The Thank You Cards That Told the Truth
Travis had come up behind me. He put his hand flat between my shoulder blades and left it there.
He reached into his shirt pocket, behind the pencil, and took out a twenty-dollar bill folded in thirds.
“Arlene put twenty in the can at the supper,” he said. “She sent this along. She said to tell you it is the same twenty, as far as she is concerned, and it has just taken the long way around.” He looked past me into the house. “I would like to hand it to the boy, if that’s allowed. I’ll write it on the sheet first.”
Cody had been standing in the hall the whole time in his sock feet. He came out onto the porch, stiff and upright in that brace, and Mr. Fenske, who is not much taller than he is anymore, put the twenty in his hand and closed the boy’s fingers around it with both of his own.
“You hold that until I ask for it back,” he said. “That’s called being a custodian.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you write on my card that the bars were good?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Arlene has it on the refrigerator.”
I would have paid $8,214 for that minute, if I had ever had it.
When the last pickup had backed out, Travis stood at the window with his arms crossed.
“The cards landed,” I said.
“They did.” He looked at the hook where his keys hung. “I don’t believe I need to go over there now. I believe it’s been said.”
They did not wait for the supper. People started walking money into the bank on Monday morning. On Thursday, day twenty, Mr. Fenske and Pastor Jim signed a check to Children’s for $7,350, and Pastor Jim drove it to Omaha himself rather than trust it to the mail. The date held.
Nobody said my sister’s name to me. Not one person. They did not have to.
The second supper was on the sixth of June. Mr. Fenske sat at a card table by the door with Marcy, who is no relation to him or to me, and every bill that went into that gray box got a tick mark from his pencil.
On Sunday Pastor Jim kept his word about the pulpit. Afterward, down in the fellowship hall, Mr. Fenske stood up by the coffee urn with a deposit slip.
“Eleven thousand four hundred and sixty dollars,” he read, “and no cents. Counted twice. I have copies for anyone who would like one.”
I stood up to say thank you, and I got as far as “You already” before my voice went. Travis stood up next to me, and Travis does not speak in front of people, ever.
“I weld for a living,” he said. “If any man in this room has anything break this summer, a hitch, a gate, a loader bucket, I don’t care, you bring it to my garage and it’s fixed. That’s all I’ve got. Thank you.”
He sat down. Half the men in the room were studying the floor tile.
My sister was not there. The family pew held only my mother, very straight, with her purse on her knees.
Rhonda came on Monday, two days before the surgery. She came to the back door, the way family does, at a quarter past nine at night when it was just barely dark.
I knew it was her from the knock. Two and then one. She has knocked that way since we shared a bedroom.