Josh drove back and forth every night so he wouldn’t lose his job at the feedlot.
Two hours each way. Elk Bend to Wichita. He’d work his shift at the feedlot from five in the morning until three in the afternoon, feeding eight thousand head of cattle, and then drive straight to Wichita in his work clothes. He’d sit with Bryce from five until eleven. Then he’d drive home and sleep for four hours and do it all over again.
The feedlot only gave him two days off. They’d already lost three hands that winter and couldn’t spare him.
“If I miss more, they’ll replace me,” he said. “And then we lose the insurance.”
So he drove. Every night. Eleven nights. Almost five thousand miles.
I stayed in Wichita. I slept in the chair next to Bryce’s bed. The school gave me two weeks of emergency leave. Mrs. Abernathy, the principal, drove down on the third day with a bag of my clothes and a cooler full of food the lunch ladies had sent.
I took one look at that cooler and cried. Turkey sandwiches. Chicken salad. Chocolate chip cookies. Three of them had written notes on paper napkins. We love you, Cass. Hang in there. Bryce is a hero.
Back home in Elk Bend, the town held a chili supper.
I didn’t know about it until it was over. Josh told me on the phone the next night, standing in the hospital parking garage.
The fire department organized it. In the station bay, where they park the trucks. They pulled the trucks out onto the apron and set up folding tables inside. The Methodist ladies made chili. The Baptist ladies made cornbread. The American Legion donated pie.
There was a coffee can at the door. A big red Folgers can with a piece of paper taped on the front. FOR BRYCE WELLER. Somebody’s daughter had drawn a picture of a fire truck and a dog on it with markers.
Three thousand, one hundred dollars. In one night.
Elk Bend has six hundred and forty people. Most of them ranchers or feedlot hands or school employees or retired. Three thousand, one hundred dollars is a lot of money in Elk Bend.
“Rodney counted it,” Josh said on the phone. “He’s the treasurer. He said he’d put it in the department account and write us a check.”
“Rodney?” I said.
“He was there all night,” Josh said. “He took the door.”
Rodney is Josh’s older brother.
We came home on the twelfth day. Bryce rode in the back seat with his arms wrapped in white gauze, propped up on pillows. Biscuit was waiting at the end of the driveway, the way she always did, with a bandage on her front paw.
She saw the car and went crazy. Barking and wagging and running in circles. Bryce was crying before we even stopped.
“Can I hold her?” he asked. “Mom, please. Can I?”
The nurse had said no pressure on the grafts. I didn’t care. I got Bryce out of the car and sat him on the porch steps, and Josh brought Biscuit over, and she put her head in Bryce’s lap and lay there, perfectly still, for an hour.
She didn’t jump on him once. She knew.
Chapter Three: The Porch
Two weeks later, Rodney stood on my porch with his cap in his hands.
It was a Thursday afternoon. I was home with Bryce. He was in the living room on the couch, watching cartoons, with his arms propped on pillows. Biscuit was lying on the floor beside him.
I heard Rodney’s pickup in the driveway. A white Ford with a Elk Bend Volunteer Fire Department decal on the back window. I went out on the porch.
He got out. He didn’t come up the steps. He stood at the bottom of them, in his feed store cap and his canvas coat, and took his cap off and held it in both hands.
Rodney Weller is forty-four. Six years older than Josh. He runs the John Deere parts counter at the implement dealer in Cottonwood. He’s been a volunteer fireman in Elk Bend for twenty-two years and the department treasurer for nine.
He’s a careful man. Quiet. Keeps his books in a ledger in a three-ring binder, in pencil, because pencil you can erase. He’s never been married. He lives alone in our father-in-law’s old house on the edge of town.
He looked at the porch boards. He didn’t look at me.
“Cass,” he said.
“Rodney.”
“How’s he doing?”
“Healing,” I said. “Slowly. He’s got PT twice a week in Emporia.”
He nodded. He kept turning his cap around in his hands.
“The board moved the supper money to the truck fund, Cass,” he said.
I didn’t understand at first.
“What?”
“The chili supper money. The three thousand, one hundred.” He swallowed. “The board voted Tuesday night. To put it in the truck fund.”
I stared at him.
“It was for Bryce,” I said. “It said so on the can. Somebody drew a picture of a dog.”
“I know it did.”
“Then how…”
“The brush truck failed its pump test,” Rodney said. He was talking fast now, like he’d practiced it. “In February. The annual service test. The pump won’t hold pressure. It’s a 1998 Ford with the original pump, and it’s worn out.”
“I don’t…”
“The state fire marshal’s office does inspections,” he said. “And the ISO does ratings. For insurance. If our brush truck can’t pass the pump test, they could downgrade the department’s rating. And if they do that, every homeowner’s insurance premium in Elk Bend goes up. Everybody’s. Hundreds of dollars a year.”
He finally looked up at me.
“A new pump is eleven thousand dollars,” he said. “We had seven thousand, nine hundred in the truck fund. The supper money gets us to eleven.”
I stood there on my own porch and couldn’t breathe.
“Bryce has insurance,” Rodney said. Quietly. “The truck doesn’t.”
He said it like he believed it. Like it was simple. Like it was the only way the math could come out.
I thought about Dale and Mike, coming across that pasture in that brush truck. With the pump going. That old, worn-out pump that couldn’t hold pressure.
I thought about Bryce face down in the grass.
“Was it legal?” I asked finally. My voice sounded strange. “To move it?”
Rodney looked at his cap.
“The money was given to the department,” he said. “Not to you directly. It went into the department account. Under the bylaws, the board can allocate department funds. So yes. It was legal.” He took a breath. “I checked. I called the county attorney.”
“You called the county attorney,” I said. “Before you came here.”
He didn’t answer.
I didn’t scream. I want that on the record. Bryce was inside on the couch. The window was open. I wasn’t going to let him hear me scream at his uncle.
“Get off my porch, Rodney,” I said.
He looked at me for a long moment. Then he put his cap back on. He walked back to his white Ford with the fire department decal.
He stopped at the truck door. He turned around.
“I’m sorry, Cass,” he said.
Then he got in and drove away.
Chapter Four: Out of Pocket
The money was given to the department. Not to us.
That’s what it came down to. I looked it up myself, at my kitchen table that night, on my laptop. I read the department bylaws, which are posted on the county website. I read the Kansas statutes on volunteer fire departments.
Rodney was right. The board had the authority. Moving the money was his legal call.
Cruel, maybe. Not a crime.
