“You shouldn’t have walked that court on that hip,” Travis said, not looking at my father’s eyes, looking instead at the white dust on Duane’s orthopedic shoe. “The doctor told Sarah last August you were thirty days away from needing a walker if that joint slips.”
Duane shifted his grip on the cane handle. His knuckles were swollen with arthritis, the skin spotted with the brown freckles of old age.
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“A girl asks a man to walk, Travis,” Duane said, his voice flat as an oak board. “A man walks. Doesn’t matter if his hip is made of bone or tin.”
Travis’s jaw worked. That muscle jumped again, jumping twice against his cheekbone.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Duane,” Travis muttered, his voice dropping into a harsh, defensive whisper:
“You think this is about her being my stepdaughter? You think I don’t care about that girl?”
Duane looked at him. For four seconds, the seventy-nine-year-old dairyman looked right through the man who had farmed his daughter’s acreage for nine years.
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“I didn’t say what it was about, Travis,” Duane replied quietly. “I didn’t say a single word. But when my granddaughter asked me Tuesday night, she looked like she’d been told her dog died. That’s all I need to know about what happened at your table.”
“I did it to protect her!” Travis hissed, leaning in, his face suddenly flushed with a dark, mottled red:
“You have no idea what came in the mail Tuesday morning, Duane! You have no idea who called my seed shed from Des Moines!”
