I’m Eight, And There’s A Whole Lot About This World I Haven’t Figured Out Yet. But Mr. Dutch – I Know Him
He was that biker, the one who kept showing up with casseroles for my dad back when he got too weak to get out of his chair. Nobody else came around. Not Grandpa. Not Uncle Leon. Not even those neighbors who swore up and down they’d check in every week.
Nobody but Mr. Dutch, white running through his mustache, a motorcycle loud enough to rattle our mailbox from the end of the block, and those rough hands that could still fix my dad’s pillow behind his neck gentler than anyone would ever guess.
Then November came, and Daddy was gone, and Mr. Dutch stopped showing up. He didn’t come to the service either, said he wasn’t welcome. Whatever that was supposed to mean, I couldn’t figure it. Grown-ups have a way of saying things that make no sense at all.
Then last Tuesday I heard Grandpa on the porch, telling someone on the phone that Mr. Dutch had gotten himself arrested. Said he’d done something foolish and now he was sitting in a cell, and odds were good nobody on this earth was going to bother getting him out.
I asked Grandpa right there what it took to bail somebody out of jail. Six hundred dollars, he said. Then he gave me that slow look of his and told me to go play in the yard.
I didn’t.
I went to my room and pulled the coffee can down from the top of my dresser. The blue one. Daddy had bought it at a flea market the summer before he got sick, and even though it was dented and the label was mostly peeled off, he told me a man’s savings don’t need to look pretty to be worth something.
I dumped it out and counted. A hundred and nineteen dollars. Mostly in quarters, plus a pile of nickels and dimes I’d earned dragging Mrs. Hartley’s garbage cans to the curb every Thursday morning.
I pulled on my backpack and walked out the front door. Seven blocks to the county building. Grandpa had no clue I was gone. Not a single person did.
The man behind the window looked down at me over the rim of his reading glasses when I climbed up onto the wooden bench to reach the counter. And when I set the coffee can in front of him and told him whose name I was there for, he froze. Just froze. Stayed that way for a good while. Then he picked up the phone beside his keyboard and said, “You need to get down here right now. There’s a little kid standing here.”
The Woman With the Red Folder
The man with the glasses told me his name was Mr. Pritchard.
He didn’t touch the coffee can. That seemed rude, since I had walked all that way with it, so I pushed it closer.
“I have one hundred nineteen dollars,” I said. “Daddy said sometimes you can pay part now.”
“Who told you that?”
“Nobody. I know things.”
He looked at the hallway behind him, then back at me. His reading glasses slid down his nose. There was a coffee stain on his tie shaped like the state of Ohio.
A woman came through the door beside the counter carrying a red folder. She had gray hair cut short around her ears and a little silver watch with a cracked face.
“Where’s your parent?” she asked.
“Dead.”
She stopped walking.
“Your other parent, then?”
“Grandpa’s at home.”
“Does Grandpa know you’re here?”
“No.”
The woman put the red folder on the counter. “What is your name?”
I told her.
She looked at the folder. Then she looked at me again, not at my face exactly. At my hair. My hands. The old green sweatshirt Daddy used to wear when he cooked.
“Mr. Dutch is not here for bail,” she said.
“Grandpa said six hundred.”
“Your grandfather was wrong.”
“He’s wrong lots.”
Mr. Pritchard made a noise in his throat. The woman opened the folder.
“Mr. Dutch was arrested for breaking into a house on Weller Street.”
“That’s Grandpa’s house.”
“I figured.”
“He wasn’t stealing.”
The woman glanced at Mr. Pritchard. He took off his glasses and rubbed both eyes.
“How do you know?” she asked.
“Because he doesn’t steal. He gives things away. He gave Daddy a radio, and he gave me a tire pump, but it didn’t work because I put the wrong end on the valve.”
The woman leaned closer. “What did he take?”
I thought about it.
“Maybe a letter.”
Her fingers stopped on the paper.
That was when she told me Mr. Dutch had been found in Grandpa’s garage with a crowbar, a black metal box, and a letter addressed to me.
I didn’t know about the box.
I knew about the letter.
