The School Kitchen Job I Took to Stay Insured

The Parking Lot

Joan took the scoop out of my hand. She did it so smoothly the kids did not notice, the way you take a knife from a toddler.

“Go on,” she said quietly. “Deb can take the line. Take your break, hon. Take a long one.”

I hung my apron on the hook. I left the hairnet on. I walked out the back door by the dumpsters, and Ron came around the building to meet me.

We sat in his truck in the school parking lot, the big white Ford he uses for work, with the engine off. It smelled like sawdust and coffee and the Copenhagen he swears he quit.

He did not start with an apology. Ron has never started anything with an apology. He started with a number.

“Thirty-eight thousand four hundred dollars,” he said.

I waited.

“That builder out of Salina. The one I framed the two spec houses for last spring. He went under in July. Filed for bankruptcy. He owed me thirty-eight thousand four hundred dollars, and I’m not going to see a dime of it.”

He told me the rest looking straight out the windshield at the school. Lumber prices. The bank line he had drawn down to make payroll in August. The two jobs that had been pushed to spring.

“I’ve got about three months, Tam,” he said. “Three months before I either let the guys go or I lose the business. Maybe four if the Glasco job pays on time.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.

He was quiet so long I thought he would not answer. Then he said, “Because you got your biopsy back the same week I got the letter from the bankruptcy court. I wasn’t going to set that on you too.”

“So you set this on me instead.”

“I know.”

“You took me off your insurance, Ron. The month I got cancer.”

“I know.” His voice cracked on it. “It was the only bill I could touch without letting a man go. I’ve got Cole and three other guys with kids. I went down the list. Everything else was a man’s paycheck.”

“And you thought I’d get Medicaid.”

“Darrell’s wife got it,” he said. “When she had hers. I thought that’s how it worked.”

“Darrell’s wife didn’t have insurance when they found it,” I said. “She went through the free screening at the health department. I had mine on your plan. The nurse told me.”

He put his forehead down on the steering wheel. He stayed that way for a long time.

“Cole knew,” I said. It was not a question. I understood it all at once, the way Cole had looked at the ground.

“I told him not to say anything,” Ron said into the wheel. “He wanted to. He’s been after me every day. I told him it was my place.”

“It was,” I said. “It was your place.”