The Checkbook My Son Kept for Me

The Thursday Table

I cannot drive, so I asked Delmar Fry.

Delmar is eighty-one and has been my friend since we rode the same school bus. He ran the garage in Rexford until his hands gave out.

He picked me up at a quarter to six on Thursday in his old Ford and drove me to the feed mill, where the Rexford Farmers Co-op has kept a round table by the scale room window since before either of us could read.

I have sat at that table for fifty-three years. Everyone there knows my business, and I had never once told them anything that mattered.

Roscoe Kitzmiller was already there. Roscoe ran the co-op for thirty-one years, and at eighty-two he chairs its board and still comes in to count the feed tickets. Lyle Hocker sat beside him with his hat on the table.

I put a manila envelope down between the sugar and the creamer.

“I need somebody to read me something,” I said. “I cannot read it myself, and I cannot ask my son.”

The coffeepot gurgled. Roscoe slid out the pages, took his glasses from his shirt pocket, and read for a long time without speaking. Then he passed the first page to Lyle, who passed it to Delmar.

“Read it out loud, Roscoe,” I said. “All of it. I want to hear it.”

Roscoe has the kind of voice they used to put on the radio for the Farm Show, deep and unhurried. He read all sixty-one lines.

“Check four-four-one-seven. Cash. Nine hundred dollars. Check four-four-two-oh. Eshelman Excavating. Two thousand four hundred.”

Nobody interrupted. At line twenty or so Lyle Hocker put his hat back on, which is what a man does when he does not know where to look.

When Roscoe finished he squared the stack with the sides of his hands.

“Lloyd,” he said. “Is that your boy?”

“It is.”

“You want to call somebody?”

“I want to know what you three would do,” I said. “I have lived here my whole life. I need somebody to tell me what is decent.”

Delmar set down his cup.

“Eshelman Excavating,” he said slowly. “My grandson Tyler has run a skid steer for Darren three winters.”

“Yes.”

“When Brandt Homes went under last year, half the contractors in the county laid off a crew. Darren did not lay off a man. Tyler said it more than once. ‘Pap, Darren never missed a Friday.'”

“Where did you think the money came from?” Lyle asked.

“I thought he had a line of credit,” Delmar said.

I understood then something I had not seen in Pauline’s office. My son had not spent my savings on himself. He did not drive a new truck or own a boat. He had been using my money to make himself a good man in the eyes of this valley, and he had never told anybody where it came from.

That was worse in one way and better in another, and I did not know yet which weighed more.

“You will not go to the sheriff,” Roscoe said. It was not a question.

“No.”

“Then you will want people, not lawyers.” He leaned toward me. “When does the school tax come due?”

“The thirty-first. Three thousand one hundred eighty-six dollars. I have four hundred twelve in the bank.”

“You have been a member of this co-op fifty-three years,” Roscoe said. “Do you know what your equity in this mill is worth?”

I did not. Marjorie had known.

“Four thousand two hundred twelve dollars. It is yours, Lloyd. The bylaws say the board may retire a living member’s equity in a hardship. I wrote that line myself in 2004 for a Brethren widow whose barn burned.”

“I will not take charity,” I said.

“It is your own money. It is just sitting in our safe.” He cleared his throat. “I will call the board tonight.”

Delmar put his hand on my shoulder. It has shaken for ten years, and it was the steadiest thing I had touched all week.

“We will not say a word to Darren,” Delmar said. “Not one of us. You tell us when.”