The Pickup Bought in My Name

Neither of us said anything for a long time. A tractor went past on the road and rattled the window in the frame.

Now here is where people ask me the sensible question. Why didn’t I just call him?

I knew the answer lying in my own bed that night, staring at the ceiling fan. A man who will forge your name will not tell you the truth on a phone. He would have had the truck in a cousin’s barn by dark and a story about a thief by morning.

I did try the credit union first thing Wednesday. A recorded woman took me through six menus and finally said only the dealership that wrote the paper could pull it back.

If I wished to dispute the loan, I should do so in writing, and a dispute would take up to thirty days to review.

Thirty days of that truck on the road. Thirty days of the notice coming in. Thirty days of my name on something I never touched.

I put down the phone and called the dealership. A young woman answered. I explained who I was and what I needed, and she said Mr. Vandeberg, the sales manager, did not handle contract questions by phone and was only on the lot Saturdays and weekdays by appointment, and she could put me down for the Thursday after next.

I thanked her and hung up. Then I sat at the kitchen table and turned the whole thing over in my mind, the way you turn over a letter you cannot deliver.

Here is what I knew. Gil Vandeberg was the son of Opal Vandeberg, who lives in the white farmhouse on County Road E-23 at the Sorenson Creek bridge. I have filled her box for nineteen years.

Opal gets her pension check on the third and her church bulletin every Friday. She had sent me a card while I was in rehab.

It was a plain card with a cardinal on the front. Inside, in handwriting that shakes now, it said, Your box is empty without you. I keep my porch light on every morning till the Jeep goes by. Get strong, Mavis.

I had pinned it to the corkboard by my bed at Maple Ridge, next to the therapy schedule. That Wednesday afternoon, after the credit union hung up on me, I dug it out of the plastic bag of cards and read it again.

I told Darla that night we would go Saturday, when Gil would be on the lot.

I called the rehab center and asked the records office to print my full admission and therapy file. A nice woman named Roxanne had it clipped together in a manila envelope by Friday, and she highlighted nothing, bless her.

Admission date. Daily therapy log. Every day, an aide’s initials at ten in the morning and at two in the afternoon. The fifteenth had Josh’s initials on it, and a note in the margin that I had done well.

Saturday morning came up clear and cold. I got up at six, out of habit, and made oatmeal I did not eat. At eight Darla came to the door in her coat. She had told Brock she was spending the day at her mother’s, helping, which was true.