The Yellow Stripe on the Bolt

“Dad,” Roy said, and sat down in the gravel.

He sat down the way a man does whose legs have decided for him, and put his hands over his face.

I did something then that I did not plan, and I still do not know whether it was right. I poured a cup of coffee from my thermos and walked across the gravel and set it on the ground beside him.

“Drink that, Roy,” I said. “Your father is going to say some things, and you’ll want something to hold.”

“I’m sorry, Marlene.”

“I know you are, today,” I said. “The question is who you’ll be on Monday.”

Emil lowered himself, with Karen holding his arm, onto the folding chair Cody brought. He set the walker aside. He looked out over the lot and the people and spoke, not loudly, in the voice that had called out tire sizes across a bay for fifty years.

“Here is how this goes,” he said.

Emil Stensland was not a man who made speeches. He made lists, and he gave this one the way he used to write up a repair order, one line at a time.

“First. Every customer on Ted’s whiteboard gets back every dollar for work that was not done, and Cody’s six get done for free. Roy will write those checks today, here, with the people looking at him.”

“Dad, I don’t have twenty thousand dollars in the account.”

“Then Ted Hurley is going to buy your alignment rack.”

Ted, who had been standing very still beside his lift, cleared his throat. “Emil, I’d have paid Roy a fair price for that machine in March if he had asked me. Thirty-eight five. Cody can run it.”

“That will do,” said Emil. “Second. The second bay closes. Third, I am moving out of that care center on Monday and into Karen’s spare room, because I would rather eat soup at her table than have my son pay my way with other people’s money.”

“Dad,” Karen said, and wiped her eyes.

“And fourth.” Emil looked at his son. “Every customer who walks into that shop gets their old parts across the counter before they pay. In a box. For as long as you own the place. You’ll write a sign for the window tonight, in your own hand, and say what you did.”

Roy nodded. He could not speak.

“And you’ll take the checks to every one of these people yourself,” said Emil. “Not to the mail.”

It took Roy most of an hour. He sat at my card table with the checkbook open, and one by one the people came and stood across from him, and he wrote each name and each number. Harvey Zeller. Gene Aaker. Alvin Peterka, two hundred eighty-nine dollars. Marge Pfeifer, nine hundred forty.

Pastor Dan Reinke stood at the end of the line with the church van invoice, and he did not preach, which I think cost him something.

When it was my turn, Roy tore the check out of the book without looking at me.

“Eighteen hundred and sixty,” he said. “And the seven hundred and forty you paid Cody. I’ll send that too.”

“Roy, I didn’t come here to ruin you. I wanted to know how many, and now I do.” I folded the check and put it in my pocket. “What you do with the answer is yours.”