The Coffee Can at the Station Door

He did that for eleven days. Nobody asked him to and he never complained once.

His brother Rodney came down twice. I want to be fair to Rodney, so I will say that.

He brought Bryce a Kansas State cap and a set of walkie-talkies, and he made Josh eat a sandwich at midnight.

Rodney is seven years older than Josh. When their mother got sick, it was Rodney who quit junior college and came home.

He has been treasurer of the firefighters association for nine years. He does not lose track of a dollar.

On the third day in Wichita, a woman from the hospital billing office came and sat with me in the family lounge. She was kind.

She showed me what Josh’s plan would pay and what it wouldn’t, and where our out-of-pocket limit was. Seven thousand dollars for the year.

“You’ll likely reach that this week,” she said. “After that, the plan covers the rest of the year’s care at a hundred percent. That’s the good news.”

It was good news. I knew families who had nothing. But I did the math while she talked, the way you do after eleven years of running a cafeteria budget, and seven thousand dollars was about what we had in the world.

And the limit did not cover the gas. It did not cover my missed days at school, or the motel nights, or the drives to Wichita twice a week for dressing checks until summer.

I did not tell anybody that. I am not a person who tells people things like that.

The first supper

It was Earl Haugen’s idea. Earl has been fire chief for nineteen years.

He is sixty-one and has gray hair he keeps short, and he speaks slowly, and when he says something the whole room tends to wait until he is finished.

He called me in Wichita on the fifth day. “The boys want to do a chili supper at the station,” he said. “Saturday after next. Free-will donation. Would that be all right with you and Josh?”

I said yes. I could not say much else. He said the association would put it on, so it would be under their name, and Rodney would do the money, the way he always did for the pancake feed and the Fourth of July dance.

I was not there. I was in Wichita, sitting by Bryce while he slept. Josh went, because Bryce made him. “Tell them thank you,” Bryce said. “Tell Dale and Mike I said thank you.”

Josh called me afterward from the parking lot of the station. I could hear somebody stacking chairs behind him. His voice was thick.

“Cass, the whole town came. Folding tables clear back to the doors. Marge Olson made forty cinnamon rolls. The Methodist women ran the kitchen. Earl stood at the door with a coffee can the whole night.” He stopped. “Thirty-one hundred dollars. They counted it twice.”

I sat in that hospital lounge and cried harder than I had since the fire. Not because of the money, exactly. Because of the coffee can.

I could see it at the door of that bay, and every farmer and teacher and kid in town putting something in.

That money was going to cover the gas and the motel and my missed days. It was going to let me quit adding numbers in my head at two in the morning.

Two weeks later, Rodney stood on my porch.