By noon she had a blister on her right palm through the glove, and she wrapped it with electrical tape from Mike’s toolbox and kept going. She did not complain once.
Part of me, a small mean part I would not want my pastor to see, was glad.
Eight years I had stood in that heat while she sat in a lawn chair with the cash box in her lap and the canopy shading her and a lemonade sweating on the table.
About one o’clock I went and stood beside her and took the paddle for two batches so she could sit down and drink some water.
She looked at me like she did not know what to make of it. Neither did I.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Your shoulder will thank you tomorrow,” I said, and she laughed a little, the first time all day.
At closing on Friday, Logan counted out loud. He took out the two hundred dollar bank and counted the rest, fourteen hundred and sixty dollars.
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The tick marks added up to the same number, to the dollar. He was so proud of that he showed it to three people.
He wrote fourteen sixty on the sheet. I initialed it. He initialed it.
Tricia stood over by the kettle cleaning the paddle and did not come over to look, and I did not ask her to.
That night I lay in bed and told Mike about the funnel cake, and he was quiet for so long I thought he had gone to sleep.
“He’s a good kid,” Mike finally said. “Don’t you let him get hurt by this.”
“I’m trying not to,” I said. It was the most honest thing I could say.
Saturday is the big day, with the parade down Main Street at eleven. It was crisp and sunny and blue, the kind of October morning that makes you forgive Indiana for February.
The leaves on the courthouse maples were orange and red and falling into the apple butter kettles if you did not keep a lid handy.
I had my mustard-yellow flannel on and my hair up in a bun that was coming apart by nine.
Logan had on the same green hoodie, which Tricia said he had slept in, and which he denied. Tricia had her ponytail and her black apron and electrical tape on her hand.
From the minute the parade went by, the line at our stand did not stop. Logan counted every bill out loud.
“Twenty, out of a twenty for a ten, ten back.” He counted so many times that people in line started counting along with him for fun.
Every hour the box got heavier. Logan banded the twenties in hundreds and put them in the bottom tray, the way I showed him.
I did not say anything to him about the number. I did not have to. He was keeping a running total in his head anyway, the same as his grandpa.
About three o’clock he said, “We’re going to beat Friday by a lot.”
“Saturday’s always the big one,” I said, and from the kettle, Tricia dropped her paddle on the pavement.
She picked it up, wiped it, and kept stirring. She did not look at us.
At four o’clock I did not walk to the bus barn. Kim Hadley drove my shuttle, and I stayed at the table.
Tricia looked over once at four thirty, like she was waiting for me to leave, and then she went back to stirring.