Then my husband reached into his shirt pocket, took out a business envelope worn soft down the fold, and slid it across the table — not to Grant. To Cody.
He said: son, I was going to give you this out on the porch later so nobody’d make a fuss. But we’re all here, so open it.
Cody opened it and went red and had to try twice before anything came out of him.
It was his apprenticeship indenture. IBEW Local 71, five-year inside wireman program, accepted for the fall class, one of nineteen out of four hundred and some who tested. Signed by the training director. And on the sponsor line, my husband’s name.
Cody had told his mother he was going to community college for business. He had not told her because he did not want to be the second man in this family that Grant made jokes about.
And underneath his, in the same envelope, was another one. Yellowed, typed on a typewriter, October of 1996. Keith Alan Vore, apprentice. He has carried that thing in a drawer for twenty-nine years.
On the back of it, in ballpoint, was the reason for everything my husband has done since I met him.
Keith — I signed for you because somebody signed for me in 1961 and I never got the chance to pay him back. Nobody gets in this trade alone. When it’s your turn, sign for somebody and don’t ever bring it up again. — R. Doyle, Local 71
Twenty-one years of driveways at midnight. My mother’s whole house rewired the week after the fire scare, three weekends, nine hundred dollars of wire out of his own pocket and he never let her see a receipt. And he has never once said why, to anybody, including me, in twenty-six years of marriage.
Don’t ever bring it up again. He took that literally. He took it the way some men take scripture.
He said one more thing and then he sat down. He said: Grant, you can think what you want of me, and mostly I don’t care, and that’s the truth. But that boy’s been sitting on this for two months because of the way we all let you talk. That part I do care about.
Nobody laughed. My brother stood there with his glass and then he set it down and sat, and he did not say anything for a long while.
He found Keith in the driveway when people were leaving. I was in the kitchen window and I couldn’t hear it and I’m glad. It went about fifteen minutes. Grant did most of the talking, which for him is unusual, and at the end of it my husband shook his hand.
In September Grant asked Keith to come look at the panel in his own house, and paid him, and Keith took it, which I think was the most generous thing either of them did all year.
Cody started school in October. My husband bought him his first meter and would not let him thank him for it.
And I have quit letting things ride at my own table. That one is mine to fix.