The Morning I Counted Dad’s Pay Out Loud

The drive home

I sat in the truck at the end of his lane for a long time with the engine running.

Here is what I kept turning over. I could have called Brody that night and had it out on the phone.

I could have driven over to their place and stood in his kitchen and told him what I thought. I could have gone around him to Lavern Haupt, who owns the store, and laid the stub on his table.

Every one of those would have ended the same way. My daughter in the middle. My daughter crying on the phone to her mother.

My daughter four months along, sitting at her kitchen table while her husband and her father went at each other over money.

And my father would have known I broke my word before the sun went down.

I did not want to win a fight. I wanted my father to have his pay.

I wanted him not to be the man in that store who came up short, because he was not that man, and everyone who drank coffee at the pot by the front door ought to know it.

I called my wife from the truck. She asked how Dad was, and I told her they had docked his pay two hundred and twelve dollars for a drawer he did not run.

She was quiet. My wife is a quiet woman when things are serious. We have been married thirty-one years. Finally she asked who ran it.

When I told her it was Kade, she was quiet again, and then she said, “Oh, Garner.” I told her Dad made me promise not to make trouble for our girl. She asked if I was going to keep that promise.

“I’m going to keep it the best I can,” I said. “I’m not going to yell at anybody. I’m not going to call anybody. I’m not going to go behind anybody’s back.”

She asked what I was going to do, then. I told her I was going to the bank in the morning.

Saturday morning

The bank in our town keeps Saturday hours, nine to noon, which is one of the things I would miss most if we ever moved somewhere bigger.

I was in the lot at five till nine with the sun just over the grain elevator.

The teller was a woman I went to school with. She counted out ten twenties, one ten, and two ones, and slid them across in a paper sleeve.

“Two hundred twelve even,” she said, and asked if I was buying something. I told her I was paying something.

I sat in the truck and took the bills out of the sleeve and laid them on my knee. I counted them twice.

Then I folded them once and put them in the inside pocket of my jacket, the navy work jacket with the company patch over the heart.

I was not working that day. I wore it anyway. It is the coat I am comfortable in.

At ten minutes till ten I drove to the store.