The Supper in the Old Fire Station

“You changed your shoes,” Homer said, and went to get his coffee.

It went like that for the next half hour. One man at a time. They’d stop by Dad’s chair with a plate or a cup and say a date and a truck and a problem, and Dad would nod and say what he’d done, and they’d move on.

Cotton said, “The brakes on the Ford. Spring of ’86. You drove it yourself to make sure.”

Leroy said, “The ladder hydraulics. 2001. You stayed until four.”

One of the men from the next town over, a tall fellow named Orrin, said, “You don’t know me, but you fixed our pump at a fire in ’92 when ours went down. You were in the parking lot at the elevator with a flashlight in your mouth.”

Dad looked at him a long time. “Gray Chevy,” he said. “Your pump packing was shot.”

“That’s right,” Orrin said, and laughed, and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, and went and sat with Vern.

By the time the first roaster was empty, the side door had opened a dozen more times. More men in navy jackets. More wives.

A few widows of firemen, who came in carrying a casserole each, because a Lutheran widow does not walk into a supper empty-handed.

There were too many people for the tables now, and Cotton and Ray kept opening Legion chairs, and folks ate standing up along the walls with their plates in their hands, and nobody minded. It was loud, the good kind of loud.

I counted at one point, standing by the coffee urn with Mabel. Thirty-eight retired firemen. Some of them had banquet tickets in their jacket pockets, I found out later. They’d simply decided they’d rather be here.

“Your brother’s going to feel that,” Mabel said, watching the room.

“I know,” I said. “I didn’t want him to.”

“I know you didn’t,” she said. “But a list is a list, and a room is a room. People get to choose where they eat.” She refilled my cup. “He’ll be all right. He was a good boy in second grade. He’ll be a good man about this.”

Around half past seven, Dad got up to stretch his knees and went back to the pumper.

Elsie was still in the cab, she’d refused to leave it, and he stood on the running board and showed her how the pump panel worked and which gauge was which.

While he was over there, two more men came in. That made forty.

When Dad came back down off the truck and turned toward the tables, every man in that bay stood up.

Nobody said to. Nobody counted to three. Homer stood first, I think, or maybe it was Vern, using his cane and the edge of the table.

And then the chairs scraped, all of them, forty old men getting to their feet on bad knees in navy jackets in the honey light.

Dad stopped walking. He stood there in the middle of the bay in his gray work jacket, with his hands at his sides, and looked at them. All those men he’d kept on the road. All those nights on the legal pad.

He didn’t say anything. He couldn’t. He put one hand on the back of the nearest chair and just held on.

Then Vern said, “Sit down, Elwood, your beef’s getting cold,” and everybody laughed, and sat down, and Dad sat down too, and wiped his face with his napkin, and went back to eating like nothing had happened.