The Thank You Cards That Told the Truth
He did not say anything. He dried his hands on the dish towel, one finger at a time, and hung it back on the oven door. Then he took his truck keys off the hook.
“Travis.”
“I’m not going to yell at her,” he said. “I’m going to stand in her kitchen until Dale wakes up, and then the three of us are going to talk about it.”
“I am asking you not to.”
“Beth, that’s our boy’s back.”
“I know whose back it is. If you go over there tonight, by Sunday there are two sides, and the money is still gone. I do not have a deposit slip. I have a paper plate in Gene’s handwriting and my word against my sister’s.”
“So we call the sheriff.”
“And tell him what? We were in Omaha. I never saw it counted. Mom is seventy-eight, Travis, and I am not putting her daughter’s name in the Wahoo paper if there is any other way. Besides, a sheriff’s report does not put one dollar in the hospital’s hands by the fifth of June.”
“Is there?”
“I think so. I gave her a week to make it right. If she doesn’t, I am writing to every family in that notebook. Give me until the cards land.”
He hung the keys back on the hook, and it cost him. I could see what it cost.
“Till the cards land,” he said. “Then I go over there. And I won’t yell then either.”
It was not until that night in bed that he told me the rest. He had sold the boat. The Tuesday before, to a man from Ashland, for $3,200 cash. The supper money was late in landing and he had a feeling, and he had not wanted to say the feeling out loud about my sister.
“You loved that boat.”
“I like the kid better,” he said, and turned over.
I bought the cards the next morning at the Dollar General. Nine boxes, sixteen to a box, plain cream ones with Thank You on the front in blue script and nothing printed inside. I bought seven books of stamps at the post office.
That night I sat down at the kitchen table with the notebook, and I wrote the first one four times before I had it. I did not want it to sound like a hint. I wanted a thank-you note with one true sentence in it that I would have given anything not to have to write.
This is what I settled on. I wrote it in every card, by hand, changing only the names and the small things.
Dear Gene and Marcy,
Thank you for coming to Cody’s supper, and Gene, thank you for standing over that serving line for three hours. The men at the door counted $8,214 that night.
I am sorry to tell you that none of it has reached Cody yet. I did not want you to wonder, or to think we were not grateful. You gave it, and that part was real, and I wanted you to hear your thanks from me either way.
Cody’s surgery is still set for June 17. Please keep him in your prayers.
With love, Beth, Travis and Cody
That was all. I named no one. I will not pretend I did not know what this town would do with one true sentence. Everybody knew who had run that supper. I wrote them anyway, because the other choice was to let 140 families go on believing a thing that was not so.
I did not mail a one of them yet. I had told her a week.