The Bible School Under the Cottonwood

Monday

Steve got up at four on Saturday morning before the spraying, borrowed the neighbor’s flatbed, and hauled the six picnic tables out from the Legion hall.

He set them up under the big cottonwood in the backyard and leveled every one of them with shims.

“You want hay bales for sitting?” he asked.

“How many do we have?”

“Enough.” He brought out a dozen small squares on the loader and set them in a half circle in front of the garage, facing the cross Noah had painted.

Monday morning I put on my old sun hat and the whistle from the years I coached girls’ softball, and I sat on the middle bale at quarter to nine with a coffee cup and wondered whether anybody would come at all.

The first car was the Larsons’ Suburban, with all five kids and a dog that was not invited.

Then the Pedersons’ grandkids on bicycles. Then a pickup, then another, then a girl I did not know walking up the driveway alone in rubber boots.

By nine o’clock there were thirty-one children in my yard. Emma was handing out name tags as fast as she could tie them. Noah was pouring Kool-Aid and pretending he was not enjoying it.

I blew the whistle, and thirty-one faces turned to me, and for one second I could not remember a single song I had ever known.

Then a little Larson girl in the front, the one with no front teeth, started the first one without me.

Every kid who had ever been in my basement joined in, and the new ones caught on by the second verse.