The Thirty One Driveways on Haskins Road

The wave

When he came back up the hill toward the top, he had to pass my truck parked on the shoulder.

I did not know what I was going to do. I did not know what he was going to do. I set my coffee down.

The town truck came even with me, slow. Gordie looked over.

He looked at me through his window, and I looked at him through mine, two men who had sat in the same pew and baled the same hay.

He lifted two fingers off the steering wheel. The way men on back roads up here have waved at each other forever.

I lifted two fingers off mine.

He drove on.

What I think about it now

People have asked me if Gordie ever apologized. He did not, not in words. I do not think Gordie has those words. His father did not have them either.

But he came to Fern’s house the next Monday morning before seven, in his own pickup, and shoveled her steps and her walk while she watched him from the storm door. She told me he did not say much. She said he said, “Morning, Mrs. Yancey,” and she said, “Morning, Gordon.”

She gave him a cup of coffee. He drank it standing on her porch. Then he went to work.

I do not know if Gordie and I will ever be what we were when we were boys. I would like to think so. Winnie says to give it time, and Winnie is usually right.

He passed me the potatoes at Easter. He looked at me while he did it. That is more than I had for eleven years.

I still plow all thirty-eight driveways.

The town truck still comes down the Haskins Road at four in the morning on storm nights, the regular pass, and it still leaves a windrow across every drive, the way it is supposed to.

But when it comes back to wing back the banks, it comes in the daylight. And it lifts the wing at every drive.

Fern is eighty-two now. She still goes to dialysis three mornings a week. Merna still picks her up at eight.

And Fern is still at her storm door at seven, in her navy coat, ready an hour early, every time.

The folded twenty-dollar bill she pressed into my glove that morning, I never spent. I could not.

I taped it to the dashboard of my truck, right above the radio, where I can see it on dark mornings.

It has ridden with me every storm since.