The Trophies Cutler Took Back From the Curb
I called Marty Hollis from the hospital parking lot.
He answered on the second ring, the way a man answers when he is standing in a grain bin with the phone clipped to his belt. “Hollis.”
“Marty, it’s Lori Tate.”
The noise behind him dropped away. “Lori? Is it your dad?”
“He’s holding on,” I said. “He’s talking a little. It’s not that. It’s the window.”
I told him. I did not dress it up. The boxes, the curb, the rain. I told him Kyle Reiter hadn’t been cruel, only hurried, because it was the truth and because I wanted Marty to hear it from me before he heard it from his wife.
He was silent so long I thought the call had dropped.
“Nineteen ninety-one,” he said finally.
“Yes.”
“I won that trophy with a bad ankle.” His voice was rough. “Your dad drove me home from the Dunhams’ game because my mother was on the late shift at the nursing home. He never said a word about it. He just bought me a Coke at the Phillips station.”
“I know,” I said, although I hadn’t.
“Where are they?”
“My dad’s shop.”
“Who else is on the list?”
“All of them.”
“Read me the names.”
I read him the names from 1984 through 1991, and he stopped me every few seconds. Underwood, he’s in Hastings, I’ve got his number. Darrell Kimbrough moved to Colorado, but his mother’s still on Elm.
“Lori,” he said, “what do you want us to do?”
I had been thinking about it all night. “Nothing hard. Nothing loud. I want you to come Saturday morning at nine and carry them back.”
“Back to the window?”
“Back to Main Street. Just come, and I’ll bring the trophies. And Marty, I’d ask one thing. Don’t say a word of blame to the Reiters. They’ve got a boy in the second grade.”
“I won’t.” A pause. “I’ll tell them the same.”
“Tell them to bring a cap,” I said, and I don’t know why I said it. It was the kind of thing my father would say.
Two hours later, Marty had called me back twice. He’d reached 11 men, and three had already asked if they could bring their sons.
By Friday evening my phone held two dozen messages, and I had stopped trying to answer them one by one.
Friday at six I walked into the store myself.
I want to say a word about that, because the easy version skips it. A small mean part of me wanted Kyle Reiter to open his door at nine and find a crowd on his sidewalk, and know what it felt like to be in the wrong.
But my father didn’t raise me to ambush people. He raised me to look them in the eye.
The bell on the door jingled the way it has since 1979. Shannon Reiter was at the register, a small, freckled woman with her hair in a clip. Her son Mason was down the paint aisle with a push broom as tall as he was, sweeping the same square foot of floor over and over.
“Lori.” She straightened. “Kyle told me. I want you to know, I’m so sorry about your dad. We both are. We sent a card.”