The Cooler on the Courthouse Bench

The Deputy

I heard the courthouse door open behind me, and my stomach dropped a little. It was Ray, the deputy who runs the metal detector, coming down the steps with his thumbs hooked in his duty belt.

Ray is in his fifties. His kids rode my bus for years, all three of them.

He’s a big quiet man who used to coach junior high wrestling, and I had no idea in that minute what he was going to say.

I thought he might tell Earl to clear out. I thought he might tell me I couldn’t be feeding people on county property. I got ready to be polite about it and not budge an inch.

“Morning, Earl,” Ray said.

“Morning, Ray.”

Ray looked in the cooler, then at me. “Diane, you running a lunch counter now?”

“My daughter just got married,” I said. “We had extra.”

Ray nodded slowly, like that made all the sense in the world. “Earl’s all right,” he told me.

“He worked at the co-op elevator for nineteen years. Back gave out on him. He sits here in the daytime because it’s quiet and nobody bothers him.”

“I sleep in the Methodist basement at night,” Earl said, “when they’ve got the cots out. They don’t open it in the daytime.”

I didn’t know the Methodist church put cots out. I’ve lived in this county my whole life and I didn’t know that. I felt a little ashamed about it, standing there in my good blouse.

Ray looked at the pan of scotcheroos. “Are those the ones with the chocolate and butterscotch on top?”

“They are,” I said. “Take one.”

He took one. He ate it in two bites right there on the sidewalk, said, “Congratulations to Kelsey,” and went back inside to his metal detector without another word. That’s Ray.

I closed the lid halfway so the sun wouldn’t get at the potato salad. “Earl, I have to go to a steakhouse now, apparently,” I said. “Would you watch my cooler for me? It was my husband’s, and I’d like it back.”

He sat up straighter. “Nobody will touch it,” he said. “You have my word on that.”

He said it like I’d handed him a real job. I believe that in some way I had.

When I turned around, they were all still watching from the top of the steps.

Kelsey in her short white dress. Tyler in his gray suit. And Gail in her black dress, with her arms crossed tight across her chest.

Gail didn’t say a word. Neither did I. I walked back up those steps, took my daughter’s arm, and we all crossed the square together without anybody mentioning the cooler at all.