Every other Friday, Ethan and I followed the same routine.
I closed the shop until noon.
We took my gray Ford F-250 into town.
First came the automatic car wash on Fourth Street.
Then we went to First Prairie Bank so I could deposit the shop receipts.
Afterward, we had blueberry pancakes at the diner.
That was our morning together.
It had started when Ethan was much younger.
Over the years, the routine became something we both expected.
I didn't always have enough time during the workweek to give him my full attention.
There were customers calling.
Engines waiting.
Parts arriving late.
Sometimes a repair that should have been finished by four kept me in the shop until well after supper.
But Friday mornings were different.
For those few hours, I wasn't the owner of a repair business.
I was just Ethan's mother.
And I liked that.
The car wash was probably the strangest part of our tradition.
It had become important because of something that happened when Ethan was four.
He had been sitting in the truck beside me when the automated brushes started moving.
The first time those huge blue strips struck the windows, he became frightened.
Then the colored soap covered the windshield.
Red.
Blue.
Thick streams sliding down the glass.
He couldn't see outside.
The brushes hammered against the truck.
He started breathing too quickly.
I remember looking over and realizing that he wasn't simply startled.
He was terrified.
So I pulled him close.
I wrapped an arm around him and asked him to look at my face.
"Watch me, Ethan."
He tried.
His eyes kept darting toward the windows.
I told him I had a little trick.
"When I wink, close your eyes."
He stared at me.
"Then count to ten. Slowly."
He wanted to know what would happen at ten.
I told him the frightening part would be finished.
He didn't look convinced.
But he trusted me.
I winked.
He shut his eyes and counted.
By the time he reached ten, the truck was moving toward the dryers.
The loud brushes were behind us.
He opened his eyes.
And he was safe.
That became our game.
Every time we went through the wash, I gave him the same wink.
Sometimes he counted aloud.
Sometimes he counted silently.
As he got older, he pretended the whole thing was embarrassing.
But he always played along.
That Friday was no different.
We drove to Fourth Street with the heavy pickle jar resting securely against him.
I could hear the coins shift whenever the truck turned.
He kept one arm around the glass.
I glanced at him.
"You're sure that thing isn't too heavy?"
"No."
"It looks heavy."
"I'm fine, Mom."
I left it alone.
He had been waiting three years for this.
I wasn't going to spoil his pride by treating him like a baby.
When we entered the car wash, Ethan leaned back against the seat.
The sprayers began.
Bright foam spread across the windshield.
I caught his reflection in the mirror.
Then I winked.
He made a face.
"Seriously, Mom?"
I raised an eyebrow.
He rolled his eyes.
Then he closed them.
I watched his lips move as he counted.
One.
Two.
Three.
I couldn't help smiling.
There was my boy, almost ready for middle school, still following a little ritual we had invented when he was four.
At ten, he opened his eyes.
The truck rolled through the warm air from the dryers.
"You're impossible," he told me.
I looked at him.
"Did anything terrible happen?"
"I was four when I got scared."
"That wasn't my question."
He shook his head.
But I saw him smile.
That was enough.
We turned toward Main Street.
The sky was gray, and the air had the bite of autumn.
Ethan held the jar on his lap.
I could see how carefully he watched it.
Three years of saving.
Three years of small decisions.
All those coins were about to become a number printed on a bank receipt.
He seemed excited and nervous at the same time.
I understood that too.
He had made a promise to himself.
Now he was about to find out how close he had come.
As we drove, I thought briefly about another promise.
One Adam and I had made to each other.
It concerned Ethan.
And my past.
We had decided to tell him everything when he turned thirteen.
Not before.
We wanted him to be old enough to understand what had happened after I came home from the military.
It wasn't a conversation I knew how to have easily.
That was why we had prepared for it.
One evening, Adam and I had sat together with a yellow legal pad.
We wrote down the things Ethan needed to know.
We talked about how much detail was appropriate.
We considered what questions he might ask.
I remember staring at the paper for a long time.
There are things a mother wants to explain properly.
Especially when she knows the truth may change how her child sees her.
We put the paper away in our bedroom bureau.
It stayed there.
Waiting for his thirteenth birthday.
I hadn't told Ethan what was on it.
He had no reason to suspect there was anything unusual about my military service.
As far as he knew, I had spent my army years fixing trucks.
That much was true.
He knew I could repair almost anything brought into my shop.
He knew I sometimes wore an old Desert Storm cap.
And he knew I preferred doing things myself rather than paying somebody for a job I could manage.
He didn't know about that year after my deployment.
I had always believed I would have time to explain.
Two more years.
That was what Adam and I had agreed on.
I didn't realize how fragile that agreement was.
First Prairie Bank stood at Main and Third.
It was an older building made of pale limestone.
The kind of place that looked almost unchanged from the year it opened.
Inside were polished floors, heavy counters, and a teller line framed by brass.
A big vault door could be seen behind the counter.
I had visited that bank for years.
I knew where to stand.
I knew which teller windows usually moved fastest.
And I knew several of the employees by name.
Near the front windows sat the green coin-counting machine.
Ethan had seen it work before.
That morning, though, he was going to use it for his own savings.
We went through the double-glass entrance.
Just inside were two narrow gray structures reaching roughly to waist height.
They stood on either side of the walkway.
I had seen people pass between them without giving them a second thought.
Most customers seemed to treat them like the electronic security gates at a department store.
I didn't stop to examine them.
There was no reason to.
We stepped into the lobby.
The familiar smell of the bank greeted us.
Clean floors.
Paper.
The faint metallic scent near the coin machine.
Behind the counter, Gale Butler was working at window two.
Gale was sixty-one.
She had silver hair and wore her glasses on a beaded chain.
I had known her for years.
There were things about Gale that most customers never noticed.
She rarely wasted words.
She didn't panic over small problems.
And she watched people closely without appearing to stare.
She also insisted on calling me Martha.
Almost everybody else used Marty.
Gale never did.
She saw us and smiled.
"Good morning, Martha."
"Morning, Gale."
Her attention went straight to Ethan.
"Are we counting telescope money today?"
Ethan lifted the jar slightly.
"All of it."
Gale laughed.
"Then we'd better find out how much you've saved."
I watched my son's face brighten.
He could barely contain himself.
Gale pointed toward the machine near the window.
Ethan headed over with his jar.
He was about forty feet away from me by the time he reached it.
I got into line behind an older farmer wearing denim overalls.
Ahead of him, a young woman was holding a toddler.
It was a normal Friday morning in a small county bank.
People waiting.
A teller counting money.
A boy getting ready to pour three years of savings into a machine.
I remember looking toward Ethan.
He was holding the jar with both hands.
He looked so proud.
And I was proud of him.
I had no idea that within moments, I would be looking across that same lobby and wishing I could move those forty feet without anybody noticing.
Click here to continue reading: PART 3: The Sound of My Son’s Coins Hitting the Bank Floor Came Just Before I Saw a Pistol Pressed Against His Head
I Thought My Years in the Army Were Behind Me Until a Stranger Looked at My Old Cap and Made a Terrible Assumption
Part 2 of 15
