The Receipts I Pinned to My Porch Rail

“Nobody wants anything from you, Mr. Tauber,” I said. “It’s you who said it was worth zero. I only wanted to hear what you’d say if somebody asked you twice.”

“You wrote twenty-two thousand four hundred dollars,” I said. “On your own drawing. For the porch. Then you told me it was a gift.”

“I did.”

“Which was it?”

He was quiet a long time. Then he said, “My grandmother had a porch in Youngstown. When she died I sold the house in a week. Cash buyer. I didn’t even go inside.”

He said it to his shoes.

“Because you know what a porch is,” I said, “or you wouldn’t have put it in the plans.”

I told him then what Jerome had priced, and what Gordon Lyle had written, and about Naomi Yoder and the credit union.

I did not raise my voice. I have driven a bus. I know how to say a hard thing so the back row hears.

“Here is what I would do, if I were you,” I said. “I would sell me this house. At the appraisal. And I would take off the twenty-two thousand four hundred that you already wrote on your own drawing, because that’s what you said a porch was worth, and you can’t unsay it. That leaves sixty-three thousand six hundred. Naomi will lend it to me.”

“And the others?”

“The Okafors have two boys. Mrs. Anselm is eighty-four. Mr. Tauber, they don’t need a porch drawn on a tablet. They need a rent they can pay.”

He sat there a minute and a half, which is a long time on a front step.

“Can I think about it?” he said.

“You can,” I said. “Take as long as you like, up to Saturday. After that I’m afraid I’ll be busy.”

Chapter 8

He called on Friday, at seven in the morning. Not me, but Naomi Yoder, who told me later that he had said only one thing before he asked what time the credit union opened.

“Tell her yes,” he said. “And tell her I’ll bring my own pen.”

We signed on the porch.

That was Naomi’s idea, and Marlene Cobb’s, and honestly I think everybody’s. It was the last Saturday of September, a cool bright morning, and by ten o’clock the sidewalk was full again. Nobody had sent for them. They came because the Courier said it was happening.

Lenora Beck brought her notary stamp. Naomi brought the papers in the same navy folder. Jerome Pickett brought a card table, and his two boys, who were nine and seven, to carry folding chairs.

Mr. Tauber came at ten-thirty. He wore a sport coat, not a vest. He walked up the steps through the crowd, and I saw people draw their feet in for him, not unkind, just careful.

He signed at the card table, in front of everyone. His hand was steady.

When he had signed the last page he put down his pen and looked at the bare rail, and the swing.

“Mrs. Kimbrell,” he said. “I owe you an apology. I said a thing in your kitchen that was wrong, and I said it knowing it was wrong. I priced your porch for my own plans and I told you it was worth nothing. It was worth what I wrote. It was worth more.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“I’m told that’s not enough.”

“It’s a start.”