Part 3

The first year was hard.

I made fourteen dollars an hour.

I paid Harvey his rent, paid for my own night classes, my own gas, my own tools.

I ate so many eggs that Kirby started calling me Omelet, which was about the most I heard out of him that whole summer.

And then, in February of my second year, the transmission on my Tacoma died on Highway 6 in a snowstorm on the way to a job.

The repair shop said it would cost about $2,400.

I had $612 in the bank.

That night, my phone rang.

It was Mom.

It was the first time she’d called since I left.

She’d heard from Caitlin, who’d seen a picture I’d posted of my truck being towed.

Mom’s voice was very soft, like she was calling from a closet, which I’m pretty sure she was.

“Honey, are you all right? Do you need help with the truck?”

Before I could answer, I heard a door open on her end.

I heard my dad’s voice, a little farther from the phone, but clear as a bell.

“Is that him? Here it comes.”

That’s all he said.

Three words.

Here it comes.

Mom said, “Martin, please.”

And then Dad said, a little louder so I’d hear it, “Tell him engineering orientation is still in August.”

I said, “I’m fine, Mom. Tell him I’m fine.”

And I hung up.

I lay on that cot doing math.

At fourteen dollars an hour, it was going to take me four months to save for that transmission.

The next morning at 5:40, I heard a horn honk down in the gravel lot.

I looked out the window.

Harvey’s white van was sitting there with the engine running.

I came downstairs, and he said, “Get in. We’re going to the Grinnell job.”

He picked me up every single morning at 5:40 for four months.

Rain, snow, the morning it was eleven below and the van wouldn’t start until he’d given it a talking to in Dutch.

He never mentioned it.

Every time I tried to thank him, he turned up the radio.

In June, I paid cash for the transmission.

$2,400.

When I drove the Tacoma back into the gravel lot, Harvey came out of the shop, looked at it, and said, “Huh. Guess I’ll sleep in tomorrow.”

He didn’t.

He was there at 5:40 anyway.

He said it was a habit now.

That’s the summer I started sending my mom cards.

I didn’t want to call the house and risk Dad picking up, and Dad got the mail.

So I sent them to the public library, addressed to her at the front desk.

Birthday cards. Christmas cards. Mother’s Day cards.

A few lines each. What job I was on. That I was fine.

And every year on my birthday, a card showed up at the shop addressed to Nolan, care of Harvey Hagadorn, in Mom’s handwriting.

Never any money, because she knew I wouldn’t take it.

Just that she was proud of me. That she’d waved at a Hagadorn Electric van on Lincoln Way, even though it probably wasn’t me.

Harvey would set the card on my workbench without a word.

Every year.

It was a long time before I figured out Dad never knew about any of it.

The years went by the way they do when you’re working sixty hours a week.

I passed my journeyman’s exam at twenty-two.

Harvey took me out for a steak in Des Moines.

Kirby gave me a card that said “Congrats,” which for Kirby was basically a speech.

Meanwhile, I watched my family from a distance, mostly through my dad’s posts online.

He didn’t post much, but it was always the same thing.

Justin in front of the insurance company building.

Proud of my oldest.

Caitlin at her new tech job in Cedar Rapids.

Two down.

And when Alexis started computer science at Iowa State, a picture of the three of them on the front porch.

My three software engineers.

Alexis was a freshman.

But that’s how Dad talked about the future, like it had already been graded.

I wasn’t in the picture, and I didn’t expect to be, but it stung a little.