Forty Plates on the Tailgate

Just in Case

I told myself it was habit, and partly it was. For 26 Octobers my body has known that the afternoon belongs to the roaster.

I do not think I could have sat in a quiet kitchen at three o’clock on the last day of harvest if you had paid me.

I seared the roasts in the cast iron, two at a time, until the kitchen was smoky and the window over the sink fogged up.

Two went into Joan’s old speckled roaster, the same one she used, with a chip on the lid shaped like the state of Florida.

The other two went into my own electric roaster, the one the kids gave me for Christmas when the old one finally quit.

Onions, a little coffee, a can of beef broth, salt and a lot of pepper. Low and slow for six hours, the way Joan taught me.

Then I peeled potatoes. Twenty pounds of them, in the big stockpot, with the radio playing the noon markets. Corn was down three cents.

I peeled until my thumb ached, and I thought about Joan’s hands, and I did not let myself think too hard about anything else.

Our daughter called around one from Cedar Falls, where she teaches second grade. She asked how the last day was going. I said fine. She said, “Mom, why do I hear the mixer?” and I told her it was nothing, and she laughed at me.

By three thirty, the green beans were cooked with a little bacon. By four, the potatoes were mashed with real butter and cream.

I made two pans of my seven layer bars, because the crew likes those best, and cut them into squares and wrapped each one in wax paper.

At four thirty I started plating. I set out the heavy paper plates on the counter in rows of ten and went down the line: roast, potatoes, a well in the potatoes for the gravy, beans on the side.

Then foil, crimped tight around the edges. Then into the coolers.

I did forty plates. That was the headcount Kristin had written on the whiteboard in the shop: the eleven on the crew, Dan and Eric and Kristin and me, the crew’s husbands and wives and a few kids, our neighbor Bev, the manager from the elevator, and Pastor Mike and his wife.

I knew that if the caterer made it, forty plates of roast beef would go into my freezer and feed Dan and me until Christmas.

I had made my peace with that. It was the not doing it that I could not stand.

By five o’clock the coolers were full and loaded on the hand truck by the garage door. The thermoses were filled with coffee.

I sat down at the kitchen table, folded my hands, and waited, and felt foolish, and waited some more.