The Ranger I Signed Over to Mom

Wednesday night supper

Mom drove herself to church Wednesday for the supper and the prayer meeting. She went early, the way she always does, to help set out the tea glasses and the paper napkins.

I came later, after a meeting with the hay producers. When I walked in she was at her usual table with her friends, and the Ranger was parked out front between two big diesel pickups, small and blue and clean.

Nobody asked her about the Buick to her face. I watched a few of the ladies look at each other over the green beans. In a town this size, people work out a whole story from one changed vehicle.

Mom did not explain. She passed the cornbread and asked after somebody’s grandson in the Army and said grace at her table when she was asked, the same as always.

On the way out, an old farmer from Mom’s Sunday school class, who is ninety and still drives his own tractor, stopped beside the Ranger and patted the hood. “Good little trucks, these,” he said. “You’ll get another hundred thousand out of it.”

“I don’t need a hundred thousand,” Mom said. “I need about three more miles to my house.”

He laughed so hard he had to hold onto the mirror.

Mom backed out of that spot as careful as you please, checked both mirrors twice, and tapped the horn once at the church ladies standing on the steps.

Main Street

Thursday was grocery day, and Mom insisted on driving herself. But she asked me to ride along, because she wanted to stop at the post office and the bank too, and she said she liked the company.

It was another bright afternoon, warm enough for the windows down. The wind had laid and the sky was clean. Mom had the radio on the gospel station out of Abilene, low, and she was humming along with a hymn.

We came down Main past the feed store a little after two. There is a long bench out front where the men sit with their coffee in the afternoon, the same three or four every day, and Darrell was standing there with them.

He had one boot up on the bench and a cup in his hand. Cletus, who was my stepdad’s best friend for forty years, was sitting right next to him. They were laughing at something.

I saw Darrell see the truck. I saw his face change. He put his boot down off the bench.