The Green Ledger and the Furnace Fund

The Porch

On the Saturday before the meeting, I went to Warren’s house after supper.

His wife, Connie, came to the door in a cardigan. She looked at me, and something in her face told me she had been waiting for somebody to come, and had hoped it would be me.

“He’s on the back porch,” she said. “He’s been out there every night this week. Go on through.”

He was sitting on the glider with a blanket over his knees, in the dark, with a cold cup of coffee on the rail beside him.

“Vernon,” he said.

“Warren.”

“They dropped my agency in July,” he said.

I waited.

“The carrier. My biggest one. Thirty years I’ve written their policies, and they sent a letter, a form letter, and it said they were consolidating in the region.” He laughed, and it was not a laugh. “I had four people on payroll. Betsy has been with me since she was nineteen.”

“Warren.”

“I thought I’d bridge it. Sixty days. I told myself it was a loan I’d pay back before anyone looked.” He rubbed his face with both hands. “The money was just sitting there, Vernon. Fourteen thousand dollars doing nothing. I told myself it was just sitting there.”

“It wasn’t sitting there. It was Orville’s.”

“I know whose it was.” His voice cracked and he stopped. “I know whose it was. You think I don’t know whose it was? I carry it into my office every morning.”

“It’s gone, then,” I said.

“Most of it. There’s about two thousand left in the account. The rest went to payroll and the carrier premiums I owed.” He looked at me. “I was going to have it back by Christmas. I swear on my mother.”

“Don’t swear on your mother.”

He nodded. He understood.

“I’m not going to ask you to say it to the sheriff,” I said. “I’m not going to send the paper a letter, though I want you to know I wrote one in my head and it was very good.”

“There’s a church meeting tomorrow night, Warren. Ina Dunagan is going to speak. She’s got Ardith’s book. I would like for you to be the one who stands up first.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because my mother will be in the third pew.” He said it flat and quiet, and it was the truest thing he had said to me all month.

“Then let her hear it from you.”

He looked out at the dark yard. He did not say yes. He did not say no.

“I’m not here to win, Warren,” I said. “I’m here to get you back.”

The Quarterly Meeting

We hold the quarterly business meeting on the last Sunday evening of the quarter, after a fellowship supper, in the sanctuary.

That Sunday, the twenty-fifth, there were nearly ninety people. I have not seen that many at a business meeting since we voted on the new parking lot, and that was a fight.

Ina came in on Maxine’s arm. She had her good gray dress on, and a black purse over her wrist, and she carried the red coffee can in both hands against her chest.

They sat in the second pew, on the left, right across the aisle from the third.

Lois Teague sat in the third pew. She had her hymnal in both hands, like always. Her son Warren was in the front, in the chairman’s seat, behind the little table with the gavel on it.

He did not look at me. He looked at his agenda.

Then Warren cleared his throat. “The finance report,” he said. His voice was steady. It was his chairman voice.

He read the numbers. The general fund. The missions offering. The building reserve, which he said was healthy. And then, a little too smoothly, “And the Dunagan memorial gifts, which have been moved into a managed account for the good of the congregation.”

Somebody in the back coughed.

He moved right along. “Is there any other business?”