The Tuesday Night Bingo Ban That Backfired
We crossed the lot together, an old sailor and a short woman in a navy coat, the cage held between us like a stretcher, and as we came around the corner of the building, I stopped.
Somebody had strung orange extension cords the length of the rafters and hung a dozen work lights from the beams. (They had found the extension cord. I’d like to say that was no small accomplishment.) Rudy had backed his truck up to one end and set four propane heaters on the tailgate, all roaring. Bev had set out the pie and, God bless her, a second pie. Forty folding chairs had been carried over from the Methodist church next door, “Zion Methodist” stenciled on the seats.
And at the biggest picnic table, beside a coffee can with a slot cut in the lid, there was an empty chair with a card propped on it. The card said, in Tommy Kessler’s lowercase, “maxines table.”
I could not have said a word.
Forty-one people turned around in their chairs. I saw Alma wrapped in two blankets in a lawn chair with her tank beside her. I saw Kyle and Tasha Burke, the young couple who had started coming in September, their small boy on Kyle’s knee, waving a daubing pen. I saw Rudy stand, take off his seed cap, and hold it over his heart as if we were about to say the pledge.
Nobody applauded. They had better sense than that.
Bev took my arm and said in her ordinary voice, “We borrowed the cards from the Methodist Women. They’ve got sixty sets in a tub from the Lenten luncheon. You’ll have to stamp your own stars. Sit down.”
I sat. Orville set the cage on its stand and put his hand on the brass handle.
I opened the coffee can. Someone had already put in a ten-dollar bill and a note: “Pack one, Rudy.” I pulled out the Methodist cards and began, as I had for twenty-five years, to hand them down the table, stamping a small star on each free space as it passed through my hands. We were, to a person, in strict compliance with the notice. I would have it read into the minutes.
It was then, as I handed Alma her pack and tapped the table twice, that I heard the side door of the Legion hall open, and footsteps on the gravel, and a voice I knew say, high and tight and rather frightened, “What on earth is going on out here?”
Darla stood at the edge of the light with her clipboard against her chest.
She still had her smock on. There was a smear of cobalt blue on her cheek, and her hair had come halfway out of its clip. Behind her in the doorway stood six women in aprons holding paintbrushes, one of them with a plastic cup of wine. They were the whole of Opening Night. They had paid thirty-five dollars each, and they were looking across the gravel at forty-one people, four propane heaters, and a wire bingo cage as if they had opened the wrong door at a wedding.
“This is an unauthorized event,” said Darla. Her voice cracked on “unauthorized.”
“Evening, ma’am,” Orville said, with perfect courtesy. “This is the Post 318 pavilion, built in 1998 by the members. The notice says Maxine is suspended from bingo at the Post. She’s been at that table four minutes and I don’t believe she’s set foot in your building.”
“The notice means the building.”