Supper for Fifty Two Boys

A bone-in pork shoulder that size takes the whole night, and it does not care what day of the week it is or what you are feeling.

It goes through a long stall around a hundred and sixty degrees, where the internal temperature just sits and sulks for hours. You cannot rush it. You cannot argue with it.

I thought about that stall a lot that night. Cole came out around nine, in his sweatshirt and his practice sweatpants, his hair still wet from the shower.

He is sixteen and six feet one and plays right tackle, and he still walks like he is afraid of breaking the furniture.

He stood by the smoker with his hands in his pockets. “Coach told us the hog fell through,” he said. “He didn’t say how.”

I did not lie to my son. I never have. “Your Uncle Milo sold it.” He took that in. The porch light caught the side of his face, and I watched the hurt arrive and settle there.

He loves his uncle. Milo had taught him to drive a stick on the back forty when Cole was twelve.

“Did he say why?” “He said things got tight.” “He said he’d be at the game.” Cole’s voice dropped. “He said he’d bring that whole hog to the supper and then sit right behind the bench and holler at the refs.”

“Maybe he still will.” “I don’t think so.” “I don’t know either,” I said. “But whatever your uncle did, the boys still have to eat tomorrow. So that’s what we’re doing.”

He nodded slowly. Then he reached out and took the long fork out of my hand. “What do I do?” “Nothing yet. Go to bed.”

“I’ll check the temp.” “You have a game tomorrow.” “Mom.” He looked at me with Lavern’s flat, patient eyes. “Let me check the temp.”

So my son stood in the cold with me for an hour and a half and learned how to read a bullet smoker.

We watched the needle hold near two-fifty. He fed in two splits of oak when the heat dipped, and he closed the damper exactly the way his father showed him.

By ten-thirty he had a cold nose and a look on his face I had not seen before, somewhere between pride and responsibility. “Good night, Mom.”

“Good night, honey.” At eleven Bev Olson came across the street in her robe and her husband’s barn coat, carrying a thermos of coffee the size of a fire extinguisher.

She has lived next to us for twenty-two years, and she is the sort of woman who learns things before they happen.

“Glen says you need folding tables,” she said. “I haven’t said a word to Glen.”

“He heard from the Hendersons, who heard it at the clinic.” She poured me a cup and put it in my hands.

“He’s getting the tables from the Legion hall in the morning. All twelve. And I’ve got two roasters of baked beans in my freezer I was saving for Christmas.”

“Bev, I can’t.” “You can, and you will, and don’t stand on your pride at eleven o’clock at night with a smoker full of meat.”