“I will be there,” I tell Dee. “Elle is in Atlanta today, so I need to wait until two-thirty to pick up Tyler, and then I will drive down.” She starts in again, and I cut her off: “Yes, I’ll be there.” The note of annoyance was deliberate, and apparently it was received.

“All right,” she says. “See you soon.”

I hang around the office for a while, not doing much, and then pick up Tyler from school. “Hey bud, we need to take a trip down to see Grandpa. Do you need to use the potty?” He shakes his head “no” and climbs into the back seat of the Explorer. “All right, bud. Buckle up, please.” He does, but not before pulling his iPad out of the seat-back pocket in front of him.

Twenty minutes later, when we are barely out of Columbus, he starts up: “Dad… Dad!”

“What is it, bud?”

“I need to use the potty.”

“Really, bud?” I look at the rear-view mirror. “Can you hold it?” He shakes his head “no.” He looks like he means it. I look back at the expanse of pasture and leafless February forests opening in front of us, and the thin line of highway slicing through it. “All right, but it’s going to be a few minutes until we get to another gas station, so try to hold it, please.”

We pull into a gas station and I park and take Tyler in. “Do you want me to come with you?” He shakes his head “no.” “Are you sure?” He’s sure. “Okay, I will be right here.” He marches in and I stand around, fiddling idly with my phone. I pick up a pack of almonds and pay for it. The old Indian woman at the register doesn’t say anything or make eye contact. I go back and wait by the restroom door. Several minutes later, he marches back out, triumphant. “All right! Let’s get moving,” I tell him.

“Dad… Dad!”

“What is it, bud?”

“Can I have this?” He holds up some plastic… thing. A toy of some sort. Perhaps a spaceship? It is light gray with blue and magenta streaks all over it, little orange sticks protruding from what appear to be wings, and a few translucent red plastic bubbles on what I think is the top of it.

“No.”

“Dad!” he cries out. “Puh-lease!” Now we both pause for a moment and stare at each other. He is old enough now to understand the concept of leverage, and to know that at this moment he has it, because whatever serious adult thing I am doing right now is not something I can afford to have derailed by a tantrum.

“Fine.”

“Wait, Dad. It needs batteries!”

“We have batteries at home.” He fusses for a few seconds, but lets this go. It is a true compromise, as now neither of us is happy. As I pay for the toy, the old woman looks at me, and I sense a note of disapproval in her face.

We get back in the Explorer and pull back out onto the road. Tyler, now content in the back seat, has his iPad cradled under one arm while he plays with the toy in the other.

“What is that thing?” I ask him.

“A Destroyer!” he says, proudly.

“How nice.”

We continue south in silence, and then turn onto Highway 280 heading east. We move progressively away from the river valley and onto the plains, the greens and blues of the upland slowly, almost imperceptibly, giving way to browns and reds of the lowland. We pass pecan orchard after pecan orchard, the trunks rising in military formation, their bare limbs stretching and flailing, with twisted, multi-knuckled fingers reaching in all directions.

Tyler continues to play with the Destroyer, lifting it and waiving it about before bringing it back down, poking at it, and repeating the whole process. I wonder: what is he destroying? Then, immediately, a word bounds out from some suddenly unlocked cabinet of my mind: Gravedigger.

It was a monster truck. It was not the biggest one (that was Big Foot). It looked something like an SUV with monster truck wheels. It was black and kelly green and midnight purple. It was my favorite. It was fearless. I would spend hours on the hardwood floor, mere inches from the television screen, watching Gravedigger crush old Pontiacs and Buicks a half-dozen at a time.

One day Miss Carol brought me a Gravedigger match-box car. She would always bring me match-box cars whenever she came over to visit my father. She saw how much I loved the Gravedigger one, so on another visit she brought me a remote-controlled Gravedigger. I loved it. I tried to take it everywhere. One morning, all four of us were in the kitchen: Dee was in a high-chair and my mother was trying to get me ready for school. She was struggling to separate me from my new toy. “Where did you get that damn thing anyway?” she asked.

“I bought it for him,” Dad said.

“No you didn’t!” I shouted. “Miss Carol gave it to me.” My mother dropped her coffee mug. It shattered on the floor. She sat down. I watched her, amazed. Dee started crying, and I started laughing. Finally Mom said: “Dan, take him to school, and then come immediately back here.”

Miss Carol didn’t come around anymore after that.

We are approaching the nursing home, but I am starting to feel queasy. “I told Aunt Dee we would stop at Grandpa’s house first. Okay, bud?” He doesn’t look up from his Destroyer.

We pull into the driveway of the house, and I open the door to let Tyler out. He hops out and takes off running towards the swingset down the hill from the driveway. I’m certain that it’s covered in cobwebs. “Be careful, please,” I say, but not loudly enough for him to hear.

I sit down on the porch steps, wide paneled and dusty white, also strung up with cobwebs. I take a few deep breaths. I stare out at the little baptist church across the way. The church where we would go together every Sunday and I would fidget in the pews and fuss with the hymnal until it was time to sing. I would sit there and wonder how much longer, how many more songs. Every so often, I would poke Dee in the ribs, in a way that my parents couldn’t see, gently enough to annoy her without causing her to cry out. And then it would be over and we would come home and have fried chicken. The words of the hymns still trapped in my mind, but devoid of any particular meaning: “Christ Receiveth Sinful Men.”

I wonder if Dad, now squarely facing the end, even welcoming it, apparently now refusing to eat or drink anything, has finally had the moment of clarity that I’ve always assumed would come to him eventually. I think when you prepare to die, you must have a powerful urge to take account of how you spent your days. Credit yourself the pride in the work you did, the children you raised, the little kindnesses you extended to your neighbor or to some needy stranger in a distant place. Debit the negligence in how you managed your family relationships, the treachery in your marriage, the little fights you wished you never started and the big ones you wished you hadn’t avoided. And then you balance your account and see what is left and contemplate whether you had lived a good life.

But now it occurs to me how foolish and wishful this all is. How could a person incapable of saying the word “love” have the capacity to say the word “sorry”? No, there are no moments of clarity, just slow, hard lessons learned bit by bit, like the ones you learn while sitting on the steps of your childhood home, about how little things change, even across generations.

It is chilly. It’s warm for February, even for Southwest Georgia, but it’s still February. I call for Tyler, and he comes running back up the hill. In his hand, the Destroyer, its wings caked in dirt and clay. “Come on, bud,” I say as he approaches the top of the hill. I reach for him as he runs towards the car, and with one arm I pull him towards me, hugging him against my side. He wiggles away, and pulls himself back into the Explorer.