The Envelope in the School Lot

“He’s getting by,” I said.

“Well, he finally squared up his tab, I’ll give him that,” Ozzie said. “Back in February. Came in with a whole fistful of fives and tens and paid it off to the dollar. Eight hundred and change. I about fell over.”

I had the scaler in my hand. I set it down on the tray very carefully, the way you set something down when you are afraid you might throw it.

Lawn money comes in fives and tens. Thirty-one lawns of fives and tens, folded in half and stuffed in a coffee can on top of a refrigerator.

“Mari? You all right?” Ozzie said. “You went white as that paper bib.”

“I’m fine,” I said. “Turn your head toward me a little. We’re almost done.”

I finished his cleaning. I want that on the record. I polished every tooth in that man’s head and flossed him and told him to come back in six months, and then I went out to my car on my break and sat behind the wheel with both hands in my lap.

I have to be fair to my brother here, because I loved him then and I love him now.

He had lost the only job he ever had. He was ashamed. The bar was the one place nobody asked him what he was going to do next.

That is the reason. It is not an excuse. He took a boy’s whole summer, every hot afternoon and every sore shoulder, and he drank it.

I thought about driving straight over to his house. I thought about standing in his kitchen and saying every true thing I had in me, and I could feel how good it would feel for about one minute.

Then I thought about what happens after that minute.

The money was already gone. Ozzie had it, and Ozzie had already spent it on beer and the electric bill. Yelling at Sorley would not put one dollar back in that coffee can.

And Teague would be standing there. He would hear his aunt and his father go at each other in the kitchen over him, and he would carry that the rest of his life as the fight he caused. Asking Sorley for it would only make Teague the reason for a fight.

So I said a short prayer in my car, the kind my mother used to say over the dishpan, and I went back in to my two o’clock.

That afternoon after work I drove over to Sorley’s house. His truck was gone. Teague was in the garage with his trombone case open on the workbench, polishing the slide with an old dish towel.

He didn’t play. He was just polishing. I stood in the open garage door a minute and watched him rub the same spot on that brass over and over.

“Come over to my house,” I said. “I’ve got cocoa and those cookies with the jam in the middle. Leave your dad a note.”

He came. He always comes. He sat at my kitchen table in his black band hoodie with his hands wrapped around the mug, and the afternoon sun came in over the sink and lit up his hair.

“Mr. Fadness called me,” I said.

His shoulders went up around his ears. He looked down into the cocoa like there was something in the bottom of it he needed to find.