19
In the Beginning
When the semester ended I returned to Buck’s Peak. In a few weeks BYU
would post grades; then I’d know if I could return in the fall.
I filled my journals with promises that I would stay out of the junkyard. I
needed money—Dad would have said I was broker than the Ten
Commandments—so I went to get my old job back at Stokes. I turned up at
the busiest hour in the afternoon, when I knew they’d be understaffed, and
sure enough, the manager was bagging groceries when I found him. I asked if
he’d like me to do that, and he looked at me for all of three seconds, then
lifted his apron over his head and handed it to me. The assistant manager
gave me a wink: she was the one who’d suggested I ask during the rush.
There was something about Stokes—about its straight, clean aisles and the
warm people who worked there—that made me feel calm and happy. It’s a
strange thing to say about a grocery store, but it felt like home.
Dad was waiting for me when I came through the back door. He saw the
apron and said, “You’re working for me this summer.”
“I’m working at Stokes,” I said.
“Think you’re too good to scrap?” His voice was raised. “This is your
family. You belong here.”
Dad’s face was haggard, his eyes bloodshot. He’d had a spectacularly bad
winter. In the fall, he’d invested a large sum of money in new construction
equipment—an excavator, a man lift and a welding trailer. By spring it was
all gone. Luke had accidentally lit the welding trailer on fire, burning it to the
ground; the man lift had come off a trailer because someone—I never asked
who—hadn’t secured it properly; and the excavator had joined the scrap heap
when Shawn, pulling it on an enormous trailer, had taken a corner too fast
and rolled the truck and trailer both. With the luck of the damned, Shawn had
crawled from the wreckage, although he’d hit his head and couldn’t