The Pantry Door Nobody Voted To Close
When the plates were cleared, around ten minutes to one, Sherry Peeler touched his sleeve. The offering has to be counted by two people, never one, and the two on Sundays are Wally and Sherry. They went up the stairs together to the church office with the zippered bag. I stayed in the kitchen with a dish towel and the dishes, and Hattie went home in her neighbor’s car with the empty basket on her lap.
I found out what happened in the church office from Sherry that evening, in my kitchen, with her coat still on.
“We always count at the long desk,” she said. “He takes the checks and I take the cash, and we call it back to each other. It goes quick. Then I took out an envelope and it said pantry.”
“Pantry?”
“In pencil. On the front. That’s all. Just the word.” She pulled her coat tighter. “I read it to him. He didn’t say anything. There was another one, and I read it. By the ninth one, I’d stopped saying them out loud and I just held them up. And there was a check with it on the memo line.”
“How much?”
“Four hundred and twelve dollars. Nine envelopes and a check. Some of them were a five.” She looked at me. “Marlene, I do not know who wrote most of them. I did not ask, and he did not ask. There’s no names on the rest. Two I knew by the envelope. Delbert and Opal’s, with the word written over the top.”
I did not say anything.
“He sat there looking at the money a long time. He wrote the total in the book on its own line, and when he got to the part where it says fund, he stopped. Then he said, ‘Sherry, you don’t mention this to anybody until I’ve talked to Marlene.’ So I’m not mentioning it,” said Sherry. “I’m mentioning it to you.”
Wally found me on Monday morning at 8:40, in the basement hallway, in front of the padlock. He was in his work coat with his folder under his arm, and he had the key to the lock in his hand. He did not have his coffee.
“I counted the plates last night,” he said.
“I heard.”
“Nine envelopes and a check, with the word pantry on them. Four hundred and twelve dollars.” He turned the key over in his fingers. “A person writes a word on an envelope, Marlene. That’s a promise. I have told this church that for fourteen years. A designated gift is a promise, it’s not a suggestion. It’s in the treasurer’s handbook, in my own writing. I can’t put four hundred and twelve dollars in the building line. I can’t do that.”
He stopped.
“And if I can’t do it with that,” he said, “I couldn’t have done it with the fourteen thousand six hundred.”
“No,” I said.
He nodded. I thought he might say more. He did not. He is not a man who finds it easy, and I did not help him, because I did not think it was mine to help.
“I’m wrong about the money,” he said at last. “I’ve known it since about August. I haven’t worked out the rest of it yet. I don’t know what I think about the rest.”
“That’s all right.”
“It isn’t. But it’s what I’ve got.” He held out the key. Not the padlock, only the key. “I’d like to be the one to take it off. If it’s all the same to you. I put it on.”
“It’s all the same to me.”