“It’s nothing personal, Megan,” Kristy said. “The chair just takes up too much room between the cars. He can come through with a bucket like the other kids.”
We were standing on the front steps of St. Paul’s Lutheran after the late service, in the bright cold sun of the Sunday before the trunk-or-treat.
People were coming out behind us, shaking hands with Pastor Elwin and buttoning their coats.
Eli was right beside me. He was holding his bulletin open in both hands like a map, the way he always did, because he liked to follow along with the hymn numbers and check them off.
He heard every word. I knew he did, because his hands went still on the paper, and Eli’s hands are never still. He wheels himself everywhere, and his fingers are always moving.
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I said, “Kristy, he’s been talking about this since August. He wants to hand out candy. He wants to be a knight, like Warren and Pansy get to be every year.”
Kristy is my husband’s older sister. She is thirty-eight, and she has run the church trunk-or-treat for nine years.
She keeps the sign-up sheet on a clipboard with a pen tied to it with yarn.
“I know he does,” she said. “And I’m sorry. But the council and I decided after last year. No chairs, no wagons, nothing parked or sitting in the walkway between the trunks. It’s a safety thing.”
“He’d be at the tailgate,” I said. “Not in the walkway.”
“A tailgate is three feet wide, Megan. A wheelchair sticks out past it. Kids are running both ways in that lane, and cars are parked on both sides. I can’t have it. I’m sorry. He can trick-or-treat with the rest of them.”
She said it pleasantly. That was the part that stayed with me.
She said it the way you would tell someone the potluck was moved to the fellowship hall, and then she turned to say hello to the Halvorsens.
I looked down at Eli. He had folded his bulletin into a small square, and he was looking at the flowerbed by the steps, where the mums were still blooming orange and yellow.
“Come on, buddy,” I said. “Dad’s got the truck warmed up.”
He didn’t say anything. He put his hands on his wheels and rolled himself down the side ramp the church put in when Eli was two.
He did not wait for me to help him. He never does.