The Camper by the Ballfield

And she told him. All of it. The lock, the note, the trash bags, the booking from Nebraska.

Then he asked her one question. “Where’s he sleeping right now?”

And she told him. “On your mother’s lot. In her camper. By the ballfield. With his cap and gown in the window.”

Kyle hung up. Then he went to his foreman.

Graduation was set for Sunday afternoon. Kyle had been scheduled to drive home Saturday, which would have gotten him into Powell late that night. His foreman, a man from Gillette who had three grown kids of his own, looked at him for about five seconds and said, “Go on. I’ll square it with the office.”

Kyle left the man camp Friday at four in the afternoon. He drove 600 miles straight through the night, through Williston and down across Montana, stopping for gas and nothing else.

Saturday morning I woke up at a quarter to six, the way I always do, and I thought I would drive by the lot on my way to the grocery store.

I liked to check on Colter in the mornings, though I never let him see me do it.

It was just past sunrise when I pulled up. The light was coming low and pink across the outfield, and there was dew on every blade of grass, and the cottonwood was full of robins.

And there, beside the camper, in one of the camp chairs some stranger had left, was my son.

Kyle was asleep sitting up. He had his work coat pulled over him like a blanket, and his boots were still on, and his head had fallen over to one side against the cottonwood trunk.

His truck was parked on the grass behind him with North Dakota mud up to the door handles.

He had driven straight through the night and pulled up by the ballfield sometime after midnight. Colter’s lights were out. He did not want to wake him.

So he had sat down in that camp chair to wait until morning, and he had fallen asleep right there, ten feet from his son’s door.

I got out of my car very quietly. I walked across the wet grass and stood beside him, and I looked at my boy.

He was 42 years old. He had gray in his beard that I had not seen at Christmas.

His hands, folded on his stomach, were cracked across the knuckles from the cold up north. He looked exactly like his father had looked asleep in his recliner.

I did not wake him. I stood there and I said a prayer of thanks, and I let him sleep.

About ten minutes later, the camper door opened. Colter came out in his sweatpants and his gray T-shirt, rubbing his eyes, carrying a bowl of cereal. He saw me first. Then he saw his dad in the chair.

He stopped dead on the step. The bowl tipped and a little milk ran over the side onto his bare foot.

He set the bowl down very carefully on the step. Then he walked across the grass and knelt down in front of the camp chair.

“Dad,” he said. Just that.

Kyle opened his eyes. He looked at his son for a long time without saying anything. Then he reached out and put his hand on the back of Colter’s neck, the way he used to when Colter was little and had struck out.