The Candle Table in the Feed Lot

I had made them anyway.

People ask why I kept dipping after the check came back, and I do not have a good answer except that my hands did not know how to stop. From August through October I made two or three pairs a night, after the dishes, with Lainey sorting tapers into the bread box and Gage asleep on the couch under the afghan.

Twenty-some pounds of wax, some of it mine, some bought from a beekeeper in Medford. Wrapped in brown paper and tied with kitchen twine.

On Friday night I put the last pair in the bread box and sat at the table with the lamp on, in a house that smelled like a field in July. Gage came down in his pajamas with his hair sticking up.

“Mom, where’s our table going to be?” He is six. He has been to the fair every year of his life. Last year he sat under my table eating a pie crust edge and handing me change.

“I don’t know yet, buddy.” “We’re still going though.”

“I’m not sure.” He looked at the bread box and then at me, and he said very reasonably, “But we made all of those.”

I opened my mouth to tell him something wise, and I could not think of one thing. That was when my phone rang.

The number was the feed store’s. Glen Kessler has owned Kessler Feed and Seed since before I was born. He sells layer pellets, salt blocks, bird seed, hog panels, and work gloves. He is sixty-four, with a white mustache and forearms like fence posts, and he has never in his life said a long sentence if a short one would do.

“Kelsey. It’s Glen.” “Hi, Glen.” “Heard about the note.” I closed my eyes. “How?”

“Betty got it from Arlene at the post office. Arlene got it from her sister. Pine Creek has no secrets.”

“I’m not trying to start anything, Glen.”

“Good. Neither am I.” There was a creak, like he was leaning back in the office chair he has had since 1994. “I’ve got a parking lot and two pallets of salt blocks nobody needs on Saturday. You could bring a table.”

I did not say anything. I could hear the wall clock in his office.

“The lot’s right across Main Street from the hall,” he went on. “People park in it for the fair anyhow. You’d get the same traffic. Maybe better. Folks like a parking lot.”

“Glen, she will be so mad.” “Well,” he said. “I’m sixty-four.” I laughed. It was the first time I had laughed in three days, and it came out wet.

“Bring your table. Coffee’s on me. Betty’s making brats.”

“Glen, I can’t pay you anything.” “It’s a parking lot, Kelsey. Nobody’s paying me. See you at seven.”

Saturday was thirty-one degrees and bright blue, with frost on every weed along the lot and the sun coming flat across the rooftops. The first day of deer season is always cold and clear, and the town feels like it is holding its breath.

I loaded the pickup at six with the candles in two milk crates and a card table folded behind the seat. Lainey carried the twine. Gage carried a coffee can of quarters for change, in both arms, careful as an egg carton.