The boy sitting next to my son in the finance office was my grandson Tanner, eighteen years old, in his feed store shirt, with a ballpoint pen in his hand and a stack of papers under his wrist. He looked up at me with an easy, puzzled smile, as if I were a surprise at a birthday party. “Granddad,” he said, “what are you doing here? Dad said he was getting us a bass boat for fishing trips, and he needed me to co sign because I have a clean record.” I am Clyde Burkhart, eighty three years old, and I leaned on my cane.
Darrell stood up from the leather chair so fast that it rolled backward into the wall. The finance manager, a nervous young man in a vest, began gathering the papers with both hands. I walked slowly around the desk, laid my envelope of twenty eight thousand dollars on the glass, and put my hand on the shoulder of my grandson. “Tanner,” I said gently, “put the pen down. Do not sign another thing.” He looked at the pen as if he had forgotten it was there and set it on the blotter.
Rick, the salesman who had walked behind me, spoke from the doorway. “Mr. Burkhart, the loan on this boat is thirty one thousand dollars, with your grandson as the only co signer. The truck money covers the down payment.” Tanner went pale. “Dad,” he said, in a small voice, “you said it was already paid for.” My son stared at the floor. Outside the glass wall, the showroom lights hummed over the new trucks, and a salesman on the lot dropped a clipboard that clattered across the concrete.
A forged truck title on a salesman screen gave one retired rancher the length of a showroom morning to bring his son back to the truth in Springfield.
I gave my terms there in the little office, with my hand still on the shoulder of the boy. “Darrell, I am not going to call the sheriff, because I laid your mother to rest in this county and I will not have her son in handcuffs. But you will give the truck back to the dealer, you will cancel this loan, and you will pay back what is owed from your own wages. You will tell your wife she may keep her job at the bank, if she tells her supervisor what she stamped. And you will stay away from the riverboat in Kansas City, starting this very hour.”
My son sank into the chair and covered his eyes. “Dad, I owe the riverboat sixty one thousand dollars,” he said, in a broken voice. “I got a payday advance, then another, then I started drinking at the tire plant lot to get through the shift. I took the Silverado because I could not think of anything else. Sherry stamped the title because I told her you wanted it sold. She thinks you are failing.” He looked up at me with wet eyes. “I am sorry, Dad. I do not know who I am anymore.”
But shame stung him into foolishness. Darrell snatched the title and the bill of sale off the desk, shoved past the finance manager, and ran out into the showroom, aiming for the front doors and the lot beyond. He crossed the polished floor between the new trucks. Rick the salesman stepped in front of a shining red F 150. Two mechanics in gray coveralls came through the service door, wiping their hands. And Tanner, my grandson, with his tall, thin shoulders and a face full of hurt, walked out of the office and stood between his father and the glass doors.
Darrell stopped with the papers crushed in his hand, and the afternoon sun flashed on the chrome grilles around him. He looked at his son. Tanner did not shout. He only said, in a steady voice that was half a man and half a boy, “Dad, I would have signed anything you asked me. Please do not make me stop trusting you.” The showroom was silent. The hand of Darrell opened. The papers fell to the carpet, one sheet at a time, and he went down on one knee and put his arms around his boy.
The consequences were as fair as I could make them. The dealer canceled the loan and returned the Silverado at no charge, because the signature on the title was proven false and the dealership did not want its name in the Springfield paper. Sherry told her supervisor what she had stamped, and the bank gave her a written warning and kept her on. Darrell began the program in Joplin that Friday, and he drove there himself every week. I gave Tanner the keys to the new F 150, the red one, the very next morning.
In the name of my wife Fern, who passed in 2021, I started the Fern Burkhart Fund. It pays for lineman and trade school scholarships for young people from farm families and for counseling for families hurt by gambling, in Greene, Christian and Webster counties. In the first year we sent twenty two students to trade school and counseled sixty one families. One was a nineteen year old from Ozark who climbed his first practice pole in a harness and hooks, and who hung there at the top for a minute, grinning at the sky and at his father below.
In October, I sat on the porch of the little house that I bought on the edge of Springfield, with a glass of sweet tea and a view of the hills going gold. Tanner pulled into the gravel drive in the red truck, with his father in the passenger seat, ninety days clear. They climbed out together, carrying a cooler and two fishing rods. Darrell stopped at the foot of the steps and took off his cap. “Dad,” he said, “we thought we would fish at the pond and bring you supper.” I stood up slowly. “Then I will fry,” I said.