Going Home - Chapter 20

After the run-in with Evan, I abandoned the rest of my walk along main street and went to do my patrol of the rest of the county before it got dark. I tried to stay focused on making notes of anything worth circling back to or checking on later, but my mind kept wandering. After the BBQ, when they’d mentioned trying to buy Rosita’s land, I’d asked her a few times about it, but she’d blown it off as not a big deal. When nothing happened, I’d assumed she was right and it wasn’t a big deal.

Evan’s move tonight, however, was a clear sign that they hadn’t dropped it and they were getting more aggressive about it. Even if Evan still thought I was the same guy he’d gone to high school with, trying to convince me, or worse pay me off, to talk Rosita out of her land was pretty heavy-handed. I was worried that it might be a sign they were trying everything they could before taking more direct action to get her land. And I knew Evan wasn’t against doing something to force her to sell.

I finished my patrol and headed to Rosita’s, since she would be finishing up about now. I was surprised to find her sitting on the front counter, playing with a rag in her hand, to the point it took her a second to recognize the bell on the door had chimed when I came in.

“Hey,” she said, sounding off.

My first thought, of course, was that Evan had come by and threatened her while I was out patrolling.

“Is everything okay?”

“Yes … no. Did you know Elaine closed the food bank this morning?”

She didn’t sound angry or mad, which is what I’d expect if Evan had come by to threaten her. If anything, she sounded incredibly sad. Whatever it was, she was obviously worried about something, so instead of confronting her about what Evan might have said to her over the last few weeks, I rolled with what she wanted to talk about.

“I saw it when I was walking main street. I thought she was still deciding what to do?”

She took a deep breath, and then the words just spilled out of her as the dam broke.

“So did I. She called me this morning and said she’d decided to just shut down. I went by and picked up all the food she hadn’t given out and called the list of people she normally gave food to, to let them know they could come here to get it. Part of me wanted to tell them they could just come eat here for free, when they need to, but there’s enough of them that I’d basically drop to break even if I gave out that much food, which means I wouldn’t be able to build a facility, which means I wouldn’t be eligible for most of the state and federal grants, which means I’d basically be stuck just helping a handful of people and never be able to do better. I know the smart thing is to just wait and stick with my plan, but that means there’s going to be at least several months where people will go hungry. I’m just so torn up about it.”

Tears streaked down her face, as she continued to pull and tug at the rag in her hand. I made my way around to the counter and hopped up next to her, putting my arm around her and pulling her into me so she could rest her head on my shoulder. I’d known she was a good person when we’d first met, but seeing how much she was tearing herself up because she couldn’t help people as fast as she wanted to really drove the point home.

“I know you want to help people, but you’re never going to be able to help everyone. All you can do is make the best decisions you can and try to do as much good as possible, right?”

“Yeah, I know. I just feel kind of helpless.”

I know sometimes women just wanted to have someone to pour their frustrations out to and didn’t always want someone to come in and offer solutions or ideas, but I couldn’t help myself. I hated seeing her so upset and every ounce of me just wanted to make her feel better.

“I know you’re hurting and don’t want to let people down, but beating yourself up won’t help anyone at all. How about we figure out how to get this done as fast as possible? Between the two of us, I’m sure we can do something to make this work.”

She kind of shrugged, but didn’t answer. I took the shrug as a good sign that she wasn’t opposed to coming up with a plan.

“So to get the grants you’ll need, you have to have a facility, correct?”

“Yes. It’s one of the things that made it hard on Elaine. Most of the grants specify a warehouse capable of holding enough food to supply the community, including cold storage.”

“Do they give specific measurements of what’s required?”

“No, it’s not like that. They don’t actually have the limitations in their charters. Most of them say they evaluate each application for comprehensiveness, completeness, and overall quality of the planned operations, but I talked to Elaine and a lot of other people she knows who run food banks, and they said the main things they look for in the proposals are adequate storage facilities and limited operating costs. Other than herself and her rent, Elaine didn’t have any operating costs, but she still got turned down every time she applied. Although they didn’t give her specifics, she spoke to a few people at the state level that flat out told her the reason was because she was operating out of a storefront with only standing refrigerators for cold food. They were also concerned, because she was renting without a long-term lease, that investments into the facilities themselves weren’t possible.”

“So you’re pretty sure if you build a facility that you own, you’ll be able to get a grant?”

“Yes. Well, not that I own. I’ve already gotten all the paperwork for a non-profit for it to operate under. Elaine put me in contact with some people who work for some of the agencies and one guy who works for a charity that gives grants like this, and they looked over my proposals and planned financials, and said that it should be okay if the facility plan is good. They also confirmed that inadequate facilities are a major reason they deny a lot of grants. They said it was because places with inadequate storage had much higher food spoilage, causing a lot of waste, but still, if they didn’t have that stupid policy, Elaine could have stayed open and none of this would have happened.”

