The count
Rolf counted the jar that afternoon, at the long table, with Brian and two of the other firefighters. The coins, the fives, the twenties, the fifty from Omaha. A man from Wisconsin had folded up a hundred and written Mabel on it in ballpoint.
Five thousand six hundred and forty dollars. Rolf wrote it on a sheet of paper and turned it around so I could read it.
“That’s the air-pack fund,” he said. “We’ve been three thousand short for two years. You just finished it.”
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“It wasn’t me. It was Mom.”
“I know whose it was,” he said. I tried to hand him my receipts for the groceries, the nine hundred and twelve dollars. He pushed them back across the table with one finger.
“Keep your money,” he said. “You’ve done enough.” I kept the receipts. I put them in a drawer. I have never cashed them in for anything, and I never will.
Mom sat in a folding chair at the end of the hall with her feet up on a bucket and the skillet in her lap. She had washed it three times and dried it on the burner, and she had rubbed a thin coat of lard into it. She looked like a woman who had come home.
“I didn’t do it for them to come,” she said to me. “I want you to know that.”
“I know.”
“I did it because you asked me to.”
“No, Mom. I did it because I couldn’t stand watching you give up your key.” She patted my hand. Her knuckles were swollen so badly that her wedding band wouldn’t turn.
“It’s just a key,” she said. Then she smiled. “But I’m glad we did it.”