The Boy in the Church Parking Lot

He did not move. “I don’t want to cause you any trouble.”

“You have not caused one bit of trouble, Eli. I caused it. Come on.”

Hank was still standing by his car. I called across to him. “Deputy, have you had breakfast?”

“I could eat,” Hank said.

That is how the three of us ended up in the church kitchen at five after seven on a Wednesday morning. I say the three of us on purpose. I had been secretary long enough to know our own rules, and one of them is that no adult is ever alone in that building with somebody else’s child. I was not going to break a second trust in the same hour.

I scrambled a dozen eggs and made toast under the big broiler. Eli ate standing up until I told him to sit down, and then he ate like a boy who had been minding every dollar. Hank drank his coffee and asked him about the moisture on the milo coming in, and Eli told him fourteen and a half, some loads fifteen.

It was the first time I heard him talk like himself. He knew his work.

“There’s a shower in the youth room,” I said, when his plate was clean. “It’s been there since the flood year, when we housed a mission team. Nobody uses it. The towels are in the cabinet.”

He looked at Hank. Hank looked at the ceiling.

“I’ve been showering at school,” Eli said. “Coach lets me in the locker room at seven.”

“And now you can sleep until the bells,” I said.

He was in and out in six minutes, and came back with his hair combed wet and the towel folded in thirds.

“Thank you for the eggs, ma’am.”

“Sandy.”

“Yes ma’am,” he said, and went to school.

---

I called Pastor Ray before the dust had settled behind that Buick.

He was at the hospital in Wichita with the family. I told him all of it, including the part about the phone call, because he would hear it from somebody and it had better be me.

He was quiet for a moment.

“He picked us because he thought we’d let him alone,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Lord, have mercy.” I heard him let out a breath. “All right. The kitchen and the shower, yes, as long as there are two adults in the building every time. I’ll be there mornings starting Friday. Don’t put him in the building overnight, Sandy. I’d like to, and I can’t. The trustees would have to vote, and the insurance would have a say. Let me take it to them properly.”

“I know.”

“And Sandy.” His voice was kind. “You called because you were frightened. Then you walked out there. A lot of people only do the first half.”

At ten o’clock I telephoned the high school and asked for the counselor. Mrs. Aldrich had been there twenty-two years. She had been my own son’s counselor.

“I can’t tell you anything about a student,” she said, the minute I said his first name.

“I know that. I’m going to tell you some things, and you can just listen.”

I told her. When I finished, there was a long pause on the line.