Eric English

In Wisconsin, nobody ever tells a guest that it is time to go home. Instead, they use an ancient military signal involving both kneecaps and a word that does not exist in any English dictionary. Last Sunday night at my friend Dave's house, six of us were sitting on the living room sofa eating apple pie. It was 8:45 p.m. Nobody had yawned. Nobody had looked at a clock. Suddenly, Dave set his fork down, placed both palms high in the air, and slapped his own thighs with a sharp crack that echoed off the drywall. Then he inhaled through his nose and spoke the word. "Welp." He followed it with a sentence that broke my understanding of the English language: "Suppose I shouldn't keep you folks." Keep us. We were sitting in his house, eating his pie, drinking his coffee, and he apologized for holding us hostage. Before the syllable finished echoing, all five American guests rose to their feet in unison like cavalry hearing the bugle at dawn. Plates were stacked in four seconds. Coats materialized from closets. Boots were laced at combat speed. I stood up in a panic, assuming the house was on fire. Then the strangest thing of all happened. The retreat stopped entirely at the front rug. We walked twelve feet from the sofa to the front door, and then stood in the entryway with our coats fully zipped, holding Tupperware, and talked for forty-two additional minutes about snow tires. Dave had his hand on the brass doorknob for half an hour and did not turn it once. I have learned that in the Midwest, a departure is divided into three mandatory campaigns: The Couch Goodbye, which means put your boots on. The Hallway Goodbye, where the actual conversation of the evening begins while everyone sweats inside winter parkas. And the Driveway Goodbye, conducted through a half-rolled-down car window in twenty-degree wind. It was 9:40 p.m. when I finally backed my car down Dave's icy driveway. I looked into my rearview mirror. Dave was still standing on his wooden front porch in his wool socks, arms crossed against the freezing snow, watching my car. He did not go back inside. He did not turn off the yellow porch light. He stood there in the cold until my tires safely reached the plowed county highway and I flashed my hazards twice. Only then did the porch light go dark. I understand now why it takes them forty-five minutes to let you out the door. In a winter that cold, nobody wants to be the first one to let go of a friend.