The Trunk I Set at the Far End

The Sign Up Sheet

The sign-up sheet was taped to the cinderblock wall outside the fellowship hall, and I ran my finger down it twice before I let myself believe what I was seeing.

Twenty-two trunks. Every family at Prairie Chapel that owned a vehicle and a roll of masking tape had put their name on a line.

The Hollisters. The Deckers. Pastor Ray and Miss Connie. The whole youth group wedged into two rows.

My grandkids were not on it. Mick and Jo were not anywhere on that sheet, and I had signed them up myself eleven days earlier.

I know I did it, because I remember Jo holding the pen and insisting she print her own name, the J going backward the way it always does, the little tail of it curling the wrong direction like a hook.

I stood in that cold hallway in my barn coat and I read all twenty-two lines a third time. There was no line with a backward J.

There was no Mick. The sheet had been reprinted on fresh paper, and the fresh paper did not have my grandbabies on it.

The furnace kicked on somewhere behind the wall, and I could smell the coffee the Tuesday ladies always leave going in the big silver urn.

I folded my hands in front of me so they would stop shaking.

I am fifty-two years old and I have been coming to that church since before some of those youth-group kids were born.

I knew exactly who reprinted the sheet. I did not have to guess, and I did not have to ask.

My stepdaughter’s handwriting was at the top of it, where it said Trunk or Treat, Saturday, five to seven, and under that, in her round careful letters, Coordinated by Shanna Vint.