She brought pot roast. Ray brought nothing. He stood in the doorway of Grandma’s kitchen like a man walking into church late.
Grandma looked up at him from the stove.
“Sit down, Raymond,” she said. “You look like you’re going to fall over.”
He sat.
We worked it out at that kitchen table. All four of us. With Grandma’s checkbook and her calculator the size of a paperback book.
Ray owed Grandma forty-four hundred dollars for the lawn. Plus twelve hundred for the taxes he never paid. He owed Miss Edna four hundred. Mrs. Banks six hundred. Mrs. Halloway five hundred. Mrs. Kessler four hundred. Tyler Simms two hundred for May and June.
I added it up. Seven thousand, seven hundred dollars.
“I don’t have it,” Ray said. “I don’t have any of it.”
“You have a truck,” Sheila said.
Ray looked at her.
“That truck is worth fifty-two thousand dollars,” Sheila said. “You owe forty-one on it. You sell it on Monday, you clear eleven thousand. That pays back every single person on Locust Street and the taxes, with money left over.”
“Sheila…”
“Or,” she said, “I can call the bank about the truck myself. And then I can call a lawyer about our marriage.”
Ray stared at her.
Then he looked at Grandma.
“Mama,” he said. “Is that what you want?”
Grandma took off her reading glasses. She folded them and set them on top of the checkbook.
“I don’t want anything from you, Raymond,” she said. “Except one thing.”
“What?”
“I want you to cut my grass,” she said. “Yourself. Every Saturday. Not Tyler. Not anybody else. You. With your daddy’s mower. In straight lines.”
Ray didn’t say anything.
“And when you’re done with mine,” Grandma said, “you’re going to cut Edna’s. And Dorothy’s. And Margaret’s. And Irene’s. And Archie’s. Every widow on Locust Street. Every Saturday. For free. Until the end of the season.”
She looked at him.
“That’s what your daddy would’ve had you do,” she said. “That’s what Danny would’ve done.”
Chapter Eleven: Straight Lines
Ray sold the truck on Wednesday.
He sold it to a dealer in Springfield for forty-nine thousand, five hundred. After paying off the loan, he cleared eight thousand, two hundred and some. He bought a 2009 Ford Ranger with a dented tailgate from a guy in Licking for three thousand cash.
On Thursday, he drove that Ranger down Locust Street and stopped at every single house. He knocked on every door. He handed every woman an envelope with cash in it and an apology.
Miss Edna told me about it later. She said he stood on her porch with his hat in his hands and cried.
“I told him I forgave him,” she said. “And then I told him he still needed to work on his spelling. He wrote ‘sincerly’ on the envelope.”
He gave Tyler Simms his two hundred dollars, plus fifty extra.
He gave Grandma back everything. Fifty-six hundred dollars, in a cashier’s check from the Bank of Cedar Ridge. She put it in her savings account and didn’t touch it.
He also gave me back the thirteen hundred and twelve dollars I’d paid for the taxes. I tried not to take it. He wouldn’t let me.
