We carried the chairs out together

So I got volunteered. That's the whole reason I was there. My mom puts my name down for things and then tells me in the car, so by the time I hear about it we're already turning into the lot and there's nothing to say about it.

It was the confirmation retreat at St. Joseph's, the weekend after the Fourth. Fourteen and fifteen year olds, half of them on their phones under the tables. I'm nineteen. I got confirmed at fifteen and I haven't had anything to do with any of it since. She told Father I'd help with setup.

I work at my uncle's shop on First. Tires. He's my dad's brother. My cousin Beto had the job before me and now Beto's over in Sunnyside and he doesn't come to my grandma's. Two classes at the college Tuesday and Thursday nights and the rest of the week I'm at the shop, so a Saturday's a Saturday. I wasn't even doing anything with it. That's not the point, I just didn't know about it till the car.

The hall's got one swamp cooler up in the window and it was ninety-eight that day. Somebody decided the first session should be outside under the elms, which means the chairs go outside, and there's like a hundred and forty of those brown metal folding ones in the closet off the kitchen. Both carts have a bad wheel. You push and they go sideways into the wall. Sorry, I don't know why that's the part I — anyway.

Danny was in there already. The deacon's son. Everybody knows Deacon Ruiz, and Danny's like twenty-four and goes to school over in Pullman and he was home for the summer, and the first thing he told me was his dad put his name on the sheet and he found out Thursday. Which is the exact same thing that happened to me, so I said so. Then we got started on the chairs.

You can take eight at a time if you get your forearm under the stack and rock it back before you stand up with it. He did eight. I was doing five. The doorway, I said. That's what I said it was. The edges leave two lines on your arms and they stay there a couple hours after.

It took about forty minutes. The grass is the part that's stupid, because the feet dig in and you can't drag them, you've got to carry the whole way out to the trees. He'd be out on the grass and I'd have the next stack up on end by the door so he wasn't standing there waiting, and then we'd switch.

He asked what I do and I said tires, and then he asked what the machine actually does. Like he wanted to know. Not the kind where somebody asks you and then starts talking about themselves. I told him about the bead breaker and he wants to know how you keep from scratching a nice rim, and I said you don't, not every time, that's why you don't put a new guy on somebody's Escalade. He thought that was funny.

He got my name off the sign-in sheet and he used it twice in about four minutes, and I counted.

He told me he's going back in August for a fifth year, for a minor he doesn't even need. He goes, it's cheaper than being here, and then he laughed at himself and said no, that's a lie, it's not cheaper. And I didn't say anything back. I've thought about that.

Somewhere in there he asked if we go to the ten. I said yeah, the ten, and then my grandma's after, every week. He said when he's home he goes to the six on Saturday instead. He said it's over fast and nobody stands around out in the lot after and asks you things.

At one point he pulled the front of his shirt up to wipe his face and I looked at the cart.

And then — okay, so at the end there's one stack left and both carts are already out on the grass, so we each take an end of it. You don't need two guys for eight chairs. It isn't heavy, it's just long. So we're going out the double doors facing each other and I'm the one walking backwards, which, somebody's got to be, and he's telling me watch the ramp, watch the ramp. It's like thirty feet. That's the whole thing. And then somebody hollered for him from the kitchen and he went in.

I set the circle up by myself, which takes four minutes, and then my mom was in the doorway saying they needed the urn plugged in.

Nothing happened. I saw him twice after. Once across the hall at the pancake breakfast and once in the Safeway lot in Union Gap when I was putting a case of water in the truck, and he says hey and uses my name.

In August my mom said it at the table with her back to me, ya se fue el hijo del diácono, otra vez a Pullman. My grandma put more on my plate right then because I'd quit chewing for a second. Estás muy flaco, mijo, come. She doesn't wait for you to answer her, the plate's already down. My aunt keeps one in her fridge with my name on the foil in marker.

I go to the six now. Thirty people and most of them are older ladies. You're out by twenty of seven.

My mom's asked twice. First time I told her the shop had me Sunday morning, and that was even true that week. Second time she just said ¿por qué a las seis? and she just like stood there, and I said — I don't know. It's quieter. That's what I said. She looked at me and went back to the sink. She hasn't asked again. She's going to.

They used the hall again in September for a funeral lunch for a lady from the parish, and they asked me to do the chairs. Took an hour and ten by myself. Both carts still go sideways into the wall.