The Stone Dad’s Road Crew Set

The monument company had poured the foundation two days before. It sat beside the tin marker, a clean gray slab, still pale where the concrete was curing. The stone sat on a pallet next to it under a moving blanket.

I set up Mom’s folding lawn chair in the grass near the cedars where she could see. She sat down, put the thermos in her lap, and held it with both hands.

“Is it under there?” she asked, looking at the blanket.

“It’s under there.”

“Can I see it?”

“In a minute, Mom. Wait for the men.”

“What men?”

Then we heard them.

They came up the cemetery lane slow, the way you drive a heavy truck on gravel: a yellow boom truck in front and two pickups behind it in a line, raising a long tail of dust that drifted out over the dry corn.

They parked along the lane and got out. Three of them. Every one of them over 65, every one in a seed cap, and every one of them wearing his old orange county vest.

I had not asked them to wear the vests. I found out later that Elwood had not asked them either. They had just done it.

Mom put her hand flat on her chest.

“That’s Elwood,” she said. “And that’s the one who always had the little dog in the cab. Nadine. Those are Harlan’s men.”

“Those are Harlan’s men,” I said.

Elwood walked over first and took off his cap. He bent down and kissed Mom on the cheek. “Edith,” he said.

“Elwood. You came.”

“We wouldn’t be anyplace else.”

The others came over one at a time and did the same thing. Took off their caps. Said her name. Shook her hand or kissed her cheek. One of them said, “Harlan was the best operator I ever worked with.” Another one just held her hand a while and did not say anything at all.

Mom opened the thermos. She had brought enough coffee for three men after all. I do not know how she knew. Maybe she did not. Maybe she just always brings that much.

Then they went to work, and it was like watching a crew that had never stopped being a crew.

Truman backed the boom truck up the lane as close to the grave as the ground allowed. Elwood walked him in with one hand up, the same way I imagine he walked in a hundred dump trucks on a hundred culvert jobs.

They pulled the blanket off. There was the stone: gray granite, upright, polished on the face and rough on the sides, with our family name across the top and Dad’s name and Mom’s name below.

Mom stood up out of her chair. I went and stood beside her for a moment, then went back to the men.

They ran nylon straps under the stone, two of them, and hooked them to the boom. Elwood checked every strap twice. Nobody hurried. You do not hurry with granite.

I pulled on my leather work gloves. Elwood looked at me and nodded toward the stone. “You guide it, Nadine,” he said. “It’s your dad.”