The Spare Key on Dad’s Hook

The truck

I should explain about the truck, because it matters, and because I let it go longer than I should have.

Dad bought the pickup new off a lot in Vandalia in 2006. It was the last new vehicle he ever bought.

My mother picked the color, a deep green she said looked like a hedgerow in June, and Dad pretended to grumble about it for a week.

The green has faded now to something closer to sage. The seat is worn smooth on the driver’s side.

Dad keeps a little spiral notebook in the glove box and writes down the miles and the gallons every time he fills it, in pencil, the way he logged loads for forty years.

He drives three places, mostly. The cafe, the church, and my mother’s grave.

Some weeks he runs to the elevator to talk to the men he used to haul for, and once a month he drives to Vandalia for groceries and a haircut.

His license was renewed in the spring. He passed the eye test without his glasses on the first try and came out of the office grinning like he had won something at the county fair.

In August my sister’s husband, Brent Stoll, blew the engine in his own truck on Route 40.

It threw a rod a mile outside town, and the mechanic said a rebuilt engine would run more than he could pay that month.

Brent runs a siding crew. Two young men work for him, and he has a gravel shop yard off a county road north of Vandalia with a pole barn, a stack of siding and a work trailer. Without a truck, he does not work.

So he came to Dad on a Saturday afternoon in August, with Annette beside him, and said, “Just for a week, Clarence. Till I get mine fixed.”

Dad handed him the keys that same afternoon. Of course he did. Dad has never once in his life watched a working man go without a way to work.

A week went by. Then two. In September I asked Brent at Sunday dinner when Dad was getting his truck back, and he said next week, the engine was on order.

In October, at the same table, Brent said something different. He said it while he was buttering a roll, not looking at anybody in particular.

“Honestly, he’s eighty-five. He’s got no business behind the wheel anymore. Somebody’s going to get hurt. The truck’s better off where it is.”

Annette nodded. My little sister is forty-five and loves her husband, and she wanted it to be true that he was looking out for Dad.

I looked at Dad, and Dad passed the green beans and said nothing at all.

I let it go. I told myself Dad was getting rides from Purvis. I told myself it was between Brent and Dad.

I had forty buses and a flu going around the drivers, and I let it go.

That is the part I am not proud of. Everything after it, I would do again.