The Saturday Cash Box at the Festival

That brings me back to five o’clock, the sun still on the courthouse lawn, the parade crowd moving toward the street dance, and Logan with the gray metal cash box open on the folding table, counting out loud.

He set the two hundred dollar bank aside first, the way he had on Friday. Then he started with the twenties.

He counted under his breath when he was being careful, and out loud when he was sure, and he was sure.

“Thirteen hundred. Fourteen. Fifteen.”

Tricia scraped the last batch onto the screen and turned the burner off.

The roar of the propane stopped, and suddenly you could hear Logan’s voice clear across our end of the square.

“Sixteen hundred. Seventeen. Eighteen.”

She came around the table slowly, wiping her hands on her apron. She stood at the end of the table.

I did not look at her. I looked at the bills, the way I had promised myself I would.

“Nineteen hundred. Two thousand. Twenty-one hundred.” He had the fives and ones left, and he counted those fast. “Twenty-one forty. Two thousand one hundred forty dollars, not counting the bank.”

He checked it against the tick marks, the large bags and the small bags. A hundred sixty-eight large at ten dollars, ninety-two small at five.

Two thousand one hundred forty. To the dollar again. He looked up at me with that big proud grin.

Then the grin slipped a little, and his forehead wrinkled up, the way it does when the answer on his algebra homework does not match the back of the book.

“Aunt Jolene,” he said, “why is it so much more than Mom always said?”

I felt the air go out of me. I had promised Mike. I had promised myself.

I had not planned for the boy to ask it, only for him to count it, and I had been a fool not to see that a boy who keeps a running total in his head would do the subtraction too.

“Saturdays are different every year, bud,” I said, and I heard how weak it sounded. “The weather was good. The parade was big.”

But he was not looking at me anymore. He was looking at his mother.

“Last year at supper you said it was slow,” he said to her.

“You said six-something. You said it was the worst Saturday Grandpa’s stand ever had. I remember because Dad said maybe it was time to sell the kettle.”

Tricia’s face did something I had never seen it do. It just came apart.

She put her hand over her mouth and turned around and walked behind the canopy, back where we keep the empty sugar sacks and the spare propane tank.

Logan looked at me, scared, sixteen years old and suddenly about eight. “Did I do something wrong?”

“No,” I said. “You counted right. Go on and see your mom.”

I did not follow him. I want that clear. I stayed at the table with my hand flat on the cash box, the way Mike puts his hands flat on things, and I let the two of them have the back of that canopy to themselves.

But it is a small stand, and the propane was off, and the street dance band had not started yet. I heard most of it whether I wanted to or not.

I am going to tell you what I heard because it is the part that changed my mind about a few things.