The Towel I Kept for Orva

We went through the item. Pastor Ellen explained it. I explained the cost, which was almost nothing. Then I said the thing I had decided to say. I looked straight at her down the length of that table and I said, “It’s only bread, Orva. Nobody in these pews will miss it.”

I have said some hard things in my line of work. I have never said anything as hard as that. I watched it go into her. She did not flinch. She said, “I see,” in the same small voice she used to say, Seconds, honey, if you want them. Then she took the paper napkin from beside her coffee cup and folded it in thirds, and laid it down, and smoothed it flat with her good hand.

That was the lie. It was the biggest lie I have told in that building. I would miss that bread more than I would miss the roof.

Gene voted no. Everyone else voted yes, and so did I. Pastor Ellen walked Orva to her car. I sat in my truck in the gravel lot with the dome light off and watched the two of them cross the lot, the tall young woman and the small old one, and I watched Orva get into her car and sit with both hands on the wheel and not start it.

I sat there until the light in the fellowship hall went out. Then I started the truck and I drove home and I told my wife what I had done, and Carla looked at me for a long time across the kitchen. She said, “You told her the truth about the wafers and a lie about the bread.” I said that was about right. She said, “Dirk Zerbe, you are the dumbest smart man I ever married.”

Forty-Nine Days

I did not call her. I want to be as honest as I can about that. I had the number. I had it on a card in my truck, and I took it out of the visor and put it back more times than I can count.

I was a coward about it, and I will say so. A man who sprays eleven thousand acres can face a seed salesman, and he cannot face a woman in a gray cardigan who once put a roll on his tray.

Pastor Ellen caught me in the church parking lot on Tuesday the twenty-second, the week after the meeting. She said, “You hurt her, Dirk, and I don’t think you meant to.” I said nothing. She said, “I don’t know what happened in that kitchen, and I don’t think you’re going to tell me. But I know you.” Then she said, “She is going to be all right, and so are you, and that is up to you.” She went back inside.