The Application My Father In Law Kept
Two hours. It is an attached garage, so it holds a little of the house, but the thermometer on her wall said thirty-one degrees, and she was eighty-four years old in a housecoat.
“Where’s your button? The one your daughter got you?”
“On the nightstand.” Her teeth were going. “It catches on my apron.”
Rick got the door up with his shoulder and came in with two moving blankets and the thermos. I did not give her the coffee, because I had been told once not to give anything to someone who might be headed for surgery, but I held the open thermos near her hands so she could feel the steam.
She found my wrist and held on to it. She had almost no grip left.
“Those were for the rummage sale,” she said. “I could see that bag the whole time. I couldn’t reach it. Harold’s hunting jacket is in there.”
“It’s on top of you right now.”
“I know it. I can smell him.” She closed her eyes. “I wasn’t scared, Dan. I want you to tell Karen I wasn’t scared. I knew what day it was.”
“You knew it was Tuesday.”
“I lay here listening. Then I heard you over on Carolina, that squeal your brakes make. I said, well, Edna, he’s two streets off. He’s never missed. You only have to last two streets.”
I could not answer her right away.
I have been asked since what I thought about, lying there. I thought about a job application. I am not proud of it, but it is the truth. I thought, Reason for leaving, and I thought, None.
The fire department ambulance was there in six minutes. They were good. They had her on a board and warm packs on her before I had my knees under me.
One of the medics, a young woman, looked at the coats and the blankets and my parka.
“Who found her?”
“Garbage men,” Rick said.
“Well,” she said, “another hour on that floor and we’d be having a different morning.”
They let me walk beside the cot to the rig. Mrs. Petersen still had my coat over her. I told them to leave it.
“Dan,” she said, when they were lifting her. “My cart.”
“I’ll get your cart.”
“It’s not all the way full.”
“I’ll take it anyway.”
I went back and stood her cart up and wheeled it down the drive and tipped it myself. Then I set it by the garage, square, with the lid shut. Rick pulled the overhead door down.
We finished the route. We got in at a quarter to four. I filled out an incident sheet and went home and stood in the shower until the hot water ran out.
Her hip was broken, and her temperature when they got her to the hospital was ninety-four. They operated Wednesday. Her daughter Karen drove up from Des Moines through the last of the snow and did not leave for a week.
I went by on Thursday after my route, in my work clothes, because I did not want to wait. Kelly met me there with the kids. Emma had made a card with a garbage truck on it.
Mrs. Petersen was small in the bed, and pink again, and cross about the food.
“There’s my Tuesday man,” she said.
Karen got up out of the chair. She is about my age. She did not say anything at all. She walked over and put both arms around me and held on, in front of my wife and my children, and I stood there with my cap in my hand.