A Hay Wagon Castle for Eli

Kristy

I want to be fair to Kristy. I have thought a great deal about how to be fair to her, because she is family, and because she is not a mean woman. She just did a mean thing.

When Jesse’s mom passed six years ago, it was Kristy who kept Arnie fed for a year.

Casseroles every Tuesday and Friday. She drove out in the snow to do it. I have never forgotten that.

But last October, something happened at the trunk-or-treat that shook her. A man backing his car out early, before the event was over, didn’t see a little girl in a bumblebee costume behind him.

He stopped in time. Barely. The girl was fine, but her mother screamed, and everybody in that lot heard it.

Kristy was the one standing closest. She saw the bumper stop a foot from the child.

A couple of weeks later the church’s insurance man came out and sat down with the council.

He talked about liability and claims and what would happen to the church if a child got hurt at a church event.

Kristy told me later he scared her half to death. She went home that night and couldn’t sleep, thinking about that bumper and that little girl. She is a mother of two herself.

So this year she made rules. Cars parked and locked by two-thirty, no moving until five.

Cones at both ends of the lane. And nothing sticking out into the walkway. No chairs, no wagons, no strollers parked.

I understood that. I still understand it. What I did not understand was looking at a seven-year-old boy who had been waiting since August and telling him, in front of the whole congregation, that he could come through with a bucket.

She never once asked me what we could work out. She never said, maybe we could put him at the end, or maybe we could find a corner. She just said no, pleasantly, and turned to the Halvorsens.

Monday

Monday at noon, Jesse came in from the barn for dinner. On a dairy farm, dinner is the noon meal, and supper is at night, and I will not be talked out of that by anybody.

Jesse ate half his plate, then set his fork down, took his phone out of his shirt pocket, and called his sister.

He put it on speaker and set it on the table between the salt and the butter.

“Kris, it’s me,” he said. “About Eli and Saturday.”

“Jess, I already talked to Megan about it,” she said. “I feel bad. I do. But I can’t make an exception. If I let one family put a chair out in the lane, then the next family wants to put out a lawn chair for grandma.”

“Eli isn’t a lawn chair,” Jesse said.

“That’s not what I meant and you know it.” She sighed. “Rules are rules, Jess. The council voted. I’m not going to stand in front of the insurance man and tell him I broke my own rule.”

Jesse looked at the phone a long while. Then he said, “All right, Kris,” and he hung up.

He did not raise his voice once. I don’t think I have ever heard Jesse raise his voice at his sister in his life.

People have asked me since why we didn’t just go to Pastor Elwin, or to the church council, or make a fuss on the church Facebook. I have thought about that too.

The answer is simple. Kristy ran that event with the council’s blessing, and the rule was written down, and I was not going to start a fight in a church parking lot in front of a hundred children. Not over candy. Not with family.

Eli did not need to win an argument. Eli needed a place to sit. Those are two different things, and Jesse understood that before I did.

He pushed his plate back and stood up. “Dad,” he said. “You got time this afternoon?”