The Van I Bought for Dad

Dwayne fried catfish with four of his co-op buddies on three propane cookers. Brooke and her friends carried folding tables down the gravel two at a time.

The people came all afternoon, in minivans and pickups and one old Buick, carrying foil pans and slow cookers and a washtub of coleslaw. The Boyds drove down from St. Louis for it, all thirty-eight, in the same shirts. Ray brought a sheet cake with a canoe drawn on it in blue icing.

By six o’clock there were ninety-four people on that gravel bar, and I know the number because Brooke counted them off on a clipboard.

I set Dad’s chair at the head of the longest table, facing the water, with his bell in front of him. He had insisted on wearing his Sunday ball cap, and he sat there with his good hand on the arm of the chair and his eyes on the river, and people lined up to shake it.

When the food was ready, I picked up the bell and held it out.

“Dad,” I said. “Do you want to say grace?”

He took the bell in his left hand. His eyes went over the long tables, the ninety-four faces, the dishes steaming in the evening sun. Then he looked at me, and what I saw in his face I cannot put into words.

He lifted the bell and rang it once, and the whole gravel bar went quiet.

“Lord,” my father said.

The word came out clean. Then he stopped, and everybody waited. A breeze moved the sycamores along the bank. Somewhere out on the water, a kid’s laugh carried a long way.

“Thank… you. For… river.” He breathed. His good hand tightened on the bell. “For… these. All… these folks. Thank you for… my girl.”

He lowered his head. I had not known I was crying until Dwayne’s hand came to rest on the back of my neck.

“Amen,” said Dad.

“Amen,” said ninety-four people, and Sue Ann Boyd blew her nose like a trumpet, and nobody teased her about it.

The food was the best I have ever eaten. There were sixteen kinds of potato dish and three kinds of pie. I cut up Dad’s fish into small pieces, and he ate it slowly with his left hand and pronounced it “Good,” twice.

Micah found his way to Dad’s chair before dark with a paper plate on his knees. He had grown an inch since June. He sat in the gravel at Dad’s feet and told him about the bald eagle his troop had seen at Round Spring. “Big,” Dad said, spreading his good arm out to show how big.

Later, a few of the regulars came up to me one at a time. Gil Peters shook my hand and put an envelope in it. In the van I found a check from Troop 214 for two hundred dollars and a note in careful block letters that said, for the bell.

Ray told me he had booked his June weekend for next year already, and that he was telling every man at his veterans hall to do the same. Sue Ann pressed the empty coffee cake pan into my arms.

“Jodi,” she said, low enough that nobody else heard. “Your daddy built something good. And you’re the one who kept it.”