The Trophies Cutler Took Back From the Curb

The window was empty when I pulled up.

For 47 years the front window of Tate Hardware had held something, a Christmas village, a pyramid of paint cans, a row of rakes. And for 40 of those years it had held the trophies, three oak shelves my father built himself in the left half of the glass, crowded with gold plastic ballplayers.

Now there was nothing but the sun on the glass and the gold paint of my father’s name, curved over the top the way he had paid a sign man in Kearney to curve it in 1979.

Tate Hardware. Cutler, Nebraska.

I put the truck in park right there in the street.

At the curb stood nine banker’s boxes in a row, and beside them one black lawn bag tied at the neck. A bulk-pickup tag was taped to the nearest box. Pickup was Friday morning at seven. It was Thursday, a few minutes past six, and the sky to the west had gone the color of dishwater.

I got out and lifted the lid of the first box.

A gold batter, caught mid-swing, with a chip out of his left cleat. The plate on the base was brass, a little tarnished at the corners. Cutler Tigers, 1987. Sponsored by Tate Hardware.

My father paid for every one of those plates himself. I know because I was 15 that year, and I held the flashlight while he scratched the year into the back of the base with a nail.

He is 81 years old. He was lying in a hospital bed in Kearney, 52 miles away, with a left hand that worked and a right hand that did not. It had been eight days since the stroke.

And his trophies were on the curb.

“Lori.”

I looked up. Kyle Reiter had come out of the side door of the store, wiping his hands on a shop rag. He is 36 or so, a big soft-spoken man from Lincoln who stands with his weight on his heels, like he expects to be told he is in the wrong spot. He and his wife Shannon bought the store from my father two years ago, when Dad turned 79 and his knees were done with ladders.

I will say this now so there is no mistake about it. They are not cruel people. I have had two years to watch them. They are tired people, which is a different thing, and tired people do things in a hurry that cruel people do on purpose.

“I left a note,” Kyle said. He held the rag in both hands. “On the door. Since the first of September. We gave it close to two months.”

I had seen that note. It was a half sheet of printer paper taped to the inside of the door glass, partly covered by a flyer for a sale on log splitters.

“Dealer rep’s coming Monday,” he said. “We’re doing the reset. New layout, the whole front, tool wall in the window. Corporate wants it done and photographed.” He looked at the box under my hand. “Nobody’s claimed these in 2 years, Lori. The league folded. I called the school and the church both. They said they had no place for them.”

“Dad had them in that window since 1984.”