Supper for Fifty Two Boys

Some of them don’t eat a real meal before a game. Their folks work, or they’re short, or they just don’t think about it.”

“I know.” “The booster club has two hundred and twelve dollars in the account. I called the pizza place in Aurora. They need forty-eight hours for fifty-two boys. The grocery store can do sandwich trays by Saturday.”

“Saturday’s too late.” “It’s too late for a lot of things, Bernice.”

I looked out the window over the sink. Our driveway was empty, a long strip of gray gravel that ran down the side of our white house to the street.

Lavern’s bullet smoker sat at the edge of it where it always sat, a black steel cooker with a domed lid and two grates inside that he had bought the summer we got married.

It had cooked ribs for the Fourth of July and brisket for Cole’s christening. It had never cooked for fifty-two. “Give me until four o’clock tomorrow,” I said.

“Bernice, you don’t have to.” “Coach, I’m not asking if I have to.” I could hear him swallow. “What do you need?”

“Nothing yet. Tell the bus driver to pull up at my house instead of the school. And tell the boys to come hungry.”

I took the rest of Thursday and all of Friday off from the vet clinic, where I have worked the front desk for eleven years. Dr. Peterson heard the whole thing in about forty seconds and said, “Go. I’ll tell the Hendersons their beagle’s recheck can wait.” That was the kind of boss I had.

Then I drove to Vogt’s Locker, forty minutes round trip, and I walked in at a quarter after nine with a number in my head.

Fifty-two boys. Half a pound of cooked meat is about what a growing sixteen-year-old lineman will put away if you let him, and a pork shoulder loses nearly half its weight in the smoker.

I had cooked for church funeral dinners for years, so I knew roughly how the math ran.

Sixty pounds raw would give me thirty-some pounds of pulled pork, plenty for fifty-two boys, a coach, a couple of assistants, and whoever came to the driveway to help.

Lloyd Vogt was behind the counter in his white apron with a pencil behind his ear. He has run that locker since his father died, and he knows everybody’s name and everybody’s business.

“Bernice Keller,” he said. “I heard about the hog.” “Already?” “Milo’s buyer is my cousin’s neighbor. It’s a small state.” I did not say anything to that. I told him what I needed.

He went into the cooler and came out with a cart.

Eight bone-in Boston butts, each one around seven and a half pounds, wrapped in white paper with his handwriting in black marker. He weighed them on the big scale. Sixty point four pounds.

“Three-ten a pound,” he said. “That’s a hundred eighty-seven dollars and some change. I’ll call it a hundred eighty-five.” “I’ll pay full.”

“You’ll pay a hundred eighty-five and take this.” He put a bag of his own rub on top of the cart, the one with the brown sugar and paprika that he sells by the jar, and then two big rolls of pink butcher paper.