My uncle Roy poured himself a glass of whiskey at two in the afternoon, set it down without drinking it, and told me who had been in the truck. “It was Charlene, Wade,” he said. “My wife. Your aunt. In February of 1987, behind the parsonage of Faith Tabernacle, in the truck of the pastor.” I stood in the kitchen of the ranch house in Amarillo, holding the old Stetson of Granddaddy Hoyt in both hands, with the cashier check unfolded on the table beside me, and I felt the whole house go still around the words. Uncle Roy had gone sober as a judge, and his eyes were wet.
He told it slowly, looking at the whiskey. Granddaddy Hoyt had sold two quarter sections of land to pay for the new sanctuary of the church, and he had driven over on a Saturday night with the check, a day early, hoping to surprise the pastor. He had found the truck behind the parsonage, and he had seen who was in it with the pastor, his own daughter in law. He had turned around and driven home without a word. The next morning he took off his hat in the church parking lot, and he never went inside that building again.
“He came to me the following Monday,” said Uncle Roy. “He told me what he had seen, and he asked what I wanted him to do. I said nothing. I begged him to say nothing, because I was a coward and I could not stand to lose her. He kept it thirty seven years, Wade, rather than shame me. He kept the check, and he kept the hat, and he kept his mouth shut, just like he taught you.” Then Roy reached out, very fast, and snatched the Stetson and the check off the table, and I understood what he meant to do.
A leather hat band peeled back in a ranch kitchen gave one grandson the afternoon to bring his uncle back to the truth in Amarillo.
I gave my terms with my hand on the shoulder of my uncle, as he stood by the stove, holding the hat. “Uncle Roy, you are not burning it. That hat has been kept for thirty seven years by a man who never asked for a thing, and I am not going to let it go up in a barrel. We are going to take that check to the bank in Amarillo, and we are going to find out what can be done with it. And then, you and I are going to sit down with Aunt Charlene, and we are going to tell her the truth. All of it. Whatever comes.”
Uncle Roy turned his face to the wall. “I have been drunk for most of my life because of that night,” he said, in a cracked voice. “Hoyt held it for me, like he held everything. He never once held it over me. I watched him sit in the back pew of the Methodist church across town for thirty years, and I never had the courage to ask him why he left. I could not look at him. And now he is gone, and the only thing he ever asked of me, was that I stay sober. And I could not even do that.” He started to weep.
Roy then did the only thing he could think of. He ran. He broke away from me and bolted out the back door of the kitchen toward the burn barrel behind the barn, clutching the hat and the check against his chest, with the whiskey bottle in his other hand. He had almost reached the barrel when Tomas, the old ranch hand who had worked for Granddaddy since 1978, stepped out of the barn door and stood in his path, six feet tall, with a pitchfork in his hand, and his brown face as gentle as a priest. Roy stopped.
“Mr. Roy,” said Tomas quietly, “Mr. Hoyt told me, the last week. He said, Tomas, if Roy ever tries to burn the hat, stand in the way.” Roy dropped the whiskey bottle, and it broke on the gravel. He sat down in the dust with the Stetson in his lap. I crossed the yard and sat beside him, and Tomas stood over the two of us, a quiet and faithful man. The sun was low over the Panhandle. After a long while, Roy handed me the hat, and said, “You tell her. I cannot.”
The money consequences were unexpected. The Amarillo bank had no record of the cashier check being honored, so the funds, one hundred and twelve thousand dollars with thirty seven years of interest, had been turned over to the state as unclaimed property. I filed a claim with the comptroller, and in March the money came. Aunt Charlene, once she knew everything, did not run. She told Uncle Roy she had been waiting thirty seven years to be asked. Together they went to the church, and they gave the check, with the interest, to the new pastor for the sanctuary.
In the name of Hoyt, who passed in October, I started the Hoyt Calloway Fund. It pays for roofs, pews and repairs for small rural churches, and for honest counseling for families carrying old secrets, in Potter, Randall and Deaf Smith counties. In the first year we repaired eleven country churches. One was a white chapel near Hereford whose roof had leaked over the pulpit for twenty years. When the new shingles went on, the old women of the congregation brought sandwiches up the ladder.
Uncle Roy stayed sober for eleven months and counting, and he and Aunt Charlene sat together in the second pew of Faith Tabernacle on the first Sunday of April. I sat behind them, in my good boots. When the offering plate came by, my uncle put in an envelope. Then, quietly, I took the Stetson of Granddaddy out of its round hatbox and placed it on the pew between us. The preacher looked at it, and a small smile crossed his face. He opened his Bible and began to read.