The Prodigal: A Ragamuffin Story by Brennan Manning, Greg Garrett Page A

ham.
    “Why don’t you come to work with me tomorrow?” his father asked after neither had said anything for a minute or two. “I could use your help with year-end inventory. Back room mostly. You wouldn’t have to talk to customers. And you could do with something to occupy your mind.”
    The microwave dinged, and Jack pulled out his steaming food. “I’m not saying no,” he said. “But how is counting hammers going to get back what I’ve lost?”
    “I don’t know,” his father said. “But it seems to me that we do what we can with what we have where we are.” He spread his hands, indicated the table, the town, the planet. “And this is where we are.”
    “Sounds like something Father Frank would say,” Jack said, seating himself.
    “It probably is,” Tom said. He inclined his head. “Don’t forget to say grace.”
    Jack looked at his father, waiting.
    He looked at his sister’s ham casserole, steaming on the plate.
    He looked around the table, empty of so much for so long.
    He looked at himself, a dark shadow in his grandfather’s dining room table.
    He looked back at his father, head bowed.
    And then he, too, inclined his head.
    “Grace,” he said.
    Then Jack picked up his fork, and slowly and with gathering strength, he began to eat.

5.
    S ome things never change. In Jack’s lifetime alone, the world had moved from rotary dial to cell phones, from three networks to YouTube and Netflix, but in Chisholm’s Hardware, Eisenhower was still president—or maybe Roosevelt.
    Teddy Roosevelt.
    Jack walked in and turned in a circle, taking in its rough-plank floors and tall shelves filled with hacksaw blades, plumbing supplies, and four-penny nails.
    He was amazed that customers could slide a credit card at the cash register now. Otherwise, it didn’t seem that anything had changed since his childhood, including the dirty tile at the front desk.
    “You know, they’ve developed a wonderful new flooring,” Jack said. “I think it’s called linoleum.” He shook his head. “And that stool. You should use it for kindling.”
    “Your mother used to sit on this stool,” Tom said after they had unlocked the door, hung up their coats, and stepped behind the front counter.
    “I remember,” Jack said. “You used to work the back room,and she’d sit out here and make people laugh. That was before—” Jack stopped.
    “Yes,” his father said, sighing as he eased himself slowly up onto the stool. “That was before.”
    “So, what can I do?” Jack said, looking around. He had worked at the store through high school, and in the summers when he was home from college. He had worked the register, loaded lumber, signed in shipments, made deliveries, counted loose nails. He’d done every task in the store except bookkeeping, which was Mary’s province. Running this store was second nature to him.
    Like preaching a sermon
, he thought, shaking his head.
    Like shaking hands after the service. Like smiling until your face hurts.
    “I tried to let things sell down here at the end of the year so there’d be less to count.”
    “Like always.” Jack nodded.
    Tom pulled a black binder from next to the cash register. “I was hoping maybe you could do a rough count of the lumber. Manny and I can’t shift the piles the way we used to.”
    Manny was older than Tom—had worked for Tom’s father, in fact. No one, maybe not even Manny himself, knew how old he truly was. Jack guessed that about all he was good for anymore was sweeping the floor and companionship. Not that those were unimportant.
    “Loose and bundled lumber both, okay?”
    “Of course.” Jack felt a tiny smile flicker at the corners of his mouth. He’d be outside where he didn’t have to talk to anybody, and two days after Christmas, surely nobody would be in the lumberyard. It was as close to hiding out as he could get in plain sight.
    As if on cue, the bell at the front door jingled, and an elderly woman in a red-and-green