“Could you put forward a plan that included details of the facility you’re going to build and the land you’re giving over?”

“No. They allow for some operations budget, but if I put the cost of the facility into it, I’ll be way over operating costs for the first year, which would get me denied. It’s why I was going to pay for it out of pocket. Even getting a loan using the property as collateral, it won’t cover everything, so I need every bit of money out of the restaurant I can get. Once the loan is paid off and there aren’t any liens on the property, I was going to wait until I built the facility and then make it and the land a charitable donation. But none of that can happen if I have to burn up all of my profits trying to feed people out of the restaurant.”

“I’m guessing you wouldn’t consider holding to your original plan? I know it would leave some families in a bind through the summer, but it would also mean long-term help for people in the county. I’m not saying you should do that,” I added, when I saw the expression on her face at the suggestion. “I’m just making sure I understand.”

“No. I’d rather help people now and figure out something later. I’ve seen the people who use the food bank when I’ve helped over there. It’s families. Kids. Older people. They can’t go for days between meals, which is what many people were doing before Elaine started up the food bank. I’ve talked to these people. Heard their stories. Do you know what three months of malnutrition does to a child’s development?”

She was getting worked up again. It tore me up to see her like this. She was a strong woman, but she was also very empathetic. None of this was her problem, but in her own mind at least, she’d taken responsibility for these people.

“It’s okay. Like I said, I wasn’t suggesting we leave them without help. I just wanted to clarify the situation,” I said, and then fell silent, thinking of options.

If we lived in a bigger city, there’d be local organizations we could go to, or even fundraising opportunities to raise cash in the community. That wasn’t really an option in Buxton. Hell, what charitable work people could do, they’d already done for Mr. Cooper. It’s why the churches and the Elks club coordinated their collection campaigns to put enough room between them. There’d been a big deal when I was a kid where there’d been a mix-up and several events had been held nearly on top of each other. The group that had gone last had collected almost nothing, because the community was already tapped out from giving to the two other organizations.

There was one option that came to mind, but I hesitated to suggest it, partly because I thought she’d say no and partly because I was selfish. Not coming up with anything else and seeing her in pain, though, was enough to push me over the edge.

“We have some options,” I said, deciding to start with the least helpful but easiest to suggest options. “The salary Orville pays me is more than I need to live on, especially when combined with my pension from the NYPD. I was going to put everything extra into savings for the end of the summer, in case I decided I still wanted to go be a teacher, but this is a better use for it. It’s not a lot. After my expenses, it’ll probably be like fifteen hundred a month. Probably a lot less than your profit, but it can take up some of the slack and free up that money for construction costs.”

“I can’t let you do that,” she said, almost reflexively.

“Yes, you can. Even your original plan had you giving up every dollar not needed to pay your bills to build this thing. How can I do any less? I’m not talking about going broke or making myself homeless. This is what I make above what my monthly bills are. It means we can’t go on any lavish dates or anything, but as long as we’re together, I don’t need anything like that.”

“Fine,” she said, smiling for the first time since I’d gotten there. “Thank you. That will be a big help.”

“Second, we can talk to the Elks and the churches. They don’t have a lot for charities outside of what they’re already doing, but they might be able to help. Hell, they’ll probably want to help. All three of them hold food drives every year to get canned food and stuff that they’d give to Elaine or the people who ran the food bank before her. You’re stepping in to fill that void, so of course, they’re going to want to help you.”

“I’ve already talked to them.”

“You have?”

“Yes. They agreed to help, but it’s not very much. None of them get a lot and this year’s spending was already mostly allotted back in February. They said they could probably do more next year, but we can’t wait that long.”

“Okay, so they’re factored in.”

“Yes. I really appreciate your offering to help, but this is going to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Not all of that will be upfront, but a lot of it will have to be. Between my savings, what’s left from Tommy’s army benefits and life insurance, and the bank loan I can cover a lot of that, but I’m still going to be about a hundred thousand short by the time everything’s said and done. Even with every dollar the restaurant makes over the summer, it would have been close. With what you’re going to give, I’m still going to have to start begging anyone I can for money to get the project through to the end. Without my profit, I’m not even close.”

“How much would you be able to cover with three months’ profit?”

“Sixty to seventy thousand,” she said.

I was honestly shaken. That was worlds more money than I would have thought she was going to say. I knew her bills were fairly low and she was very busy almost all of the time, but Buxton was a really small town.

“You’re making three-hundred thousand dollars profit a year?” I asked.

“Closer to three seventy-five, but the summer is our slow season. If this was in the middle of the year, we’d have more to work with.”

“Seriously?” I asked, still surprised by the numbers.

