At my high school graduation party, Dad told me there was no money for college because “school was always harder” for me—while my 16-year-old sister had a new Jeep and $60,000 in her college fund. I already had a college acceptance letter in my pocket, but he wouldn’t even complete the financial-aid form. When I packed to move in with the uncle he called “the family loser,” Dad stood in the hallway and said, “You’ll be back by the Fourth of July.”

I never got to ask. He told me about school being harder for me, and Mom said they didn’t think I’d really go, and I stood there with the letter in my pocket and decided I wasn’t going to hand it to either one of them. Later that night, while I packed, I did ask about the form. Dad didn’t even look up from his phone.

I’m not putting my tax returns on some government website so you can borrow money you’ll never pay back. So the letter stayed in my pocket. It went to Warsaw with me. Now, Uncle Hoyt is my dad’s older brother, 3 years older. Their dad, my grandpa Emmett, started Emmett and Sons Pumping in 1971 with one truck.

Septic tanks mostly, and a few portable toilets for construction sites and the county fair. Grandpa painted the sign over the shop door himself. When he passed, Hoyt kept the business going. Dad went to college. That was the whole story as I knew it. Grandpa died. Hoyt took the business. And Dad got nothing.

Dad told it at Christmas. Dad told it at Grandma Doris’s birthday. Dad told it so many times that when Hoyt walked into a room, I already knew how to feel about him. The family loser, divorced, never went to college, lived in an apartment over his own shop, pumped septic tanks for a living.

When Hoyt showed up at Christmas in a clean flannel shirt, Dad would say, “Look who washed his hands.” and everybody would laugh and Hoyt would smile and eat his ham. The only real conversation I ever had with him was at Grandma Doris’s funeral when I was 14. He found me out by the church parking lot where I’d gone because I didn’t want anybody to see me cry. He didn’t say anything about crying.

He just handed me a business card and tapped the number written on the back in pen. You ever need anything, you call this one, not the shop, this one. On the drive home, Dad saw the card sticking out of my shirt pocket. Don’t get any ideas, he said. I kept it in my wallet for 4 years.

The night of my graduation party, I called the number on the back. Hoyt answered on the second ring like he’d been sitting next to the phone. I said, “It’s Reed.” And then I didn’t know what to say next. He said, “Where are you?” I told him. He said, “Pack a bag. I’m leaving now.” That was it.

He didn’t ask what happened. He didn’t ask what Dad said. He was there in 40 minutes. The next morning, I woke up on a couch in the office of Emmett and Sons Pumping out on Highway 65 south of Warsaw. A metal building, a gravel lot, one pump truck, and 40 blue portable toilets lined up on a flatbed trailer like they were waiting for a bus.

There was a woman at the desk already, gray hair, reading glasses on a chain, coffee going in an old percolator that sounded like it was trying to start a lawn mower. She looked at me over her glasses. You must be the nephew. Yes, ma’am. I’m Marva. I do the books. I do the phones.

And I do not make breakfast. There’s cereal upstairs. She pointed at the ceiling with her pen. Hoyt says you’re good at math. I’m all right. Good, she said. He isn’t. I walked out to the lot with my cereal. Over the shop door hung Grandpa’s sign. Old wood. The paint faded to pink where it used to be red.

Emmett and Sons Pumping since 1971. I remember standing there with the bowl in my hand thinking, “Sons with an S.” Two of them, but only one ever showed up for work. I didn’t ask. I figured it was just a sign. By noon, my phone said, “No service.” Dad had taken me off the family plan.

I hadn’t even been gone a full day. Marva looked at my phone and then at me. Betty called the phone company before he finished his coffee. Hoyt drove me to the Walmart in Clinton that afternoon and bought me a prepaid phone. When I tried to pay him back, he said, “Take it out of your first check.” What check?

The one you’ll get Friday. You start Monday. Mom called the new number about a week later. I don’t know how she got it. Probably from Hoyt, who probably figured she should have it. Your father’s hurt, Reed. Come home, tell him you’re sorry, and we’ll forget all about this. No, Reed. Honey, be reasonable.