He was wearing his tan Sunday sport coat. The one he wore to my mother’s funeral. And to Mason’s baptism. And to nothing in between.
Under it, a white shirt buttoned all the way to the top.
And on his head, his seed corn cap. The good one. The green one he keeps on the hook by the back door and only wears to town.
His cane was in his right hand. His shoes were shined.
He didn’t climb up into the bleachers.
He went straight down to the end of the gym where the seniors were lining up. And he stood right next to Kaylee. Like he’d been assigned there by the governor.
Travis saw him.
I watched it land on his face.
First confusion. The plain kind. Like a man who sees his own truck parked somewhere he didn’t leave it.
Then understanding.
Then something else. Something I didn’t have a word for.
He turned and looked at me.
I looked back at him.
I didn’t explain. He didn’t ask.
“Jodi,” he said quietly.
“She asked for him,” I said. “Tuesday night. After you went out to the shed.”
He nodded. Slowly.
He looked back down at the floor. Kaylee had taken her grandfather’s free arm, and she was laughing at something he’d said. Her laugh carried all the way across the gym.
Travis didn’t say anything else.
He put his hands back between his knees.
But he stopped rubbing his thumb.
He went very still. The way a man goes still up in a deer stand.
The JV girls cleared the floor. The varsity girls from both teams lined up along the far sideline for the ceremony. Our girls in maroon. The visitors in white. Everybody with their hands clasped behind their backs.
Mr. Halvorson does the announcing at every home game.
He taught shop at our school for thirty years. He has a voice like a man calling hogs who’s been to a little bit of college.
He tapped the microphone twice.
“Ladies and gentlemen. Please welcome our senior volleyball players and their families, as we honor them on their final regular-season home game.”
The first girl was announced with her mother and father. They walked out to center court together. She handed her mother the rose. They turned for a picture. Everybody clapped.
The second girl walked out with her mother and her stepfather.
I noticed that. Of course I noticed that.
I didn’t look at Travis. But I felt him notice it too.
The rose went to the mother. The stepfather put his arm around both of them.
The third girl had both parents and a grandmother in a wheelchair, pushed out by an uncle. The grandmother got the loudest cheer so far.
Then Mr. Halvorson looked down at his index card.
And I saw him pause. Just slightly. The same way Mrs. Larson had paused on the phone.
Then he read it.
“Number seventeen. A middle hitter and four-year letter winner. Kaylee Brandt. Escorted tonight by her grandfather, Mr. Duane Ostrem.”
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