I sit on a tattered beach towel in the passenger seat of my dad’s farm truck. Everything is covered in a chalky layer of dried mud and manure. Pieces of hay stick out of cracks in the leather seats. Dad’s miniature Australian shepherd perches on the center console between us. Her sky-blue puppy eyes scan the fields for darting deer.

“Smells like a gerbil cage in here.” I break the silence.

“Huh?” Dad grunts like one of his bulls, looks over at me as if awakened from a dream.

I repeat the thing about the gerbil cage, louder.

“Gerbil cage.” Dad chuckles, one hand on the steering wheel, the other picking at an old acne scar on his tan cheek.

The red Ford used to be Dad’s main mode of transportation. Every other Monday morning I rode in it to school, eating a rainbow-sprinkled donut. Dad drove on to construction sites: downtown skyscrapers and fantastic villages for sick children, with arches painted like candy canes. Sometimes my dad would strike into one of those old scars on his face and a foul smell would fill the cabin. The smell like taking earrings out for the first time in a long time. Dad has always been ashamed of the scars. I’ve watched him push away the small wandering hands of my niece, sitting in Dad’s lap, Cheerios in her hair: what’s this bump, Papa?

Now the red Ford is a farm truck, and my dad, retired, raises cattle. I visit once a year. I don’t hear from Dad much—I don’t have a grandbaby for him to cuddle, or a wedding for him to attend—but he is with me some mornings when I first see my feet. My toes his toes. Sometimes he visits through a sudden, high-pitched, hereditary hiccup. But I think of him most when I’m not thinking, when I’m driving and mindlessly scratch behind my ear. I bring my finger to my nose, and there he is: a passenger with not much to say, humming Tom Petty off-key.