Carol, it said. For the day Russell needs help and is too proud to ask. Underneath, in her careful slant, Mama had written that she knew about Lorraine\u2019s surgery and the $9,600 they still owed the hospital. She had given Russell the card in March, her last good week, and told him to hand it to me if things got bad. He never did. He was ashamed. Selling the jars felt easier than admitting to his little sister that he couldn\u2019t pay.<\/p>\n
The rest of the card read like any other recipe. Put up the peaches. Give them away. Tell folks plainly what my boy needs. They will remember every jar I ever left on a step. I read it out loud because Russell asked me to, and his voice was too thick to do it himself. Lorraine sat down on the cooler and cried into her dish towel.<\/p>\n
Mrs. Kowalski set down the jar, took a coffee can from her clipboard bag, and dropped in forty dollars. Edna Larkin went next. Then the young woman with the peaches. Customers who had bought jars the week before came back, refused refunds, and added more instead. It took four Saturdays. On the last one, Earl counted the can twice on my red checked cloth: $9,860. Russell paid the hospital that Monday and gave the extra $260 to the church food pantry.<\/p>\n
Next August, Russell and Lorraine came down to Mama\u2019s cellar with sacks of peaches and a borrowed pressure canner. We worked three weekends side by side. Lorraine burned her thumb and learned the dilly beans. Russell rebuilt the bottom shelf where the board had split. When we finished, I chalked the count on the wall beside the old one. Three hundred twenty. We gave away every jar, and asked only for the jar back, washed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Carol, it said. For the day Russell needs help and is too proud to ask. Underneath, in her careful slant, Mama had written that she knew about… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stories"],"yoast_head":"\n