He wrapped the foil tighter and said, “Something like that.”
Another time he asked me to pack extra biscuits.
“That many?”
He grinned. “You ask too many questions.”
I asked questions. He just had a way of making them slide right off him.
Then he died.
His coach called me first.
Collapsed during a game.
Seventeen years old.
His coach called me first. Then the hospital. Then somebody from the school. I had to fly out for the funeral, and I sat in a church full of strangers listening to people talk about my grandson like he had changed their lives.
One teammate said, “Calvin never let anybody sit alone.”
A teacher said, “He had this habit of finding the kids everybody else had given up on.”
My front door was damaged.
One young man I didn’t know stood up in the back and said, “He made me believe I could still be decent.”
That one stayed with me.
When the funeral was over, I came home to my little house feeling emptier than I knew a body could feel.
I got out of the cab, dragged my suitcase up the walk, and stopped.
My front door was damaged.
Not wide open. Not hanging loose. But the frame was cracked near the lock, like somebody had tried to force it and then stopped. Fresh wood dust still clung to the step.
