The Float My Father Pulled Down Main

Jolene

My wife Jolene was at the kitchen table when I came in. Kaycee had already gone upstairs.

Jolene had her phone face down in front of her and a cup of coffee she had not touched.

“I called him,” she said. “He didn’t pick up.”

Lyle is her older brother by three years. They grew up on a farm south of Arcadia.

He taught her to drive a stick shift and carried her on his shoulders at the county fair. She has loved him her whole life.

“Should we just pay him?” she asked. “Six hundred dollars. It isn’t worth this, Mack. It isn’t worth her senior year.”

I sat down across from her. I thought about it. I want you to know I did think about it, for longer than a minute.

“I paid him, Jo,” I said. “You know I paid him. You were there when I went to the bank.”

“I know.”

“If we pay him again, he learns that taking it out on a kid works. And next time it’s something else. And Kaycee learns it too.”

Jolene put her face in her hands. She did not cry. She just stayed like that a while.

“He isn’t right since she left,” she said finally. “He isn’t sleeping. He told me he eats cereal for supper.”

“I know he isn’t right,” I said. “That’s why I’m not going to fight him.”