The Lawn Chairs Facing the Road

The Man Who Remembered

On the first Tuesday of October, I was in the kitchen with my hands in a bowl of bread dough when the phone rang on the wall.

“Mrs. Hanes,” said a man’s voice, slow and careful. “This is Vern Tolliver, down at Tolliver Camper Sales in Jacksonville. You may not remember me.”

“I remember you, Vern. You walked us through every cupboard.”

“Yes, ma’am.” There was a pause. “Mrs. Hanes, I think I’m standing next to your camper.”

I wiped the dough off my hands one finger at a time and leaned against the counter. “Tell me.”

He told me the way a careful man tells something he is ashamed of. He had been gone three weeks, a dealer auction in Indianapolis and then a new grandbaby in Ohio, and he came back Monday morning and walked the back lot before opening.

“There was a fifth wheel behind the shop that I didn’t recognize as a purchase,” he said. “Cream with a brown stripe. I thought, that looks like the one I sold the Hanes couple in April. I walked up to the door.”

“The step,” I said.

“The oak step. Two treads, and a little burn mark underneath where I believe your husband set down a hot pan. In thirty-one years, I have never had a man test-fit his own stairs on my lot. I’d know that step in the dark.”

I closed my eyes.

He went on. On a Tuesday in the middle of September, while he was away, a man had come in with a title and a signed paper, and the used-unit manager, a young man named Bryce, had bought the camper on the spot for twenty-four thousand dollars.

“That’s a quick-cash price,” Vern said. “That unit retails on my sheet at thirty-eight nine. The paperwork said power of attorney, and it looked clean. But Bryce is twenty-six, and he did not call the owner. He should have called the owner.”

“He did what you let him do,” I said.

“I did. I never trained him not to.” Vern’s voice dropped. “I’m going to give it back to you tonight, on a flatbed, at what I paid. Twenty-four thousand, not a nickel more. I’ll eat the cleaning and the lot time.”

“Vern, how is it you remember us so clearly?” I did not mean it as a question, really. I wanted to hear it said.

“Mrs. Hanes, the day you bought that camper, you counted out the last sixty-three dollars and twenty-five cents of the price from a Maxwell House can, onto my desk, in quarters. It took ten minutes. My girl rolled them after you left, and I kept the wrapper.” He stopped. “I stood there thinking, this woman has been saving for this day since before my children were born. I did not forget.”

“Vern,” I said. “Don’t send it tonight. Pull it into your shop where nobody can see it. Don’t put a sign on it, don’t tell Bryce who it belongs to, and please do not call my son-in-law.”

I told him about the carving knife, and Arlen’s small plan, and the chance we meant to give Doug.

“How long?” Vern said gently.

“Until my husband’s birthday, the second Sunday in November. The whole family comes out. If Doug has anything to tell Arlen, he has five weeks to do it.”

“And if he hasn’t?”

“Then you can bring it home yourself, Vern, and I’ll set another place.”

He cleared his throat twice. “It will sit in my shop under a tarp. I will keep it as if it were my mother’s.”