The Axles From the Fifty Eight Derby

Why I Didn’t Fight Him

People have asked me since why I did not stand in the carport and pitch a fit, or call our mother, or tell him to put those wheels back on or not come to Thanksgiving.

The plain answer is that they were his axles, off his mower, from his shop. And a shouting match in my driveway on race morning would have sent Beckett back inside to cry instead of up to that hill.

My son is ten years old. His daddy left when he was two and has not been back.

Darrell is the closest thing to a father he has ever had, and I was not going to make him choose between his uncle and his car at seven in the morning.

So I set my coffee down on the washing machine and stood there. Beckett did not say anything either.

He held the wheels for his uncle while Darrell loosened the bolts, one at a time, the way he had been taught to.

That is the thing I remember most. My boy did not cry, and he did not argue.

He held the wheels steady, so they would not roll off the carport, and he handed them up to his uncle one by one.

When the last one came off, Darrell put his hand on top of the red helmet for a second.

Then he loaded the axles and the four wheels into the back of his truck and drove off down the road toward his first yard.

Beckett sat down on the carport step beside his car. It was just a blue wooden box now, sitting on the concrete on its floorboard, with four empty bolt holes on each end where the brackets used to be.

Forty One Dollars

I went inside and looked at the clock on the stove. Inspection on Main Street was at eight-thirty. The race started at ten.

The farm store in Cookeville did not open until eight, and it is a good half hour each way.

I opened my purse on the kitchen table and counted. I had forty-one dollars and some change until I got paid on Wednesday.

I cook breakfast and lunch at a diner out by the interstate, six days a week, and Labor Day weekend I had taken the Saturday off for the first time all summer.

Even if I made it to Cookeville and back, I did not know what to buy.

I did not know what size axle fit those brackets, or what wheel would roll true on a hill. Darrell knew those things. I did not.

I stood in the kitchen and said a short prayer, the kind my grandmother used to say over a sick calf. It was not fancy. It was mostly the word please.

When I went back out, Beckett was still sitting on the step. But he was not alone.