Twelve Chairs and a Desk

Spring

Patti’s husband, Jeff, has run a farm drainage tile outfit for thirty years.

He needs a strong back every spring, as soon as the ground dries enough to get the machines in the fields. Patti mentioned Tyler. Jeff called him that Monday.

Tyler started that week. He came home every night muddy to the knees, sunburned, and so tired he fell asleep on the couch with his boots still on. He was happier than I had seen him since high school.

One Saturday at the end of March, Sierra came to find me at the kitchen table with a plastic bag from the uniform store in Marion.

Inside were two pairs of navy scrubs, required for her clinicals, the first nursing uniform she had ever owned.

“They’re too long,” she said, embarrassed. “They only had regular length and I’m five-two. I was going to take them to the dry cleaner in town, but they want twelve dollars a pair.” She hesitated. “I don’t know how to do anything like that.”

I looked at her standing there holding those scrubs, and I thought about a little girl sitting outside a locked sewing room listening to the machine. I put down my coffee.

“Come on,” I said. “Bring them in the sewing room. I’m going to show you, and then you’re going to do the second pair yourself. That’s how I teach it.”