The Spare Key on Dad’s Hook

Monday

On Monday morning, just after sunup, Annette’s gray sedan pulled into Dad’s drive. Brent was driving.

He got out, walked up to the porch and knocked, and when Dad came to the door, Brent asked if he could buy him a cup of coffee.

Dad told me about it that night on the phone. The waitress told me about it too, the next time I came in, and Purvis told me a third time, so I believe I have the whole of it.

Brent drove Dad to the cafe, and they sat at the counter, and Brent bought two coffees and two cinnamon rolls.

Then, in front of Purvis and the whole morning crowd, Brent told Dad he had been wrong, plain, the way a man says it when he means it.

Purvis did not make a speech either. He just reached over and clapped Brent on the shoulder once, hard, and went back to his paper. The waitress refilled Brent’s cup without being asked.

Brent got his own truck running a week before Thanksgiving. He found a used engine at a salvage yard down near Effingham and put it in himself, with his crew helping on two Saturdays.

It cost him a good deal less than the rebuild would have.

He made his Ramsey job on time, too. He borrowed a flatbed from a friend for the first week.

It turned out a man can find another way when the easy way is taken off the table.

Thanksgiving

We had Thanksgiving at Annette’s this year. Brent carved. Dad said the blessing, short, the way he always does, thanking the Lord for the food and the hands that made it and for everyone at the table.

After dinner Annette and I did the dishes together at her sink, the way we did when we were girls and Mom washed and we dried. For a long while neither of us said anything.

“I should have asked,” Annette said finally, with her hands in the dishwater. “I should have asked Dad myself. I took Brent’s word because it was easier than finding out.”

“So did I,” I said. “For three months. I’m his daughter too.”

She looked at me, and we both laughed a little, the tired way sisters laugh. She handed me a gravy boat. I dried it.

“Brent wrote the mileage down,” Annette said. “Before he gave it back to Dad. He wrote it in that little notebook in the glove box, in pencil, under Dad’s last entry. Then he wrote the oil change. He said Dad would want the record straight.”

I did not know what to say to that, so I just dried the next plate.

The yard

Dad drives to the cafe every morning now, same as before. He parks across from the station on Main, where he can see his truck out the window, and he and Purvis drink their coffee and settle the price of beans.

On Sundays he drives to church and then out to the township cemetery, four miles south, past the cedars at the bend. In winter he will sweep the snow off Mom’s stone instead of the leaves.

The station owner checked the front end, like Dad asked. It needed an alignment, which Dad paid for himself and would not let anybody argue about.

Last Saturday I drove over to St. Elmo for no reason except to see him.

I pulled into the gravel drive and there it sat, faded green in the bright cold noon, backed in tight beside the shed where it belongs.

Inside, by the back door, the spare key hung on its hook on the little brass ring.

I touched it on my way in, the way you touch a doorframe in a house you grew up in, just to know it is there.

The truck sits in Dad’s yard, and the spare key is back on its hook.