A Roaster of Chili at the Curb

“I’m not wearing a thing I didn’t earn,” he said. He was embarrassed, and he would not look at her. “You fed more folks this afternoon than I did all year.”

Macy wore it home. I did not argue.

The cigar box came out to four hundred and twelve dollars. There were bills, and quarters, and one hundred dollar bill folded very small. Macy counted it twice on the kitchen table that night and looked at me with a question.

“It’s yours,” I said.

“No,” she said slowly. “It’s Grandpa’s.”

On Sunday, she drove out with Mike to the Post and handed the whole box to Earl for the Kansas Honor Flight fund, which sends veterans to Washington to see their memorials. Earl looked at the can, and then at her, and did not say anything for a while.

Then he walked her over to a framed photograph on the wall of the hall. It was Wendell Brenner at the pancake griddle in 1994, in his Legion cap and an apron, with flour on his forearms.

The Post meets on the second and fourth Tuesdays. At the Tuesday meeting on the twenty seventh, forty one members were present, and I was not one of them, so I only know it the way you know most things in a small town.

Earl read the rule sheet aloud, the one that said canned beans, canned tomatoes and store-bought seasoning were all allowed. He read it twice. Then he read the line about the head judge’s decision being final, and he read it a third time, slowly.

He said the rule had never been meant to let one man end a girl’s day. He said he should have written it differently, and that was his fault.

Then Opal Kreger stood up and moved that the cook-off judging be done by three judges instead of one. They would be chosen by the Auxiliary, and none of them could be married to or related to an entrant. The entries would be numbered. The judges would taste from the same bowl, blind, before anyone had a chance to lift a lid.

Gilbert was in the room. He sat in the back row of folding chairs with his arms crossed and his chin down, and he did not say a word during the whole discussion.

The motion passed, thirty nine to two. Then Harold Bauer stood up from his seat by the door, leaning on his cane, and said he had one more.

“Gilbert Brenner won’t be judging any more cook-offs at this Post,” he said. “Not this year, and not as long as I’m breathing.”

That one passed too, thirty four to six, with one man abstaining. Gilbert was the head judge no longer. His blue ribbon pin was on the table by the end of the meeting, and I am told no one touched it.

I heard he did not argue. I heard he got up at the end, nodded to Earl, and walked out to his truck. He has not said a word to us since, and neither have we.

I want to be honest here, because I think that matters. Mike has not spoken to his brother, and I do not know if he will. There was no hug and no apology, and there was no scene in the parking lot. Gilbert has not come around to say he was sorry, and I have stopped waiting.