“He said, ‘If I walk into that church, I have to look Renee in the eye and tell her what happened to the money.” Mr. Haskins turned his hat around in his hands. He is a retired electrician with a voice like a gravel road, and I had never seen him unable to finish a sentence. “I did not understand it. Not right then. I figured he meant money for the troop dues. So I asked him straight out. And he said, ‘Walt, the college fund is gone.” I held on to the screen door. Ethan was upstairs, and I was grateful that he was in the shower with the music turned up.
I knew exactly which fund he meant. When Ethan was born, his father and I opened a savings account in his name at a credit union on Kingston Pike. Every month, I put in seventy five dollars, and every Christmas, his grandparents added a little more. By this spring it should have held something over twenty six thousand dollars. I had not looked at the statement in two years, because after the divorce, his father had insisted he would handle the account and send me the paperwork. I had trusted him. That is the plain, foolish truth. I trusted a man because the alternative was admitting that I had married the wrong one.
I drove to the credit union the next morning with my driver license and Ethan birth certificate. The teller, a young woman with a tidy braid, typed for a long time and then turned the screen toward me with a very careful face. The account had been closed fourteen months earlier. The last withdrawal was twenty four thousand, eight hundred dollars. Signed by the father of my son. A custodial account allows it, she explained gently. A parent can sign. The money belongs to the child, but a parent can take it, and then it becomes a matter for the courts. Then I sat in my car and pressed both fists against my mouth.
A man who could not face a simple question about his sons savings let an Eagle Scout walk up that aisle alone.
My first thought was to drive to his house and throw every fishing rod he owned into the river. My second thought was of Ethan standing at the front of that church with forty two badges across his sash. I called Mr. Haskins instead, because he was the only adult I could think of who had known my son since he was eleven and seen him earn every one of them. He came over with a casserole his wife had made and sat at my kitchen table for two hours. He told me what he knew, which was a good deal. The father had put the money into a bass boat and a share of a fishing lodge in Kentucky, and the lodge had failed in March.
“He called me three times about the ceremony,” Mr. Haskins said. “Each time he asked whether the troop planned to mention scholarships. There is a college award for Eagle Scouts, and he was terrified somebody would announce it from the podium. He was afraid that Ethan would ask him about the account in front of the whole church.” It was the saddest kind of cowardice, a man who would rather abandon his son at the happiest moment of his life than answer one simple question. “He had a choice,” I said. “He could have just told the truth.” Mr. Haskins nodded slowly. “Most men do not,” he said, “until somebody makes them.”
I asked a lawyer in Maryville who had represented a friend of mine. She spent an hour reading the papers and then said something I will not forget. “Ms. Calloway, you can sue him, and you will probably win. But think about what your son needs. He does not need a verdict. He needs to hear it from his father, and he needs the money back.” So I invited my ex husband to dinner. Not to the house. To a Cracker Barrel off the interstate, on a Sunday, with Ethan sitting beside me and the lawyer letter folded in my purse. I did not warn him. I did not give him a chance to prepare an excuse.
He looked ten years older than the last time I had seen him. Ethan said, in the polite, flat voice he uses when he is trying not to feel anything, “Dad, I saw the fish.” His father shut his eyes. “Son,” he said. “I took your college money. All of it. I spent it on a boat and a bad idea. I did not come to your ceremony because I could not stand to be in a room where people were proud of you, when I had done the opposite of what a father does.” Ethan did not speak. He picked up his fork, put it down, and picked it up again.
“Okay,” Ethan said finally. “Here is what is going to happen.” I had never heard that tone from my son, and I understood in that moment that Mr. Haskins had taught him more than knots. “You are going to pay it back. Every dollar. Mom has a lawyer and she will write the plan.” His father nodded, tears running into his mustache. “And you are going to come to the court of honor in August. We are having a second one, just for me. I want you to pin the medal.” There was a long silence. “I would be honored,” his father whispered, and Ethan said, “It is not about honor, Dad. It is about showing up.”
The repayment plan was eleven pages long. His father signed every one. He sold the boat within the month, and he took a second job at a hardware store on Chapman Highway, stocking shelves on weekends. The first payment arrived on time, and the second, and the third. He sent a check every month, with a little note in the memo line, and the note always said the same thing. For Ethan.
The second court of honor was held in the fellowship hall of our church on a warm Saturday in August. Mr. Haskins stood at the podium with the medal on a blue ribbon. Fifty people came, many of them the same ones who had witnessed my lonely walk in the spring. This time, when the scoutmaster asked for the parents, two of us stood. His father crossed the room in a borrowed suit that did not quite fit. His hands shook as he pinned the medal to the sash. Ethan looked at him, and then, in front of everybody, put both arms around him. I heard someone behind me start to cry, and I realized it was me.