What Linda Ames Said at the Door

The breakfast

I was not there for what happened that Saturday. I heard it from Kim’s husband, who goes, and from Linda, who was not there either but heard it from everybody, and from Steve, who was there and who told it the plainest.

The Methodist men have a breakfast at the church the first Saturday of every month. Biscuits and gravy, eggs, coffee in the big percolator. Thirty or so men, most of them retired, most of them farmers or retired from the elevator or the co-op or the school. Roger had gone for twenty years. He usually sat at the end of the second table and talked about wheat.

That Saturday, after the blessing and before anybody had gotten up for seconds, Roger stood up.

Steve says the room went quiet without anybody telling it to, because Roger Ames did not stand up at things.

Roger said, “Most of you have heard what I did Thursday. Some of you heard it wrong, so I’ll say it right.”

And he said it. He said he changed the locks on Travis Pruitt’s widow while she was at the graveside. He said he set her children’s things on the porch on the first frost of the year.

He said he did it because he looked at a number in a book and did not ask one question about the people it belonged to.

He said it was not legal and he knew it was not legal and he did it anyway, because that was how his father did it and he had never once stopped to think about whether his father had been right.

He said, “I’ve got thirty-eight houses in this town. Some of you rent from me. Some of your kids do. If any of you are behind because somebody got hurt or got sick or died, you come see me, and you come see me before I come see you. I’m going to ask, from now on. I’m not good at it. Somebody may have to remind me.”

Then he sat back down and ate his eggs.

Steve said nobody said anything for a minute. And then old Mr. Hensley, the one with the dog on route four, got up from the first table with his cane and walked all the way down to the end of the second one, and put his hand on Roger’s shoulder, and went back and sat down.

That was the whole thing. That was all it was.

But by the next Sunday, three families who rented from Roger had gone to see him about rent. One of them was eight months behind and had been too ashamed to say so. He set them up on a plan. Linda keeps the plans now, in a separate book, in the front room, where she can see it.