The Candle Table in the Feed Lot

“Not this time.” He said it plainly, the way a man says a thing he has turned over for a week. “A fair like this doesn’t need to look like Madison, Kelsey. It needs to feel like somebody’s grandmother lives there.”

I did not say yes right away.

I took it home and thought about it for three days. I asked Jeff, who said it was my call. I asked Arlene, who said, “Well, I’ll sit wherever you tell me,” which was not an answer but was a kindness. I asked Glen, who said he had a lot and a roaster and I could have both whenever I wanted.

On Thursday night I sat down at the kitchen table after the kids were in bed and got out a clean sheet of paper. I wrote four rules.

Every old vendor gets the table they always had. The booth fee goes back to thirty-five dollars, and it stays there. Anyone who wants a table gets one, with no jury, no application, and no letter.

And the lot across the street stays open for overflow, because Glen said it should, and because I had learned in one morning how much room there is when you stop counting.

I read it over twice. Then I took the note out of my back pocket, where it had been for three months, soft at the folds. Too country for the direction.

I did not throw it away. I put it in the bottom of the cash tin, under the tray, flat against the metal.

Not as a grudge. I put it there as a reminder, so that when someone I do not quite understand asks for a table at my fair, I will remember how thin an envelope feels in your hand when you already know what is inside.

I mailed my answer to Arnold on Friday. I wrote Natalie nothing.

She has not called. She did not come to Thanksgiving at Ron’s, which Ron noticed most of all. I am not going to chase her. If she comes to my door, I will pour her a cup of coffee, and I will mean it. That is as far as I have gotten.

I do not think forgiveness is a door you push open for someone else. I think it is more like leaving a porch light on.

That night, the kids and I sat at the kitchen table with the double boiler going and a stick of cedar between us.

“Mom,” Lainey said. She was dipping a wick for the first time in her life, very slowly, with her tongue in the corner of her mouth. “Mr. Nyberg said he’d light the candle at supper.”

“I know he did.” “Do you think he did?” I thought about the coin purse, and that big thumb on the latch.

“I think he did,” I said. “I think it had company.”

She nodded. She dipped, and lifted, and let the wax run off in a thin gold thread. The kitchen smelled like a warm field, and out in the back, in the dark, fourteen hives sat wrapped in black paper for the winter, keeping each other warm.

“Mom?” “Yes, baby.” “Next year can I have a bigger sign?” I laughed, and I reached over and fixed the wick between her fingers.

“Yes,” I said. “Next year you can have the whole feed sack.”