The Duster My Son Would Not Come Home For

“I’ve been talking to him,” Roric said. “Every March. Five Marches now. It wasn’t no cousin in Salina.”

I do not remember sitting down, but I was sitting on a creeper with my knees up, like a boy.

“He calls the parts counter,” Roric said. “Not the shop. The counter line, the old number, the one nobody uses. First time was the March after the wreck. He didn’t say who it was.

He just said, ‘Is it still in the far bay?’ And I said yes. He didn’t say anything for a while and then he said, ‘Is it getting fixed?’ And I told him. Every year I tell him what’s gone on it.

The quarter. The floors. The engine. The paint, he wanted to know the paint. I told him you did it at night. I told him you talk to it.” He cleared his throat. “He said, ‘Does he?’ like it hurt him.”

“Why in God’s name,” I said, and my voice did something I did not recognize, “would you not tell me.”

“Because he asked me not to.” Roric looked at the floor. “He said, ‘Don’t tell Dad I called. He’ll think it means something.’ I gave him my word.

I have never broken it to a man before tonight.” He looked up. “I’m breaking it now because I figure I owe him one more thing, and I owe you one.”

“Say it.”

“I was standing behind you in that ditch,” Roric said. “I heard what you said. All of it, Verlon. And I watched where he was looking when you said it.”

I felt the cold begin at my knees. It was the same cold.

“He was looking at the car,” Roric said.

“You were over him with your hand on his face and you said you ruined the only thing I ever loved, and that boy looked right past you at that Duster.

And his face went. You saw it go. I saw you see it and not know what you were seeing.”

“I meant him,” I said. It came out in a whisper. “Roric, I meant him.”

“I know you did.”

“I looked at him and I thought, he’s the only thing, and he’s ruined, and he’s bleeding, and I…” I could not finish.

“I know,” Roric said. “I’ve known the whole time. I heard your voice. I could hear what you were saying.

But I was the only man in that ditch who did, and Dace was nineteen with a concussion and he’d just told his father he was sorry about a car, and his father said that.

Verlon, he’s thought for five years you meant the car.”

He thought I meant the car. And then, because he thought it, he had watched me, through the only window he had, which was Roric’s voice in the back lot every March, spend five years building the car back for the car’s sake.

Each year the proof had come in. The quarter panel. The paint. The talking to it. Every time Roric reported another piece of my devotion to a 1970 Plymouth, my son heard confirmation of the cruelest thing he believed about me.

“I told him in year two,” Roric said, quietly. “I said, ‘Dace, I think you got it wrong, I think he meant you.’ And he said, ‘Then why’s he still building it?'” Roric shook his head. “I didn’t have an answer for that. Neither did you.”