“I know, it’s a lot. Our food costs are really low and we get business from the entire county. I also do several events a month up in Summersville, especially around Christmas and the fourth of July.”

“Holy cow.”

She just kind of shrugged. I think she was embarrassed by the praise, but in a place like Buxton, the only people to make that kind of money were the two lawyers and maybe Doc Thompson. No one at the mine even made that much, since the people at Dixon who did, didn’t live anywhere near here.

“I don’t normally have that much every year, mind you. Before Elaine shut down I was ordering about twenty-five percent more food each month so I could donate it, so my profit was a lot less. Those numbers are without that expense, since she isn’t around any longer to donate to.”

“So really, you just need to come up with seventy-thousand dollars?”

“Yes, but that isn’t exactly easy. That’s after tapping every resource I have, with my savings drained and the property mortgaged.”

“I have about forty-five thousand in savings, from my severance and what I put away from my pension after paying off the lawyer. That would get you most of the way there, and we could figure the rest out as we go.”

“You can’t do that! What about your plan? You’re already going to give me everything you’d otherwise be putting into savings. What if you decide you don’t want to keep working for the police and you’re going to go off to be a teacher. You can’t do that if you don’t have any money.”

“I can do that. If I do decide I need the money, I’ll deal with it then. If you want, you can consider it a no-interest loan to the non-profit without any set payment dates and pay it back when you can. What I can’t do is step aside and let you do something drastic to try and make this happen while running a food bank out of your restaurant at the same time.”

“Henry, we’ve only known each other a few months and we just started really dating. You’re talking about giving me everything you have. That’s crazy.”

“No, I’m talking about supporting the non-profit setting up a food bank in my hometown. That’s not any crazier than you deciding to give up the property your brother left you and everything you make to run a food bank in a town you’ve only lived in for a few years. I figure it just means we’re both just the same amount of crazy, which is why we work so well together.”

“Okay. I’ll call the bank tomorrow and set up a meeting about the loan. We’re going to do this,” she said, hugging me tightly.

“Yes, we are,” I said, hugging her back.

I never did get around to asking her about Evan and his threats. It was still a problem, but I didn’t want to ruin her good mood at figuring out how to make her plans work.

We talked for a while longer before I headed back out. I hadn’t really processed what I’d offered her, but I did think it was the right call. For now, it wouldn’t change anything, but if I decided I didn’t like working for Orville, I’d find myself short on options.

Still, every day I was more and more certain I wanted to be with Rosita, so not working for Orville didn’t have to mean leaving town. Of course, if I stayed and didn’t work for Orville, I was basically left with working in the mines, which was something I really didn’t want to do.

That was, however, a question for later. For right now, I was actually enjoying working as a deputy, more or less. Sure, it was tedious and boring for long stretches on the night shift, but I actually enjoyed the times during the day shift or parts of the night shift where I got to check in on people and occasionally help someone out. Being a policeman in a small town was not like working in New York City at all, to the point where it was almost like a different career altogether.

I was actually thinking about that when I headed into the office the next morning for the handover to Orville, who had the next day shift.

“How’d everything go?” Orville asked.

“Good. A real quiet night. Mr. Benson was up to it again. He calmed down a bit when I got there, so I dropped him off with his sister and took his keys. They’re in Sarah’s desk.”

Mr. Benson was in his mid-sixties and a fall down drunk pretty much every waking moment. He’d worked in the mines as a younger man, but got out on disabilities in his late thirties when a mine shaft collapsed, killing everyone but him. I’d found him yelling at cars parked outside of one of the smaller bars in town. He’d gotten kicked out for being combative with the other drinkers, which happened once or twice a week. I would have wondered why they still let him in, except knowing he spent nearly every dollar of his disability on booze, my best guess was they didn’t want to turn away the sure money.

So we worked as a taxi service for him, most nights just dropping him off with his sister while he yelled at us for not letting him drink. Occasionally he’d get really aggressive with us and we’d shove him in a holding cell overnight, but that didn’t actually solve the problem. He’d sober up enough to be apologetic and go back home, just to do it again the next night. Except for the yelling and occasional drunk lunge, he was harmless, so I agreed with Orville’s policy to just get him off the streets when we found him.

“So you’re a week in. How’s it going so far?”

“Fine, I guess. You’re the boss, you tell me.”

“Fair enough, although that wasn’t what I was asking. I know you’re up to the job, or I wouldn’t have offered it to you. I’ve already gotten calls from some of the business owners. They love that you do a foot patrol down main street a couple of times each shift, and that you stop in and check on them. They feel like they really have our ear, and think it was all my brilliant idea. I, of course, took credit for it and I’ve already told Al he needs to start doing it too.”

“I’m glad I can make you look good,” I said, getting a laugh out of him.

“Good, keep doing it and I’m a shoo-in for reelection. What I meant though, was how are you feeling about it, since you were really on the fence before you started?”

