Three Children and a Pot of Soup
“No fork,” I said. “Sit on that hay bale. Those hands are done for a while.”
“I can work.”
“You can open the gates for me and carry the grain bucket hooked over your arm. That’s all, till the doctor says. And stay clear of the big red one. She’s all talk.”
He opened every gate that morning with his wrist and his elbow, and he carried the bucket on his forearm like a woman with a purse, and he stayed beside me forty minutes without a word. I did not make him talk. When the last bunk was full he looked out at the gray light and said, without turning around, “Is it real that we’re staying?”
“For today. That much I can promise. Past today the lady from the county has to say.”
He nodded like that was a fair answer, and I understood this boy had been told sweet things by grown people often enough to prefer one small true thing.
Pam Ostlund came at eight in a tan county car, a woman near fifty with reading glasses on a chain and a clipboard worn smooth at the corners. She was kind to the children and exact with us.
She drank Marie’s coffee and asked a hundred questions. Working smoke detectors? (I tested every one that morning, and I will not forget how my hands shook.) Firearms? Medicines? (Marie went and got a tackle box from the garage.) Then she sat down across from us.
“I’m putting you down as an emergency placement. That’s not a license. It’s me saying the children are safe here tonight. If you want to keep them, you’d need the foster training, a home study and a full background check. Classes are Tuesday nights in the county seat, ten weeks.”
“How long do you think?” Marie asked.
“I don’t know. Their mother’s hands are bad and she has no house. The father isn’t in the picture, and the grandmother in Arizona is eighty-one. The goal is to put this family back together. It might be a week. It might be a year.” She took off her glasses and looked right at me. “Mr. Mercer, I would rather hear your honest answer now than have those children learn it in a car on the way somewhere else. Can you do this?”
“I had my herd on the sale list for November,” I said. It sounded smaller out loud. “I’d decided I was done. I’m not sure what I’ve got left, ma’am. I’ll tell you straight. I can do a week.”
Pam wrote it down. “A week is a fine answer. A week is what we need today.”
She drove the children to the clinic in the county seat herself at ten. The doctor listened to three chests again, cleaned the boy’s palms and wrapped them fresh. Clear lungs, all three. He told Danny no gripping for two weeks, and Danny told him, very seriously, that he understood.
The thing nobody tells you about a small town is what it does when something burns.
By ten that morning the first casserole sat on the porch, Edna Cox’s chicken and rice, still warm. By noon there were nine. Pastor Tom Reinke came with a laundry basket of boys’ clothes from the church closet. By afternoon Josie wore corduroy overalls with the cuffs rolled four times and Mr. Buttons in the bib pocket.
On Monday Marie drove Bus 4 as usual. For the first time in nineteen years, three of her passengers got on at her own mailbox.
That night Danny stood at the end of the supper table.