But today Winston had to keep his office door shut—not even a crack to allow in the shuffling sounds of customers wandering the aisles. He had screwed up an order last week. Six cartons of three-penny nails, enough to build a new hardware store, when he only meant to order six boxes. He’d been making other mistakes lately, little ones that no one noticed (he hoped), and that he managed to fix before anyone from accounting found out. This mistake was going to take some time to clear up, and the kids were due home by 3, (was it 3 or 2?) because Robin mentioned something about working late over in Sierraville. Today there would be no time to help customers find overhead sprinklers, no exchanging inside hinges for out. All the things he loved to do. Today there would be none of that.
He couldn’t locate the order book and the key to the inventory file cabinet had jammed in the lock. The only locksmith within reach was recovering from hip surgery.
He sighed, and just like that his mind turned, as it constantly did nowadays, to his son Robin. Robin with his marriage shaken loose, the kids with no mother, and Timothy’s nose running a yellowish green snot. Maybe he ought to call a doctor. What if something happened to that child, then what? Robin was in too much of a hurry to be any kind of father to those kids. Dropping them off like baggage at school, pushing them into the truck, out of the truck, they might as well be sacks of laundry. Sweaters twisted inside out, broken toy parts, mismatched shoes, all tossed in the back seat where they’d get sandwiched between screwdrivers and wrenches. Fast food wrappers, wrinkled attempts at artwork, their small lives were already turning into a cluttered heap.
“It’s just a cold, dad. Kids get colds.” Robin didn’t seem in the least bit concerned about his son’s dripping nose. Maybe that was a good sign. Maybe grandfathers were too old to know the difference between simple colds and early stage diphtheria. But the green stuff had been coming steady and it couldn’t be right.
How was he supposed to help with the kids—a man who couldn’t figure out how to open a jammed inventory cabinet. A man who left the key to the safe in his trousers on top of the washing machine and today he desperately needed to find that nail order so he could get a full return. It might have to wait until Monday but it’s a holiday Monday he thinks, Memorial or Veteran’s or maybe that was last week. Winston’s mind was racing now, bedraggled grandchildren, stuck file cabinets, and now he started to wonder whether he remembered to turn off the humidifier in the kids’ room.
At this last, overwhelming possibility, Winston lay his head down on the soft wad of accounting books splayed across his desk, flopped his arms out flat across the table in exhausted supplication, and allowed his tired body to convulse in three heaving, excruciating sobs.
No tears came. He wished they would, imagined they might cool down the hotness that burned in his throat, bathe him in some interior kind of way. This life had become all too much for an old man to sort through. He shuddered with the enormity of his existence. How was it that life led so desperately downward?
“Mr. Till, are you still there?” Lindsay’s gentle knock informed him that it was 2:30, time for him to end his day, finally.
“Yes, dear, I’m just finishing up” he answered, collecting his coat, his lunch bag that hadn’t been touched, some horse stickers for Timothy and princess stickers for Grace (hadn’t he given them the same ones last week?) and said his goodbyes to the staff.
He hadn’t accomplished nearly what he needed to but for some reason, Winston found himself looking forward to the drive home. Robin had hinted that he might leave the kids for the whole weekend. He had landed a great job in Peardale, twenty miles south, a deck with built-in spa, whatever that meant. Winston tried to picture folks lying naked outside in full view of their neighbors and got stuck on the thought.
What would he do with the kids all weekend, maybe take them to the hardware store again. They seemed to enjoy playing up and down the aisles, Lindsay treating them to the mints behind the counter, Len giving them sandpaper samples and address numbers and Elmer’s glue. Or maybe they’d just stay home. He liked being home with them, even with nothing to do. There was noise in the house now, noise that he didn’t need to generate. He was glad he had offered to let Robin and the kids move in. It made him feel like a father, made him drive faster than usual to beat them home.
5.
THE ROAD FROM SCHOOL to home ambled along a seven-mile stretch of highway, which usually put both kids to sleep. The hard right onto Route 49 usually stirred them awake, then past the boarded up vegetable stand, the brand new health food store, the field of cows and horses that no longer held their interest. But the smell of livestock woke them fully, preparing them for what was coming up at the next bend, Highway Hardware, and by now they were craning their necks to see.
“There's Grandpa’s store,” Timothy announced at the juncture, then checking off the next few landmarks, Ervin's Gas and Oil Change, the Chinese restaurant, the old Lutheran church that seemed to have more weeds than worshippers, and finally the field of buried automobiles that sprouted clover in the winter and wild iris in the spring.
Maybe ten feet past the car cemetery, the truck swerved hard and left onto an unpaved, unmarked stretch of road, milepost 4.8, and before the steering wheel had a chance to straighten came the next hairpin, to the right this time, causing the kids to sway back and forth across the seat. “Whoa!” they called out every single time, one of the highlights of the long trip home. Not many people ever made that second hairpin turn. The faded wooden sign marked Blind Shady Bend was known to only a few residents, and they liked it that way. “Make a sharp left just after the car cemetery” was all anyone said, should directions be called for. They rarely were.
As usual, Robin had been the last to pick the kids up from school. The teacher never said anything, she didn’t have to, she just sat at her desk, art supplies and tinker toys and books all stacked neatly on the shelves, so quiet you could hear the scratching of her pen as she finished up the details of her day. Blackboards washed down with a thoroughness that suggested he was later than his usual late this time, and her eyes confirmed it when at last she acknowledged his presence.
“Today is teacher training day. Did Grace give you the notice? School ended at 2:00.”
He didn’t recall reading any notice, but it was most likely his oversight and not Grace’s. She was the one who remembered to put the fruit rolls in their lunchboxes.
“Sorry. I never saw it.”
“They are in the library. You’d better hurry, it closes in 15 minutes.”
Well it wasn’t Miss Larner’s fault either. She was paid to teach, not babysit the children of frazzled parents.
He heard Timothy crying before he opened the library door. The way Grace explained it, he had kicked her when she was leaning down to pick up her pencil, so she grabbed his shoe and threw it across the aisle to teach him a lesson.
"Gimme back my shoe” Timothy screamed, “I want my shoe.”
"Knock it off” Robin yelled not at his bossy daughter, but at the crying, shoeless little boy.
“Stop acting like a baby,” he shouted to the little boy who still sucked juice out of Batman cups with nippled lids, still kept his frayed blanket tucked safe on the bottom of his backpack, rubbed its silky edge against his lips when he thought his dad wasn’t looking.
“Get up, get your things, we gotta go.” He gave his son a quick propelling pat on the rear that only made the crying worse.
Robin grabbed the shoe, holding the crying boy in his other arm. By the time they managed to get to his truck, Grace was already stationed in the middle, in the place right next to Daddy’s, seat belt locked, hand on the emergency brake, ready for his signal to push in the button and let it down. She was