The Hams I Carried Down the Road

The First Lane

The first place was the Hoffmans. The old couple who gave me their spoiled apples all summer. Merle and Edith, married since Eisenhower, Merle on oxygen now and Edith half blind.

I came up their porch steps and knocked, and stood there with a twenty-pound ham in my arms like a swaddled thing. When Edith opened the door and saw me, her face did not know what to make of it.

“Verna, honey, what in the world.”

“I cured hams this year, Miss Edith.” My voice shook and I let it. “My dad’s recipe. My grandpa’s, really.”

“And I’ve got more than one woman could ever eat. I thought of your apples all summer long. I wanted you to have the first one.”

I put it in her arms. She was not strong enough to hold it, and Merle came shuffling with his little oxygen cart trailing him.

Together, the two of them, they held that ham up between them like it was a baby being christened. Edith’s chin came apart.

“Nobody has brought us a thing since the spring,” she said. “Since the church ladies at Easter. Nobody comes down this far anymore.”

Merle put his dry old hand flat on the paper. “You cured this yourself. In the old house.” His voice whistled with the oxygen. “Your dad would set down and cry, girl.”

I did not stay long. You do not stay long when a thing is that full.

I went back down their steps and took up my cart handle. I was most of the way to the road before I let myself feel my own face. It was wet, and the cold made it ache, and I did not care one bit.