The Sweet Corn Sign on My Tailgate

I saw Ottilie set down the jar of honey she was holding. The old man in the seed cap stopped with his coffee halfway up.

Lowell walked straight through the middle of the market. He was in his work clothes, the gray shop shirt with his name stitched on the pocket. His face was red, and not from the sun.

He stopped at my tailgate. He did not look at me. He did not look at the sign, though I saw his eyes catch on it for a second, his mother’s lettering, and slide away. He looked at his dad.

Grandpa did not stand up. He did not say one word. He just lifted that empty coffee can off his knee with both of his shaking hands and held it out.

For a long moment Lowell didn’t move. The whole market was watching. I could hear the bees at Ottilie’s table and a buggy horse stamping somewhere over on the side street.

Tobin had come around to stand next to me and I put my hand on his shoulder.

Then Lowell reached into his shirt pocket and took out a bank envelope, thick and folded over. He opened it, and he took out the money, and he counted it into his father’s coffee can right there in front of everybody. He counted out loud, the way Grandpa does.

Twenties, mostly. A few fifties. His hands were shaking almost as bad as Grandpa’s. “Seven hundred,” he said, and his voice cracked, and he kept going.

“Eight hundred. Eight-fifty. Nine hundred.” He folded the empty envelope and put it back in his pocket.

“I sold my deer rifle last night,” he said. He said it to Grandpa, but loud enough that the people in line could hear, and I believe he meant them to.

“The rest came out of my check this morning. That’s all of it, Dad. Every dollar.”

Grandpa looked down into the can for a while. Then he looked up at his son. “I know it is,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” Lowell said. “I’m sorry, Dad. I told myself it was coming to me anyway. It wasn’t mine. It was never mine. It was the kids’.”

Grandpa didn’t make a speech. He didn’t say I forgive you, or how could you, or any of the things people say in the movies.

He just nodded, slowly, the way he does, and he put the plastic lid back on that coffee can and pressed it down all the way around with his thumb.

Then Lowell did something I did not expect. He looked at the last sack of corn on the tailgate, the only one left.

He turned to Tobin and said, “How much for that dozen, buddy?”

Tobin looked up at me. I nodded. “Five dollars,” Tobin said. “Same as last year.”

Lowell took out his wallet and handed Tobin a ten. And Tobin, very carefully, opened the tackle box and counted him back a five, and handed it over, and said, “Thank you, sir.” Lowell’s face just about broke in half.

He took the sack in both arms. Then he turned around and faced the line, all those people who had been watching, the old men from church and the widow Della and the couple from Iowa City and the man from the bank.

He didn’t say anything to them. He just stood there a moment and let them look at him.