Three Old Farmers and a Locked Door

The key went into the lock and stopped halfway, like it had run into a stranger.

I stood on the back porch of the house I had lived in for four years and turned it the other way. Nothing. I tried the front door key, the one on the red ribbon Dad tied on it in 1974 so none of us kids could say we lost the wrong one. Nothing. It was ten minutes after seven on a Friday morning in October, I had come back from a night at the lake motel for a clean blouse and my pills, and I could not get into my own kitchen.

Then I saw the padlock.

It was bright, new brass, the kind that still has the little cardboard tag stuck in the shackle, and somebody had screwed a hasp onto Dad’s kitchen door right beside the old doorknob. Drill dust still sat on the porch boards in a fine yellow dune. Biscuit, my beagle mix, hopped out of the Buick behind me, took one look at the door, and lay down on the welcome mat with his chin on his paws, the way a dog does when he has already worked out that something is wrong and is waiting for you to catch up.

Two black garbage bags sat on the porch swing. A Ziploc bag sat on top of them, and in the Ziploc was my blood pressure pill organizer, the plastic one with the days of the week.

Then I understood the night I had just had.

We buried Dad on Thursday afternoon, and the funeral lunch in the church basement went on until almost four. When the last pan of scalloped potatoes had been wrapped, Roger took me aside by the coat rack. He put his hand on my shoulder, which he had not done since I was a girl. He said, “Judy, go sleep somewhere. Jeannie’s got a second bed at the lake motel. I’ll lock up and see to the casseroles. You have not slept a whole night through in four years.”

I thought it was the kindest thing he had said to me in ten years. I went. I left my pills on the dresser, because I was only going for one night. I slept eight hours with a quilted motel bedspread pulled up to my chin, and Biscuit snored on the carpet, and while I slept, my brother drove his truck into the yard and went to work with a drill. It must have taken him half the night. Packing a sixty-one-year-old woman’s room into two bags takes a while, if you are going to do it properly. I had handed him the hours myself.

I heard the truck before I saw it. I knew that engine. My brother Roger bought the same silver Silverado every four years. It came up the lane slowly, the way a truck does when the driver has been parked at the end of the road waiting for you to find what he left.

He got out with a coffee in his hand and his son Drew a step behind him, and he did not look surprised to see me. That was the part I remember best. He looked like a man who had planned this and was pleased with how the morning was going.