The Nine Wrecks on a Rented Rack

Why I did not fight him

People have asked me since why I did not just call a lawyer. A lawyer was the first thing my sister said, and the second thing my pastor’s wife said, and I understand why.

But a lawyer takes months. A lawyer means Lu suing his own father, with Lu sitting in a recliner unable to drive himself to the courthouse, and nine families waiting on cars that would not get fixed in the meantime.

And Lu could not do it. I knew that before I asked.

He had fought with his father exactly once in his life, at nineteen, and he told me once it took them three years to speak again. His mother had cried the whole time.

His mother passed in 2019. Since then it had just been Orval and his two boys, Lu and his little brother Dorsey, and a lot of silence around the Thanksgiving table.

Lu was not a coward. Please do not read it that way.

He was a man in pain, flat on his back, whose own father had walked into his shop and taken the thing he was proudest of. Some hurts take the fight right out of a person.

So I made a decision driving home. The machine was gone, and I could not get it back by Monday.

But the nine cars were still on the lot, and the nine promises were still mine to keep.

The recliner

I got Lu into the house and into his chair. I brought him a glass of iced tea and his pain pill and sat down on the footstool in front of him, and for a while neither of us said anything.

The television was on with the sound off. Some ball game. Lu stared at it without seeing it.

He kept rubbing his thumb along the arm of the chair, the way he does when a part will not line up.

“Thirty-eight thousand,” he finally said. “It was worth more than that, Mal. The measuring system alone was worth fifteen. He sold it like scrap.”

“I know,” I said.

“I paid on that thing for eight years.” His voice was very quiet. “I paid on it the year the furnace went out. I paid on it the winter you were sick. I never missed one, not one.”

“I know, honey,” I said. “I wrote every check.”

He looked at his hands for a long time. They are big hands, scarred across the knuckles and stained gray along the nails that no soap ever gets out. I have loved those hands for twenty-two years.

Then he looked up at me and said the thing I will remember for the rest of my life.

“Where are you going to get a rack by Monday?”

Not “should we.” Not “can you.” Just where. Like it was already decided, and he trusted me to carry it out, and the only question left was the parts.

I went and got the laptop off the kitchen table and sat back down on the footstool.