The Pork Chop Supper on the Lawn

Six O’Clock

By six that evening there were more than forty people on our lawn. Kids running between the tables with sweet corn butter on their chins.

The Pruitt girls, without curlers this time, setting out paper plates. Conrad and Blaine standing at the cooker with Clark, arguing about how long to leave the chops on.

Calvin had hung his showmanship ribbon and Pepper’s second-place ribbon on a nail by the empty pens, and every kid on the road had to go and look at them at least once.

Sherri came walking down the road at five minutes to six. Alone.

She had on a plain blouse and jeans and she was carrying a pie of her own, and I could tell from across the lawn she had thought about turning around the whole way down.

Chance walked about thirty feet behind her with his hands in his pockets. I had not expected him at all.

The First Chair

I met her at the edge of the lawn and took her pie and handed it to Trisha.

Then I took Sherri by the elbow, gently, and walked her to the head of the long table, where I had set the first chair.

People were already watching. You know how it is when someone gets walked to the head of a table. Even the kids stopped running.

“Sit here,” I said, and pulled the chair out for her. “Please. This one is yours.”

She sat. She held the edges of the folding chair like she was sitting in a rowboat. Chance stood at the edge of the lawn by the maples, watching his mother.

Blaine brought her the first chop off the grill on a paper plate. Clark stood behind the cooker with his tongs and did not say anything, but he was watching his daughter.

I did not have anything written down. I just stood at the head of the table next to her, and I waited until the yard went quiet, which took about a minute, because Cliff was in the middle of a story.

“I want to say thank you,” I said. “To everybody on this road. Monday morning, my son’s three pigs were loose in Cliff’s beans at a quarter to six. And in fifteen minutes, all of you were out there in your pajamas.”

“Conrad brought his panels. Trisha brought her boards. The Pruitt girls turned Biscuit at the ditch. Cliff walked out in his church slacks. My husband and his dad poured water on Pepper until she could walk. And every one of you walked slow, the way you’re supposed to.”

I put my hand on the back of Sherri’s chair and left it there.

“And I want to thank Sherri,” I said. “By name. Because Sherri was there before any of us. She saw that pin was loose before I did. She held a panel when it counted. And she latched the gate and dropped the pin when it was done.”

I looked at Calvin, and he stood up from his chair halfway down the table. We had not practiced this. He had asked me that afternoon if he could.

He had something in his hand. He held it up so everyone could see. It was the steel pin off the middle pen, on a loop of baling twine.

“I keep it in my pocket now,” he said, in his clear eleven-year-old voice. “So I always know where it is. Thank you, Aunt Sherri.”