The Granddaughter Who Fed the Card Club

Orrin Walks Over

When every old man had a plate, Paisley had one burger left on the grill. She put it on the last of Ilse’s buns. She set it on a paper plate. She held it out toward the machine shed door.

Nobody said a word. Orrin stood there a long moment. Then he set his cards down on a chair inside the door and walked across the gravel toward the truck. He walked like he was seventy-one and every year of it was sitting on his back.

He stopped in front of the tailgate. Paisley held out the plate.

“This is my deer, Grandpa,” she said. “I shot it with my bow.” He took the plate. He looked at it. He took a big bite, and I watched him chew.

With his mouth still full he said, “That’s good, honey.” Then he swallowed, and he set the plate down on the tailgate next to Lavern’s, and he stood there with his hands open.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I owed these men. I didn’t owe them yours. I knew it when I did it, and I did it anyway.”

The whole card club was standing around the truck. Nobody looked away.

“I never told them it was yours because I knew what they’d say. They’d have said give it back to her. Every man here would have.”

“Darn right,” Royal said.

“I’d have given you every pound back,” the dairy farmer said. Orrin nodded. He looked at Paisley.

“I’ll make it right,” he said. “I’ll pay for your processing on this one, and next fall I’ll buy your tag. And when I tell this story, I’ll tell it right. That my granddaughter shot two deer this year and fed the whole card club with the second one.”

What She Said Back

Paisley looked at her grandpa for a long time. I didn’t know what she’d say. I didn’t know if I’d want to hear it.

“You don’t have to pay for anything,” she said. “I just wanted them to know.”

“I know,” Orrin said. “That’s why I’m going to.” She stepped around the tailgate and hugged him around the middle. He held on to her for a long while, his hand on the back of her orange cap, and his shoulders shook once.

The card club let them be. A couple of the men went back toward the shed. Royal picked up his cane. Lavern stood by the truck with his hands in his coat pockets and looked out over the black fields with his eyes wet and his face calm.

I scraped the grill. I didn’t trust myself to do anything else.

The Rest of the Afternoon

We stayed till three. The men went back to their pinochle, but they kept the door rolled up and kept calling Paisley in to sit with them. She learned how to meld. She lost every hand. Royal made her his partner for one game and they lost that too, and he laughed till he coughed.

Orrin made coffee on the woodstove and brought me a cup out at the truck. We stood by the tailgate drinking it in the sun.

“I should have said something to you in October,” he said.

“I should have said something to you too,” I said. “I didn’t want to wreck Thanksgiving.”

He snorted. “You’d have been right to wreck it.” He drank his coffee. “She’d have been ashamed of me. Her grandma.”

“Maybe,” I said. “She’d have been proud of today, though.” He nodded slowly. “Yes. She would.”