Chapter 7 - The Silence at the Table
The dust from Donnie's truck hung in the late afternoon air for a long time.
Nobody moved. Mom knelt down in the gravel, picked up the brass house key, and held it against her chest, weeping silently. Dad stood looking at the bent smoker in the ditch, his shoulders hunched under the weight of thirty years of misplaced pride.
I walked over to the ditch, grabbed the iron handle of the smoker, and hauled it upright onto the grass. It was scraped and dented, but the heavy cast iron had survived.
"Come inside, Mom," I said softly, taking her by the arm and helping her to her feet.
She leaned heavily against me as we walked up the porch steps. Inside, the house was dead quiet. On the kitchen counter sat the three pans of Scotcheroos, untouched.
Dad walked in a minute later, wiping his boots on the mat. He didn't look at either of us. He walked straight to the refrigerator, pulled out a pitcher of sun tea, poured himself a glass, and sat down at the heavy pine kitchen table—the exact same table where he had pointed his drumstick at me on my twenty-ninth birthday.
I pulled out a chair opposite him and sat down.
For five minutes, the only sound was the hum of the old refrigerator and Mom softly washing her face at the kitchen sink.
"Ernie told me the truth about line four," Dad finally said. He didn't look up from his tea. "He said you spent three years coming in an hour early on second shift just to clean Donnie's packaging heads before the morning inspection."
"I did," I admitted quietly.
"Why?" Dad asked, finally lifting his eyes to meet mine. "If he was treating you like dirt, why did you cover for him?"
"Because he was my brother," I replied. "And because I knew that if Donnie got fired, you’d find a way to blame me for it anyway. I figured keeping his line running was the only way to keep peace in this house."
Dad flinched as if I had hit him with a ball-peen hammer. He set his glass down on the table, his hand shaking.
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"I spent twenty years thinking Donnie was the one who had the spark," Dad muttered, his voice barely above a whisper. "He was loud. He played ball. People liked him at the legion hall. You... you were always out in the barn taking apart lawnmowers and reading repair manuals. I thought you were just stubborn. I thought Donnie had to look out for you because you didn't know how to talk to people."
"I know how to talk to people, Dad," I said. "I just don't talk when I don't have anything honest to say."
