Then something happened that I had not expected. His shoulders came down and the smile went out of him, and he looked like exactly what he was, a tired man in a vest.
“Do you know what an estate sale nets, after the ads and the insurance and the trailer note?” he said. “On a good day, eleven hundred dollars. My mother is in memory care at Windsor Place. It’s fifty-eight hundred a month, Mrs. Eckert. My sister can’t help, and the big stores have been eating me alive for six years.”
I believed him. That was the hardest part. I believed every word.
“I’m sorry about your mother,” I said, and I meant it.
“Then take the envelope.”
“No.” I said it as gently as I could. “That wouldn’t be fair to the five families on Ned Gantt’s list. Edith Voigt and the Albrecht brothers. They were told the same words I was.”
“Here’s what I can do,” I said. “Give the two thousand to Ned to divide. Then bring each of those families their difference, or as much as you can, by the end of the month. If you do, I’ll stand beside you in Ned’s barn on a Friday night and say you made it right.”
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He stood a long while with the envelope in his hand.
“I haven’t got it, Nancy. It went to the home and the trailer and the truck. If I had it, I’d give it to you.”
“Then give what you have.”
“And who hires me after?”
It was a real question, and he asked it plainly. Nobody answered. Then a slow, deep voice spoke from the line of men.
“Nobody will, son.”
Ned Gantt had come in his own truck and had been standing quietly by the mailbox. He did not say it in anger. He said it the way he would read a price.
“Not me, and not the Lions, and not the funeral home. People trust the man who comes to their house in the worst week of their year. You spent that trust, Kirk, and it’s gone. I’m sorry for you.”
Kirk looked at the men. He looked at Hub, who had taught half the toolmakers in the county. He looked at Greg, standing very still with a plank in his hands.
Then he handed the envelope to Ned without a word and climbed into his white truck and backed down my gravel road slower than I have ever seen a man drive.