The Cowbell at the Two Mile Mark

Her ponytail was coming loose. She looked up at me and I saw her see it on my face before I said a word.

“What happened?” she said. “Is it Grandma?”

“Grandma’s fine,” I said. I sat down across from her. I had thought about what to say the whole drive, and none of it was any good. “Your dad called me at lunch. He can’t take you Friday.”

She set her toast down. She did not say anything for a while. She just lined up the corners of her algebra book with the edge of the table, the way she does when she is trying to hold still.

“Why not?” she said finally.

“He has a fishing tournament in Missouri on Saturday,” I said. “So I’m taking you. I already got my shifts covered. We’ll leave Friday after school, same as you planned.”

I did not say anything else about Kurt. I did not say what I thought of him.

I had made that promise to myself four years ago when we split, standing in that same kitchen. Whatever he did, she would not hear it from me.

“Is Dad mad at me?” she asked.

That one went right through me. Fifteen years old, a state qualifier, a girl who got up at five thirty to run the gravel road past the Lutheran church in the dark all summer, and her first thought was that she had done something wrong.

“No, honey,” I said. “Your dad’s not mad at you. Your dad is fishing. That’s all it is.”

She nodded slowly. Then she picked her toast back up and took a bite and chewed it like it was cardboard.

“Can we still go to the pancake place after?” she asked.

“We can go anywhere you want,” I said. “We can go to the pancake place twice.”

She almost smiled. Almost. Then she went back to her algebra, and I went to the refrigerator and stood there with the door open looking at nothing, because I did not want her to see my face.

Thursday morning before my shift I drove her to school and walked into the gym with her. The gym smelled the way small-town gyms always smell, floor wax and old popcorn and the heat coming up out of the vents.

Coach Haakenson was sitting on the bottom bleacher with a clipboard, going over the travel list with the boys. Our boys’ team had qualified for state as a team, seven runners, and they were riding the activity bus Friday morning.

Dina Haakenson was thirty-eight and had run for the college in Brookings. She had coached Ainsley since seventh grade.

She was the kind of coach who knew every kid’s split time and every kid’s mother’s work schedule, and never mentioned either one out loud.

“Mrs. Mertz,” she said, getting up. “Ainsley told me first period. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” I said. “I just need to change the form.”

She already had it out. The parent transportation form, with Kurt’s name and signature on the line, dated in August. She had a new one under it, filled out except for the signature.

“I’d put her on the bus in a second,” she said quietly, so Ainsley would not hear. “But it’s the little bus, and it’s full. Seven boys, two alternates, a manager, me and my assistant. The district won’t let me put a kid on without a seat belt.”

“I know,” I said. “I wouldn’t ask you to. I want to take her anyway.”

I signed my name where his had been. Jolene Mertz, mother. It is a strange thing to sign your name on a line that was supposed to be someone else’s.