The Hooks I Dug Out of the Shed

Why I didn’t just call somebody

Later that week, a woman at church asked me why I did not call the sheriff right then. I understand the question. I have asked it myself.

The answer is simple. A report to the sheriff would not have put hooks on Jace’s boots by seven o’clock Monday morning.

Neither would a lawyer, or a judge, or a phone call to Monty at the sale barn with the auctioneer going.

The co-op letter said plain as day that apprentices report with their own climbing gear, fitted and in good condition.

The nearest place that sells line gear is nearly three hours away, and it closes at noon on Saturday. Jace did not have twenty-three hundred more dollars. Neither did I, not by Monday.

What I did have was in my shed.

We fished the buckle out with the stick and let it cool on the gravel, and Jace dropped it in the feed sack along with the steel D-rings and the blackened shanks.

Then he threw two shirts and his work boots in my truck and we drove the three miles back to my place.

He did not say anything the whole way. Neither did I.

Once, on the curve by the low water bridge, I reached over and put my hand on the back of his neck the way I did when he was little, and he let me.

The shed

My shed is a ten by twelve with a tin roof, behind the house.

Most of what is in there belonged to my daddy, and the rest belonged to the woman I used to be, before the knees.

On the back wall, hanging from two sixteen penny nails, was an old canvas bag.

I had not taken it down in eleven years. There was a dirt dauber nest on the strap.

Inside were two pairs of climbers. One was my daddy’s, from the seventies, heavy and plain.

The other was mine. And under them, coiled up like a sleeping snake, was my old body belt.

Jace stood in the door of the shed with the sun behind him while I laid it all out on the workbench.

The leather had gone dry and gray. The pads were cracked. But the steel on my hooks was clean. It had never seen a fire.

“Those were yours?” he said.

“These were mine,” I said. “Your granddad bought them for me the week I got hired on. He wouldn’t let me buy my own.”

I turned the left climber over and showed him the leg strap. Scratched into the leather, near the buckle, with the point of a pocketknife, were two letters. His grandfather’s initials. W.K.

“He did that on the tailgate of his truck,” I said. “I asked him why, and he said so I’d always know who taught me to climb.”

Jace touched the letters with his thumb. He was quiet a long time.

His granddad died when he was fourteen, and they had been close, the way old men and boys can be close over a fishing pole or a broken mower.

“I didn’t know you still had them,” he said.

“I didn’t know I was saving them,” I said. “Turns out I was.”