Part 3 — The Cigar Tin
Cyrus climbed back into his truck and came out with a small brown paper bag, and he set it on my porch rail.
“My mechanic found it taped behind the rear panel. I did not open it, Arv. I knew by looking that it was not mine.”
Inside was a cracked cigar tin with the paint rubbed to the metal. I knew what it held before I lifted the lid.
In 2021 I had put it there with my own hands. Lenoras wedding band, and a small folded piece of paper in her handwriting. Her last grocery list, from the week she passed. At the bottom, in her loopy hand, “Dip cone, 2 spoons. Arv always forgets.”
I sat on the porch step with the tin in my lap and wept like a boy.
I had hidden the dearest thing I owned inside the one thing a nephew would sell, and a man I had raced in 1971 was honest enough to bring it home.
Cody stood by the rail looking at his boots. He said nothing for a long while, and then he said, “Uncle Arv, I did not know.”
“I know you did not,” I said. “That is the whole trouble.”
Cyrus explained what he proposed. He had paid forty-eight thousand dollars for a car that was appraised at seventy-one thousand five hundred. He said he did not want a Mustang bought with a lie. He would return it to me, and take his money back from the nephew, a little at a time, with a written agreement.
Cody went white. He said he had spent most of it on the Broncos and a man in Fruita.
Cyrus did not raise his voice. He said, “Then you will sell your truck, and you will work for me on weekends at the shop until it is paid, and you will go to the meeting on Wednesday nights at the Methodist church.”
The Colorado lawyer I spoke to confirmed that signing another mans name on a title is a serious matter, but a victim can decide to settle if the harm is made right. I told him I would settle.
By November, the title was reissued in my name. Cyrus drove the Mustang to my driveway himself, and he rolled the window down.
That Sunday I drove it to the Dairy Queen with Lenoras ring on a chain around my neck. I ordered a dip cone and two spoons.
I ran one finger along the dash, like petting a horse, and I swear the engine purred.