The Porch Money at Wednesday Supper

The plan

I did not go to the meeting in Pastor Jon’s office. It was not my place. But Sheila called me the next night, and she told me how it had gone.

She told me Brent had sold his bass boat. It was a nice boat, a 2015 Lund, and he loved it more than any object he owned. He sold it to a man from Ogilvie that same weekend for $19,000. He also sold the side-by-side they used for deer season.

“Every dollar of it goes to materials,” Sheila said. “For your roof first, because yours is the one that leaks. Then the others, in the order you all paid.”

“What about labor?” I said. “You can’t pay a crew.”

“That’s the other part,” she said. “Pastor Jon is calling the men’s group.”

The men’s group at Trinity meets Saturday mornings at seven for coffee, bars and a devotion. Most of them are retired farmers, a couple of retired electricians, a few younger guys who work construction. They do a work day every fall for some widow or shut-in, usually something like raking leaves or fixing a step.

They had never roofed a house.

“Brent will lead it,” Sheila said. “He’ll run the crew. Two Saturdays, if the weather holds. The porch after.”

“And Mom’s ten thousand?”

There was a pause on the line.

“He’s paying her back separately,” Sheila said. “Five hundred a month. He wants to bring it himself. In person. He said he doesn’t want to mail it.”

I sat with that a moment.

“Sheila,” I said. “Are you all right?”

She was quiet so long I thought the call had dropped.

“No,” she said. “But I’m still here. I’m not leaving him over this. I’m just going to be very mad at him for a very long time.”

I laughed despite myself. So did she, a little.

“For what it’s worth,” I said, “I didn’t come to that supper to shame him. I came because he wouldn’t pick up the phone.”

“I know,” she said. “That’s why it worked.”