Daddy had told me, three days before he died, that if Mr. Dutch ever came asking for it, I was supposed to give it to him. He said it was in the back of the hall closet under the extra blankets.
Grandpa cleaned out that closet the week after the funeral.
He said he was making room.
What Daddy Put Under the Blankets
The woman with the red folder asked me what the letter said.
“I didn’t read it.”
“You gave it to Mr. Dutch?”
“No. Grandpa took it.”
“Where is it now?”
I shrugged. “Maybe in his desk. Maybe he burned it. He burns mail he doesn’t like.”
Mr. Pritchard looked at the woman. She closed the folder.
“What’s your grandfather’s full name?”
I told her.
She wrote it down, then asked me where I lived. I gave her the address. She asked if I had any aunts, uncles, teachers, or neighbors who could come get me.
“Mrs. Hartley,” I said. “But she has a bad knee. And she thinks every kid needs more socks.”
The woman almost smiled.
“I’ll call Mrs. Hartley.”
“No. Call Mr. Dutch.”
“Mr. Dutch is in custody.”
“Then call somebody who can let him out.”
“That’s what we’re trying to do.”
She picked up the phone. Her voice changed when she spoke into it. It got flatter. Business voice.
I sat on the bench and kept my hand on the blue coffee can.
They let me wait in a little room with a plastic plant and a calendar from a funeral home. October was still showing, though it was December. The picture was a lake with two ducks on it.
Mrs. Hartley came in wearing her purple housecoat under her coat. Her hair wasn’t brushed on one side.
She looked at me, then at the coffee can.
“Did you walk here?”
“I had to.”
“Your grandfather is calling the police.”
“I know.”
“Did you tell him where you were?”
“I left him a note.”
Mrs. Hartley held up a piece of notebook paper.
It said:
I went to get Mr. Dutch. Don’t be mad.
“You wrote this?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“That should make him less mad.”
“That’s why I wrote it.”
She sat beside me, slow because of her knee. The chair squeaked.
“Your father was a good man,” she said.
“He couldn’t always get out of his chair.”
“I know.”
“He still was.”
“I know that too.”
A deputy came in. Not Grandpa’s friend Deputy Cole. This was a woman with brown hair pulled into a tight knot and a badge that said M. RIVERA.
She crouched so her eyes were level with mine.
“Your friend Mr. Dutch gave us a statement,” she said.
“He has a real name.”
“I know. Walter Dutchman.”
“Dutch is easier.”
“He’s asked for you.”
“Can I see him?”
“Not yet.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re eight.”
I didn’t think that was a good reason. Eight was old enough to drag trash cans through snow. Eight was old enough to know which pills Daddy took in the morning and which ones made him sleepy. Eight was old enough to count a hundred nineteen dollars twice.
I told her that.
She nodded like she’d heard something she didn’t like but couldn’t argue with.
Then she put a photograph on the table.
It showed Mr. Dutch standing in Grandpa’s garage. His hands were up. The black box sat open on the workbench.
Inside it was Daddy’s old wallet, three envelopes, a folded blue shirt, and a little red plastic dinosaur.
The dinosaur had one leg missing.
I reached for the picture.
“Where did you find that?” I asked.
“Mr. Dutch had it in the box.”
“That’s mine.”
Mr. Dutch Tells Me the Part Grandpa Left Out
They took me to a room at the county building where Mr. Dutch was waiting with a deputy by the door.
His mustache had more white in it than I remembered. There was a cut beside his left eyebrow. His leather vest was gone, and he wore a gray jail shirt that hung off him like somebody else’s clothes.
He saw the coffee can under my arm.
“Well,” he said. “You always did have bad ideas with excellent follow-through.”
I climbed into the chair across from him.
“Did you steal my dinosaur?”
“No.”
“Then why was it in your box?”
“Your daddy gave it to me.”
“It has one leg.”
“That was the way it came.”
“You kept it for two years?”
“Three.”
He rubbed the edge of the table with one finger.
Mr. Dutch told me Daddy had called him in October. I didn’t know because Daddy had been asleep most of that day, or pretending to be. He told Dutch to come by after dark and take a box from the hall closet.
But Grandpa was already in the house.
