The Pork Chop Supper on the Lawn

What Trisha Told Me

Chance is Sherri’s son. He was fifteen that summer. I knew him the way you know your husband’s sister’s kid, at Christmas and on the Fourth and in the church parking lot. A quiet boy, tall, polite to his grandpa.

What I did not know, because I married into the family only twelve years ago and Blaine does not talk about things, was that Chance used to show pigs too.

“He was good,” Trisha said. “Really good. Better than my kids. He took grand champion barrow when he was ten. Sherri was at that barn every minute. She was proud of him, Rhoda. You never saw anybody so proud.”

“What happened?” I said. I had turned the engine off by then without even noticing I had done it.

“She got harder on him every year,” Trisha said. “You know how it is. The better he did, the more she needed him to do. When he was thirteen, he lost showmanship by one place, and she lit into him at the wash rack in front of everybody.”

“In front of everybody,” I said.

“Said he had embarrassed her. Said he had not latched a pen right all week and he had been lucky not to lose a pig. Loud. Half the barn heard it.”

I stood there at her mailbox with my hand on the door and did not say anything at all.

“He walked out of that barn,” Trisha said. “Went and sat in the truck. Never showed again. He sold his last pig that fall and he has not been near the fairgrounds since. I don’t think he and Sherri have talked about it one time in two years.”

“Did she know,” I said, “what she was doing Monday morning? Did she know she was doing it again?”

“I don’t think she knew she was doing it,” Trisha said. “I think she saw Calvin with those pigs, and that pin hanging loose, and she saw Chance. And she did the thing she always does, which is decide somebody needs a lesson.”

Telling Blaine

That night I sat out on the porch steps with Blaine after Calvin was asleep.

The lightning bugs were coming up out of the yard, and the empty pens behind the shed were quiet for the first time since April.

“Did you know about Chance,” I said. “The wash rack. When he was thirteen.”

Blaine was quiet a long time. He picked at a splinter on the step with his thumbnail.

“I was there,” he said. “I was the one who went and sat in the truck with him. He didn’t talk. He just sat. I bought him a lemon shake-up, and he never drank it. It melted in the cup holder.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” I asked him. I was not angry about it. I just wanted to know.

“Because it was Sherri’s business,” he said. “And because I figured she’d fix it. She always fixes things. She does the books at the elevator, she runs Christmas dinner, she took Dad in when Mom died. She just never fixed that one.”

I told him what I wanted to do. I had been thinking about it since Trisha’s mailbox, and I said it out loud for the first time so I could hear how it sounded on the porch steps.

“I want to have the road over,” I said. “Everybody who came out Monday. Saturday evening, after the fair is done. Pork chops on the lawn. I want to thank them.”

“That’s a good idea,” Blaine said. “Dad will want to run the grill. He’ll be hurt if we don’t ask him.”

“And I want to invite Sherri,” I said. “I want to seat her first. And I want to thank her by name in front of everyone.”

Blaine turned and looked at me on that step like I had grown a second head.