The Van Dad Drove to Church

Saturday

On Saturday morning I drove to Valley City, thirty minutes on the interstate, to a rental place by the truck stop.

I had called ahead on Thursday, because a twelve-passenger van is not something they keep a row of.

The young man at the counter had a farm kid’s sunburn and a name tag I did not read.

He looked at my license, ran my card, and told me it was two hundred eighty-nine dollars for the weekend with the insurance, back by Monday at five.

“Hauling a crew somewhere?” he asked, while he walked me around it to look for dents.

“Church,” I said. “Six widows and my dad.”

He stopped with the clipboard in his hand. “My grandma used to get picked up for church,” he said.

“Some old guy in a van. Every week for years.” He gave me a full tank, which they do not usually do, and did not charge me for it.

The van was white and almost new, with seats that still smelled like the factory.

It rode higher than my pickup and handled like a hay wagon in the wind, which there was plenty of on the drive home.

When I pulled into Dad’s driveway, he was already out on the porch in his cardigan.

He came down the steps slow and walked all the way around the van twice, the way he used to walk around a semi at the elevator before he let it load.

“Side door slides,” he said, pulling the handle. It rolled back smooth and quiet. “Ours used to stick in the cold.” He ran his hand along the edge of it. “This one won’t stick.”

“It’s just for the weekend, Dad.”

“I know,” he said. Then he climbed up into the second row and sat there a minute with his hands on his knees, looking at the empty seats behind him, counting them.

Practice

That afternoon I took the van to the empty high school parking lot and practiced.

I have driven a school bus for activity trips, so the size did not scare me, but I wanted to know where the corners were before I had six old women in the back.

Dad rode along in the passenger seat. He did not say much, but every time I took a corner too fast, he put his hand flat on the dash, and I slowed down.

“You know the route?” he asked when I parked.

“I’ve ridden it with you a hundred times.”

“Riding’s not driving.” He took a folded sheet of paper out of his shirt pocket.

It was the route, written in his square elevator-ledger hand: six names, six addresses, and a time next to each one, to the minute.

At the bottom he had written: Inga, give her five minutes extra. Do not honk.

I folded it and put it in my own shirt pocket. “I won’t honk,” I said.

“I know you won’t,” he said. “But I’m doing the doors.”

Sunday morning

Sunday came up bright and still, the kind of September morning in North Dakota where the air is cool and the sun is warm and you can hear a pickup start a mile away.

I got to Dad’s at a quarter to nine. He was sitting at the kitchen table already dressed, his black suit pressed and too big on him now, and the maroon tie Mom bought him for their fortieth anniversary.

He had shaved twice. I could tell, because there was a little nick on his jaw with a scrap of toilet paper on it, and he had forgotten to take it off.

I reached over and took it off for him, and he let me.

“You eat?” I asked him.

“Half a piece of toast. Don’t tell your sister-in-law.” Garrett’s wife always fusses at him about breakfast. Then he looked at the clock and stood up. “We’re two minutes late.”

He came down the porch steps with one hand on the rail and the other on my arm, and I opened the passenger door of the rented van for him.

He got in and pulled the seat belt across and clicked it.

“You drive,” he said. “I’ll do the doors.”