The Cans My Daughter Collected

The parents’ group meets on the first Thursday of every month at six-thirty, in the cafeteria, at the long tables the lunch ladies pull out after supper. There is a coffee urn in the corner that has been making the same bad coffee since I was in the second grade.

That Thursday, the kindergarten’s paper turkeys were taped all along the wall under the windows, hand-print feathers in red and orange and brown. Somebody had set out a plate of store-bought sugar cookies. The radiators were clanking, and the whole room smelled of floor wax and chili from the lunch they had served that noon.

Corey had traded a shift to be there. He came in last, in a clean flannel shirt, and he took the chair against the back wall and folded his arms and did not move again for an hour. He was true to his word. He was a wall.

I counted thirty-one people. Parents mostly, a couple of grandparents, Mr. Eastman the principal in his sweater vest, and Mrs. Barnett near the front with her reading glasses on a chain. Bonita Lindemann, the treasurer, sat at the head table with her green ledger open. She has balanced the books for every raffle in the county for twenty years.

Mr. Merritt had come too, with two other men from the Legion in their caps. I had not asked him. I think Mrs. Barnett had mentioned it at the post. He sat down by the door with his hands folded over his cane and nodded at Lacey as if they shared a secret.

My mother came in at six-thirty-one, because Barry had asked her to watch him be thanked, and she sat at a table near the back.

And Barry sat in the third row.

He had worn his good jacket, the tan canvas one with the corduroy collar, and he had shaved. He had a cup of the bad coffee in one hand and a sugar cookie in the other, and he looked like a man who had come to receive something.

I learned later what he had been telling people. All fall, at the feed store and after church, he had been saying he was the one who gave the fifth grade a place to keep their cans. A couple of parents had even thanked him on the street. I had not known that, and seeing him there with his cookie, I felt calm, like the wind finally stopping.

Lacey sat beside me on a folding chair with her feet not touching the floor. She had on her good corduroy jumper and the yellow work gloves from the ball field, which I had not told her to bring and had not told her to leave behind. Her green notebook was shut in her lap.

“Are you scared?” I whispered. “No.” She considered it. “Maybe a little.”

“Me too.” “Okay,” she said, and slipped her hand into mine.

Then Bonita turned a page in her ledger and said, “Next, the fifth grade trip fund. Mrs. Barnett, you want to speak to this?”

Mrs. Barnett stood up. She is a small woman with gray curls and the most patient voice I have ever heard.

“Thank you, Bonita. As most of you know, the bus to Columbus this spring is still short eleven hundred dollars, and the company needs payment by the fifteenth.” She looked over her glasses.