I didn’t count out thirty that Saturday. It was his birthday. Dad didn’t pay anybody that Saturday either. I think he forgot.
But I don’t think he forgot anything else.
Chapter Seven: The Screen Door
By June, Dad couldn’t sit still while I counted.
He’d lay down Jasper’s ten. And the second I pulled out my chair, he’d get up.
He’d go to the sink. He’d turn on the water. He’d stand there with his back to us and run the water over his hands, or over a coffee cup, or over nothing at all.
And I’d count. Out loud. To his back.
Twenty. Thirty. Forty. Same as your cousins. Thank you for your work.
And when I was done, he’d turn off the water and dry his hands on the dish towel and go out on the porch.
Andrea asked me about it.
“Is he okay?” she said. “His heart?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “He seems fine. He just can’t watch.”
“Brady.” She looked at me. “Maybe it’s time to stop.”
“Stop what?”
“Counting it out. In front of him. Every week.” She bit her lip. “Maybe just give Jasper the thirty in the truck. On the way home. Where your dad doesn’t have to see it.”
I thought about it. I really did.
“No,” I said finally.
“Why not?”
“Because then he doesn’t have to see it,” I said. “And then he can tell himself it’s not happening. That Jasper’s fine with ten. That nobody minds.” I looked at her. “I’m not going to yell at him, Andi. I promised you. I’m never going to say one word. But I’m going to count it in front of him every Saturday. Until he makes me stop.”
Then one Saturday in late June, Reid and Corbin did something at the screen door.
It was hot. Ninety-one degrees. The boys came in soaked through, like they’d been swimming. Dad counted out the money. Two twenties into Reid’s hand. Two into Corbin’s. One ten into Jasper’s.
Then he got up and went to the sink.
I pulled out my chair. I took out my wallet.
“Hold out your hand, bud.”
And I counted. Twenty. Thirty. Forty. Same as your cousins.
Reid and Corbin were standing by the screen door. On their way out to the truck. Trina was out in the yard waiting for them.
Reid stopped. He turned around. He looked at the four tens in Jasper’s hand.
Then he walked back over to the kitchen table. He took one of his twenties out of his pocket. And he laid it on the table in front of Jasper.
Corbin looked at his brother. Then he walked over too. He took out one of his twenties. He laid it on top of Reid’s.
Jasper looked at the two twenties on the table. Then up at his cousins.
“What’s that for?” he asked.
“We all pushed the same grass,” Reid said.
He didn’t say it loud. He didn’t look at Dad. He just said it, the way you’d say the weather was hot.
Corbin nodded. He didn’t say anything. Corbin never says much.
Then the two of them turned around and walked out the screen door. It banged shut behind them.
At the sink, Dad had stopped running the water.
He was standing there with his back to us. His hands on the edge of the counter. Very still.
He’d seen every bit of it. In the reflection in the kitchen window over the sink. I could see his face in it. I could see him watching.
He didn’t turn around.
Jasper looked at me. He had four tens in one hand and two twenties on the table in front of him.
“Dad,” he said. “What do I do?”
I looked at my son. Twelve years old. A kid who reads at a fourth-grade level and couldn’t figure out why his grandpa paid him less.
“What do you think you should do?” I asked.
He thought about it. He picked up the two twenties.
Then he got up and ran out the screen door after his cousins.
I watched through the screen. He caught them at Trina’s truck. He held out the two twenties.
Reid shook his head. Jasper kept holding them out. Reid shook his head again.
Then Corbin, the quarterback, the one who never says much, put his big hand on top of Jasper’s head and messed up his hair and said something I couldn’t hear.
Jasper put the twenties in his pocket.
Then the three of them stood there in the driveway in the heat, talking. Laughing about something. Like boys do.
At the sink, Dad turned off the water.
Chapter Eight: The Third Saturday in July
Then came the third Saturday in July.
Ninety-four degrees that afternoon. Not a cloud. The kind of Kansas heat that makes the air above the road shimmer and the cicadas so loud you can’t hear yourself think.
The boys mowed from eight to eleven, then took a break, then finished up after lunch. Dad made them drink water every half hour. He stood on the porch in his new straw hat with a gallon jug and handed it out every time one of them came by.
