He was my sponsor for six years

Vern has the key. He's had it since the furnace quit the winter before I started coming, because he's the one who crawled under there and got it going again, and the deacon figured it was easier to hand him a key than get called out at eleven at night. So if Vern's got a grandson playing ball up in Rapid, we're all standing in the lot in our coats until somebody gets him on the phone. That's happened twice in nine years. Both times we just had the meeting out on the steps.

Loretta does the coffee. She's there at six for a six-thirty because the big urn takes twenty-five minutes and she won't use the little one. There's nothing wrong with the little one. She just don't care for how it makes it. Somebody donated that big urn out of a church wedding and it's about the size of a propane tank. She buys the coffee with her own money out of a can she keeps in the cupboard, up on the shelf with the filters, and if you try to hand her a five she'll put it back in your coat pocket out in the lot and not say anything about it.

Heat's on a timer. Comes on at five. If we run past eight you can hear the pipes start ticking as it goes off.

There's a kid comes in every third week or so, works at Big Bat's, hair down past his shoulders. He asked me one time does the water office hire and I told him they put people on in the spring. He never did come see me about it.

He came down from Kyle. Twenty-two years, and he'd say the number like it was a phone number. Sixty-two. Drove bus for the school district, then they had him fixing things for them instead.

I'd been calling him at two in the morning off and on for six years by then, and mostly not for the reason you'd think. Once because my daughter was in Rapid and the police called the house and I didn't know which direction to point myself. Once in February, a line froze out past Wounded Knee and I sat in the truck at four with the heater going and got to thinking about my brother, and he talked to me about a transmission for forty minutes until it was light enough to work. He never once asked me if I'd been drinking. He'd just start talking.

I drive for the water office. Meters, and hauling out to the houses that aren't on the line yet. Nine years in October.

The Tuesday I'm telling you about was in November and nothing happened at it. Gene picked up thirty days and we clapped. Loretta had the urn going but that outlet by the window quit on her again, so she ran a cord in from the hallway and it laid across the floor the whole hour with Vern telling everybody to pick their feet up. Afterwards it's him and me stacking chairs, because everybody else has somewhere to be, and he says do you want to take a ride.

So we drove out to the powwow grounds. There's nothing out there in November. The arbor's just posts that time of year and the grass is still knocked flat from August, because nobody's going out there to mow it for the wind. He left the engine on a while for the heat and then he shut it off. He's got a thing about idling. He'll tell you what it costs an hour if you let him.

He talked about his wife. She passed in 2019 and in the room he'd never said more about it than the fact of it. Then he talked about a man he knew in Denver in the eighties, and he said it the same way he'd tell you about a job he used to have.

I ran the heater knob back and forth a couple times, which doesn't do one thing with the engine off.

Then I told him about a guy in my platoon in 1991, and how nothing ever happened, and that I never told nobody that.

It happened in the truck and it didn't take long. That seat don't go back more than about four inches on account of the toolbox he keeps behind it. He wiped his side of the windshield off with his sleeve.

We were out there a long while after. I had to be at the shop at seven and I kept running the number on it, which is a thing I do. He drove me back to the church lot where my truck was. There was frost on it and I sat there and ran the defroster a while before I went anywhere. He said see you Tuesday and I said yeah.

The boys were still asleep when I got in. Jayce had school. Sonny doesn't yet, he's six. They're in my house because a judge said so, and there's a folder in the kitchen drawer with the order in it and copies of every piece of it. I made them eggs. Sonny won't eat the white part so I cut it off for him.

Nothing changed for a while. We talked on the phone the same as ever. He called me on a Thursday about a step and I did the work and it was fine.

Then in March I asked Alvin to sponsor me. Alvin's seventy-one and doesn't hear great, so he makes you say everything twice, which is not the worst thing in a deal like this. He said yes. He asked me one question, which was am I all right, and I said yeah, and he let it go.

Nobody asked me about it. People switch around in there. Vern's switched twice.

He still comes Tuesdays. We split the coffee run now, on account of Loretta's knees. I get whatever's on the shelf at Sioux Nation.

We put the tables up after. He'll say something about the furnace. Last month I had the cane and he took the heavy end and had it up on the rack before I got around to the other side.

Sonny got in the hall closet back in August looking for a ball and found the chair folded up in there and wanted to know what it was. I told him it's for if I need it. He asked could he sit in it. I said no.

I check the foot every night before I get in bed. You use the little mirror and go over the whole bottom of it, and in between the toes. Takes about a minute.