The Woman Who Fried the Chicken

Mr. Abbott is ninety-two. He drove a propane truck around Henry County for thirty-some years, and there is hardly a farm between here and Deepwater he has not filled a tank at. His wife, Louise, died four years ago this December. He has a walker now, and getting him from his car to that end table is about all he has in him.

He cannot stand in a line. He has not been able to for two years.

Since Louise passed, our mother has carried a supper to his house every Tuesday and every Friday. She has never missed. When there was ice last January, she called Dean and stood in her doorway with the dish until he came and took it.

She had told the youth, I learned afterward, to be sure Mr. Abbott got a plate. And the line was long, and the youth were fifteen years old, and nobody had gotten to him.

So she got up to do it herself.

She walked the length of that hall. It took her a while. She got in the line, and when it came to her turn she took a clean plate and she put on a thigh and a drumstick, because he likes dark meat, and green beans, and a roll.

Two pieces.

Under the sign.

Cheryl was at the end of the serving table, counting what was left in the last roaster. I know now that there were nineteen pieces of Mom’s in it and forty people still in line, and most of them had been eyeing that roaster since the blessing.

She looked up and saw our mother, who had already been served, who had been asked to sit, shuffling along in that old blue dress with two pieces of chicken on a plate, holding everybody up.

I do not think she thought at all. I think something in her that had been pulled tight for a long time just let go.

She stepped around the table and her hand came down.

That is where I came in.

I knelt on the linoleum. It is that speckled tan tile every church basement in Missouri has, and it was cold through my slacks.

I picked up the biggest piece of plate first. Then the next. I stacked them in my left hand, careful of the edges.

I picked up the thigh. It was still warm. The crust on it was perfect, dark gold, and it had not even cracked when it hit. Six hours at a stove, and it was going in the trash barrel by the kitchen door. You do not serve a man chicken off a floor.

I picked up the drumstick.

I picked up the green beans one at a time, because there was nothing else to pick them up with.

Nobody spoke. Cheryl stood over me. I could see her shoes, the navy flats she wears for church work, and I could see that her hands had started to shake.

“Jan,” she said. Very low. “Get up. I’ll get a mop.”

I did not get up.

I heard a tea pitcher set down hard on a table across the room, and then Dean’s boots. He did not say a word. He went past me to the wall, picked up a folding chair, and set it behind my mother.

“Sit down, Opal,” he said, gently. “I’ve got you.”

She sat. He kept one hand on the back of the chair and stood there, and he looked at my sister, and he did not say anything to her either. Dean has known Cheryl for thirty years. I think he was giving her room to say something first.

She did not say anything.