Grandpa’s Mules on Main Street

What the Town Heard

I stopped by the feed store the week before the Fourth to pick up a sack of sweet feed. Treva runs the register. She has known me since I was in diapers.

She rang me up and then she put her hand on top of the sack before I could pick it up.

“Garrett,” she said, low, “Royce was in here in June. He told the dog food thing to the whole counter. Thought it was funny. Nobody laughed. He even had a card up on our board. Two mules, six hundred, call Royce.”

I nodded. I had figured as much. Royce has always told his jokes at the feed store.

“Folks heard you bought them,” she said. “Folks heard what you paid with, too. Tire money. Tasha told my sister at church.”

“Tasha talks,” I said.

“Tasha’s right,” Treva said. She took her hand off the sack. “We’ll be out on the Fourth. All of us.”

I did not know what she meant by that until the Fourth.

Telling Grandpa

I never told Grandpa about Royce. I never told him about Quincy, or the dog food, or the tire money. I told him the mules were at my place for the summer, so I could keep an eye on them.

That was true, as far as it went.

What I did tell him, the week before the Fourth, was about the parade. I sat on the edge of his bed and told him Arlo had us behind the color guard, and the home said he could go, and the team was ready.

He did not say anything for a long time. He looked out his window at Main Street.

“I don’t know, Garrett,” he said finally. “I’m an old man in a home. I don’t want to be a show for people.”

“You won’t be a show, Grandpa. You’ll be driving.”

“My hands aren’t what they were.”

“I’ll hold the lines. You just sit up there.”

He turned his head and looked at me, and his eyes were wet, and I looked away because I did not know what else to do.

“Pet and Kate,” he said. “Are they going good?”

“They’re going good, Grandpa. Kate still stops at the mailbox.”

He laughed then, a real laugh, the first one I had heard out of him since May. “That’s my girl,” he said. “All right. All right. I’ll go.”