Gary Thorson took the paper off the table in the fellowship hall, and the room watched him read it. He is sixty eight, a tall, stooped, courtly man in a cardigan with the pale eyes of a man who has sold a great many hammers, and he read it the way he reads a bill from a supplier, slowly, line by line. Then he looked at the signature again. “Marvin,” he said, “why did you never tell this family?” I stood at the head of the long table in my wet apron, with dishwater running down my forearms into my sleeves, and for a moment I could not speak.
Karen had come to my side. My wife is sixty four, small and straight, with a halo of white hair and the Thorson way of folding her hands when she is angry. “He did tell me,” she said clearly, to the hall. “Eight weeks ago. I asked him to wait. I wanted to see what my brother would do with a man he thought could only wash dishes.” A murmur ran down the tables. A child asked loudly what a dozer was. Somebody shushed him. The coffee urn ticked in the kitchen, and Gary stood perfectly still with the sheet of paper in his hand, like a man holding a summons.
Kyle had not moved. He is married to the daughter of Gary, he is thirty four, and he is a wide shouldered, soft spoken operator with a sunburned neck and big, honest, ashamed hands. He stood with his napkin in one fist. “Marv,” he said at last, “I should not have done it. I know I should not.” He looked at the floor. “Gary told me. He said, Marvin is selling everything off before the bank gets it. He said it would be a favor, to take the dozer. He said you would never want to see it go to strangers.”
A wet church apron lay over a folding chair and gave one earthmover the whole dinner hour to bring his brother in law back to the sink.
The fellowship hall went so still that I could hear the lutefisk steaming in its pans. Gary lifted his eyes from the paper to his daughter, Jenna, whose hand was over her mouth, and I watched his face do the thing a face does when it is deciding how much of the truth it can afford. “Marvin,” he said. “I thought the company was going under. Everyone said so. Kyle told me that you had stopped taking jobs. I thought I was helping him land on his feet.” “Gary,” I said, “you called me the dirt pusher for thirty nine years. You never once asked me if I was going under.”
“No,” said Gary. “I did not.” He set down the paper. His shoulders, in the cardigan, seemed to shrink an inch. “Marvin, when we were young I was jealous. I stood behind a counter selling nails while you were out building dams on every creek in this county. Karen would come home and say, Marv saved the Henderson farm. Marv fixed the bridge on County 8. And I was selling nails.” His voice was very quiet. “I called you the dirt pusher because it made me feel taller. That is the whole of it. I am sorry.”
I took off the wet apron. I laid it over the back of a folding chair, slowly, and I looked at the faces, the church ladies with their lefse and their coffee, the men in their Sunday cardigans, the children under the tables. “I will say something now,” I said, “because I think I have waited long enough. When my father cosigned that loan in 1978, he said one thing. He said, a man who builds dams has to know water. Water does not care who you are. It finds the weak place.” I turned to Kyle. “You found mine. Not the dozer. The part of me that never wanted to make a scene.”
I told him the way out. The dozer, the excavator, and the dump truck would go back to the yard on Highway 14 the next morning. Kyle would sign the statement. The buyer, who had been told on Saturday, would not press charges; they wanted to hire an operator for the spring flood season, and Kyle had the touch on a blade. “Eighteen months at operator wages,” I said. “On the crew of Arne. And you will take one dishwashing shift per month at this church, on a Friday, for as long as the church will have you.” Kyle blinked. Then a ragged laugh broke out of him.
Gary came around the table. He took my hand and shook it, long, and hard, and did not let go. “Marvin, I would like to ask a favor,” he said. “May I wash the dishes?” I stared at him. “You are in a cardigan,” I said. “I have an apron,” he said. “I would like to wear yours.” And the whole hall began to clap, slowly at first, and then louder, the church ladies and the deacons, a ripple spreading outward, until Pastor Lund himself had to bang a serving spoon on a pot for order.
Gary washed dishes for two hours. He did it badly. He broke a gravy boat, and sprayed himself, and Karen stood beside him with a towel, drying plate after plate with a smile I had not seen on her face in many years. I sat at a table in the corner with a bowl of rice pudding and watched the two of them. Kyle came and sat down opposite. We did not speak. He ate half of my pudding with a spoon he had borrowed from a small child, and when he had finished, he said, “Marv, will you teach me about water?”
He learned. Over the spring he worked the floods with the crew of Arne, in boots, up to his knees in mud, and he built a levee on the Straight River in nine days that held through the worst water in a decade. Gary drove out to see it. He stood on the top in a pair of new work boots and looked down the long green slope, and he did not say a word. At the dinner the following winter, he handed me an apron. It was new. On the front, in white thread, a woman from the church had stitched, The Dirt Pusher.