Chapter 10: The Truck

The block party went until ten.

Somebody dragged out a speaker, and somebody's uncle fired up a grill in the street.

The widow from the corner cried into her paper plate and then danced with my father.

Sebastian stood at the edge of it with a plastic cup of beer.

Six strangers told him, one after another, that they didn't know what he'd done but they were glad of it.

"I didn't do anything," he kept saying.

"He's modest," I told them.

"He's a Crewe," said the SEPTA jacket. "They don't know how."

At ten my father pressed his truck keys into my hand.

"Take him for a drive," he said.

"He's been standing for four hours. He looks like a man who's never sat on a curb in his life."

"Dad, we have the car."

"The car's got heated leather. The truck's got a bench seat." He winked at me. "Go on. Make a memory."

I didn't ask what he meant.

I didn't want to know.

We drove down to the river with the windows cracked and the radio turned low.

I parked in the dark lot at Penn Treaty Park, beside a row of black trees and a long, silver, slow-moving stretch of the Delaware.

The truck smelled like old coffee and my father's flannel.

The heater clicked.

"I have another amendment," Sebastian said.

"Of course you do."

He took a folded page from his coat pocket and passed it over.

PROPOSED AMENDMENT 3.

Mrs. Crewe may introduce Mr. Crewe as her husband at her place of work.

I read it, and then I laughed.

"You wrote me permission to say a word," I said.

"I thought you might not want to."

"Sebastian."

"I thought you might want the option."

"I'm going to say it on Monday to a man who needs a new hip," I said.

"I'm going to say it in front of every patient on my floor."

"You can."

"Granted," I said. "No edits."

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