The Chili Supper at the Fire Hall

Cooking for a Crowd

People think cooking for 160 is hard. It is not hard, if you cook for 300 every morning.

I figured on six ounces of chili a person, with seconds for the farmers. That came to about 45 pounds of ground chuck, which I ordered from the meat locker in the next town over because they gave me a price.

Twelve number ten cans of kidney beans. Eight of crushed tomatoes.

The fire hall had two big steel roasters, the eighteen-quart kind, and I borrowed a third from the school just in case. I browned the meat in batches in the hall kitchen all Saturday afternoon.

Cornbread I made in full sheet pans, three of them, from my mother’s recipe, the one with a little sugar that the old men always pretend not to like.

The church ladies brought pies. Eleven of them. Apple, cherry, two pecan, a sugar cream, which if you are not from Indiana you have never had, and which is the best pie on the earth.

Nola brought three pies by herself, plus four gallons of sweet tea, plus her calculator. “Old habit,” she said, and patted her apron pocket.

Clint set up the folding tables in rows. He and two of the volunteer firemen moved the big red engine out of its spot and parked it in the open bay, nose toward the meeting room, with the overhead door rolled up behind it.

“For the kids,” Bill Branch said. “They always want to see the truck.”

Wade had not let go of a piece of paper all afternoon. He had it folded in his back pocket, and every time I asked him what it was, he said, “It’s private.”

The Supper

By five o’clock the line went out the door and down the sidewalk.

It was a March evening, cold but not bitter, the kind of evening where the sky stays light longer than you expect.

Nadine came at a quarter till. She had on a red cardigan, and her short ash-blonde hair was done the way she wears it for church. She did not look at me right away. She hung up her coat and washed her hands at the kitchen sink.

“Where do you want me?” she asked.

“Right here,” I said, and I handed her the ladle.

I stood beside her in my gray hooded sweatshirt with an apron over it, my hair pulled back in a ponytail, holding a stack of foam bowls. The two steel roasters sat in front of us on the long serving table, with the tray of cornbread next to them.

Clint had Josie and Wade back in the kitchen, buttering cornbread squares and filling paper cups with crackers.

Pastor Mike from our church said a short blessing before we started, standing by the coffee urn with his hat in his hands. He thanked God for the food, the hands, the firemen, and the neighbors. Then he said amen and got in line like everybody else.

Early in the line came Earl Lacey.

He was a gray-haired farmer in a canvas coat that had seen a lot of winters. He touched the brim of his cap when he got to the table, and he held out his bowl to my aunt.

Nadine ladled the chili in. Her hands were steady then.

“I’m Earl,” he said to her. “You’re the one that made that page.”

“I am,” Nadine said, and she smiled.

“Well, I’m obliged to you,” Earl said. “My wife and I, we lost a barn in ’96. Nobody made a page then. I’m glad you did it.” He nodded toward me. “I hope it got those babies some new beds.”

Nadine’s ladle stopped halfway back to the roaster.

“Yes,” she said. “It helped.”

I handed Earl a square of cornbread. I did not say a word.