The Van Dad Drove to Church

The church lot

The church sits up on the hill at the north end of town, white with a tall steeple you can see from the interstate.

The lot is gravel, and on a dry September morning the dust hangs gold in the air when the cars pull in.

We came up the hill at twenty to ten. The lot was about half full.

There were men standing by their pickups talking about yields and the weather, and women gathering on the steps, and kids running in the grass by the cemetery.

And there was Garrett.

He was standing near the door in his brown sport coat, the one he wears to every wedding and funeral, waiting for his wife, who was talking to the pastor’s wife on the steps. He had his hands in his pockets.

He saw the white van come up the hill. I watched him look at it, the way you look at a vehicle you do not know.

Then I pulled closer, and he saw Dad through the side window in the second row, in his black suit, with six old women around him.

I watched my brother’s face go still.

I pulled into the spot nearest the door. It is not a marked spot. Nobody ever painted anything.

But for 22 years everybody in that congregation has left it open for Clement and his van, and that morning it was open too.

Dad slid the side door open from the inside and climbed out before I could get around to help.

He stood by the door and held out his arm, and one by one the ladies came down.

Garrett did not move. His wife came down off the steps and stood next to him, and I saw her look at him and then at Dad and then at him again.

What the ladies said

Theda was the first one down. She put her hand on Dad’s arm and stepped to the gravel, and she straightened her navy hat, and she looked across the lot at my brother.

“Is that your boy Garrett?” she asked Dad.

“That’s Garrett,” Dad said.

“Nils, help me down the rest of the way. I want to talk to him.”

I took her other arm, and we walked across the gravel together, Theda and me, with the other five coming behind us in a slow little line, Dad last with Inga on his arm.

Garrett saw us coming, and I think he expected the worst. I think he expected Theda Moen to tell him off in front of the whole congregation of the church he was baptized in. His shoulders went up a little.

Theda stopped in front of him. She had to tip her head way back to look at him, because Garrett is six foot two.

And she reached up and took his hand in both of hers.

“Garrett,” she said. “We heard at the cafe you were going to make your dad stop driving us. We all heard it. And we have been praying all week.”

Garrett opened his mouth. Nothing came out.

“And then he called us Wednesday, every one of us, and said he would be by Sunday same as always.” She squeezed his hand.

“I know it wasn’t easy for you to let him. I know you worry. But you let him. Thank you for that, honey. Thank you for letting your father keep driving us.”

The second widow came up beside her. “Thank you, Garrett,” she said, and patted his arm. “You’re a good son.”

The third one, Solveig, the farm widow, took his other hand. “We’d have had no way to get here, you know. Not one of us. Thank you.”

They came one at a time, the way they came down the van steps.

Each one touched his arm or his hand or his sleeve, and each one said thank you, and each one meant it with her whole heart.

My brother stood there in his brown sport coat in front of the church, with men from the implement dealer and the elevator and the cafe watching from their pickups, and he did not say one word.

He could not. There was not a word in the world he could have said.

He could not tell them the truth, that he had sold the van and kept the money and that this one was rented on my card.

Not to their faces, not to six widows who had been praying for him all week. And he could not take the thanks, either. I watched him try to swallow it.

His wife stood next to him. She did not say anything either. But she was looking at the white van with the rental sticker on the back bumper, and I saw her understand it.

Dad came up last with Inga on his arm. He stopped in front of Garrett.

The two of them looked at each other for a long moment, my father and my brother, and the ladies went quiet around them.

“Morning, son,” Dad said.

“Morning, Dad,” Garrett said. His voice cracked on it.

That was all. Dad did not say anything else. He did not have to.

He turned and walked Inga up the church steps, one step at a time, and the other ladies followed him in.