The Wooden Fire Truck for Wesley

The line under the truck

At the end of the day, as the last of the cars pulled away from the curb, Wesley came and found me by the Chevy. He had cake on his shirt and his tie hanging by one clip, and he looked tired in the good way.

“Grandma, can I show you something?”

“What is it?”

He took my hand and led me to the truck, which was still sitting in the middle of the driveway. And then he did something I had not expected. He got down on his stomach in the grass and wriggled halfway under it, the way boys do under a car, and he put his face up close to the frame.

“There’s writing,” he called. “Under here.” My heart stopped. I had burned the line in on a Wednesday night in September, and then I had forgotten that a child would look. I had assumed no one would ever see it. That was the whole idea.

“Can you read it?” I asked.

“I’m sounding it out.” He was quiet, and I could hear him moving his lips. “For. Wesley.” A pause. “From. Grandma. And. Grandpa.” Another pause, longer. “Ernest.”

He slid back out on his elbows with grass on his chin and sat up on his knees in front of me.

“Grandpa Ernest made it too?”

“His pen did,” I said. “He had a wood-burning pen. I used it.”

“But he’s in heaven.”

“Yes.” Wesley thought about that. He looked at the truck. He looked at the bell. And then he said, very seriously, the way he says everything, “Then he came to my party.”

I could not answer him right away. I looked off down the street at the long afternoon light on the roofs, and I put my hand on the top of his head, and I kept it there.

“I think he did,” I said. “I think he rode in the front.” Wesley nodded as if that settled it. Then he climbed back into the cab, and sat with both hands on the wheel, and rang the bell one more time.