“I was just thinking about that last night, actually. I think I let my experience in New York City cloud my judgment of what this would be like, but it’s really not as bad as I thought it’d be. It’s practically a completely different job made up of the stuff I liked about being in the NYPD, without the parts I hated.”

“Good. So, are you thinking you might stay?”

“It’s too soon to tell. Let’s just let things roll for now and see how it goes.”

“I wasn’t meaning to push you. I guess I’m wondering what it is you don’t like about living here?”

“It’s not that I don’t like living here, it’s just that it’s so different. I’d forgotten about all that came with living in a small town, except for maybe the worst part. I’ll admit that I dug in my heels when I first got back, since the thing I remembered was everyone being up in everyone else’s business. That’s still there, but I’d forgotten the stuff that I liked. There’s more of a sense of community here than I’d remembered, although maybe that was because I was a kid and didn’t really know the difference.”

“I guess you don’t get that in a huge city.”

“I mean, you do, sort of. It was weird. The neighborhood was kind of like its own community, and I’d thought it was more or less the same thing as living in a place like this, but now that I’m back, I realize it really isn’t the same. It’s similar, but there it was just the block, give or take. Here, it’s everywhere. Of course, that’s also the downside of a small town.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s hard to really explain. In a place like New York City, it’s impossible to be isolated. I saw all kinds of people from all kinds of places, so much so that it just became normal. It was harder to see people as different or strange, because everyone was different and strange. I couldn’t walk five feet without hearing multiple languages being spoken. There was variety in everything. Here, everyone knows everyone, but that also means anyone new or different sticks out like a sore thumb. Hell, I felt it when I came back, and I’m from here. But I’d been gone long enough that I could feel people watching me everywhere I went and it always felt like someone was just talking about me when I walked in the door, since everyone suddenly shut up as soon as they saw me. It can be kind of unwelcoming, even though they don’t mean for it to be.”

“I hadn’t thought about it like that.”

“For me, it didn’t last that long, since people got used to me and I was already a known quantity, but I see it more with Rosita. People seem to love her restaurant and she’s always doing things to help the community, but I can see people watching her when she walks by. She’s still an outsider, and it will be a long time before she shakes that label.”

“Has she said anything?”

I knew what Orville was getting at. Cops in a small town were about a lot more than just keeping crime down. Like the mayor, priests, and town doctor, they were part of the glue that held the community together. In a small community like this, tensions could reach the boiling point pretty fast, and the community leaders had to be aware of the trouble spots so they could ease tensions before that happened.

“No. I’m not even sure she notices. Until we started dating, she really only worked or went to the food bank to help Elaine. I think some of that was being isolated in the community, but a lot of it was by choice. She still has a lot of pain from losing her brother and I think she uses being really busy as a way to be distracted. It’s not overt, but it’s there. Despite everything she does to help people, she’s not really friends with anyone in town except Elaine and Julie, the girl who works for her sometimes. And with both of them, the relationship is very much directed at what connects them, the food bank in the former and work in the latter.”

“Huh, I hadn’t noticed that.”

“Like I said, I don’t think people do it on purpose. It’s just the nature of a small town. For instance, you stop in and get food there a few times a week, and talk to her, right?”

“Sure.”

“Besides knowing she runs the restaurant and her brother used to live here, what do you know about her? Have you ever talked to her away from the restaurant?”

“That’s a good point,” he said, sounding a bit apologetic.

“I’m not trying to call you out and, like I said, I don’t think she’s even noticed. I was just trying to point out some of the ways it’s different being back here.”

“Still, looking back on it, I guess I’m as guilty as everyone else for kind of keeping things superficial with her in a way I don’t with people who’ve lived here forever. You know, Sarah has been bugging me about doing more social things now that we have more free time after bringing you on. How would you feel about getting together for dinner later this week? You’re working days on Sunday and Al has the night shift, and I know Rosita is closed Sunday nights. I can check with Sarah, but I’m sure she’ll be game.”

“You don’t have to do that. We’re fine, really.”

“I’m not trying to pay penance. Sarah really has asked about us spending time with other couples and I think it would do you and me some good to socialize outside of here. There are only three of us, so I think it really helps to build good relationships with my deputies. We have Al over from time to time, so this isn’t some favoritism.”

“In that case, I’d be happy to. I’ll check with Rosita and let you know tomorrow. Sound good?”

“Yep. Okay, I got things here. You go get some rest.”

He didn’t have to tell me twice. I hadn’t actually expected to get into that kind of conversation, but I was glad things ended up the way they did. While I’d never let Evan know he’d gotten to me, some of the things he’d said about Rosita resonated with observations I’d made the few times we’d been out of the restaurant and in town, and this would be a good start helping her stop being seen as an outsider by the rest of the town.