“I’m not saying it to be sweet,” I said. “Brynlee started it. Tyson’s prayer was the shortest I ever heard. They asked God to help you, because they figured you needed it.” I put the cashbox down. “I was angry at you, Doyle. I wrote a terrible post. But those kids wouldn’t let me carry it.”
He opened his mouth. Then he shut it. For several seconds the only sound in the lot was bells.
“I have a meeting,” he said at last, and turned, and walked back across the asphalt, past the long, silent line, and got into his truck.
He did not leave.
What I remember most is that for an hour and a half a white pickup sat across the highway with its window rolled down, and a man sat in it with both hands on the wheel, watching mums go into people’s arms. I saw him at eleven. I saw him at noon. I never asked what he was thinking, but I prayed for him every time I met that windshield.
At 1:41 in the afternoon, Tyson, who had been working the marker since sunrise, drew the last mark. He stared at the sheet for a second. Then he turned around and said in a cracked voice that carried across the whole lot, “That’s six hundred.”
Get a new story in your inbox every morning.
Facebook doesn’t show you every story we post. Our free newsletter does. Join 2,500+ readers.
Colt counted the money three times. Six hundred mums at thirty dollars came to eighteen thousand. The jar and the tip bucket held another seventeen hundred and forty-two. Colt read the total off the back of a bulletin: nineteen thousand, seven hundred and forty-two dollars.
Shanna had driven up from the city by then, after Maddie’s nurses practically pushed her out the door. When I put the first envelope in her hands she could not speak. She put her forehead against my shoulder, and I held her up while the cold wind came across the lot and everybody pretended not to look.
When I looked up again, the white pickup was gone.
The ballots
I thought that was the end. I was wrong. On Monday morning Kaylee found me in the church kitchen with a cardboard box in her arms and a look like she had swallowed a lightning bug.
“The student council didn’t plan this,” she said. “I need you to know that.”
“Plan what?”
She set down the box. It was full of paper ballots.
In Gower Flats the homecoming queen is chosen by student vote in homeroom the week before the game: seniors only, four names and a write-in line. Council seals the result in an envelope, and the principal opens it at halftime and crowns the winner with a plastic tiara that has been in the trophy case since 1974.
The vote had been held the Friday before our sale. Not one student told me.
Kaylee counted out loud. Of two hundred and eighty-one ballots, two hundred and twenty-six had the same name on the write-in line, in two hundred and twenty-six different handwritings.
“She’s a junior,” Kaylee said. “She hasn’t been to school since March. The handbook says queen has to be a senior in attendance. We know. We wanted to see what would happen.”
“What did Mr. Doyle say?” I asked.
“Nothing. He took the envelope and shut his office door.” She swallowed. “What if he throws them out?”
I did not have an answer. I told her God had gotten us this far on a lot full of mums, and I did not think He had finished.