“I was going to tell you all at the end of the day, Clint,” I said, and I set the fryer tongs down on the table. “Hoyt Paving was sold last spring for ten million four hundred thousand dollars. The paver your son has parked behind his garage is unit nine on the equipment schedule. It belongs to the buyer. Brody put a sign on it and listed it for two hundred sixty five thousand dollars, and I would like you to tell me, in front of this whole yard, why a man would sell something that is not his.” The smell of hot peanut oil hung in the air, and nobody reached for a turkey leg.
Brody tried to smile. “Uncle Delmar, that machine was just sitting there. I was going to pay for it after the first few jobs.” “Chuy called me on Saturday morning,” I said. “He told me you came to the yard on Friday night with a lowboy trailer and a story that I had approved. He believed you, Brody, because you are family. He has run my crew for twenty two years, and he has never had to doubt a Pickering before.” Chuy had driven over himself, and he stood at the back of the yard with his hat in his hands, looking like a man who wanted to be anywhere else.
Darla stepped up beside me. “Brody, your father told us this business was going to be a gift to the family. He never mentioned the paver belonged to somebody else.” Clint turned very slowly. For thirty years he had called me the tar man, and tonight he looked at his son with the same weight in his eyes. “Boy,” he said, “is that true? Did you take it without asking?” Brody said nothing. Across the yard, the banner that read Pickering Paving, Coming Soon rippled in the evening breeze, and not one person in that crowd could bear to look at it.
A paver with a price painted on its side gave one nephew the weekend to bring his uncle back to the family table in Tyler.
I spoke gently, because I had no wish to shame a young man in front of a crowd. “Here is what happens now. By Sunday night the paver goes back to the yard on Loop Three Hundred Twenty Three, and Chuy checks it from front to back. Brody pays for the tow and the fuel himself. The banner comes down tonight. And no one in this family signs a single paper for a Pickering Paving until the buyer has said whether he may. If the machine comes back whole, I will let this lie. I would rather have a nephew than a lawsuit.”
The next morning I drove to the yard, and I found a surprise waiting. Sixteen of my old paving crew had shown up on their day off, still in their work boots, with a cooler of ice water and a pot of coffee. They had heard from Chuy, and nobody had asked them to come. They helped back the paver off the trailer, wiped it down and walked it into its bay as gently as if they were putting a child to bed. One of them, a giant named Ruben, patted the hood and said, “Mr. Hoyt, we would have gone to hell and back for you.”
The money consequences came quickly. Clint had put up the family shop as collateral for the loan on the new business, and the bank called it in the minute the paver went back. He had to sell the fryer trailer and the bass boat, and for the first time in his life, he asked his wife for a loan instead of offering one. The supplier of asphalt who had extended credit to Pickering Paving sent a bill for thirty eight thousand dollars. It took Clint eighteen months to pay it off, and he did it without complaining, which surprised me most of all.
I did not want revenge. I wanted a better ending. So I called the new owners and asked about the six month apprentice program at the plant. They said they would take Brody on the crew, at an honest wage, working the screed behind the paver in the Texas heat. And I started something new with a part of the sale. The Hoyt Trade Scholarship pays for a year at Tyler Junior College for any young person who wants to learn to run heavy equipment. Twelve students signed up for the first class. Not one of them had a paver in their backyard.
Clint came to my house on a Wednesday evening, alone, carrying a case of cold beer and a sack of tomatoes from his garden. He sat on my porch for an hour before he said a word. Then he said, “Delmar, I called you the tar man for thirty years, and I never once meant it kindly, and I am sorry.” I looked at the sky for a while. I told him I had not minded, because the tar was honest work, but that I had minded being laughed at by people who ate what that work paid for. He nodded and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.
On his first Monday on the crew, Brody showed up at five in the morning with a lunch pail and a bad attitude. By ten, the attitude was gone, burned out of him by the heat of the asphalt. Chuy handed him a rake and showed him how to feather an edge, and Brody did it wrong six times before he did it right. At noon he sat in the shade of the truck, drinking water, covered in black dust. “Uncle Delmar,” he said, “how did you stand this for forty years?” I told him I had loved it, and that love makes a hard day light.
In the spring, Brody laid his first stretch of county road, a half mile of smooth blacktop on a farm road outside Tyler. I drove out to see it with Darla, and he stood at the edge with his arms crossed, trying not to look proud. At the fall family supper, he handed me the tongs. “Six turkeys,” he said. “I did the frying this year. You sit.” I sat. Clint passed me a plate, and we all ate until we were silly, and the paver slept safe in its yard with the number nine on the side.