Page 14 of Thunder

Then Raine sets her fork down and gets a thinking look, and I know something's coming, because Raine at a dead stop is Raine loading up.

"Daddy, can Miss Presley come to dinner sometime?"

The table doesn't go quiet, because Mama Lou's too smooth for that.

She goes still over her plate and doesn't look at me, which is its own kind of loud.

"She helped me name my barn kitten," Raine goes on earnestly, building her case. "The gray one. She said his name should be Biscuit and she was right, he looks exactly like a biscuit. And she knows everything about horses and cows, and she said she'd show me how the cows get matched up for babies, the science part, and she never came to show me 'cause she's been busy."

There’s a moment of silence before she starts up again.

"Can she come? I miss her."

I miss her.

Two words out of a nine-year-old and they go into me deeper than anything the road did today.

Because I miss her too, and that's what I can't say.

I miss her at this table so bad it's a physical pain worse than the hip, and my daughter just laid it out plainly the way kids do.

She said the true thing none of the grown-ups are allowed to say, and she's looking up at me waiting for me to fix it like I fix everything else.

I can't fix this one.

"She's been workin' awful hard, baby," I say, and I keep my voice easy.

"Up before the sun, out at those pens all day. Runnin' a whole cattle program by herself is a big job. I 'spect by suppertime she's wore all the way out and just wants to put her feet up."

"Oh."

Raine considers this, and I think it’s a good enough answer for her, because nine-year-olds take you at your word when you love them right.

"Okay. Maybe when she's not so tired."

"Maybe then."

"I hope she's not too tired for too long." She picks her fork back up. "I like her. She's not fake-nice like some grown-ups. She's real-nice."

"Yeah," I say. "She is."

Across the table, my mother looks at me then, one long look, the look a woman gives you when she's known you your whole life and can read something off your face you'd swear you kept blank.

She doesn't say a word.

Mama Lou never needs the words.

But that look says I see it, son, whatever it is, I see it.

I hold her eyes and I don't give her anything back, because some loads you carry alone until you can't.

* * *

Raine's asleep by dark, and my mother's gone home.

I'm out on the porch with a beer I'm not drinking and my leg propped on the rail, and I let it all come back now that there's nobody to keep my face right for.

A silver truck on an empty road, running our charter, as disciplined as a soldier.