He still comes to Sunday dinner

There's not much to it. I don't know why this is the one you want.

Shane parks up by the fence on the left side, because the rest of the driveway don't drain and the low end goes to ice by November. That's been his spot for years. Him and my sister been split four years now and he still pulls in there at three on a Sunday.

They split over money and some other stuff that ain't mine to know. There wasn't a blowup or nothing. She just told him one January to go find somewhere.

It's for the boys. Bryce is ten and Shane's got him in the youth club that runs out of the middle school, so the two of them are in that truck together three nights a week anyhow. Kayla don't care. She'll leave him a plate in the microwave if practice runs long.

Mamaw died two Februaries back. She was ninety-one and she'd been going down since the fall, so nobody was shocked, and the service was at the place out on National Road and then everybody came back to her house up in Warwood. There was about forty people in there. Somebody's church sent scalloped potatoes in one of them foil pans and it sat out so long my aunt Deb finally just chucked the whole thing.

The fridge was full up with food people brought, so the beer went in a cooler in the bed of Shane's truck. He's got an '09 Silverado. Gray two-fifty, still got the ladder rack on it from when he was doing gutters with his cousin. Busch Light, the sixteen-ounce cans, because that's what my dad buys and my dad bought it. I had six of them, maybe seven. Then somebody found a bottle of apricot brandy in the cabinet over Mamaw's stove that had to have been in there since the nineties, and me and him drank most of that out of coffee cups.

He wasn't supposed to stay. He was gonna drive back to his place in Bethlehem, but by ten he wasn't driving nowhere, and my cousins had both rooms upstairs. So he took the recliner down the basement and I was already on the couch down there.

The basement's finished, sort of. Wood paneling and a drop ceiling. Mamaw had one of them kerosene heaters down there she wouldn't let nobody replace, and you gotta trim the wick on it or it smokes and then the whole room smells like a shop floor. Shane's tall so he's got to duck the beam by the stairs.

TV was on with no sound, on the weather channel, the one that's just the local forecast over and over with the music going. We had it on more for the light than anything, because the lamp down there is on the same breaker as the space heater and if you run both of them it trips.

We talked about his truck a while. He needed a transfer case, or he did then. And he told me about a job he bid over in Triadelphia that he didn't get, and how the guy that got it wasn't even licensed.

Then it got quiet for a while. I'm not gonna lay it out for you. It happened and it wasn't a big production and after he went back over to the recliner.

I woke up quarter after five because the heater was ticking. He already had his boots on. He went up and put Mamaw's percolator on, the metal one you do on the burner that takes about twenty minutes, and we drank it at the kitchen table in the dark because the switch for that kitchen is over by the back door and neither of us got up. Neither one of us went back for a second cup of it. He asked what time Deb was coming for the recliner. I said eight probably.

He said he'd load it before he left so nobody had to mess with it, and that's what he did. We took it out the side door and got it in the bed and he ratcheted it down and put a moving blanket under the feet so the legs wouldn't scratch nothing. Then he ran it up to Deb's and went to work. He worked Sundays back then.

Next Sunday he was in the driveway at three. He didn't get weird about it. He still sends the whole family the bracket sheet every time Bryce wrestles. He called my dad in June about lumber prices for no reason I can figure.

I live over Deb's garage. There's a window unit in that apartment that drips down onto her driveway and she's asked me twice to put a pan under it. I bought the pan in July. It's still in my truck.

In March he brought the truck to the shop for four tires. I did them myself, mounted and balanced, took maybe forty minutes on the machine. That machine's a Coats older than I am and the bead breaker on it pulls left, so you gotta stand on it funny. My dad's been saying he'll replace it since I started there. He would've done Shane at cost, he always has, he did it when they were still married and he kept doing it after. Shane paid the whole ticket at the counter and I told him don't do that and he did it anyway and left. Fronts are cupping on them already. He don't rotate them. Never has.

I go to practice sometimes when Bryce is on a good run. Shane's got a folding chair he sets at the corner of the mat and he yells the same two things at every kid in there. I went one fifty-two all four years and I was pulling weight for it by the time I was seventeen. Bryce asked me one time what was wrong with my ear and I told him it's from doing exactly what he's doing right now.

One time in the fall he said something. We were out in the lot at the Moundsville tournament waiting on Bryce to come out with his bag and Shane goes, we ever gonna talk about that. And I said talk about what. And he laughed and said all right. Then Bryce came out and we went to Sheetz and got him a pretzel.

If Kayla knew, he wouldn't be in that driveway. He sits in the same chair at that table. He cuts up Wyatt's ham for him because Wyatt's six and he's slow about it and he'd sit there till Tuesday. He says grace when my dad asks him to. Last Sunday he come in late off a job and ate his standing up at the counter with the plate on a dish towel.