The Day I Towed My Son’s Truck Home

The Cap

Emmett came out of the office then, walking slow across the gravel with a receipt in his hand. He did not hand it to me right away.

He went around to the passenger side of the rollback, where Cale’s Silverado sat chained up on the bed, and he opened the door of the pickup with the key Cale handed him.

He leaned into the cab of that maroon truck. I watched him through the back glass.

He reached up and took my daddy’s cap off the rearview mirror where it had swung crooked on the tow, and he held it in his two hands a minute and looked at it. He rubbed his thumb across the soft gray bill.

Then he hung it back on the mirror, straight, the bill facing forward, the way Daddy always wore it, and he shut the door easy.

He came around to my window. His eyes were wet, and he did not try to hide it.

“Your daddy loaded my truck every Saturday morning for twenty years,” he said. “Sweet feed and a salt block. Never once let me lift a sack myself, and I was a grown man with two good arms. Said a man’s back was a gift and you don’t waste somebody else’s.”

I could not say anything.

“That boy’s got his hands,” Emmett said, and nodded at Cale. “Stacked my order this morning at seven fifteen, before any of this. Did it right.”

Then he handed me the receipt through the window.

It was the regular yellow carbon receipt from the book on the counter, with the lot’s name printed at the top. The date was filled in.

The vehicle was filled in, 2004 Chevrolet Silverado, maroon, with the last six of the serial number. The amount said one hundred twenty five dollars and no cents.

And across the bottom, in Emmett’s square ballpoint printing, pressed so hard it went through to the pink copy underneath, he had written: Paid in full, posted rate.

And he had signed it. Emmett Craw. Not his initials, the way he signed the log. His whole name.

I looked up at him. Behind him, Lonnie was standing on the trailer steps and could see exactly what Emmett had handed me, and Emmett knew it, and Emmett did not look back at him.

“Drive careful, Shay,” he said, and stepped back from the truck.