Daddy had given Mr. Dutch a key months before. He told him to use it if Grandpa changed the locks. Grandpa had changed them.
“So you broke into the garage,” I said.
“I opened the side door.”
“With a crowbar.”
“The door was stuck.”
“That is what people say when they use a crowbar.”
He looked down.
“What was in the box?”
“A copy of your birth certificate. Your father’s will. A letter from a lawyer. And a little money.”
“How much?”
“Two thousand dollars.”
I stared at him.
“That’s more than my coffee can.”
“Much more.”
“Why didn’t Daddy give it to Grandpa?”
“Because it wasn’t for your grandfather.”
The room had a clock that clicked too loud.
Mr. Dutch leaned forward. “Your father named me as your guardian if anything happened to him.”
I didn’t understand the word.
“Like a babysitter?”
“Like the person who gets to decide where you live.”
I looked at Deputy Rivera.
She nodded once.
“Your father also left instructions that the money was for your care,” Mr. Dutch said. “School. Clothes. A place to live. Not your grandfather’s gambling debts.”
I knew about the gambling debts. Grandpa said those were private, but he kept envelopes from the racetrack in the kitchen trash. Once I saw a pink slip with Daddy’s name on it.
“Grandpa took the letter,” I said.
“And the box.”
“He said he was making room.”
Mr. Dutch’s mouth moved, but no sound came out at first.
Then he said, “Your father was scared of him.”
That part made my stomach turn. Not because I didn’t know. Because I did.
Daddy used to lock his bedroom door when Grandpa visited. He said it was because of the cat, but we hadn’t had a cat since I was four.
“Why didn’t you come to the funeral?” I asked.
Mr. Dutch sat back.
“Your grandfather told me I wasn’t welcome.”
“That doesn’t answer it.”
“No. It doesn’t.”
He looked toward the door.
“I was in the parking lot. I saw your grandfather standing beside you. I thought if I walked in, he’d make a scene. Your daddy deserved one day without a fight.”
“Nobody talked at the service.”
“I know.”
“People coughed.”
“I know that too.”
He took the red plastic dinosaur from his pocket.
I didn’t know he had it.
He placed it on the table. The missing leg was still missing.
“Your dad gave me this the first week I met him,” he said. “He told me you had thrown it at him because he wouldn’t let you eat cake for breakfast.”
“I did.”
“I know. He laughed about it for years.”
I picked up the dinosaur.
The door opened. A man in a dark coat came in and introduced himself as Mr. Feldman, the lawyer whose name was on Daddy’s papers.
He had a folder under his arm.
“Mr. Dutch,” he said, “the judge signed the release.”
Mr. Dutch stood.
The room went strange around me, not spinning, just too many things moving at once. The deputy, the lawyer, the coffee can, the dinosaur in my fist.
“Is he going home?” I asked.
Mr. Feldman looked at me.
“Not to your grandfather’s house.”
The Place With the Red Door
Mrs. Hartley took me home that night.
Grandpa was on the front steps, yelling at Deputy Cole. His face had gone red around the nose. He pointed at me when we pulled into the driveway.
“What did you tell them?” he shouted.
Mrs. Hartley got out first.
“Don’t speak to him like that.”
Grandpa laughed once. It was a bad sound.
“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Dutchman broke into my property. He’s been filling that boy’s head with lies for months.”
Mr. Feldman stepped out behind us.
“Raymond,” he said. “You need to stop.”
Grandpa went quiet.
Not scared. Not exactly.
Caught.
The next morning, a judge listened to everybody in a room with wood paneling and a flag in the corner. I sat in a chair too high for me. My feet didn’t reach the floor, so I hooked them around the bottom bar.
Grandpa said Mr. Dutch was dangerous.
The prosecutor said Mr. Dutch had entered the garage without permission, but the box belonged to my father and the charges could be handled later.
Mr. Feldman showed the judge the will.
It had Daddy’s handwriting on the first page and two signatures at the bottom. One was Mr. Feldman’s. The other was from a woman named Mrs. Bell, who had been Daddy’s nurse during the last month.
Grandpa said Daddy was confused when he signed it.
Mrs. Bell came in anyway.
