Tom Callahan retired in June.
He’s seventy now. He’s taken up fishing. Badly.
But before he left, he did one last thing.
He had that old photograph from the Dunmore branch opening taken down off his office wall. And he had it rehung in the lobby. Right in the center of the main wall, where every single customer walks past it. In place of the sailboat poster.
With a little brass plaque underneath it.
The plaque points to the second row. To the small man in the canvas work jacket, holding his hat against his chest.
It says:
Earl Doyle. Who risked the north quarter. Who stood in the back, and held the bank up.
Grandpa has never once looked at it.
He says it embarrasses him. Every time we drive past the bank, he looks out the other window.
But last month, on a Tuesday morning, I caught him.
We’d driven in to make a deposit. In the old Ford. Mud up to the doors, same as always.
He walked in ahead of me. Overalls. Feed-store cap. Resoled boots.
And he stopped right in the middle of the lobby. In front of that photograph.
He stood there for a long time. Hands clasped behind his back.
A couple of customers glanced at him curiously. Then moved on.
“Grandpa?”
“Mm.”
“You okay?”
“I’m thinking about Walt,” he said.
His voice was low.
“He was a good man. He had a stutter. When he got nervous, he’d tap his pencil on the desk. You could hear it clear across the room. Tap tap tap.”
He smiled faintly.
“He never tapped it around me.”
“Why not?”
“I think he trusted me.”
Grandpa turned his cap over in his hands.
“That’s all anybody really wants, Casey,” he said. “Somebody they don’t have to tap around.”
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