Thirty One Days in the Church Basement

The First Morning

We did not go to the motel that first night. It was already past one in the morning, and Bev put us in her spare room and on her couch. The kids slept in a pile. I did not sleep at all.

At seven in the morning, my phone rang. It was Pastor Dan from the Methodist church. I had been going there since I was a girl, mostly because the church van used to come pick up the kids on our end of town.

“Heather,” he said. “Ann and I have been talking all night. Bring them to the church.”

“Dan, I can’t ask you to do that.”

“You didn’t ask,” he said. “I’m telling you. The basement is warm, the kitchen works, and the school bus already stops out front. Bring them.”

His wife, Ann, got on the phone after that. She said, “Honey, you just come. We’ll sort the rest out.”

I asked if there was anything I should bring, and then I remembered I did not have anything to bring. Ann heard that in my voice, I think. She said, “Just bring the kids. We’ve got the rest.”

The Methodist Men

By noon that Wednesday, the Methodist men’s group had been through the basement like a work crew.

There are about nine of them who show up regular. Most of them are retired. Harold Lyle leads them, though nobody ever voted on it. Harold is seventy-six, a retired farmer, and he wears the same green seed cap he has worn since I was in Sunday school.

The men had gone out to the American Legion and borrowed army cots, the old canvas kind with wooden legs. They had two more from a deer camp and one from somebody’s garage. Eight in all. One for me, one for each kid, and two extra for when Travis came home.

I came down the basement stairs that afternoon and stopped. They had set the cots up along the back wall under the high little windows, with quilts on every one of them. Not blankets. Quilts. The women’s circle had gone through their cedar chests.

Harold was coming down the stairs behind me with the last cot folded over his shoulder. His knees cracked on every step. I tried to take it from him and he would not let me.

“I’ve carried heavier than this,” he said. “I carried you once. Vacation Bible School, 1994. You fell asleep in the craft room.”

I did not remember that. I started crying right there on the stairs, and Harold just set down the cot and stood there and let me.

Lily went straight to the cot with the pink and yellow quilt on it. She lay down on her back and looked up at the ceiling tiles and the fluorescent lights.

“Mama,” she said, “is this a camping house?”

“Yes, baby,” I said. “It’s a camping house.”

I knelt down and tucked that quilt around her. It had a little label sewn into the corner: Made by Ruby Coffman, 1971. Ruby is ninety-six now and lives with her daughter in Iowa. Her quilt kept my baby warm for thirty-one nights.