Free The Deposit Slip by Todd M. Johnson

farm like it did with Pauly, and we’re behind. That bank cuts no one slack. Joe’s tried to meet with Mr. Grant over there a half dozen times, and it’s not helped. Joe prob’ly doesn’t remember what his dad said, but even if he did—well, you know.”
    Jared said he did and thanked her before getting into his car.
    Soil money. Excess check. Maybe Clay knew someone who could fill him in on the likelihood of that and how he could explore it.
    The afternoon was waning. Jared knew he had to make a decision about his dad. He hadn’t even called to tell him he was in town yet. Reluctantly, he pulled his cell phone from his pocket and punched in the number.
    “Hello?”
    “Dad?”
    “Is that you, Jared?”
    “Yeah. I’m in town.”
    “In Ashley?”
    “Yeah. Okay if I stop by?”
    “Of course, son. You’re in town? In Ashley?”
    He answered yes again, and said he’d be there soon.

    Jared approached the house feeling unsettled—like he always did getting together with his dad. The rage that used to surge when he was in proximity to his dad had faded years ago, replaced first by a sense of futility and loss that eventually numbed into general discomfort. He vowed that he’d never forgive him. But there were times—like today—when the vow weighed on him almost as much as the anger once did.
    He had visited his dad’s home several times over the years. Still, he was always surprised when he pulled up. It was a tiny two-bedroom rambler at the end of a cul-de-sac where the road met the edge of town. The house was a third the size of the one they used to own on the other side of Ashley. Farm fields bracketed it, visible beyond the backyard. Overhead, a satellite tower loomed like a giant derrick from the empty lot next door. His dad would have been embarrassed living here when Jared was growing up.
    Jared saw him now, on his knees in the front yard, stuffing leaves around the hedges beneath the picture window. That image also surprised: his dad never touched a hoe in all the years Jared lived under his roof.
    “Son!” Samuel Neaton called, wiping his hands on his pant legs.
    His excitement when Jared visited only fueled the discomfort. As Jared extended his hand his father grasped it like a lifeline and pumped excitedly.
    Inside the house, Jared looked around the spare living room. A set of keys and a wallet lay beside a Bible on an entryway table; the few end tables held knickknacks Jared recognized from their old home. An assortment of framed pictures of his mother and him lined the walls.
    The mantel was adorned with a photograph of the Ashley First Lutheran Church. Jared swallowed a surge of disdain.
    “I just got back from a Saturday service,” his dad said, waving him to a chair and offering him coffee or pop.
    It had been several months since they’d last spoken. As his dad settled into a chair across the room, Jared asked about his work as the church grounds keeper, the job he had held for seven years now.
    “It’s going fine. Pastor Tufts has been at First Lutheran four years now. He’s still pretty young, but a good man.”
    Jared could hear the caution in his father’s voice as he lingered on the church. Jared recalled the First Lutheran sanctuary on Sunday mornings growing up and remembered sitting with his parents, singing hymns while dust motes hovered overhead, glowing with the light passing through rich panes of stained glass. He could picture his father, a church elder, standing beside the pastor at the pulpit, and recalled some of the good times he’d had with friends at youth group meetings.
    Still, he’d not been inside First Lutheran—or any church—since he’d left Ashley. He couldn’t imagine when that would change. The only betrayal in his life that approached his father’s fall from grace was the failure of the pastor or a single church elder to visit his mother in the wake of his father’s fall.
    His father knew better than to linger on a topic that had spawned so many