Elmo didn’t quit either. He and Dolly went round all afternoon in the sunshine, pressing for the second pan, until the last cane went through a little before three.
Then he sat on his bucket in the shade of the mill, and the old men came and sat with him.
Around three, Brother Tim came over to the porch table where I was writing names on the list. He watched me a minute. Then he said, real quiet, “Did Pearl ever hear anything from the committee?”
“No sir,” I said. “Mom asked me not to make a fuss. So I didn’t.”
He nodded. “She’s a better Christian than I am,” he said. “I’d have made a fuss.”
Get a new story in your inbox every morning.
Facebook doesn’t show you every story we post. Our free newsletter does. Join 2,500+ readers.
“No you wouldn’t,” I said. “You’d have come up here and eaten biscuits. Just like you’re doing.”
He laughed and took another one.
The second batch came off at twenty past five, with the sun still on the ridge lighting the steam gold. Fifty-four pints. Every name on the list got one, and that was all the molasses there was.
A hundred and seven pints of Pearl Seay’s sorghum, pressed in her own yard on Daddy’s mill with Elmo’s mule. All of it sold.
When I counted the coffee can on the kitchen table, there was one thousand four hundred and sixty dollars in it.
Brother Tim was getting ready to leave. Mom took the coffee can from me, put the lid on it, and walked it out to him at the porch steps herself. She put it in his hands.
“For the roof,” she said. “Don’t you put my name on anything. Just fix the roof.”
He looked at the can and then at her. I think he wanted to say a whole sermon. He didn’t. He said, “Yes ma’am,” and he hugged her, and he went down the drive with that coffee can held against his chest like a baby.
The yard was emptying out by then. Curtis was putting out the fire. Ike was walking Elmo and Dolly down to the road, because Elmo wouldn’t let anybody drive him.
Mom was scraping the empty pan with her paddle, getting up the last of the molasses stuck to the baffles. She’d save it in a coffee cup for her own biscuits. The scrapings were her favorite part.
That’s when I saw Tiffany walking up the drive.
She was walking alone, slow, the way you walk up a hill you don’t want to climb.
She had on her good cardigan from the bazaar, and she was carrying two empty quart jars, one in each hand, the big ones from the church kitchen.
Ronnie saw her too. He put down the maul and went to stand beside her at the edge of the yard, and I watched him put his hand on her back. She didn’t look at him. She was looking at my mother.
Mom kept scraping the pan. She didn’t stop when Tiffany came up, and she didn’t hurry, either. She just finished the stroke she was on and set the paddle down on the stone.
“Pearl,” Tiffany said. Her voice was thin. “I came to see if you had any molasses left for the church kitchen. For the Wednesday supper. The cupboard’s out.” She held up the jars. “I’ll pay whatever you’re charging.”
There was a long quiet in the yard. A few people who were still folding chairs stopped folding them.