The Harvest Dinner I Set in the Shed

Eighteen Men At My Table

The first pickup turned down our lane at six minutes past noon. I know, because I was watching the clock on the shed wall like it owed me money.

It was Old Dale’s rusted Ford. And behind it came another, and another.

A whole string of them, raising dust down the section line. Every one of them turning in at our place. Not one went on to Faye’s.

They came into the shed blinking at the light and the red cloth and the smell. Big dusty men, suddenly shy, the way men get around a set table.

Old Dale took off his cap at the door. The rest of them followed him. Eighteen caps coming off in a row, like at the flag.

“Well now,” Dale said, looking down the tables. “Well now, Sheila.”

He said my name. First thing through the door, he said my name.

I had to turn to the roasters so he would not see my face do what it did. I blamed the steam. There was steam enough to blame.

They washed up at the trough Roy had set by the door. Then they sat.

I started carrying. The beef and the corn and the potatoes. Megan poured the tea.

For a while there was only the sound of eighteen men eating hard after a morning of dust. No sound in the world like it.

Then it started. “This your corn, Sheila?” from a young one down the end.

“It is,” I said. “Off the half acre out back.”

“These your beans?”

“Those are mine. Put them up in July.”

“Sheila, is this the sour cream raisin?” Dale again, holding up a forkful like evidence.

“It is, Dale. Made it for you last night.”

One by one, down two long tables, the men asked whose food it was. And one by one I told them it was mine.

And they thanked me. By name. Each of them.

Thank you, Sheila. Good eating, Sheila. Best dinner on the circuit, Sheila.

Eleven years of standing behind a roaster nobody saw. It all came due at once, in a dusty shed, on a Saturday noon.

I had to keep walking to the serving line so my hands would have something to do besides shake. I refilled the corn that did not need refilling.

A big fellow named Jeff, who runs cattle up by Bruce, called me back as I passed. He had his plate cleaned twice over.

“My wife has been coming to this bee eight years,” he said. “She always said the dinner was the best part. She is going to want to know whose it really was.”

“It is mine,” I said again, because I had not gotten tired of saying it yet. I do not think I ever will.

“Then you tell her it was Sheila,” he said. “I will make sure she knows.”