The Prayer Chain and the Birthday Party

The old farmer

When the parts had all been named, I went into the kitchen to light the candles, and Harold followed me in, slowly, on his cane.

He leaned on the counter by the sink while I found the matches. Through the doorway we could see Eli explaining the three-point hitch pin to Pastor Jim, using both hands.

“I was a lot like him,” Harold said.

I struck the match and looked at him.

“Lined up every bolt in my dad’s shop by size. Every one. Couldn’t stand the church bells. Couldn’t stand wool. Didn’t talk to anybody but the cattle until I was near seven.” He smiled a little. “My mother used to say, Harold’s particular. That was all anybody said. Harold’s particular.”

I didn’t know what to say. The match burned down to my fingers and I shook it out.

“There wasn’t a word for it then,” he said. “Not in this county, anyhow. So nobody looked for one. I just figured out how to be how I was, and farmed sixty years, and married the best woman in Allamakee County, and I did all right.”

He looked through the doorway at Eli.

“He’s going to have a word for it. That’s better. That’s a whole lot better.” He was quiet a second. “I knew Danny, you know. Donna’s brother. I taught his Sunday school class one winter, before they kept him home. He used to sit right by me because I didn’t talk either.”

I put the matchbox down on the counter and put both my hands over my face, right there in my own kitchen, with thirty-one people in the next room.

Harold patted my shoulder twice, the way you would pat a good horse, and went back to sit on the couch.

The cake

We carried the cake in with the six candles lit and nobody sang. That was the plan, and I had worried it would feel wrong, like a party with a hole in it.

It didn’t. Eli knelt in front of the coffee table and looked at the six little flames for a long time, and then he blew them out, all six, in one try.

And thirty-one people put their hands in the air and waved them.

Nobody clapped. Not one person. They had all read the index card on the door. The quilting ladies waved. Pastor Jim waved.

Harold waved from the couch with one hand on his cane. Brayden waved both arms like he was bringing in an airplane.

Eli looked up at all those hands, and he smiled, and he waved back at them with both of his.

I was standing beside Donna. She took my hand, and she held it so tight it hurt, and neither one of us let go until the cake was cut.