Paige Walked Her Paper Route Back

“Corinne, I’ve got a hundred and forty.”

“Then get your hundred and forty, and I’ll get the rest out of the account, and it goes to Paige before dark.” She did not raise her voice. “And you will be at the kitchen table at four o’clock with your applications and the name of every person you’ve lied to. And you will not drive that truck anywhere until you have.”

“Corinne.”

“I mean it, Melvin.”

He set the coffee cup on the porch rail. He went into the house, and he came back out with his wallet, and he took out his money and counted it into my mother’s hand, in front of Marcella Pelham and my daughter and me and the whole bright morning. A hundred and forty dollars. It took a very long time.

Paige did not hug him, and he did not ask her to. She held her grocery bag and looked at the man who had driven her to school every rainy morning of sixth grade, and she said nothing at all. It was the quietest thing I have ever seen her do. Then she turned to her grandmother and said, “Grandma, I have five more houses.”

My mother nodded. She said, “I’ll be right here when you’re done.”

The end of the route

Pete Yoder was waiting at the county road when we got there. He had driven out from the Courier office on a Saturday, in his good coat, and he was standing beside his Chevy with his hat in his hand.

“It’s okay, Mr. Yoder.”

“Thank you.”

The last envelope was number sixty-three, and it went to Leonard Voigt.

He was standing at his mailbox. He had been there, he told me later, since a quarter to ten. He is eighty-four, a retired dairy farmer with hands the size of snow shovels, and he has lived alone on the county road since his wife Margaret died four winters ago. He wore his barn coat over his pajamas and a feed cap pulled down to his eyebrows.

Paige walked up the long gravel drive, with me crawling behind her in the Buick, and she gave him his envelope in both hands.

He read it standing up. He read it slowly, the way a man reads something that matters. Then he folded it very carefully along the creases and put it in his breast pocket, behind the pen.

“I didn’t believe him,” Mr. Voigt said.

“Sir?”

“When he told me you quit. I said, no, she didn’t.” His voice was rough. “That Paige doesn’t quit anything. I’ve been watching her walk that drive for three years. You come up it in the sleet. You come up it in the dark, and the paper’s in the box at seven o’clock, and you never once forgot.”

“Thank you, Mr. Voigt.”

“My Margaret used to say the paper girl was the only person who still came up the drive. All the rest of them, the nurse, the church, they drive up and honk. She comes to the door.” He cleared his throat. “She used to leave you a Christmas card with five dollars in it. You remember that?”

“Yes, sir. Every year.”

“I’ve been leaving it since she passed. I leave it for her.” He put his big hand on the top of Paige’s head, gently, the way you would rest a hand on a young horse. “I didn’t leave it this year because I thought you’d gone.”

Then he reached into his coat and took out a twenty and a ten. “This is for October. This is for the walk. And I’ll have a card for you in December, same as always.”

“Mr. Voigt, I can’t take thirty.”

“You can, and you will.” He looked at me. “Is that your mother, young lady?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You raised her right,” he said.

I could not say anything. I nodded.

Paige put the thirty dollars in her pocket with the rest, and zipped it.