“You tired?” his father said.
“I’m fine,” Jimmy said, his eyes still shut.
“I just come out for a minute,” his father said again. “Your mother said you might like to go up to Gillette for the band, for the show up there.”
“What?” Jimmy said.
“If you wanted to go up and see the band, I could drive you up. Mom has made a kit, some sandwiches and that. If you want to, I could drive you up. The weather’s not great, but I could drive you up.”
Jimmy’s eyes were open now, and he tried to draw a deeper breath. The air came in strings, and his legs were faintly trembling. He pushed himself in three motions up so he sat facing his father. “Dad,” he said, “you know I’m sorry about coming back out here and making problems for you. If I’d had anything else or another way . . .” Now Jimmy’s voice skipped out on him, and he waited. Something new was burning in his spine, and the pain was like static. “That’s all. I’m sorry.”
His father was a stationary silhouette. “If you’d like to go up there, I could drive you. I’d like to drive you. Shit, I’ve driven to Gillette when they wouldn’t take the mail. The day you were born I was out in Stayner with a freight train stopped by the blizzard, and your mother called from Holy Cross downtown.”
“They’d stopped the train,” Jimmy said. He hadn’t heard this story for forty years.
“That was a snow that stopped every damn thing.” His father’s voice was like a hand on his arm. “But your mother had walked seven blocks to Hildy’s house.”
“Aunt Hildy,” Jimmy said, remembering the woman now dead twenty years.
“There was a woman could manage,” Edgar said. “She called me up there and said they were going over to Holy Cross to pick up a baby.”
Jimmy struggled on an elbow to sit up. His eyes were fine now, and he focused on his father as he told his story.
“I told the foreman. It was Sid Jakowski, remember?”
“I remember Sid,” Jimmy said. “I knew his daughters in school.” Something was happening to Jimmy’s face; he could feel it. Strange, he knew at last, I’m smiling. But his back and his chest were knotted in a cramp. His father sat before him, an old man. My father is an old man, and I am an old man. “They were tough girls, Polly and Lucinda.”
“He was a tough guy. Scared-of-nothing Jakowski. But not in that storm. We had the one company International, and he wouldn’t drive me down. I argued with the man. We were in the switching shack by the roundhouse, and he wouldn’t budge. He wouldn’t lend me the damn truck.”
“So you took it.”
“I took the truck. He knew I was going to and just gave me the keys.”
“Didn’t he say—”
“He said, ‘Don’t take the truck,’ and he gave me the keys. I was having a baby. You were on the way, Jimmy.”
The garage ceiling made a quiet chuffing as the plastic filled and emptied.
Jimmy’s face felt strange again, and he heard himself speak. “We could go up there. It’s only a little snow.”
“Sure we could.” Mr. Brand stood up. “I’ll warm up the car.”
He exited the little room, and Jimmy leaned back against the headboard. He felt the electricity in his arms and legs, but he could not move. Finally, by counting down from five, he slid one leg to the edge of the bed and over. The floor was ridiculous, so far down there.