“Shirley. It’s Walt Brandt.”
I looked at the deputy’s name tag. I had not read it once in forty minutes. It was a brass bar pinned over his right shirt pocket, and it said BRANDT.
“I heard a Fourteen on there with you,” the voice said. “Shirley, is that my boy’s radio you’re on?”
The deputy went white under the sunburn. All the way white.
My mother looked at him. She didn’t look at the name tag. She didn’t have to.
That was the moment I understood it. She had read that brass bar the minute he walked up to her window. She had known for the entire forty minutes whose son was making her stand in the sun. She had carried that in her handbag the whole time, in the heat, with her hand burning on the trunk lid.
And she never once spent it.
