The Debt I Carried for Thirty-Four Years

The Drill

The reunion was the fifth of September, a Saturday. I will not pretend I didn’t know something was coming. Mr. Hollin knows everything about everyone and says nothing, and when I passed him at the post office that Tuesday he said nothing to me, and I read it on his face.

Sixty-two people came. I had invited Rosalee myself, in June, by phone. I had not told her about the plate. I told myself I wanted it to be a surprise for her, and I told myself that for ten weeks, and I want you to understand how long a man can tell himself a thing. I think now that I wanted a witness. I wanted somebody there who had loved my mother as the plaque said she did.

I was at the smoker. I had the ribs on, and the ham was already out, and I had a pair of long tongs in my hand because I could not think what else to do with my hands. At twenty minutes to twelve, I saw my brother walk to his truck. He came back with a yellow cordless drill. Twila walked beside him. She had something in her cupped palm, and I saw it catch the sun, four small brass screws, and I thought, she is carrying them like eggs.

He held a plate to the post next to mine, square and level, at exactly my height. He had measured it. He put in the first screw. The drill was loud. Every table stopped, one at a time.

What I want to tell you is what I saw. Twila said, “A little left,” and he moved it left. She never looked at the crowd. She handed him the screws one at a time as if she had been doing it forty years. It was not a performance. It was two people who had done a thousand small jobs together, in a kitchen, in a barn, on a roof, handing each other the next thing. I had not seen that in twenty years, because I had never once looked.

I thought, I have been counting that woman short my whole life.

Then Aunt Hettie, who is ninety-one and has said what she thought in that family since before I was born, said in a voice you could hear at the creek, “It’s about time somebody did.”

I could not move. I had the tongs in my hand. Somebody’s boy began to clap, and I will tell you that it was my own grandson, nine years old, who had not understood a thing and clapped because the drill had finished. A few others joined, and then stopped.

I put down the tongs. I said grace, because I am the oldest and it falls to me, and I said it with my eyes shut and my head down, because I could not trust my face. I ate my dinner standing up at the end of the table. At two o’clock I left. I did not speak to Gaylen. I did not know how to begin.

Rosalee found me by the truck, before I left. She did not say hello. She said, “Verlin, I never gave a dime for that plate and you know it. You didn’t tell me.” I said I knew. She said, “Dorcas would have been ashamed.” I said, “Yes.” She looked at me for a while and said, “I’ll sit with Twila. You go home.” And that is what she did.