Chapter 10: The Coffee Can

My father's kitchen smelled like coffee and engine oil and the kind of quiet a house gets after one person has left it.

He sat me down at the oilcloth table where I had done my homework.

Then he went to the cupboard over the stove.

He climbed on a chair with his bad knee and a grunt, and took down a Folgers can.

It was red, dented, and heavier than it should have been.

"Dad."

"Don't say anything till I'm done."

He set it between us.

The lid came off with a pop.

Inside, packed tight, in rubber bands, were receipts.

Hundreds of them, small and soft with handling, the paper gone the color of tea.

"Every month for nine years," he said.

"I took the cash down on the fifteenth and got a slip."

"I didn't trust a bank to keep my receipts, so I kept them myself."

"Your mother would've said I was a fool."

"She'd have said you were careful."

"She'd have said both."

I pulled the first bundle toward me.

For seven years, the slips were typed on Trust paper, with the counter girl's initials in the corner.

Then, two years ago in November, they changed.

The paper became thick, cream-colored letterhead.

The writing was blue ink, in a heavy slanting hand I had seen on a hundred Settlement Night programs.

Received of W. Pascoe, $4,200. For the note. L.H.

I read the slip.

I read the next one.

They were all the same, twenty-four months of them.

"He took it himself?" I said.

"The chairman said he was tightening the books."

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