Uncle Denny did not want to take the papers. So I read them out loud myself, one at a time, standing on the porch.
March. New tires, because he had driven it on a flat for twenty miles. Three hundred and ten dollars. June. Taillight and bumper, after he backed into a post at the lake. Two hundred and forty. August. Bed liner, after he hauled a load of broken concrete and did not tell me. One hundred and eighty. September. Transmission flush and a new clutch, because he had been towing a boat that was too heavy. Three hundred and seventy.
Eleven hundred dollars. And the transmission quote from Thursday was another twenty four hundred.
Grandma stopped the porch swing with her foot.
Two years of being the nephew who cares more about a truck than his own blood, and the truck was the only thing my father left me.
That truck was my dad. He bought it new in 2006. He drove it to every one of my baseball games and every one of my graduations. When he died three years ago, he left it to me in his will, with a note that said, take care of her and she will take care of you.
Denny knew that. He was at the funeral.
Grandma knew it too. She had not said a word the whole time. Now she stood up. She is eighty seven and she stands up slow. She walked over to her son and took the invoices out of my hand and looked at every one of them herself.
Then she said, Dennis. Your brother loved that truck. He loved this boy more. You will pay for every one of these, and you will not ask him for it again.
Denny started to say something about family.
Grandma said, this is family. This is exactly what family is.
He did not argue with her. Nobody argues with Grandma.
He paid the eleven hundred that week. He also paid half the transmission, which he did not have to, and which I did not ask for. He brought the check to my house himself. He stood on my porch for a long minute before he knocked.
He said he was sorry. He said he had been borrowing the truck because his own was falling apart, and he was too proud to tell anybody he could not afford another one. He said he took it out on me because I was the easiest one to take it out on.
He also said he missed my dad. That was the part that got me. They were brothers for sixty years.
The truck came out of the shop in October running better than it had in years. The mechanic said my dad kept good records. He said it would go another two hundred thousand if I treated it right.
Denny found a used truck of his own in the spring. It is not much, but it is his.
Last month he called and asked if I wanted to go fishing. Just us, his truck, the lake where my dad taught us both.
I said yes. He drove.