Part Thirteen: The Office
I dropped the kids at the front door at eight. Lily went to kindergarten. Noah went to second grade. I told Noah to go straight to class and not stop at the office.
He looked at me. He knew something was going on.
“Is it about the pennies?” he asked.
“I don’t know yet, honey,” I said. “Go to class.”
I walked into the office.
The seventy-four shoeboxes were still stacked against the back wall. The armored car from the bank wasn’t coming until Friday.
Mrs. Jaeger was at her desk, very carefully not looking at anyone. Mr. Okonkwo was standing in the doorway of his office with his arms crossed.
And Dale Heckert was sitting in one of the little plastic chairs by the front counter.
He looked smaller than I’d ever seen him.
He was wearing his Dickies and his gray Heckert Auto T-shirt and his steel-toed boots with the knotted laces. But his shoulders were hunched. His crew cut looked like he hadn’t combed it. His face was red and blotchy.
He was holding something in his lap. A coffee can. An old red Folgers can with a dented lid.
When he saw me, he stood up so fast the plastic chair tipped over.
“Becky,” he said.
His voice was hoarse.
I didn’t say anything. I stood just inside the office door with my purse over my shoulder.
Mrs. Fogle came out of the cafeteria in her apron and hairnet. She stood beside the counter, between us, with her arms crossed.
“I’m not here to cause trouble,” Dale said. “I just—I need to say something. And I need to give you something.”
He held out the coffee can.
“I don’t want anything from you, Dale,” I said.
“It’s not for you,” he said. “It’s for the kids. The lunch kids.”
I didn’t move.
He set the can on the counter. He took off the lid.
It was full of money. Not pennies. Bills. Twenties and fifties and hundreds, rolled up tight with rubber bands.
“Four thousand three hundred dollars,” Dale said. “Mrs. Fogle says that’s what’s left. Every grade. Kindergarten through fifth. I asked her yesterday afternoon.”
I looked at Mrs. Fogle. She nodded slowly.
“He called at three o’clock,” she said. “Asked how much was owed in the whole school. I told him. He hung up.”
She looked at the coffee can.
“He was waiting in the parking lot at six-thirty this morning,” she said.
Part Fourteen: Cheese
“Why?” I asked.
Dale didn’t answer right away. He looked at the coffee can. Then he looked at Mrs. Fogle.
“You tell her, Edna,” he said quietly. “I can’t.”
Mrs. Fogle uncrossed her arms.
“Becky,” she said. “Do you know how long I’ve worked here?”
“Thirty-one years,” I said.
“Do you know who worked here before me?”
I shook my head.
“My mother,” Mrs. Fogle said. “Irene Bauer. She was the lunch lady at Washington Elementary from 1962 to 1993.”
She looked at Dale.
“Dale was in her lunch line,” she said. “Every day. From first grade through sixth.”
Dale was staring at the floor.
“My dad drank,” he said. His voice was flat. “He ran the shop. Made decent money. Spent most of it at the Rusty Nail on Main Street. Some weeks there wasn’t any money for groceries. There sure as heck wasn’t any for lunch.”
He swallowed.
“I got the cheese sandwich,” he said. “Second grade. Third grade. Fourth. Every day for three years. White tray. One slice of cheese on white bread in a plastic bag. A carton of milk.”
The office was very quiet.
“They called me Cheese,” Dale said. “Through high school. Even after the shop started doing better. Even after I joined the Navy and came back. Guys I went to school with still call me Cheese at the Rusty Nail. Forty-five years later.”
He laughed. It wasn’t a happy sound.
“I’ve never told anybody that bothered me,” he said. “I just got meaner. Figured if I was mean enough, nobody’d notice I was the cheese sandwich kid.”
“In fifth grade,” Mrs. Fogle said quietly, “his account was eighty-four dollars in the hole. That was a lot of money in 1975. The school was going to send a letter home. To his father.”
She looked at Dale.
“My mother paid it,” she said. “Out of her own purse. Out of her grocery money. She never told him. She never told anybody. She just started putting a hot lunch on his tray one day and never said why.”
Dale’s face crumpled.
“I didn’t know,” he said. “I didn’t know until 2009. At Irene’s funeral. Edna told me afterward, in the church basement.”
He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. His knuckles were scarred and greasy.
“She paid my lunch for two years,” he said. “And I never even said thank you. Because I didn’t know.”
Part Fifteen: What He Saw
“When I saw that post,” Dale said. “Yesterday. About the pennies.”
He looked at the wall of shoeboxes.
“Twenty-three kids,” he said. “Twenty-three kids who won’t get the cheese sandwich.”
His voice cracked.
“I paid you in pennies to make a point,” he said. “To make you feel small. Because you were leaving. Because everybody always leaves. My wife. My son. Every good mechanic I ever had. You.”
He looked at me.
“You were the best parts person I ever had,” he said. “Better than my dad. Better than me. And when you put that letter on my desk, I didn’t know what to do. So I did what my dad would’ve done.”
“I wanted you to kneel in the gravel,” he said quietly. “I wanted you to count every one of them and think about me while you did it. I wanted you to be angry.”
He looked at the floor.
“And you turned every one of them into lunch for the cheese sandwich kids,” he said.
He looked up at me. His eyes were red.
“I sat in my truck in the shop lot for three hours last night,” he said. “Reading that post over and over. Reading the comments. Every single person in this town thinks I’m a monster.”
He swallowed.
“They’re right,” he said.
I didn’t say anything for a long time.
I looked at Dale Heckert. Sixty-one years old, standing in an elementary school office in his work clothes, holding a Folgers can full of money, crying in front of the lunch lady.
I thought about the pennies. About my children’s hands in yellow rubber gloves. About my raw knees and cracked fingertips. About Lily’s lopsided roll with her sticky fingerprints.
“Dale,” I said. “Why did you ask for me?”
He looked at me.
“Because I owe you an apology,” he said. “First. Before anybody else. Before I give the school a dime.”
He took a breath.
“I’m sorry, Becky,” he said. “For the pennies. For the oil. For making your kids scrub them. For not speaking to you for two weeks. For six years of never saying thank you.”
He looked at the wall of shoeboxes.
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
