The Jar on the Feed Store Counter

The Loading Dock

I owe you the story of how that happened, and I do not come out of it well.

It was the third week of April. Lavon had been doing the quarter-end books, and on a Friday afternoon she came out of the back office with the ledger open in front of her like she was carrying something hot. She never said anything loud in her life. She said, “Linus, we are short nine thousand four hundred dollars from the feed account. It went out in four withdrawals over six weeks, and every one has Tobin’s initials.”

I went out to the loading dock.

Tobin was loading a flatbed for Lemuel, who stood by the truck with his hat in his hand. Behind Lemuel was a high school boy waiting on a bag of show pig feed. So there were two witnesses.

I did not take him in the office. That is the part I think about most. I could have said, “Son, come back here a minute.” I could have shut a door.

I said it right there on the dock. “Nine thousand four hundred dollars.”

He took his gloves off slowly, one finger at a time. He is my son, and I know what his face does when he is scared. It goes very still.

“Dad,” he said. “I was going to tell you Sunday, at dinner. I was going to explain.”

“Explain what? That you went into my account?”

“It was a loan. I was going to put it back.”

“I raised a thief,” I said.

I said it in front of Lemuel and the boy, loud enough for the man in the aisle to hear.

Tobin did not argue, and for a boy who could not lose, that was the worst of it. He stood there with his gloves in his hand and looked at me a long time, and I watched him decide something.

“I’d tell you why,” he said. “But you don’t want to know.”

“I do not need your reasons,” I said. “I need a son I can leave this store to.”

He nodded. That was all. He laid his gloves on the pallet jack, walked through the store, and out the front, and I heard his truck start. I stood on the dock with my hands shaking and told myself I had done the hard and right thing.

He was gone by dark. Elsa came home from the school office and found his room half emptied and sat down on the bed. When I told her, she did not scream or cry. She said, very quietly, “You did not even ask him why.”

“I did not have to,” I said. And then I said the sentence I would give anything to take back. “I do not want his name said in this house until he can look me in the eye and tell me he is sorry.”

I said it like I was laying down a law. Elsa looked at me, and she did not argue. It took me eleven years to understand that she did not argue because she had already decided what she would do instead.