They came in at one-thirty, soaked through.
Reid and Corbin stopped by the screen door in their sweaty T-shirts. Reid had grass in his hair. Corbin had a sunburn across the back of his neck.
Jasper sat at the table. Grass stains all down his white T-shirt. He’d been on the weed eater again. He had a scratch on his arm from a hedge apple tree by the fence.
Dad sat across from me in his overalls.
That new straw hat sat on the table beside him. He’d taken it off when he came in, the way he always does. He’d set it down carefully, crown down, brim up, so it wouldn’t lose its shape.
He counted out Reid’s forty. Two twenties.
He counted out Corbin’s forty. Two twenties.
Then he set Jasper’s ten on the table. Right next to the hat.
He didn’t put it in Jasper’s hand this time. He just laid it on the table.
I opened my wallet.
I’d done this eleven Saturdays in a row. Three hundred and thirty dollars. I knew exactly how much, because I’d been keeping track in a little notebook in my truck, the way I keep track of hours on a job.
“Hold out your hand, bud,” I said.
Jasper held out his hand.
I took out the first ten.
Before I could say twenty, Dad put both hands flat on the table.
He pushed back his chair and stood up.
I stopped. My hand was in the air with the ten in it.
Andrea’s voice was in my head. Don’t you dare raise your voice. Not with his heart.
I hadn’t said anything. Not one word. But Dad was standing up. His face was red. His hands were shaking. He was breathing hard.
“Dad,” I said. “Sit down. Your heart.”
He didn’t sit down.
He walked across the kitchen to the cupboard next to the refrigerator. The one where he keeps the coffee. He opened it and reached up to the top shelf and took down a coffee can.
An old Folgers can. Red, with the label half worn off. I’d seen that can my whole life. That’s where Mom kept the egg money, when we had chickens. That’s where Dad kept cash for the farm store.
He brought it back to the table. He set it down in front of him.
He pulled off the plastic lid.
Then he sat back down. Slowly. Like his knees hurt.
He reached into the coffee can. He pulled out a ten-dollar bill.
He looked at Jasper. Not at me. At my son.
“Put your wallet away, Brady,” he said.
He didn’t look at me when he said it. He kept his eyes on Jasper.
I put my wallet away.
Dad picked up the ten he’d already laid on the table. The one by the hat. He held it out to Jasper.
“Hold out your hand,” Dad said.
Jasper held it out.
Dad laid the ten in his palm.
“Ten,” Dad said.
Out loud. His voice was rough.
He reached into the coffee can and took out another ten. He laid it on top.
“Twenty.”
Another one.
“Thirty.”
One more.
“Forty,” Dad said.
He stopped. His hand was shaking on top of Jasper’s.
“Same as your cousins,” he said.
His voice broke on the last word.
“Thank you for your work.”
Chapter Nine: Going Places
Nobody in that kitchen moved.
Reid and Corbin were standing by the screen door. Corbin had his hand on the handle. He didn’t push it. Reid was staring at his grandfather.
Jasper looked down at the four tens in his hand. His grandpa’s hand was still on top of his. Dad didn’t let go.
“Grandpa,” Jasper said quietly.
Dad finally let go. He sat back in his chair. He put both hands over his face.
I thought he was going to cry. I’d never seen my father cry. Not at my mother’s funeral. Not when he sold the cattle. Not ever.
He didn’t cry. He just sat there with his hands over his face for a long time, breathing.
Then he took his hands away. He looked at me.
“Your granddad paid me a quarter,” he said.
I didn’t understand.
“Your Grandpa Ross,” Dad said. “My father. When I was a boy. We hauled hay. Every summer. Me and my brother Gene. Same field. Same bales. Same heat.” He looked at the straw hat on the table. “He paid Gene a dollar a day. He paid me a quarter.”
I stared at him.
“Because Gene was going places,” Dad said. “That’s what Dad said. Every Saturday. Gene’s going places. Gene was smart. Gene read books. Gene got a scholarship to KU and went to law school and became a lawyer in Kansas City.”
He shook his head.
“And I stayed,” he said. “I stayed and farmed this ground. I took care of Mom and Dad till they died. Gene came home twice in thirty years. Once for each funeral.”
He looked at Jasper.
