Part 5

By this past fall, all three of my siblings were living back at home.

In my parents’ house, in Ames.

Three grown programmers sharing one bathroom, eating Mom’s casserole, and sending out resumes from the kitchen table.

I didn’t know any of that part until the applications showed up.

In September, we’d posted two office jobs, an estimator and a project coordinator, because I was drowning in paperwork and Arla had threatened to quit.

Our website was one page with our phone number and a picture of Harvey’s old van.

On a Monday in October, I opened my email at 6:30 with a gas station breakfast burrito.

There were thirty-one new applications.

I started at the top.

The fourth one was Justin.

I set the burrito down.

His resume listed the insurance company, six years, senior developer.

Then almost a year with nothing on it.

He’d applied for project coordinator.

The fifth one was Caitlin, estimator.

The ninth one was Alexis.

She’d applied for both.

They’d all come in on Sunday night within about forty minutes of each other.

Like somebody had sat them down at the kitchen table and told them to do it.

When Harvey came in, I turned the screen around.

He put on his reading glasses and read the names.

“Well,” he said, “that’s a coincidence.”

“It’s not a coincidence,” I said.

“Out of every electrical shop in Iowa? Forty minutes from Ames? Did they know it’s yours?”

I thought about it.

The shop still said Hagadorn Electric. My name wasn’t anywhere on the website.

“No,” I said, “I don’t think they do.”

Harvey took his glasses off and let them hang on the cord.

“So, what are you going to do?”

I didn’t know.

So I treated it like any other job.

I sent all three the same email I send every qualified applicant.

Interviews this Thursday at 10:00.

It came from Arla’s address, signed Hagadorn Electric, like always.

All three replied yes within the hour.

Twenty minutes later, Arla poked her head in.

“A man called for the owner. Says he’s the father of three of the applicants and he’d like to come along Thursday to, quote, discuss the opportunity.”

She paused.

“He sounded like a professor.”

“He is one,” I said.

Arla looked at me for a long second.

Then she said, “I’ll put on the good coffee.”

And closed the door.

Thursday was cold and bright with frost still on the soybean stubble.

At 9:45, I was out in the yard helping a nineteen-year-old apprentice named Silas load a spool of wire onto a truck.

Work boots, old jeans, a faded gray hoodie with a hole in the elbow.

I’d thought about dressing up.

I decided I wasn’t putting on a costume for them.

At 9:50, a silver Honda Odyssey turned into the gravel lot.

I’d know my dad’s walk anywhere.

He got out in his brown corduroy jacket and looked at the building.

The new sign, the six work trucks along the fence.

He looked surprised, and he didn’t like being surprised.

Then the other doors opened.

Justin got out first, heavier now, with a beard trimmed exactly like Dad’s.

Caitlin had cut her hair short.

And then Alexis climbed out, twenty-three years old, and the last time I’d seen her, she was sixteen and barefoot, shoving a sandwich through my truck window.

I set down my end of the spool.

Alexis saw me first.

She stopped dead in the gravel.

Her hand went to her mouth.

Then Caitlin saw me, then Justin.

And then my dad turned around to see what everybody was looking at.

He looked at me for a long time.

At the boots, at the hoodie, at the hole in the elbow.

I watched him do the math, the same way he’d read a student’s paper.

I watched him come up with an answer.

“Nolan,” he said, “you work here?”

Harvey says it’s the first time in seven years he’s ever seen me be ornery.

My dad had decided who I was in about four seconds, the same way he had at the dinner table, and I wanted to see how far he’d go with it.

“Every day,” I said.

Dad nodded slowly, like that confirmed something.

He looked at Silas, who was nineteen and had grease up to his elbows, then back at me.

“Well, that’s good. I’m glad you found steady work.”

He said it the way you’d tell somebody their haircut was different.

Then he pulled himself up a little straighter.

“We’re here to see the owner, about the office positions. Go get your boss.”

Behind him, Alexis made a little sound, like a laugh she’d swallowed.

“Sure thing,” I said. “Wait right here.”

I walked past Arla, who was watching through the front window with her coffee mug halfway to her mouth, and down the hall to Harvey’s office.