She wore the same blue coat she had worn at the service. She told the judge Daddy had been awake, clear, and angry that afternoon.
“He asked me to make sure Mr. Dutch got the papers,” she said.
Grandpa started talking again.
The judge told him to sit down.
That was the first time I had ever seen anyone tell Grandpa that and have him do it.
The judge said I could stay with Mrs. Hartley for now, but only for a short time. Mr. Dutch needed a place to live that had room for a child. He had a motorcycle and no working washing machine. Mrs. Hartley said both were problems she could solve.
Three days later, Mr. Dutch came to the house with a red pickup truck.
His motorcycle was in the truck bed.
“Why is it back there?” I asked.
“Because the front tire’s flat.”
“You don’t know how to fix it?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then why is it flat?”
“Because it enjoys attention.”
Mrs. Hartley gave him a look.
He stopped joking.
His house was outside town, behind a tire shop, with a red front door and a porch that leaned to one side. There were motorcycle parts on the kitchen table and six cans of beans in the cupboard.
The bathroom had a yellow tub.
My bedroom had a bed with a quilt covered in tiny sailboats. There was a lamp without a shade, a box of crayons, and one sock under the radiator.
The sock was orange.
I didn’t ask whose it was.
The Envelope Daddy Meant for Me
Mr. Feldman gave me the letter on Saturday morning.
It was inside a clear plastic sleeve. The paper had been folded twice, and the top corner was soft from somebody touching it too much.
Mr. Dutch sat beside me at the kitchen table. He didn’t try to read over my shoulder.
The letter said:
Buddy,
If you’re reading this, I couldn’t stay long enough to teach you how to shave, drive, or lie properly about eating the last cookie. I am sorry about that.
You are not going to live with anybody just because they are related to you. You are going to live where you are safe and where somebody shows up. Mr. Dutch shows up. He doesn’t always know what to say, but he comes through the door. That’s more important.
The money in the box is yours. The papers are yours. Nobody gets to take them because they are older, louder, or family. If somebody tells you I wanted something different, ask them why they waited until I was gone to say it.
I love you bigger than I knew a person could love another person. Eat something besides cereal.
Daddy
I read it twice.
The second time I stopped at the part about Mr. Dutch.
He was looking out the window at the red pickup. His hands were flat on his knees.
“Did Daddy really say you didn’t know what to say?” I asked.
“Your father was a very honest man.”
“Did he say I could live here?”
“He asked me to try.”
“Try what?”
“Being your guardian.”
I folded the letter along the old lines.
“Are you good at it?”
“No.”
That answer bothered me.
He scratched at the table with his thumbnail. “But I’m learning.”
From the hallway, a pan fell over.
Mr. Dutch looked toward the noise.
“That was already like that,” he said.
“It wasn’t.”
“Then we’re both learning.”
I put the letter back in its sleeve. The red dinosaur sat beside my elbow. I had set it there without thinking.
Outside, a motorcycle coughed in the driveway.
Mr. Dutch went to the window.
“That one’s mine,” he said.
“It still sounds broken.”
“That’s because it is.”
He walked out to look at it, and I followed him with Daddy’s letter tucked inside my sweatshirt.
The bike rattled once, then died.
Mr. Dutch patted the seat.
“Don’t start,” he told it.
I laughed before I meant to.
He looked over at me.
“Your dad hated that joke,” he said.
“What joke?”
“That I talk to machines.”
“Maybe he hated the way you do it.”
“Could be.”
He opened the motorcycle’s side panel and pulled out a wrench. I sat on the porch step, holding the red dinosaur in one hand and the envelope in the other.
The county building had called it a guardianship hearing.
Grandpa called it kidnapping.
Mr. Dutch called it Tuesday.
The motorcycle coughed again.
This time, it started.
And from inside the house, the phone began to ring.
Would you have opened Daddy’s letter right away, or saved it for later?
If you’re curious for more heartwarming tales, you might enjoy reading about My Daughter Waved at a Biker Outside School, So I Asked Why or even The Biker Brought My Deaf Daughter a Motorcycle. For a story with a bit more grit, check out The Biker Wouldn’t Let Anyone Near My Daughter.
