The Tuesday Night Bingo Ban That Backfired

In twenty-five years at the Harlan Springs American Legion hall, I have been called a great many things. Most of them were some version of “Maxine, where did you put the extension cord.” Until the second Tuesday in October, nobody had ever called me a threat.

I am five feet one in my good shoes. I am seventy-one years old. The most dangerous thing I own is a nine-by-thirteen pan of lemon bars, and on that Tuesday I was carrying it through the side door at ten past six, the same as I had carried a pan of something through that door nearly every Tuesday since the spring of 2001.

Darla Whitlock was waiting just inside. She stood in front of the coat rack with her lanyard on and her clipboard held across her chest like a shield, and she had the look of a woman who has rehearsed in a mirror. Behind her, the hall was filling up. Forty-one regulars were settling into folding chairs, the coffee urn was gurgling, and Orville Haskins was already at the caller’s stand, polishing the little wooden balls with his handkerchief.

“Maxine,” Darla said. “Do you have a minute? I need to speak with you before we begin.”

“I have eighteen,” I said. “Game one is at six-thirty. Let me just set these down.”

“I’d prefer you didn’t.”

I looked at the lemon bars. The lemon bars looked at me. In all my years I had never been asked to hold a lemon bar against my will.

Then Darla turned the clipboard around, and I saw she was holding a sheet of paper in a plastic sleeve. Not a plastic sleeve, exactly. It had been laminated, properly, with the little rounded corners. Somebody had gone to considerable trouble.

I took my reading glasses out of my cardigan pocket and read it right there in the doorway, the way I had read every invoice that crossed my desk at the Harlan Cooperative Elevator for thirty-four years. Slowly, from the top, with my finger.

It was titled “Notice of Suspension.” It said that pending a review of the Tuesday Program, Maxine Teller was suspended from all bingo activities at Post 318, effective immediately, for three reasons. One, the early marking of cards. Two, the intimidation of new players. Three, a statistically unusual win frequency. It was signed in purple gel pen, with a tiny smiley face in the loop of the D.

By then the room had gone quiet in the particular way a room goes quiet when forty-one people are all pretending to look at something else. Bev Tanner had stopped unwrapping her sugar cream pie. Rudy Pfeiffer, who is six foot two and has never intimidated a living soul, was studying the ceiling tiles.

“I want to be clear that this isn’t personal,” Darla said, in a low voice, which in that hall carries exactly as well as a loud one. “We’ve received concerns. I have a responsibility to the player experience.”

My face was hot and my knees were doing something I had not authorized. But my mother raised me to believe you do not argue with a piece of paper in front of forty-one people holding daubers. You save the argument for the kitchen. In public, you read the fine print.

“This is very nicely laminated,” I said.

Darla blinked. “Thank you. I did it myself.”

“It shows. The corners are lovely. May I ask about the third item? The win frequency?”