The Boy Who Raked Nine Yards

“I did those Thursday after school,” Rowan said. “He asked me to. He said it was a little one, so it was a freebie.”

I had not known about that. That made ten yards, not nine. I did not say anything. I just got out of the car.

Harlan came out the front door before we got to the steps, and I walked up to meet him on the porch boards. He had on the brown cardigan he always wears from October to April, buttoned all the way, and his white hair was combed straight back.

“You’re early, Shay,” he said. He looked pleased. He looked like a man who had settled something sensible and was glad to see it come out tidy.

I went up the steps. I took the rent envelope out of my vest, and I put it in his hand, and then I said, “Let me count it for you, Harlan,” and I took it back out and counted it into his palm.

Fifty, a hundred, a hundred fifty. I counted it out loud, every bill, slow, the way I count at work when somebody is watching me. Six hundred. Six hundred fifty.

Harlan looked down at what was in his hand. Then he looked at me. “That’s $650,” he said. “I told you $515.”

“You did,” I said.

“The boy’s raking covers the rest. I told you that yesterday.”

“No, sir,” I said. I kept my voice low and plain. “The boy’s raking was never mine to spend.”

He did not say anything for a second. He looked past me at Rowan, who was standing at the foot of the steps in his oversized green flannel, his hands hanging at his sides, not understanding yet.

I went back down the steps. I took the second envelope out of my vest. I turned my back to the porch and I faced my son, and I said, “Hold out your hand.”

He held it out, palm up. He looked at me like I had lost my mind.

I put a ten in his hand and a five on top of it. “Fifteen,” I said. “That’s the house on Wythe Street.”

Another ten, another five. “Thirty. That’s the one by the tracks with the big oak.”

“Forty-five,” I said. “The yellow house.” He was not breathing. I could hear him not breathing.

“Sixty. Seventy-five. Ninety.” I named every house, because he had raked every one and he knew every one, and I wanted him to hear each yard he had done paid out loud, one at a time.

Behind me I heard the boards creak. I did not turn around. Rowan’s eyes went over my shoulder for a second, and I knew Harlan had stepped back into his doorway.

“One-oh-five,” I said. “One-twenty.” I put the last ten and the last five in his hand. “One thirty-five.”

Rowan held the bills fanned out in his fingers like a hand of cards. He did not close his hand. He just looked at them.