He put his big, rough hand over mine on the lift lever.
“Slow,” he said. “Everything on a forklift is slow, Jo. The only people who ever get hurt are the ones in a hurry.”
We spent three Sunday afternoons in that lot. I moved empty pallets from one end to the other and back again. I knocked over a trash barrel once, and Earl laughed so hard he had to sit down on the edge of the dock and wipe his eyes.
The third Sunday, I set a pallet down so soft and so square that he didn’t say anything at all.
He just nodded. Once.
And I felt about ten feet tall.
That was the first time I ever called him anything but Earl. On the drive home, I said, “Thanks for teaching me.” And then, real quiet, so quiet I hoped he wouldn’t hear, I said, “Daddy Earl.”
He didn’t say anything. He just kept his eyes on the road. But I saw his hand tighten on the steering wheel. And I saw him blink a lot more than the dust on that road called for.
I went back to plain Earl a week later. Twelve-year-olds are like that. But I never forgot the look on his face.
I use a forklift every single Tuesday of my life, when the feed truck comes in from the mill. And every Tuesday, when I lift a pallet, I hear him say slow. I have never once raised a load while turning.
That’s the man who stood at my counter and told three old farmers I owed him for raising me.
That’s why I was standing in my own storeroom between the dog food and the seed corn with my hand over my mouth.
Mitch got back from the dairy a little after one.
By then, Don had called his son, and his son had stopped by the store for nothing in particular, and I knew the story was already moving around town like a grass fire.
I told Mitch the whole thing in the office with the door shut. He listened the way he always does, leaning on the file cabinet with his arms crossed.
When I got to the marker, he let out a long breath through his nose.
When I got to Virgil taking off his cap, he looked down at the floor for a long time.
“You all right?” Mitch asked finally.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I think so. I feel like I did something I can’t take back.”
“You didn’t do anything you need to take back,” he said. “You let him off seven thousand dollars, and you told him the truth. That’s a pretty generous way to be mad at somebody.”
“He’s going to go home and tell Mama I humiliated him in front of the whole county.”
Mitch thought about that for a while. He’s careful with his words, like they cost money.
“Maybe,” he said. “And if he does, your mama’s going to ask why. And then he’s going to have to tell her something.”
I hadn’t thought about it that way.
For three years, I’d worked so hard to keep Mama out of it. It had never once occurred to me that the only person who could put her in it now was Earl.
That night, I almost called her four times. I had the phone in my hand, my thumb right over her name. Every single time, I put it down.
If I called her, it would be me asking her to take my side. And I didn’t want a side. I just wanted it to be over.
Sunday morning at church, Mama was there in her usual pew, third from the front on the piano side. Earl wasn’t.
“His back’s bothering him,” she said, and she patted my hand during the last hymn the way she always does.
So he hadn’t told her. Or he’d told her something that wasn’t the whole story. I sat through the entire sermon and didn’t hear one word of it.
Monday, two different women at the café asked Mitch if everything was all right with my family. Mitch told them everything was fine. That’s what Mitch says about everything short of a house fire.
Tuesday, the feed truck came in from the mill at seven. Twenty-two pallets. Mineral and cubes and sweet feed and dog food.
I unloaded every one of them myself on the forklift while Mitch checked them off the bill of lading with his clipboard.
Halfway through the load, I caught myself crying in the seat. Slow and quiet. The forklift idling. A pallet of mineral hanging up in the air in front of me.
I set it down square and soft before I wiped my face.
Slow, Jo. Everything on a forklift is slow.
Mitch saw. He didn’t say anything. He just walked over, set a cup of coffee on the dock beside me, and went back to his clipboard.Wednesday afternoon, Ray Whitlow came in for a sack of goat feed. While I was ringing him up, he mentioned, like he was talking about the weather, that he’d seen Earl’s truck at the sale barn in Springfield on Monday. With the stock trailer hitched behind it.
“Sold some cows?” I asked.
“Sold six bred cows,” Ray said. He picked at a loose thread on his cuff. “Good ones, too. Fall calvers. Brought eleven hundred a head, I heard. Didn’t figure that was the time of year a man sells his bred cows.”
It wasn’t. Nobody sells good bred cows in October unless he needs the money worse than he needs those calves.
I knew that. Ray knew I knew it. He paid for his goat feed and left without another word.
I stood there behind the register doing the math in my head. Six cows at eleven hundred a head. $6,600. Almost exactly what was on that ticket.
For one awful second I thought, he’s going to walk in here and throw it on my counter. He’s going to pay it off just to spite me, and sell off his herd to do it.
Thursday, I drove past Mama and Earl’s place on the way back from a delivery. I never go that way. I slowed down anyway.
His truck was in the yard. The kitchen light was on. Mama’s egg refrigerator was sitting at the end of the driveway where it always sat, with the coffee can on top for change. Everything looked exactly like it always looked.
That’s the thing about a house. It can look the same from the road for years while everything inside it is falling apart.
Friday night, I lay awake next to Mitch and added it all up again. Not the ticket this time. The years.
Thirty-six years of Earl.
Softball games. Forklift lessons. The day he walked me down the aisle at the Methodist church because Daddy couldn’t, and how his hand shook when he gave mine to Mitch. The night he drove two hours through an ice storm when my car slid into a ditch outside Joplin.
Thirty-six years. And one Saturday morning.
I decided I wasn’t going to take back the marker. That part was done.
But I decided something else, too.
If he walked back into my store, whatever he had to say, I was going to let him finish saying it.The next Saturday morning was cold and clear, and the men were at the counter by half past seven.
Virgil, Don and Ray. Same spots. Same as always, like a church pew.
Nobody mentioned the week before. Don started in on the price of hay. Ray had a complaint about the county road grader leaving a ridge of gravel down the middle of his road. Virgil just drank his coffee and watched the door.
At twenty minutes to eight, the bell over the door rang.
It was Mama.
She had on her good wool coat, the navy one she wears to funerals and to the bank. Her purse was hooked over one arm.
And in her other hand, she was carrying the old red Folgers can she has kept her egg money in for as long as I’ve been alive.
Earl was two steps behind her.
