Lemons
The problem was lemons. Every store in Spencer would be about cleaned out by fair week, and we had none.
I called Tobin, our neighbor to the north. He farms with his son and drives a delivery route to the restaurants around the lakes twice a week in the off months.
“How many do you need?” he said.
“I don’t even know,” I said. “As many as you can find.”
He was in our yard before eight with a forty-pound case of lemons in the back of his pickup and a fifty-pound bag of sugar beside it.
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“I had them on the truck for a café that closed for the season,” he said. “They’ll go soft by Tuesday anyhow.”
“I’ll pay you,” I said.
“Pay me when you sell out,” Tobin said. He looked over at Rylan, who was standing on the porch steps in a clean green T-shirt with his hair still wet. “Not before.”
I called the postmaster and got a sub to run my Saturday route. That was the first Saturday I had taken off since spring.
Merle’s Trailer
The trailer was small and white, the old kind with rounded corners and a fold-up service window, sitting on its spot straight across the midway from Dawna’s stand.
On the side, in small blue letters by the window, Merle had painted their names years ago. Merle and Marvella Quist. Spencer, Iowa.
Marvella was waiting for us in a lawn chair beside it. She had a ring of keys in her lap and her church cardigan over her shoulders even though it was already warm.
She stood up and handed me the keys. Her hand shook a little.
“You open it,” she said. “I can’t be the one to open it.”
I unlocked the back door and propped up the window. The air that came out smelled like forty summers of fryer grease and bleach and something sweet underneath, maybe old lemon oil worked into the wood.
Rylan went in first. He stood in the middle of that little trailer and turned all the way around, looking at everything. The hand press. The steel sink. The cooler.
“Mrs. Quist,” he said. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” Marvella said. “Now get to scrubbing. The inspector comes through at nine.”