The Trees I Sold From the Crossroads

The corner

On Monday, on my lunch break from the bank, I drove out to the church at the crossroads and found the pastor in the fellowship hall, setting up folding tables for a funeral lunch.

I asked him if I could sell trees off the gravel lot at the corner, on weekends, starting the first Saturday of December.

I said I would keep it clean and keep out of the way of Sunday service.

He thought about it for less time than I expected. He had a grandmother’s face on a forty-year-old man, round and kind.

“That corner’s sat empty every December I’ve been here,” he said. “Just don’t block the cemetery gate. And come in and use the restroom whenever you want. It’s too cold out there for the kids.”

I offered to pay something toward the lot. He shook his head. “Put a tree in the sanctuary for us,” he said. “That’s plenty.”

I called the township office too, because I am a bank teller and I like things on paper.

The clerk said a farmer selling her own trees on a church’s lot with the church’s say was the church’s business and mine, and wished me luck.

Waldo’s flatbed

Waldo lives a mile and a half down the road from Dad.

He hauls hay and round bales for half the county with a sixteen-foot tandem flatbed trailer and an old flatbed Ford that he swears he will be buried in.

I went over on Tuesday after work and asked if I could rent the trailer for four weekends.

He came out of his pole barn wiping his hands on a rag and listened to the whole thing without a word.

“Your dad’s trees,” he said when I was done.

“My trees,” I said. “Dad planted them.”

“Same thing,” Waldo said. “You’re not renting it. You’re borrowing it. Bring it back with the tires aired up and we’re square.”

He hooked it to my Silverado himself that Wednesday, and checked the lights, and checked the safety chains twice, and told me not to take the corner by the gravel pit too fast with a load on.