The Pink Copy That Caught the Treasurer

The Twenty-Dollar Bill

I went to see Dean on Friday at noon, alone, because I had told Kay I would, and because I did not want to be the kind of person who walks up to a man’s life with a folder behind her back.

He was eating a sandwich off wax paper at his desk. A picture of the girls’ 12U team hung next to the framed Volunteer of the Year plaque.

“Kris Hanlon!” He stood up with his whole face smiling. “Sit down. Is Maddie still playing short this year?”

“Short,” I said. “She’s been counting things lately.”

He laughed, a big easy laugh, and I sat down.

I did not bring the folder. I let him talk about the planting forecast and a farmer’s hail claim. Then I said, as lightly as I could manage, “Dean, I’m helping Kay tidy the file for the uniform order. Would you have the profit statement the wreath company mailed in December?”

He did not pause. I want to be fair to him on that. His smile never moved.

“Oh, that thing.” He waved the sandwich. “Lost it, I’m afraid, in the office shuffle. Wreaths just don’t pay like they used to, Kris.”

“The company says seven thousand and eight dollars.”

I watched that go across his face like a window shade coming down one slat at a time.

“The company,” he said, “had a different price list than I was given.” He tried the smile again, and it almost took. “You know how vendors are. It doesn’t matter. We did what we could.”

I could have laid the folder on his desk, and he would have had nothing left to stand on.

But I had told Kay one chance, and I had told myself something in the night: that I would give him every minute I could stand to give him, the way you let a child say the true thing before you say it for him.

“Dean,” I said, “Sunday week you’re reading the treasurer’s report at the sendoff supper. I would like it to be the real one.”

For one second he looked at me as if I had pulled a rug out from under him. Then he looked at the plaque on the wall behind my head.

“I always read the real one,” he said.

“Then I’ll be glad to hear it.”

He walked me to the door with his hand hovering near my elbow, because he was raised right, and the bell rang over our heads. At the door he pressed something into my palm.

It was a twenty-dollar bill, folded in half.

“For Maddie,” he said, and his voice was warm and a little hoarse. “For working so hard on that sale. Tell her Mr. Stroud says she’s the best shortstop in the county.”

I thanked him. I put the twenty in my coat pocket. I did not spend it, and I still have it.

I walked out into the March wind and sat in my car for eleven minutes, and I could not make my hands stop shaking.