The Gym That Walked Down Main Street

“Paige.”

“I’ve got it,” I said. “I think I’ve got it.”

“I’ll be back by two,” he said. “Leave me the heavy stuff if there’s any left.” And then, because he is a good man and knows me, he said, “Don’t you go in there and say anything to Cy you’ll have to take back at Thanksgiving.”

“I already went in,” I said. “I didn’t say much.”

“Good girl,” he said. “Go to work.”

The 9 o’clock class started pulling in at 8:40.

The first truck was Arvid Tollefson’s. Arvid carries our mail on the town route, and he has carried it for thirty-one years. He is fifty-eight. He had both knees scoped the winter before he started with me.

He parked behind my truck and got out and stood there with his hands in his jacket pockets. He looked at the racks. He looked at the plates leaned up against the brick. He looked at the new brass on the door.

Then he looked at the hardware store window, for a long time, and then he looked at me.

“Cy?” he said.

“Cy,” I said.

He did not say anything bad about my uncle. He just let out a breath through his nose, slow, like a horse.

Then the others started coming. Two ranch wives in one pickup, still in their barn coats. A retired highway department man and his wife. Neva, one of my nurses, coming straight off a night shift at the hospital, still in her scrubs, with her gym shoes in a plastic grocery sack.

And Ingeborg, in her tan car, parking very carefully at the curb, the way she always did, with about a foot to spare in front and behind.

They all stood on the sidewalk and looked at my things.

“Well,” Neva said. “This is a new kind of class.”

Nobody laughed, but a couple of them almost did, and it helped.

“I’ve got another room,” I said.

I said it louder than I meant to. They all turned around.

“I signed on the old feed store Tuesday. Down at the corner by the elevator lot. It’s empty. It’s clean. I was going to tell everybody next month.” I took a breath. “The 10 o’clock class can be there. I don’t know about the 9 o’clock. I’m sorry. I’ll refund this month for anybody who wants it.”

Arvid took his hands out of his pockets.

“How far is it?” he said.

“Three blocks.”

He walked over to the nearest stack of plates and picked up a 45 in each hand, the way you pick up two buckets of water, and he settled them against his legs.

“Then we’d better get walking,” he said. “Ten o’clock is coming.”

And that was it. That was the whole speech. I have thought since that if he had said one word more, somebody would have argued, and if he had said one word less, nobody would have moved.

The two ranch wives each took a 25. Neva set her grocery sack on the hood of her car and took two 10s. The highway department man and his wife took one end each of a bench, the way you would carry a church pew.

“Somebody ought to load it in a truck,” the highway man said.

“By the time we loaded it and unloaded it,” Arvid said over his shoulder, already walking, “we could have walked it twice.”

He was right. Loading, strapping down and unloading four pickups would take longer than the walk. You can carry a plate three blocks in about six minutes.