Daddy Parker's Arc

Chapter 7 of 10

Daddy Parker drove home with two slots still open. He parked near his property line and walked along the wood fence to clear his head. That's when he saw the man. A grown man, hands braced on a fence post, shoulders shaking. Daddy Parker slowed. He didn't speak. He just stood beside him at the rough planks until the worst of it passed. The man wiped his face. He pulled something from his coat pocket. A small oval badge, polished smooth from years of thumb-rubbing. A Ford emblem. "Off my Model A," he said. "Sold the car last spring. Wife got sick. Two girls at home who need more than I can give." He turned the emblem in his palm like it weighed more than it did. Daddy Parker felt something close in his chest. He thought of the speech bill in his drawer. The call he hadn't made. The quiet math he did every night and lost. "Come sit," he said. He walked the man to a small pavilion on the edge of the property, an open roof and clean wood floor. They sat together on an iron-and-wood bench under the eaves. Daddy Parker didn't fill the silence. He let it hold them both. After a long while, Daddy Parker took out his list. He uncapped the pen. "Father Number Five," he said. "If you'll have it." The man's mouth worked. He nodded once. Daddy Parker closed the man's fingers back around the emblem. "You keep that. I've got a car you can drive for a day." They walked back toward the road. One slot left now. Daddy Parker felt the weight of the man's grief settle next to his own, and he knew, walking, that he could not keep telling himself next month. Not after this. Tonight he would open the drawer. Tonight he would look at the number again.