“I swore,” he said. “I swore when I was ten years old, I would never do that to a kid of mine. I’d never pay one less than another. Never.”
His voice cracked.
“And then Kyle walked out on Trina,” he said. “And I looked at Reid and Corbin, and all I could think was, those boys need somebody to tell them they’re worth something. They need somebody to tell them they’re going places. Because their daddy sure didn’t.”
He looked down at the table.
“And I looked at Jasper,” Dad said, “and I thought, he’s got Brady. He’s got a dad who shows up every Saturday. He’s fine. He doesn’t need it.”
He shook his head.
“I did the exact same thing,” he said. “The exact same thing my father did to me. I told myself I had a good reason. Dad thought he had a good reason too.”
Nobody said anything.
Then Dad turned to me.
“Eleven Saturdays,” he said. “You sat there. Every one. And counted it out. And never said a word.”
“I promised Andrea,” I said. “No yelling. Your heart.”
“You didn’t have to yell.” He almost laughed. “Every Saturday, I’d lay down that ten, and you’d pull out that chair, and I’d hear you. Twenty. Thirty. Forty. And I’d be ten years old again, standing in my dad’s barn with a quarter in my hand.”
He looked at Jasper again.
“And then this boy,” he said. “This boy took the money you gave him. The money I wouldn’t. And went and bought me a hat.”
He put his hand on the straw hat.
“With my own thirty dollars,” he said. “He bought me a hat.”
His chin was shaking.
“I’ve been wearing it every day,” Dad said. “I wear it in the yard. I wear it to the co-op. I wear it to church and take it off at the door. And every time I put it on, I think, that boy paid for this with money I owed him.”
Then he reached into the coffee can again.
He pulled out a stack of bills. Tens and twenties. He counted them out on the table. Slowly. Out loud.
“Twenty. Forty. Sixty. Eighty.”
All the way to three hundred and thirty.
He pushed the stack across the table to me.
“Eleven Saturdays,” he said. “Thirty dollars. That’s yours.”
I looked at the money. I didn’t touch it.
“Dad,” I said. “You don’t have to.”
“Yes, I do,” he said. “I’ve been putting it in that can. Every Saturday. After you left.” He looked at the coffee can. “I started the second week. I didn’t know what I was going to do with it. I just knew I owed it.”
I stared at him.
“You were saving it?”
“Thirty dollars,” Dad said. “Every Saturday. After you counted. I’d come in from the porch and get thirty out of my wallet and put it in the can.” He shook his head. “Couldn’t make myself hand it over. Couldn’t make myself say I was wrong. But I couldn’t keep it either.”
Chapter Ten: The Lawyer in Belleville
The next Monday, Dad drove to Belleville to see a lawyer.
I didn’t know he was going. Trina didn’t either. We found out when the lawyer’s office called both of us on Wednesday and asked if we could come in that Friday.
Her name was Karen Lundquist. She’d done Mom’s estate when Mom died four years ago. Her office was above the bank on 18th Street, with a window that looked out at the Republic County courthouse.
Dad was already there when we came in. Sitting in a chair by her desk in his overalls and his new straw hat. He took the hat off when we walked in. He set it on his knee, crown down.
“Your father asked me to go over some changes with both of you,” Karen said. “He wanted you to hear it together.”
Trina and I sat down. We looked at each other.
Karen opened a folder.
“Two years ago,” she said, “after Mr. Shaw left your sister, your father set up two certificates of deposit at the Mankato bank. Payable on death to Reid Shaw and Corbin Shaw. Twenty thousand dollars each.”
I didn’t know that. I looked at Trina. Her face had gone pale. She didn’t know either.
“For college,” Dad said quietly. “For those boys. Because I knew Kyle wouldn’t pay a dime.”
“Last week,” Karen went on, “he came in and asked to change some things.”
She slid a paper across the desk.
“He’s added a third certificate of deposit,” she said. “Same bank. Payable on death to Jasper Whitaker. Twenty thousand dollars.”
I couldn’t breathe.
“Dad…” Trina said.
“And,” Karen said, “he’s asked me to set up three 529 college savings accounts. One for each of your sons. With the State of Kansas. He’s putting five thousand dollars in each one now. And he’s set up an automatic deposit of a hundred dollars a month into each one from his checking account. For as long as he’s alive.”
