The Eight Tires I Took Back

He ran the whole first week on one truck and drove it himself.

He lost two of his regular loads to a hauler out of Valentine that week, because a rancher with calves sorted and a buyer waiting does not wait on anybody.

Out here everybody knows everything by Wednesday, and by Wednesday everybody knew why.

I did not tell anybody. I did not have to. A rancher sat on the county road and watched it, and Thad bought coffee at the co-op, and Arlo’s mother sings in the choir.

The next Monday, Arlo Penner showed up in our yard at five in the morning with his thermos and his logbook and his boots laced.

Lyle shook his hand, and they talked for about ten minutes by the old daycab.

Arlo drives the daycab now, local grain and some short hay loads, and he takes the Kenworth when Lyle needs a reset.

He’s careful. He does his pre-trip with the light on every tread, every time. Lyle says the boy checks tires like a bookkeeper.

Royce put tires on truck two the week after, a set of recaps on credit at the co-op, and got the rest of his calves hauled late.

He pulled the bald ones off himself and stacked them by his shop door with the others.

Thanksgiving came. Lyle’s aunt set out two tables pushed together with the quilt over the seam, the way she always does.

Twenty-three of us. Royce came late and sat at the far end and didn’t say much through dinner.

After the pie, when the men went out to stand in the yard and look at each other’s pickups, Royce walked over to Lyle by our flatbed.

I was at the kitchen window drying the gravy boat. I saw the whole thing.

Royce said something short. Lyle stood with his hands in his coat pockets and listened.

Then Royce said something else, and looked at the ground, and Lyle took one hand out of his pocket and held it out, and Royce shook it.

Lyle told me in the pickup going home what Royce had said. It was three words and then five more. “I was wrong. I could have killed you.”

Lyle said, “Yes, you could have.” And then he said, “Ask me next time, Royce.” That was the whole of it. That’s how men out here settle the big things, in a handful of words beside a flatbed.

I don’t know if Royce and I will ever be easy with each other. I’m not sure we should be.

Forgiving a man is one thing. Forgetting where he left your husband is another, and I don’t intend to do the second one.

But the door is open. He knows it is. He was at the Christmas program at church in December, in the back pew, and when the kids sang, he sang too.

The ledger is on my kitchen shelf now with the cookbooks. I still write every tire we buy in it, every code, every position. Arlo’s started teasing me about it, the way Lyle used to.

The page with the pencil writing is still in there. I didn’t tear that one out.

Some mornings when I’m doing the books, I turn to it on purpose before I start, just to look. First set that’s ours.

Royce’s bald tires are still stacked by his shop door, and I drive past them every Sunday on the way to church.