The Name I Read in a Flat Voice
Eleven years ago, in the spring, the first slip came in printed in block letters with a single word on it.
It said Tobin.
I read it that Saturday like the rest. I said it out loud to the empty store. And then, for the first time in four years of reading names, I did not pray.
I sat on the stool with that little square of paper in my hand and could not make my mouth say the next word. I said the name again, softly, as if checking it for flaws. Then I said, “Lord, whoever this Tobin is, and wherever he is, You know. Amen.” I put the slip in the can and picked up the next.
Get a new story in your inbox every morning.
Facebook doesn’t show you every story we post. Our free newsletter does. Join 2,500+ readers.
That was a lie, and I knew it, and I told it anyway.
It came again the next Saturday, and the one after, three weeks in four for eleven years. Always folded in thirds, always ironed flat, always printed in the same ruler-straight letters on the same cheap ticket paper. And every Saturday I read it in exactly the same voice, a flat, even, practiced voice, the one you use on a name that is none of your business.
Here is what I told myself. There are other Tobins. There was one at the Methodist church for a while, and one who drove a milk truck out of Duncan. I told myself the first rule of the jar is no questions, so I was only following the rule.
You see how it works. It was the one name in that jar I had every right to ask about, and I used the rule like a fence, to keep something out. I hid behind it for eleven years from the only question I was afraid of.
Because Tobin is my son.
He was born in the Duncan hospital in 1985, and he was sweeping the floor of my store at nine years old the way I had swept my father’s. He was a kind boy and a stubborn one who could not stand to lose an argument, and I think now he got that from me. He ran the loading dock for eight years. He was twenty-six the Saturday I read the first slip out of the first jar, and he teased me about it all that year. He called it “Dad’s switchboard to heaven.” He used to come in at six and sit on a bag of cattle cubes and listen to me read.
He has not set foot in Marlow in eleven years.