“Equal,” Dad said. “All three. Exactly equal.”
I turned and looked at him.
“Dad,” I said. “Jasper’s not going to college. Not a four-year school. He reads at a fourth-grade level. You know that.”
“I know it.”
“Then why?”
Dad looked out the window at the courthouse for a long time.
“You know what that boy did to my mower last week?” he said. “The riding mower. The Deere. It’s been running rough for two years. I took it to the dealer in Concordia twice. They couldn’t find it.”
“I know.”
“Jasper listened to it for about ten seconds,” Dad said. “Then he got down on his back in the shed and pulled the fuel line and found a crack the size of a hair. Fixed it with a piece of hose from my junk drawer.” He shook his head. “Runs like new.”
He looked at me.
“Five-twenty-nines pay for technical college,” he said. “Diesel mechanic school in Beloit. Lineman school, like his daddy. Welding. Anything.” His voice got rough. “That boy’s got a good eye. I told him that when he was eight. I just forgot I said it.”
Karen slid another paper across the desk.
“And finally,” she said, “your father has updated his will. The farm and the house were previously left in a trust for Reid and Corbin.” She paused. “As of last Monday, the farm and the house are left in equal thirds. To all three of his grandsons.”
Trina made a sound. She put her hand over her mouth.
“Is that all right with you, Trina?” Dad asked.
She looked at him. Her eyes were full.
“Dad,” she said. “I never wanted it any other way. I just didn’t know how to say it.”
“Neither did I,” Dad said.
Out in the parking lot, Dad stopped by his truck. He put his straw hat back on. He stood there looking at the courthouse.
“Gene’s been dead three years,” he said. “I never told you that. He died in Kansas City. Heart attack. In his office. Sixty-nine.” He looked at me. “I didn’t go to the funeral.”
“Dad.”
“I couldn’t,” he said. “I was still mad. About a quarter a day. Sixty years later.” He shook his head. “I’m not going to let my grandsons be mad at each other about ten dollars. Not for sixty years. Not for one.”
Chapter Eleven: August
In August, Dad had his bypass.
Dr. Shah in Concordia sent him to the heart hospital in Wichita. Triple bypass. Andrea took two days off from the cardiac floor to be there with us. She sat in the waiting room with me for six hours, holding my hand, explaining every word the nurses said.
He came through it fine. Better than fine. Dr. Shah said his ejection fraction was up to forty-five percent by October.
But he couldn’t mow. Not for three months. Not even the riding mower.
So the boys did it. Every Saturday. Without him.
Reid on the riding mower. Corbin on the push mower. Jasper on the weed eater. Then they’d trade off. Like always. They didn’t need anybody to tell them.
Dad sat on the porch in a lawn chair, wrapped in a blanket even though it was ninety degrees, wearing his straw hat. Watching them. Andrea made him wear a little heart monitor on his belt. He hated it.
At one-thirty, the boys came in.
The first Saturday after he got home from Wichita, they lined up at the kitchen table like always. Sweaty and grass-stained.
Dad was in his chair. Slow. He’d lost twenty pounds. His hands were thinner.
He reached for the Folgers can on the table.
“Grandpa, you don’t have to pay us,” Reid said. “You’re sick. We’ll do it for free.”
Dad looked at him.
“Did you mow the yard?” he asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“All of it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then you get paid,” Dad said. “That’s the deal.”
He reached into the coffee can.
“Hold out your hand, Reid.”
Reid held it out.
Dad counted. Out loud. “Ten. Twenty. Thirty. Forty.” Four tens. One at a time.
“Thank you for your work,” he said.
“Hold out your hand, Corbin.”
“Ten. Twenty. Thirty. Forty.” Out loud. “Thank you for your work.”
Then he turned to Jasper.
“Hold out your hand, bud.”
Jasper held it out.
“Ten,” Dad said. “Twenty. Thirty. Forty.”
He stopped. He looked at my son.
“Same as your cousins,” he said. “Thank you for your work.”
He counted out loud every Saturday after that. All three boys. One bill at a time. The same words.
I never pulled out my chair again. I didn’t need to.
But every Saturday, I sat at that kitchen table anyway. Across from Dad. And I listened to him count.
