The Key My Husband Forgot I Had

She could not find anything, so she labeled the aisles herself with pink sticky notes. Lloyd Abbott read them off to me. Aisle nine said Pipes. Aisle ten said More Pipes. Aisle four said Screws, Big. And one whole section of electrical just said I Don’t Know, with a little frowning face.

“She brought in cinnamon rolls, though,” Lloyd said. “I’ll give her that. Good ones.”

On Thursday morning she came across the square herself.

I saw her from the window, picking her way over the brick crosswalk in white sneakers, walking an old man by the elbow. It was Mr. Abbott, Lloyd’s father. He is eighty-eight and deaf in one ear.

She got him through my door and stood there, pink in the face.

“I’m not supposed to be over here,” she said.

“Then why are you?”

“Because he’s been in three times since Tuesday for a thing for his toilet, and I’ve sold him the wrong thing three times, and he keeps being so polite about it.” Her chin wobbled. “He’s eighty-eight. He walked back every time.”

“It’s the flapper, Mr. Abbott?” I said, loud, on his good side.

“Fill valve,” he hollered back. “It runs all night.”

“I don’t have one till the truck comes tomorrow. Tiffany, go back to aisle nine. Halfway down on the right, at about your knee, there’s a red and white box with a picture of a tall plastic tower on it. It’s eleven dollars. Sell him that.”

She stared at me. “You’re not even in there. How do you know that?”

“I put it there.”

She stood a second longer, twisting the strap of her purse.

“He told me you just ran the register,” she said. “He said it was easy. He said anybody could do it.”

“I did run the register. I did some other things too.”

“I did hair for eleven years.” She said it like she needed somebody to know. “I’m good at hair. I’ve got ladies who drove forty miles for me.”

“I believe it.”

“I’m sorry about Monday. The laughing. I do that when I’m nervous.”

“I know you do, honey. Go sell Mr. Abbott his fill valve.”

She walked him back across the square by the elbow, slow, and waited for the light even though there was not a car in sight.

About an hour after that the Tuesday men came, and it was not Tuesday.

You have to understand about the Tuesday men. There are five of them, all past seventy, all farmers or the next thing to it. Every Tuesday morning since before I was hired they have sat on nail kegs around the stove at Crandall’s and settled the price of cattle, the Kentucky basketball schedule, and what is wrong with the county judge. I made their coffee for twenty-six years. Strong, in the big percolator, with a pinch of salt the way Earl taught me.

They filed in on Thursday, one behind the other, with Lloyd in front carrying a percolator in a cardboard box.

“It isn’t Tuesday,” I said.

“It’s Tuesday wherever the pot is,” Lloyd said. “We went over there this week and sat forty-five minutes. Nobody put the coffee on. Nobody knew there was coffee. The girl offered to run to the gas station for us, bless her.”

“That’s the store’s percolator, Lloyd. You take that right back.”

“It is no such thing. My wife bought this one yesterday at the dollar store in Danville. Receipt’s in the box.” He looked around. “Where are the kegs?”