The Van Dad Drove to Church

Driving them home

After the service, the ladies had coffee and bars in the church basement.

Dad sat at the end of the long table and ate two lemon bars, which was more than he had eaten all week.

Garrett did not come down to the basement. When we came out to the lot at a quarter to twelve, his pickup was already gone.

I drove the route backwards, the way Dad always does. Inga first, then the altar-flower lady, then the fourth house, and on down to Theda last.

At every house Dad got out and rolled the door open and walked each lady to her door, and I did not try to stop him.

At Theda’s, she stood on her porch with her navy hat in her hand and waved until we turned the corner. Dad waved back through the window the whole way down the block.

When I pulled into his driveway, he sat there a minute with his seat belt still on, looking at the clean dry patch of concrete by the garage.

“That was a good Sunday,” he said.

“It was,” I said.

“Thank you, Nils.” He did not look at me when he said it.

He just reached over and put his hand on my shoulder for a second, the way he used to when I was ten and had helped him at the elevator. Then he got out and went in the house.

I drove the van back to Valley City on Monday morning before my first class, and the farm kid at the counter asked me how church went. I told him it went fine.

Garrett

Garrett came to Dad’s house the next Saturday morning, a little before ten. I was there, cleaning out Dad’s gutters, so I saw him pull in.

He did not come up the walk right away. He sat in his pickup for a while with the engine off.

When he finally got out, he did not come to me. He went straight to the porch, where Dad was sitting in his chair in the sun with the farm report on the radio, and he stood at the bottom of the steps with his cap in his hands.

I came down the ladder and stood by the garage. I did not go over. It was not mine to go over.

“Dad,” Garrett said. “I need to tell you something.”

“Go ahead.”

“I found a van. Used, a Ford. It’s a 2012, twelve-passenger, a hundred and forty thousand miles. Torvald at the Bible camp up by the lake is selling it, the camp got a new one.”

He stopped. “I put the thirty-five hundred down on it. Every dollar. And I’ll cover the rest.”

Dad did not say anything. He turned the radio down.

“Title’s in your name,” Garrett said. “Just yours. Not mine. Nils can be on it if you want somebody. But not me.” His voice went funny. “I don’t deserve to be on it.”

Dad looked at him for a long time. My brother stood there at the bottom of the steps with his cap in his hands, fifty-eight years old, looking like he was nine and had broken a window.

“Those ladies thanked me, Dad,” Garrett said. “All six of them. Theda Moen held my hand. And I stood there and I let them.”

He wiped his face with the back of his wrist. “I haven’t slept since Sunday.”

“Sit down, Garrett,” Dad said.

Garrett came up and sat in the other porch chair, the one that had been Mom’s, and the two of them sat there in the sun for a while and did not say anything. I went back up the ladder.

After a while I heard Dad say, “You were scared I’d die.”

“Yes,” Garrett said.

“I know you were,” Dad said. “So was I. But I’d rather die on the way to church with Theda Moen in the back seat than in my chair waiting for it.”

He let that sit a minute. “Don’t you ever sell anything of mine again without asking me.”

“I won’t, Dad.”

“All right, then,” Dad said. And that was the end of it. That was all the fight there ever was between them.