The Pay They Docked For The Funeral

Brett did not know what to do with any of it. That is the part I will remember when I am as old as Vernon. He came out of the back around seven thirty with his iPad, ready to see a normal slow Monday, and he walked into a wall of his whole town, and not one person was rude to him. That was the genius of it, though I do not think they planned that part, I think it was just who they are. Nobody yelled at Brett. Nobody even looked at him mean. They just loved me so loud and so publicly, in his building, on his clock, that he could not do a single thing about it. He stood by the register next to my signed warning and that overflowing pickle jar and he watched a hundred people prove his chart wrong, and his face went from confused to pink to a kind of gray I recognized, because I had seen it on my own face the morning my mother called me overhead with her silence.

He actually tried, once, to take control of it. Around eight he clapped his hands and announced that we had a wait and he would be happy to seat parties as tables came open, as if he were doing the room a favor. Vernon Pruitt, who had not stood up fast for anything in a decade, stood up. And Vernon said, in a voice that filled the whole room, we are not waiting on you, son. We are waiting on Ruthie. And he sat back down. And that was the last thing Brett Kessler tried to run that day.

Now I have to tell you about Earl, because the town rallying was the first half of that Monday, and Earl was the second, and I did not see the second coming any more than I saw the first.

What I did not know, pouring coffee in that packed room, was that somebody had called Earl Dillard in Arizona. To this day there is a friendly argument in Dunmore about who called first, because it turned out about four different people called him over that weekend, Vernon and Pastor Hofer and Peggy’s own cousin who lived here and Marlene. But the first one through, the one Earl always credited, was Vernon, who did not own a cell phone and had to get his granddaughter to find the number, and who called Earl on Saturday night and said, Earl, I do not want to trouble a sick man, but you need to know what is being done to Ruthie down at your place.