The Night My Son Called 911
“Okay,” Mason said. Just that.
Then he started eating like a boy who had been holding his breath since the Fourth of July.
I ate the whole square. Brenda put another one on my plate without asking, and I ate that one too.
Afterward Mason went to the freezer and got out the vanilla. He carried it to the table in both hands and set it down in front of the deputy.
“It’s after supper,” he said. “Everybody ate.”
“I witnessed it,” said Tom.
There was enough for five small bowls if you scraped the carton. Mason scraped the carton. He gave me mine first.
“You can close it now,” he told Tom. “The report.”
“I’ll mark it resolved,” Tom said. “Pending follow-up.”
Brenda washed and I dried, because she would not have it the other way. Tom had the kids out in the yard, showing them how the tailgate latch worked.
“I need to say something,” I told her. “I’m not somebody who needs this. I work. I have worked since I was fifteen.”
“I know you work.”
“I just had my hours cut. It’s temporary. I’ve got it handled.”
“Honey.” She rinsed the pan and held it up to the light to check it. “You’ve got it handled the way I have seen a lot of women handle it. You’ve handled it right out of your own hide.”
I did not have an answer for that.
“I’m going to tell you something, and then I’ll leave you be,” she said. “Tom doesn’t tell this. I tell it for him. He grew up over by Blue Hill, him and two sisters. His dad got hurt, and then his dad got mean, and then his dad was gone. His mother pressed shirts at the dry cleaner. She said she ate at work. For two years those kids believed her, because why wouldn’t you.”
She handed me the pan.
“He was nine when she went down at the pressing table. Right on the floor, in front of customers. She was in the hospital in Hastings eleven days. He told me once the worst part wasn’t being scared. The worst part was that he had known. He had seen her plate. He was nine years old and he had seen it, and he hadn’t known there was anybody a boy could tell.”
I dried that pan for a long time.
“So when dispatch said a little boy out on the county road had called in about ice cream,” Brenda said, “and then he got in here and that child started in about supper, well. He came home last night and sat in the truck in the driveway a while. Then he came in and said, Brenda, make the runza one.”
“Your boy had somebody to tell,” she said. “That’s all that’s different. Don’t you take that from him by acting like he told a lie.”
“I told him he’d told a stranger our business,” I said.
“Well. You can fix that at bedtime.”
At the door she stopped with the clean pan under her arm.
“Church is at ten thirty. We’re at the Methodist church on the highway. I believe that’s yours.”
“It was.”
“Still is. I checked the directory.” She patted my arm. “There’s a chest freezer in the basement. I’m not going to say another word about it. I’m just telling you where it is.”