The Quartet on the Flatbed at the Gate

Dad Comes

Dad came at one o’clock. Haskel’s daughter drove him and Haskel together, and Orvin and Burnis came in Burnis’s old Ford with the windows down.

Dad wore his light blue shirt, the pressed one, and his good bolo tie with the turquoise stone Mom bought him in Ruidoso on their thirtieth anniversary.

He was bareheaded, his white hair combed with water. He has never worn a hat to sing. Mom said a bass ought to show his face.

He stood at the back of the trailer for a long time, looking at it. At the bales. At the steps the boy had built. At the speaker sitting on an upturned feed bucket.

“Son,” he said, “nobody stops at a hay trailer.”

“Then you’ll have sung to the cows, Dad,” I said. “You’ve done that before.”

He almost smiled. He did not quite let himself. But he put his hand on the rail of the steps, and he gave it a shake to see if it would hold, and then he nodded once.

“Whoever built this knew what he was doing,” he said.

I pointed at the boy from the mill, standing over by his truck with his hands in his back pockets.

Dad walked all the way over there and shook his hand. The boy turned red to his ears.

The Gate Opens

The fair gates opened at two. The opening on the main stage, Kirby’s band, was set for four o’clock. In past years the quartet would have sung at four, and the band would have followed.

I had told nobody we were starting at two. I had not put up a sign. I had not called the radio station.

I did not want anybody to say I was drawing a crowd away from my brother on purpose.

I just wanted Dad to sing the first song at the fair, the way he had for fifty-eight years.

Wherever he sang it, it would be the first song people heard when they walked in.

Haskel needed both hands on the rail and my shoulder under his arm to get up the steps.

He did not like it, and I did not make anything of it. Burnis came up behind him and took his cane.

They stood in their row the way they always have. Haskel on the end where the rail was, then Dad next to him, then Burnis, then Orvin on the other end. Four pressed shirts. Three hats, and Dad’s white hair.