Chapter Twelve: The Straw Hat
That was two years ago.
Reid is at Kansas State now. A sophomore in mechanical engineering. He comes home on weekends sometimes and mows Grandpa’s yard. He says he misses it. He says nobody in Manhattan knows how to do stripes.
Corbin is a senior. He threw for three thousand yards last season. Two colleges have offered him scholarships. One in Nebraska, one in Missouri. He hasn’t decided yet.
Kyle came to one of his games last fall. Drove all the way from Colorado. Sat in the visitors’ bleachers. Corbin saw him. He didn’t wave.
But Dad was in the home bleachers. Front row. In his straw hat. Every single game. And Corbin waved at him every time he came off the field.
Jasper is fourteen now. A freshman at Rock Hills High School.
He still reads slow. He still has an IEP. He’s still in the reading group with the tutor in Beloit twice a week.
He’s also in the school’s FFA chapter. Future Farmers of America. In the agricultural mechanics competition this spring, he took first place in small engines at the district contest in Concordia. Then second at the state convention in Manhattan.
Reid drove over from campus to watch him. So did Corbin. So did Trina and Andrea and me.
So did Dad. In his straw hat. In a wheelchair Andrea made him use because the convention center was so big.
When they called Jasper’s name for second place in the state, Dad tried to stand up out of that wheelchair. Andrea had to grab his arm.
“Sit down, Glen,” she said. “Your heart.”
“I’m standing up,” Dad said. “My grandson just took second in the state.”
He stood up. All the way. With Andrea holding one arm and me holding the other. He stood there in the middle of that convention center in Manhattan, Kansas, in his straw hat, and he clapped for my son like he was clapping for a quarterback.
Jasper saw him from the stage. He grinned so hard I thought his face would split.
Last Saturday was the third Saturday in July again. Two years to the day.
Ninety-six degrees. Hotter than before.
The boys mowed. All three. Reid home from K-State for the summer. Corbin, two weeks from fall camp. Jasper, fourteen, taller than me now.
Dad sat on the porch in his lawn chair with the gallon jug of water. In his straw hat. It’s not new anymore. It’s two years old. The brim’s starting to get soft at the front from where he grabs it. There’s a sweat stain on the leather band.
He won’t buy another one. Andrea offered. He said no.
“This one’s paid for,” he said.
At one-thirty, the boys came in.
They lined up at the kitchen table. Grass stains. Sweat. Sunburns.
Dad sat in his chair across from me. He set his straw hat on the table beside him, crown down, brim up. He reached for the Folgers can.
Reid. Forty. Out loud. Thank you for your work.
Corbin. Forty. Out loud. Thank you for your work.
Then he turned to Jasper.
“Hold out your hand, bud.”
Jasper held it out.
“Ten,” Dad said. “Twenty. Thirty. Forty. Same as your cousins.”
He stopped. He held on to Jasper’s hand a second longer than he needed to.
“Thank you for your work,” he said.
Then he did something he’d never done before.
He looked up at all three of them. Reid by the screen door. Corbin leaning on the counter. Jasper at the table with his forty dollars.
“You three,” he said. “You know what you are?”
None of them said anything.
“You three are going places,” Dad said.
He picked up his straw hat. He put it on. He pulled the brim down low.
“All of you,” he said from under it. “Every one.”
The boys went out the screen door. It banged shut behind them. I could hear them in the driveway, laughing about something, the way boys do.
Dad sat there with his hat pulled down.
I sat across from him at my mother’s auction table, with the burn mark on the corner from when I was fourteen. I didn’t say anything. Neither did he.
After a while, he reached across the table. He put his old hand flat on top of mine. He left it there.
“You went places too, son,” he said quietly. “Every pole in four counties. I just never counted it out loud.”
I didn’t trust my voice. So I turned my hand over under his and held on.
Outside, the riding mower started up. Somebody was taking one last pass along the fence row. I could hear the engine running smooth as silk, the way it hadn’t run in years, before a twelve-year-old boy found a crack the size of a hair in the fuel line.
Dad lifted the brim of his straw hat. Just a little. Just enough to look out the window at the yard.
Stripes. Dark and light. All the way down to the road.
“Good eye,” he said.
