The Boy Who Raked Nine Yards

He came home those evenings with his shoulders aching and his hands red, and he ate two plates of whatever I fixed and fell asleep on the couch before the dishes were done. He did not complain once. Not one time.

On the second Saturday I drove past one of the houses on my lunch break.

I saw him out there by himself, raking a big pile into the middle of the yard, and I saw him stop and lean on the rake and look up at the mountain for a minute.

Then he went right back to it. I had to pull over at the end of the street because I could not see well enough to drive.

I do not know exactly why. I think I was seeing his daddy’s shoulders on him for the first time, and none of his daddy’s quitting.

Rowan’s father left for Ohio when Rowan was two years old. He has sent four birthday cards in eleven years and not one dollar.

I do not say much about him, because Rowan does not need to carry that, but I will say this: I have always been afraid Rowan would learn from him that work is something a man can walk away from.

So when that boy raked nine yards and did not quit, it meant more to me than the money. It meant he was not his father. That is the plain truth.

Abner Lusk had agreed to hold the guitar until the fifteenth of November. Rowan had put $15 down on it out of his birthday money, so he owed $160, and Abner had written it on a little yellow card and tucked it behind the counter.

Rowan had it all figured out. He would get $135 from Harlan when the last yard was done.

He had $25 more to find. He had $8 in quarters in a pickle jar and was working on the rest.

Then Harlan called me at the gas station that Friday and spent my son’s $135 on my rent.

I drove home after my shift with my hands tight on the wheel. The sun was low and bright over the ridge, and the mountains looked like somebody had set them on fire, orange and red all the way up.

Rowan was on the front steps with Ivo’s little guitar when I pulled in.

He was picking at something slow, the same four notes over and over, trying to make his fingers stretch where the small neck would not let them.

“Hey, Mama.” He set the guitar down beside him and stood up. “Did Mr. Voss say when he’s paying me? Abner’s only holding it till the fifteenth. That’s tomorrow.”

I have been asked since then, more than once, why I did not just call Harlan back that afternoon and have it out with him.

Why I did not tell him flat out that he owed my son $135 in cash and that was the end of it.

Here is the honest answer. If I had argued it on the phone, then Rowan would have learned that his work was only worth a fight between grown-ups.