Curtis made good on that truckload of split oak. And more besides.
He and Roy got to talking the way men do. While they were stacking wood, instead of looking at each other.
By January, the two of them had rigged up Roy’s brother’s old box blade to clear out the ditch line along the Dermots’ driveway. A job Roy had been putting off since before the fire.
Curtis told me once, driving home, that he never said much to Roy about Wyatt and the coat.
“Roy didn’t need me to,” Curtis said. “Some things a man just says thank you for with his hands. Same as Dad always did.”
And I thought, not for the first time, that my son had turned out to be exactly the kind of man his father raised him to be. Even from two states away, most months out of the year.
Wyatt never once asked anybody to make a fuss over what he did. And mostly, nobody has. Past that one night.
He mowed through the last few weeks of the fall season. By Thanksgiving, he was talking about raising his prices by two dollars a yard come spring.
Strictly business. Like the whole thing at the supper had happened to some other boy, and not to him.
But I noticed something.
He started setting a little money aside this time. Separate from the Folgers can.
In a plain white envelope he keeps in his sock drawer.
One afternoon I asked him about it. Careful. Not pushing.
“What’s that envelope for, Wyatt?”
He just looked at me and smiled that gap-toothed smile.
“You never know, Grandma,” he said.
And I didn’t ask him again.
I’ve learned my lesson about what a boy is allowed to keep as his own business. Until he’s ready to let it go.
Sophia Rivers is an experienced News Content Editor with a sharp eye for detail and a passion for delivering accurate and engaging news stories. At TheArchivists, she specializes in curating, editing, and presenting news content that informs and resonates with a global audience.
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