Arlo came home nine days later.
On a Monday. With a cane. A walker folded up in the trunk. And a three-ring binder full of exercises from his therapists.
Brad called me the Sunday night before.
“Mom. Could I be the one to drive Dad home? If that’s all right? You can ride along.”
I said yes.
I’d been waiting for him to ask.
So on Monday morning, Brad wheeled his father out the front doors of the rehab hospital in Sioux Falls in a wheelchair. He helped him into the front seat of my car. And he buckled his father’s seatbelt for him.
The same way Arlo had once buckled Brad’s.
I rode in the back seat.
Arlo kept his good left hand on the dashboard most of the way home. Like a man bracing for a bump in the road.
He had more words by then. Not many. But more.
He could say yes and no. And coffee. And Merle. And my name, the short way.
When we passed a field of soybeans outside Pipestone, he said, “Beans.”
And Brad said, “Merle’s got ours all in, Dad. Every acre.”
And Arlo nodded hard.
We turned onto our county road a little before noon. The cottonwoods along the creek had all gone yellow while he was gone.
I was watching the back of Arlo’s head from the back seat.
And I saw the exact moment the barn came into view over the rise.
Because his whole body leaned toward the window.
Brad slowed down.
We came up to the end of our lane. Brad started to make the turn.
And Arlo’s left hand came off the dashboard. And grabbed his son’s arm.
“Stop,” Arlo said.
Brad stopped the car right there. By the mailbox. Half in the lane and half on the gravel road.
And Arlo sat there and looked at his barn.
It was red. Deep and even. The right red. Glowing a little in the noon sun.
Three sides and the peaks. The trim white again.
And one gray strip down the northwest corner by the silo.
And above the haymow door, in white:
A.J. 2026.
He looked at it for a long time.
I could see his eyes moving. Reading it.
His mouth worked.
“Who,” he finally said.
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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