“I’m not sure I could do any better.” My father didn’t say anything, sitting there strapped to a machine, watching his own blood cycle out of his body, travel around a bunch of tubing and back into his body. This went on for four hours, three days a week. My father wasn’t the youngest patient in the place, there were kids in there, cases that would break your heart if you thought about it too much, but he was young, too young. He should have done better. Me, I could have done better. I’m sure he thought it. Here I’d gotten myself into trouble before I was out of my teens, and then more trouble, and had to call in a favor with one of his friends to help me out.

“Everybody makes mistakes,” he’d told me. “It’s not about the mistake; it’s what you do about it.”

I could have done better. I could do better. I did something for the kid, I told myself. I kept that other guy away. I would do more, I promised myself. Once I got a little more money coming in, I could do more. Maybe I could even go to school, finish up at the community college for a start. I wouldn’t have to be doing jobs for Froehmer forever. I could get a better job. I had time. I wanted to tell my father that I had plenty of time, but what was the point of telling him that? He didn’t want to hear it, not now.

“Froehmer says he’ll come by when he can,” I said.

“I gave him a lot of work over the years,” my father said. “He hasn’t forgotten.”

“He hasn’t.”

“We did all right together. You should have seen us. We stole from Uncle Sam, believe me, but not too much. They would have wasted it anyway. And we did good work; we did a lot of good work. We did more for this town than a lot of people realize. Other people got the credit. You know, you look around at the old statues and monuments and it says right on them, ‘presented by the people’ of such and such town, ‘dedicated by the town of’ such and such; it’s all about the community. Now you look at the statues and stuff and it doesn’t mention the people. It’s all ‘dedicated by the mayor’ or some other politician. As if they did it themselves. We were the ones in this town. We got a lot done. A lot. We did all right for this town, you know. We just did a little better for ourselves.” He laughed a little thinking about it. “You should have seen us, son.”