The Mum Sale the Principal Shut Down

I looked at Elam. He looked at the line, took off his cap, and put it back on.

We opened the gate at eight.

Colt had taped butcher paper to the flatbed, and the youth group took turns with a marker, one tally mark for every mum sold. By eight-thirty there were sixty. By ten there were two hundred and twelve. The mums went out to the trucks in a steady, jingling river, and I stood pouring change into a toolbox with tears running down my face and no apology to anybody.

Here is who bought mums.

A retired bus driver in a John Deere cap bought twelve, one for every girl who had ridden his route in thirty years. Cheerleaders from the school we would play on Friday pooled their allowances and bought four. A man who had never set foot in our church bought twenty and said his wife had died of the same kind of sickness in 2011, and he would put one on her grave every year until he joined her.

At a quarter past nine a man in a ball cap and a canvas jacket stood in line almost an hour, looking at his boots. At the front he bought one mum and asked, in a low voice, “Is the little girl going to be all right?”

“She’s got a good chance,” I said. “A good doctor and a better mother.”

He nodded, and he put a folded hundred-dollar bill in the jar and went away. I did not know who he was. I found out later.

Doyle

At a quarter past ten, a white pickup pulled up across the highway.

I felt it before I saw it, the feeling of being looked at by someone come to settle a matter. I turned with a cashbox in my arms and there was Doyle in a flannel jacket, crossing the lot with his keys in his hand.

The line parted to let him through. Nobody jeered. They just got quiet, the way a church gets quiet when the preacher walks in late.

He stopped in front of the flatbed. He looked at the tally on the butcher paper. Two hundred and forty by then.

“Mrs. Varner,” he said. “I received notice Thursday afternoon of a facilities request filed by a board member. I’d like to know how this was arranged.”

“Doyle,” said Elam.

Elam had come up beside me with his thumbs in his belt, a head shorter than Doyle and thirty years older, and Doyle seemed to shrink a little, like a boy called to the board.

“Elam,” Doyle said, stiffly. “You went around me.”

“Son, I went right through the front door of a policy you didn’t read,” Elam said, kindly, the way you’d tell a boy his shoelace was untied. “Community use of facilities, 1998. The lot is booked for a church youth group from seven to three. There’s a signed copy at the superintendent’s.”

Doyle’s face tightened. He turned to me. “This is a liability. If a child is hurt in this lot, the district is exposed.”

“Doyle,” I said.

I had spent nine nights rehearsing something clever. What came out was plainer.

“We’ve been praying for you. All of us. Every morning, since the day you came to the church. By name.”

He stared at me.