Grandpa’s Mules on Main Street

What Grandpa Said

Grandpa saw him.

He drew back on the lines, gentle, and spoke to the mules, and they stopped. Right there, in the middle of Main Street, with the parade going on ahead of us and the fire truck behind us, the wagon stopped in front of Royce.

The whole street went quiet. I have never heard a town that quiet. You could hear the flags.

Grandpa looked down at Royce for a long time. Royce looked up at him. He did not look away. I will give him that.

“Royce,” Grandpa said. His voice was thin but it carried. “I hear you got six hundred dollars for my girls.”

Royce’s jaw worked. He did not say anything.

“Linus told me,” Grandpa said. “Week before last. He comes up Tuesdays and we play dominoes. He told me all of it. The dog food too.”

I turned and stared at him. He did not look at me.

“I hear that six hundred went into my account,” Grandpa said. “Into that office in there. Paying for my bed.”

“Yes sir,” Royce said. It came out of him like a croak. “Every dime, Grandpa.”

Grandpa nodded slowly. He looked at the mules. Then he looked back at Royce.

“Then I guess these girls are still feeding me,” he said. “Like they always did.”

Nobody on that curb said a word. Royce’s face crumpled up. He put his hand over his mouth.

He was forty-five years old and he stood there on Main Street in front of the whole town with his hand over his mouth.

Grandpa let him stand there a minute. He did not say anything else hard. He did not have to. It was all already said.

Then he spoke again, and his voice was different. Softer. The voice he used with the mules.

“You used to lead Kate when you were a little fellow,” he said. “Remember that? Every fall at the church picnic. You’d walk at her head all day long and you wouldn’t let anybody else do it.”

Royce nodded. He could not talk.

“She always minded you best,” Grandpa said. “Come take her head, Royce. We’ve got a block to go.”

The Last Block

For a second, Royce did not move. I could see him deciding. All those faces on the curb, all those people standing.

It would have been the easiest thing in the world for him to turn around and walk off down a side street.

He stepped off the curb.

He walked out into the street to the front of the wagon. Kate turned her head to him and blew through her nose, and he put his hand up under her bridle, at the cheek strap, the way Grandpa taught both of us when we were little.

“Hey, Katie,” he said. I could barely hear him. “Hey, girl. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Grandpa picked up the lines.

“Walk up, girls,” he said.

Somebody on the curb started clapping. Then everybody.

It went down both sides of Main Street, and the residents on the lawn were clapping, and Ileta was crying, and Sybil was crying, and my boys behind the wagon with the shovel were looking at each other like they did not know what was happening.

Tasha was on the curb by the bank. She caught my eye and put her hand over her heart.

Grandpa drove that last block with his hat on and his blue shirt pressed and his hands steady on the lines. I sat beside him and kept my hands in my lap.

And Royce walked beside the wagon all the way to the end of Main Street, with his hand on Kate’s bridle, and he did not let go.