The Name in the Thursday Paper

The baptism

We had the baptism set for Palm Sunday, the last Sunday in March, three weeks and a day after he was born. Pastor Lund likes to baptize at the regular service, so the whole congregation makes the promise along with the parents.

Josh asked his mother to come. He called her himself. She said she would be there. She did not say anything else, and he did not push her.

That morning it was thirty-four degrees and sunny, with snow still in the ditches and the first robins in the yard. I dressed Wyatt in the gown at Grandma Ruth’s kitchen table, because she wanted to be the one to tie the ribbon at the back of the neck.

“Eleven,” she said, tying the bow. “Twelve now.”

We filled the fourth pew on the left and spilled into the fifth. My folks, Lloyd and Diane. Grandma Ruth and Grandpa James, Grandpa in his good blue suit and the hearing aids he only wears to church. My cousin Amy and Josh’s buddy Jeff, the sponsors. The ushers had put out palms, and the whole church smelled faintly green.

I looked across the aisle. The third pew on the right, the end seat, was empty.

“She’s coming,” Josh said quietly, before I could ask.

After the second hymn Pastor Lund invited us forward. Josh carried Wyatt, and I walked beside him, and Amy and Jeff came behind. We stood at the font, the old carved oak one with the silver bowl. Wyatt kicked at the lace with both feet.

Pastor Lund looked out at the congregation over his reading glasses.

And that was when Sharon stood up from the very last pew, the one by the back wall where people sit when they come late or do not want to be seen.

She came up the aisle slowly. She was wearing her navy church dress and the pearl earrings Harold gave her for their twenty-fifth. Every person in that church had read both papers, and every one of them turned to watch her come.

Her right hand was closed tight around something.

She stopped two steps from the font. She did not look at Pastor Lund. She looked at me.

“Before you say his name,” she said, in a voice that carried farther than she meant it to, “I have something of Harold’s.”

She opened her hand.

It was a pocket watch. An old gold-filled railroad watch with a worn case, on a short chain. I had seen it once, years ago, on Harold’s dresser.

“It was his dad’s,” Sharon said. “And then it was Harold’s. He carried it every Sunday of his life in his vest pocket. It’s engraved H.B. on the back.” She turned it so I could see the letters, worn almost smooth. “I was going to give it to a Harold.”