The House I Bought Back for Dad

I went back to work that afternoon because the road still needed graded, and because I needed to think, and I think best with a blade under me.

I made one long pass and then I parked on the shoulder and called my wife on my lunch.

She works the front desk at the clinic. She took her break and went out to sit in her car so we could talk.

I told her all of it, the sign, Esther’s coffee cake, Coral, the lake lot, the twenty thousand dollars.

Then I told her what I was thinking, and I said it fast so I could not back out of it.

Before the county hired me, I worked eighteen years at the implement dealer, setting up combines and running parts.

They had a 401(k) and I put into it every paycheck from the time I was twenty-two. I never rolled it over. It just sat there and grew.

It was our retirement. Hers and mine. The county pension is decent, but that account was the difference between getting by and having a little.

We had talked about a camper. We had talked about seeing the grandkids in Colorado more.

“If I take it out now,” I said, “it’s a ten percent penalty because I’m not fifty-nine and a half. Then it’s income tax on top, federal and state. To clear $189,000, I’d have to take out a lot more than that.”

I had already looked at the statement on my phone. There was about three hundred twenty thousand in it.

By the time the government got its piece, the house would take nearly all of it.

My wife didn’t say anything for a while. I could hear her turn signal ticking. I think she’d bumped the lever and didn’t notice.

“Emmett,” she said, “I know what it means. I can add.” Then she said, “He’s your dad. He held my babies. Do it.”

I sat there on the shoulder of that gravel road with the engine idling and the phone in my lap and I didn’t move for a good five minutes.

A meadowlark sat on the fence wire the whole time. I don’t know why I remember that.

The next morning I took a personal day and walked into Coral Vinje’s office on Box Butte Avenue at eight o’clock sharp.

She was already there with her coffee. She looked up and knew who I was before I said it.

She was younger than I’d pictured, maybe mid-forties, reading glasses pushed up in her hair. She pointed me to the chair across her desk and didn’t say anything for a long time.

“You know I represent the seller,” she said finally. “Your brother. I can write up an offer for you, but I have to tell you I work for him. You’d want your own agent. There’s two good ones down the street.”

“I know who you work for,” I said. “I don’t need anybody negotiating for me. I’m not going to negotiate. Write it up at his price.”

She took her glasses down out of her hair. “Full asking? Nobody pays full asking around here. Houses on that street have been going for a hundred and seventy-five, maybe eighty.”