The Wooden Fire Truck for Wesley

Eight

They came across the grass in a pack, with their arms out, and for about ten seconds it looked as if I might lose a grandmother’s worth of hip.

Then Wesley stood up in the cab and held up one hand, the way a crossing guard does, and said in a loud, clear, six-year-old voice, “Wait your turn! You have to wait in line!”

And they did. I do not know how to tell you what that was like.

They lined up on the driveway without being told, little ones in front and bigger ones at the back, shifting from foot to foot, a girl in a purple coat and a boy with a missing front tooth and two sets of twins in matching sweaters. I counted them again. Eight.

Every one of them had their eyes fixed on that truck.

“Two at a time,” I said. “There are two seats. And everybody gets a ride around the yard, but you have to keep your hands inside, and you have to let the driver steer.”

“Can I drive?” the missing-tooth boy said.

“Everybody gets a turn at driving. But the birthday boy drives first.” I walked around to the back of the truck and took hold of the push handle, and I was fixing to give it the first shove when a hand came down over mine.

“I’ve got it, Mom.” It was Darren. He had come around the corner of the house with a spatula in one hand and a dish towel over his shoulder, and I do not know how long he had been standing there. He looked at the truck. He looked at the line of children.

He looked at his son in the driver’s seat with both hands on the wheel and a smile on his face wide enough to split it.

And then he looked at me.

Darren is forty-one. He has his father’s shoulders and his father’s way of going quiet when something is too big to say. I watched him take it all in. He set the spatula down on the tailgate, very carefully, like it might break. Then he put his big hands around the push handle and leaned into it.

“Hold on, birthday boy,” he said. “Here we go.” The truck rolled down the driveway and out onto the grass.

I stood by the Chevy with my hands folded and watched my son push my grandson around his own backyard on a fire truck I had built in Ernest’s shop, and I could not have told you right then whether I was laughing or the other thing.

That was when I saw Dawn on the back deck.