The Van Dad Drove to Church

Down the line

The second stop was two blocks over, a woman who had taught third grade to half the town, including me.

She came out with her Bible in a zippered cover and told me I had been a terrible speller and was a fine shop teacher.

The third was a farm widow who had moved into town when she could not keep the place anymore.

She told Dad she had brought him a loaf of rhubarb bread, which she set on the dash.

At each one, Dad got out. At each one, he went to the side door and rolled it open and held out his arm.

If the walk was short, he went up it and knocked. If it was long, he stood at the van and waited, and they came to him.

At the fourth house, he had to stop. I saw him put one hand flat on the side of the van and stand there with his head down, breathing, while the woman was still locking her door.

I started to get out. He held up one finger without turning around, and I sat back down.

By the time she reached the curb, he had straightened up, and he was smiling, and he held out his arm, and she never knew. None of them ever knew. He made sure of it.

The fifth was a widow who still does the altar flowers, and she had a coffee can of zinnias on her lap the whole ride.

The van started to smell like rhubarb bread and zinnias and ladies’ face powder, and it was the best a vehicle has ever smelled.

Nobody asked about the old van. I kept waiting for it. Somebody would say, where’s the Chevy, or what happened to the old one with the crack. Nobody did.

I think they knew. I think in a town that size they had all heard something by Wednesday.

And I think every one of them decided, separately and without talking about it, that if Clement did not bring it up, they would not either.

Inga

Inga Rustad lives out at the edge of town, past the grain elevator Dad ran for thirty-one years, in a little yellow house with a garden that is mostly gone to seed this time of year.

I pulled into her drive at 9:38. Dad looked at the paper in my shirt pocket and then at his watch. “Five minutes extra,” he said. “We’re right on time.”

He got out and did not wait at the van this time.

He went all the way up her walk, slow, and knocked on her door with two knocks, the way he always did, and stood back a step so she would not feel crowded.

It took her a while. Inga is ninety-one and uses a cane, and her knees are bad, and the door opened a few inches at a time.

When she saw who it was, she put her hand over her mouth.

“Clement,” she said. “They told me at the cafe that you were finished.”

“They were wrong,” Dad said. “You ready?”

She was ready. She had been ready since eight, I would guess.

She had her purse and her cane and her church gloves, and she took Dad’s arm with her free hand, and the two of them came down the walk together, him slow from the pneumonia and her slow from ninety-one years.

I got out and opened the passenger side for her, because Inga always rides in front.

Dad said he would sit in the second row with the ladies, and I could tell he was glad to sit down.

When I got back in, Inga patted my hand on the gearshift. “You look like your mother,” she said. “Drive careful.”