When I was eight years old, I thought adults who argued were mad at each other.
That seemed obvious.
At eight, there weren’t a lot of categories.
If two people were raising their voices and telling each other they were wrong, they were fighting.
And if they were fighting, they probably didn’t like each other.
That was how it worked on the playground.
Apparently, that was not how it worked at the café in Maroa.
I would sometimes sit there with my dad in the morning, surrounded by men who had already been awake for hours.
Farmers mostly.
Seed corn hats.
Work boots.
Jackets that smelled a little like outside.
Coffee cups that never seemed to get empty because somebody was always walking around with the pot.
And the newspaper.
There was always a newspaper.
Somebody would have it folded in half on the table, and eventually somebody would read something out loud.
That was usually how it started.
“Did you see this?”
Then somebody else would say something.
And within about thirty seconds, the entire table would be involved.
Everybody had an opinion.
And nobody seemed particularly interested in hiding it.
One guy would say the president was doing exactly the right thing.
The guy sitting three feet away would tell him the president didn’t know what the hell he was doing.
Someone would start talking about taxes.
Someone else would say farmers were getting screwed.
Then somebody would point out that the person complaining about government spending had just spent half the winter trying to figure out which government program he qualified for.
That usually got a laugh.
Then the argument would keep going.
Not pretend arguing, either.
They disagreed.
Really disagreed.
One guy would lean back in his chair and shake his head.
“You’re nuts.”
“I’m nuts? Listen to what you just said.”
“I heard what I said.”
“Well, that makes it worse.”
And then somebody would take another drink of coffee.
I remember watching all of this very carefully.
Because I was trying to figure out when the fight was going to happen.
It never did.
Eventually somebody had to leave.
There were fields to check.
Something needed repaired.
Somebody had to get to the elevator.
A truck was waiting somewhere.
The newspaper got folded back up.
The coffee cups got pushed toward the center of the table.
Chairs scraped against the floor.
And that was it.
No resolution.
Nobody declared a winner.
Nobody apologized for having the wrong opinion.
Nobody said they needed some time apart.
They just left.
That part confused me enough.
What happened afterward confused me even more.
Because later that same day we might be driving down a country road and Dad would lift a couple of fingers off the steering wheel.
The truck coming toward us would do the same thing.
The little Maroa wave.
And I’d recognize the driver.
It was one of the guys from the café.
The guy Dad had just spent twenty minutes arguing with that morning.
They were waving at each other.
I remember asking about it.
“I thought you guys were mad.”
Dad looked over at me.
“Who?”
“That guy.”
“What guy?”
“The guy you were arguing with this morning.”
Dad looked back through the mirror like maybe I was talking about somebody else.
Then he understood.
“Oh.”
He laughed.
“We weren’t mad.”
Well, that didn’t make any sense.
I had been there.
I heard them.
They absolutely did not agree.
“But you were arguing.”
“Yeah.”
Then he went back to driving.
That apparently settled the matter for him.
It did not settle it for me.
A few days later, I saw an even stranger version of it.
One of those same men needed help with something.
I don’t remember exactly what it was anymore.
A piece of equipment.
A truck.
Something on the farm.
The kind of thing that could turn an ordinary afternoon into several hours of people standing around machinery trying to figure out why something that worked yesterday had decided not to work today.
But I remember who showed up.
One of the guys from the table.
One of the guys he disagreed with.
There was no discussion about the argument from the café.
Nobody said:
“Before I help you, I need to know whether you’ve reconsidered your position.”
Nobody checked voting records.
Nobody asked who was right.
There was work that needed done.
So they did it.
That happened all the time.
The same people who would tell each other they were completely wrong over coffee would loan each other tools.
Pull each other out of ditches.
Help when equipment broke.
Show up when somebody got sick.
Bring food when somebody died.
Wave from trucks.
Stand along the fence at football games.
Sit a few pews apart at church.
And the next morning, if somebody opened that newspaper and read the wrong sentence out loud, they would start arguing all over again.
Eventually I asked Dad how that worked.
I don’t remember his exact words.
I wish I did.
But I remember what he meant.
He told me that disagreeing with somebody wasn’t the same thing as not liking them.
And it definitely wasn’t the same thing as not being there for them.
You didn’t need a neighbor who agreed with you about everything.
You needed a neighbor who would tell you what he actually thought.
And then show up when you needed him.
At eight years old, I had never considered that those could be the same person.
I thought kindness meant agreement.
I thought friendship meant agreement.
I thought getting along meant agreement.
The men at that table apparently had no idea about any of those rules.
They would tell each other the truth as they saw it.
Sometimes loudly.
Sometimes badly.
Sometimes with absolutely no chance of convincing anybody.
And then life went on.
The crops still had to come out.
Kids still had games that night.
Something still needed fixed.
Someone’s mother was still in the hospital.
Somebody still needed a hand.
Maybe that was the thing I was watching without realizing it.
Nobody at that table seemed to believe that disagreement was a relationship-ending event.
An opinion was an opinion.
A neighbor was a neighbor.
Those were different things.
Years later, I can still see that table.
The newspaper lying open.
Coffee cups everywhere.
A half dozen men completely certain that the other half dozen had lost their minds.
I can hear them talking over one another.
I can hear somebody laughing.
I can hear a chair sliding back when somebody finally had to get to work.
And I can still see two pickup trucks passing each other on a road outside Maroa later that afternoon.
Two fingers coming off one steering wheel.
Two fingers coming off the other.
A tiny wave between two men who had absolutely no intention of agreeing with each other.
And absolutely no intention of letting that stop them from being neighbors.
