Wayne said it over pot roast, rocking his chair back on two legs the way our mother-in-law used to scold him for.
“Pocket change, honey,” he told Glenda. “Nobody pays good money for cider they can’t see the point of.”
Nobody laughed but him. That was the first thing I noticed. He laughed alone, a short dry sound, and then he reached for the rolls like a man who had settled something.
Glenda set her fork down. She is nine years old, with red braids her grandmother used to say were pinned on by a committee, and her father’s stubborn jaw.
“The church roof leaks,” she said. “I’m going to fix it.”
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Wayne grinned at her across the table. “With what?”
“With cider.”
My husband Ben said, “Wayne.” Just that, low, the way you say a dog’s name when it is getting near the garden.
Wayne held up both palms. “I’m only telling her how it is. Somebody ought to. The world doesn’t hand out roofs to nine-year-olds.”
I did not raise my voice. I have never once raised it at that table, and I was not going to start in front of my daughter.
I said, “She’s nine, Wayne. Think what you like. You don’t get to say it to her face.”
The room went quiet except for the clock over the stove. Wayne looked at me, then at Ben, then at his plate. He ate the rest of his supper without another word.
He did not stay for pie. He said he had hay to haul in the morning, which was true, and he put on his coat in the mudroom without looking back.
Glenda sat very straight until the truck pulled out. Then she picked her fork up again and finished her potatoes, one bite at a time, with her chin set.
Later, when the dishes were done, Ben stood at the sink drying the same glass for a long while.
“You want to talk her out of it?” he asked. “Before she gets her heart set and he turns it into something.”
I looked at him. “She already has her heart set.”
“I know it,” Ben said. “I’m asking if you want to try.”
I told him no. I want to be honest about why, because people ask me, and the answer is not a noble one.
It was not wisdom. It was only that I had asked Glenda, upstairs, while she was brushing her teeth. I asked if she wanted to let it go.
She spat into the sink and wiped her mouth on her sleeve. “No, ma’am,” she said. “I don’t want to let it go.”
That was the whole conversation. She is not a child who says things for show. If she had wanted out, I would have given her out, and gladly.
She did not want out. So I was not going to be the one to tell her that what she wanted was small.
Ben nodded and went out to the shop. I heard the saw start up and the little hitch it makes on the third cut.
Our church is Pleasant Grove, out on County Road 52, southwest of Lamar. Forty families, one pastor, a gravel lot and a white frame building that was old when my mother was a girl.