The Coffee Can at the Station Door

What I could do

I lay awake that night and went through every way it could go.

I could stand up at the next association meeting and say what he did.

I could put it on Facebook, where people would have been on my side in four minutes and said things about Rodney I would have had to sit behind every Sunday.

Every one of those roads ended with Josh and his brother never speaking again, and Bryce growing up without the uncle who bought him walkie-talkies.

But I did not want to roll over either. That money had been given to my son by people who loved him.

It was wrong to take it out of his hands, and I was not going to pretend otherwise.

Around three in the morning, I got up and went down to the kitchen and opened the freezer and looked at the double batch of sloppy joe I had been making when the fire came. Six gallon bags, flat, stacked like books.

I am a school cook. I know what sixty pounds of hamburger costs, and how many cans of beans and onions go with it, and how many people a forty-quart pot feeds.

I could not change what Rodney did. But I could cook.

In the morning, I called the meat locker in Strong City and ordered sixty pounds of ground beef. Then I called Earl.

Earl

He came out to the house instead of talking on the phone.

He drove up in the department pickup and stood in my kitchen in his navy department jacket, and he did not sit down until I made him.

“I didn’t know until it was done,” he said. “I want you to know that, Cassie. I was on the Morris County fire until four in the morning. When I got home, it was in the minutes.”

“I know, Earl.”

“I could have called a special meeting and had it voted back. I thought about it.” He turned his cap in his hands.

“But it would have split the department down the middle. Half of those boys think Rodney’s right about the truck. They’re not wrong about the truck.”

“I’m not asking you to vote anything,” I said. “I want to do another supper. Myself. Not the association’s, mine. I’ll cook it. I’d like to use the bay, if you’ll let me, one more Saturday.”

He looked at me a long time. Earl is not a man who answers things fast. The refrigerator hummed. Upstairs I could hear Bryce talking to Pete, telling him something about a video game.

“You can have the bay,” he said. “And I’ll take the door.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Yes, I do.” He stood up and put his cap back on.

“Cash goes in the can. Checks get written to Cassie Lund, not to the association. I’ll stand there and make sure every dollar goes where people think it’s going. Nobody’s going to wonder about this one.”