The Cornstalks I Tied Down Main

The Map On The Window

The map was taped inside the committee office window, and I stood on the sidewalk and read it twice before I let myself believe my name was not on it.

Every fall the downtown committee hangs a hand-drawn map of the square in that glass, the week before the festival. Everybody is penciled into the block they have agreed to dress up.

The bank corner. The old Rexall. The benches by the war memorial.

For nine years my name sat in the same spot, the east-side lampposts, in my sister Rochelle’s careful print.

This year the east side said “open.” Underneath, in the notes column, she had written one line.

“Patty says she is too stretched this year to commit.”

I had not said that. I had not said one word to anybody about this year.

I was still in my apron with the flour on it from the morning bake, standing there reading my own sister tell the town I had begged off.

A truck slowed at the light and somebody waved. I waved back without feeling my own hand.

Rochelle keeps the committee books and does the map because she is the one who stays organized. I am the one with the pruning shears and the baling twine.

That had been the deal for most of our lives. She writes it down, I make it look like something. Nobody ever had to say it out loud.

I went inside and pulled a sheet of rolls out of habit, though they were already done, and I set them on the rack and burned two fingers doing it.

Then I called her. It rang four times and went to the machine, her bright committee voice telling me to leave it after the beep.

I did not leave anything. What was I going to say, that I wanted my name put back on a list?

That was the whole ugly size of it. A list. A piece of posterboard in a window.

I could hear myself saying it and I could hear how small it would sound, and I hung up before the beep ran out.

The bell over the door went and Mrs. Teeters came in for her usual half dozen. I boxed them and made change for a ten and said the pies would be ready Thursday.

The whole time the map was burning a hole in the back of my eyes. Too stretched to commit. Like I was a woman who had quit on her own town.

I locked up at two, which I never do on a festival week, and I drove the six miles out to the home place with my hands tight on the wheel.

I was not going to call Rochelle back. I was not going to march into her kitchen and have it out across her clean counter.

I knew exactly how that went, had known since we were girls. She would cry first and be sorry second, and somehow I would end up apologizing.

So I did the math on the drive instead. The festival opened at eight the next morning.

That gave me one night.