The Popcorn Balls on Elm Street

Marlene from church was the one who called me about the post.

It was a Monday morning, five days before Halloween, and I was standing at my kitchen sink in my robe, rinsing out the coffee pot.

“Joanne, are you on the Facebook right now?” she asked. Marlene is seventy-four and still says “the Facebook,” and she only calls before nine when somebody has died or somebody is about to wish they had kept quiet.

I told her I was not, that I only look at it at night to see pictures of the grandkids. She was quiet a second, and then she said, “Well, honey, you had better sit down and look.”

So I dried my hands on the dish towel, sat down at the kitchen table where I have sat for nearly forty years, and opened the town group on my phone with my reading glasses pushed up on my nose.

The group is called Harlow Hometown Happenings. Mostly it is lost dogs, the Lions Club pancake breakfast, somebody selling a used crib, and somebody else asking who in the world is burning leaves on a Sunday.

The post at the top had gone up at 6:12 that morning.

It already had more comments than the time the grain elevator caught fire. It was from Kayla Pruitt, who is married to my son.

“Friendly reminder to all the parents for Halloween,” it said. “Please only let your kids eat sealed, store-bought candy. Do not let them eat homemade treats from certain houses on Elm Street. You never know what is in them or how they were made. Safety first, mamas.”

There are nine houses on Elm Street in Harlow, Iowa. Only one of them has handed out homemade treats every Halloween for forty-one years.

It is the white one at the corner of Elm and Fourth with the green shutters, and it is mine.

I read it three times. Then I set the phone face down on the oilcloth, the way you set down a hot pan, and I looked out the window at the maple in the front yard that had dropped half its leaves overnight.

“Joanne? You still there?” Marlene said, and I realized I still had the house phone tucked against my shoulder. I told her I was there, and I thanked her for calling, and I said I needed to get dressed.

“You want me to say something on there?” she asked. “Because I will. I have been eating your popcorn balls since Reagan was president, and I am still alive and kicking.”

I told her no, please, not to say one word. I did not know yet what I was going to do, but I knew that a fight in the comments was not it.