He hadn’t counted on the old man dying that fall. Henry was putting a truck tire on a rim when his heart gave out as suddenly as a blowout on a tire. Henry Junior was called out of English class with the news. It took a few anguishing days for Henry’s heart to finally give up, but by the time Henry Junior made it back to class a week later, he had stepped in to keep the tire business going, and shelved his thoughts of leaving, no questions asked.

Shorty continued to run the shop and Lena, who kept the books, didn’t miss a beat once they reopened a few days after the funeral. Neither of them needed Henry Junior for the day-to-day business, but they both began to look more to Henry Junior for guidance, and to teach him their part of the operation. At first it was just extra hours of work after school, but once he graduated, leadership was given to him one small handful at a time.

He also hadn’t counted on his mother’s immense grief and sudden helplessness. Her care fit squarely on his shoulders, and he carried it without flinching. The thousands of details and decisions that went with all those changes grew up around him like the weeds around the used tires behind the shop.

For a while he told himself he was merely postponing his departure. He had looked into colleges and jobs within 200 miles, thinking his clunker pickup could manage that. He’d looked at the train route to see which stops between St. Louis and San Antonio grabbed his attention. Just get off the train at that spot and figure it out from there. He’d saved enough to get started somewhere. By the end of the summer he could see the red lights of his decision vanishing in the distance. He never really decided to stay; he simply stopped planning to leave.

He lived in the house with his mother, forming a quiet existence of sadness and sameness. The same two avocado green stoneware plates and coffee mugs never made it to the cabinet.  There were merely shuffled from the table to the sink to the drain board and back to the table. There were days he came home from the shop to find his mother couldn’t muster the energy to cook. So he learned to cook the same few things Alice had cooked for him throughout his growing up. The only break in the routine of work and caregiving was Marjan.

Henry Junior had known Marjan forever. In a town like Bowman, people of the same age grow up together. The two of them had come through all the grades in school together, had cycled through all the phases of being childhood friends and aloof teenagers. Henry Junior and Marjan were two of just a few in their graduating class who remained in Bowman.  They each ended up taking care of a surviving parent. During a chance encounter at Suzanne’s, the Main Street café, they shared a booth and discovered some comfort in talking. As Marjan put her sadness and frustration into words, Henry Junior felt immediately lighter. They began meeting regularly, savoring Suzanne’s homemade pies and unburdening each other by talking of the constant demands of caring for an aging parent who had given up.

They’d never seen each other as sweethearts, but sitting across from each other in “their booth” from week to week, they realized it was better to be with someone that to be alone. That kind of need took root and grew into something neither expected. Shortly after Marjan’s father died, they married and moved into the house with Henry Junior and Alice.

Henry Junior learned how to be tender with Marjan. He learned to sit quietly with her, to listen as she talked about things she did that day and about things that upset her. These were acquired skills for Henry Junior, things he had not observed much in his own family. He learned to talk to her, an outgrowth of their time at Suzanne’s. He was able to hand over to her the sometimes overwhelming responsibility of the tire shop for just a few minutes, and when he took it back, it was a lighter load.

She gave him comfort, and she gave him space. She learned early on not to question his daily trek out to the tracks. His quiet resolve as he walked out the back door each evening was enough to convince her of its necessity. She developed her own ritual of sitting at the kitchen table, waiting for the man who walked in the back door gentler than when he left.

He did not have to learn to be tender with his two girls, born 21 months apart. It came as naturally as breathing the first time he held each one. During the first pregnancy, he built a third bedroom onto the old house.  It was clearly an add-on.  The new siding didn’t quite line up with the old, and he never seemed to be able to stay very far ahead of the leak that appeared every few rainy springs where new roof met old roof.  But he painted the girls’ walls pink and he helped Marjan hang curtains with a pink and orange floral pattern. With each passing winter, as infants crying turned into little girls giggling, it seemed his life got harder and better.