The Aunt Who Pulled Emmys Project

The board met in special session the next Tuesday. They voted unanimously to pay for a reverse osmosis unit under each of the four kitchen sinks, $1,380 each, installed, out of a well-assistance fund nobody had touched in six years.

Until the units went in, the district delivered bottled water and ready-to-feed formula to the Strouds.

Alexis called me from her kitchen the day the unit was installed. In the background I could hear a tap running, a clean, ordinary sound. “Tell Emmy it’s the first water Hazel’s ever had out of that sink that I wasn’t afraid of,” she said. I told her. Emmy sat down on the stairs and did not speak for a while.

The fair board called a special meeting on a Thursday night, after the water board vote made the paper. Twyla Ellison phoned me from the parking lot afterward. The judges’ decision had been reviewed and reversed, she said.

The project was reinstated, first place, junior division, with the blue ribbon restored. Mr. Everly had stood up and said he should have spoken for it on the day, and had not, and was sorry.

Rhonda had been asked to step down from the judging panel for the rest of the year, pending a review of how the withdrawal was handled. She had agreed.

Mr. Everly drove out to our place that Saturday, with the ribbon in an envelope. He stood on the porch with his hat in his hands and said it to Emmy directly, with no one else around. “I taught farm kids for thirty-four years.

I’d have been proud to teach you.” Emmy said, “Thank you, Mr. Everly.” She took the ribbon. She did not tell him it was all right either. I liked that about her.

Glenn Dunning called on a Monday. The extension office runs a well-testing day every June, he said, in the grange hall, and it has never had a young person on the volunteer list. Would Emmy like to help run the table next summer? There would be a stipend. Eighty dollars. A real name tag.

She said yes before he finished the question.

The ribbon is on the wall above her desk now, next to the Fairchild jar, which the family let her keep once their new filter went in. The jar is empty and clean, with the orange tape still on the lid.

She has started a new notebook. On the first page, in her round blue handwriting, she wrote the number of every well in the county that has never been tested, and I counted over four hundred.

I drive her on Saturdays. She walks up the lanes by herself. I stay in the cab with the radio low, and I watch her go up each porch with her little speech and her jar, and I think that this is the only thing I ever did that mattered.

I did not shout. I did not hire anyone. I drove my daughter to a room full of neighbors and I let her speak.

Ivan still has not forgiven his sister, and I have not asked him to. At Thanksgiving there will be nine chairs at our table, and I know whose name is not on the list. The choice of knocking is hers. Emmy says she will answer if she does. She says it the way she says everything, plainly, with a jar in her hand.