One Quiet Question Before the Pageant

“She did,” I said.

I told him all of it. He didn’t interrupt.

“I’m going to say something to her,” he said.

“Not yet.”

“Bob, you’re asleep on your feet and sixty miles from home. If you say something to her now, you can’t take it back, and it’ll be what Dustin remembers. That his dad came down off a pole and yelled at his aunt.” I let that sit. “I’ve already done something.”

“What did you do?”

“I asked a question.”

“What was it?”

I told him.

He did not speak for a while. Then he said, very quietly, “Good.”

“Don’t call her.”

“I won’t. Not until I’m home.” Then, after a moment: “Is he all right?”

“He’s doing the line to the dog.”

“He’s a better man than I am,” said my husband, and he hung up so he could go back to work.

Thursday at four, Kris Calhoun called. “Come to rehearsal tonight. Six o’clock. Bring Dustin’s robe.” She would not say why.

I left Dustin at home with Sarge, the plat book, and a bowl of buttered noodles, and drove the four miles to Bethel with the robe folded over my arm like a flag.

It was already dark and the fellowship hall windows glowed yellow across the gravel. Only a few cars sat in the lot: the Calhouns’ van, the Foleys’ pickup, Connie Hoyt’s little Ford with the dent in the door. And a gray Oldsmobile I knew, belonging to Doris Albright, who is eighty-three and had not driven after dark since her hip. Somebody had driven it for her.

I opened the door.

Pastor Ken Hallett stood at the very back in his driving coat, car keys still in his hand. He had come straight from Omaha. He looked at me and gave one slow nod.

Jeanette had called a costume meeting for the mothers, and the mothers had come. Nine of them sat around the long table with their hands in their laps, no glue guns, no tinsel. Doris sat in a folding chair by the radiator with her walker parked in front of her and her good blue coat still buttoned. The children had been sent home at five.

Jeanette stood at the whiteboard with her clipboard against her chest. Behind her the cast list still ran down the page, and next to Shepherd Two was the gray smear with its ghost letters. She stood up straight, I’ll say that for her. But her hand around the pen had gone white at the knuckles. She looked at me when I came in. She did not look away.

Kris Calhoun, who sells insurance and has never made a speech in her life, got up from the table.