“Reverend, I have been asking myself that same question for three weeks,” I said, loudly enough for the folding chairs in the back. I walked down the center aisle in my good suit, past the easel with my own photograph and its black ribbon, past the donation jar, past three rows of people staring as if I were the ghost of a man who had come to collect a debt. “I am Peter Simmons. I drove the number twelve bus in Rock Hill for thirty one years, and as you can see, I am very much alive. So I would like to thank every one of you for coming. And I would like to ask what in the world my son has been telling you.”
No one spoke. My sister, Dolores, who had screamed when I came through the door, sat with her hand on her heart and her mouth open. Leon, my barber, stood by the coffee urn wiping his eyes with the end of a paper napkin. At the podium, Kyle gripped the edges so hard his knuckles were white. I stopped in front of him. He was forty four years old, a head taller than me, with the eyes of my mother. I said, as gently as I could, “Son, would you like to tell them, or shall I?”
His lips moved. Nothing came. Reverend Whitley, my old pastor, a silver haired man with a voice like a church organ, stepped up beside me and said in a low voice, “Peter, I think the congregation is owed an explanation.” Kyle finally spoke. He said, in a cracked whisper, “I needed money. I owed people. I owed a lot. I thought, Dad is seventy four, he is not going to be around forever, and the house will come to me anyway.” He turned to the room and spread his hands. “I never thought it would get this big. People kept giving. I could not stop it.” A woman in the second row put her hand over her mouth.
A fundraiser page for a man who was still alive brought a whole town to a hall and sent one son back to the driver seat.
I looked out at the room. Those were the faces of the people who had loved me. Thirty eight thousand dollars. Men who had played cards with me on Tuesday nights. Women who had baked me casseroles after my wife Marjorie died. A young man I had driven to school on my bus when he was eight years old, who was a deputy sheriff now, in a brown uniform, standing by the exit with his arms crossed and his jaw tight. He met my eyes and gave a tiny shake of his head, as if to ask, do you want me to do something? I held up a hand. Not yet.
I turned to the crowd. “Friends,” I said, “I am touched. Truly. I have never been to my own funeral before, and I must say, the turnout is gratifying.” A few people laughed, a surprised, grateful laugh, the sound of a room letting out its breath. “I am not going to ask you to forgive my son. That is not my place. But I am going to ask you for something. I want you to look at your neighbor and know that you did a good thing today. You opened your hearts to a family in need. The need was fake, but the hearts were not.” Reverend Whitley wiped his eyes.
“Here is what will happen,” I went on. “Every dollar will be returned. Every one. My son has agreed.” I looked at Kyle, who gave a jerky nod. “The page will come down tonight. My lawyer, Mr. Haskell, is in the third row, and he will arrange the refunds through the church office. Anyone who wants their donation back can have it, with an apology.” A voice from the back called out, “Pete, I would rather give mine to the food pantry.” Another said, “Me too.” Then another. Within a minute, nearly the whole hall was calling out. I stood there with my hat in my hands, humbled.
That is how the Marjorie Simmons Food Pantry came to be. Thirty one thousand of the thirty eight were donated back, by the people who had given it, with a handwritten note from each. The remaining seven thousand, I returned to the givers who asked. Kyle was there when we cut the ribbon. He did not speak. He stood at the back of the little converted garage in his old church shirt, holding a stack of folding tables, and when the pastor asked for volunteers to carry the boxes, he was the first to lift one. I did not say anything. I just watched him carry.
Kyle repaid me the money he had spent, nine thousand dollars, over three years. I did not ask for it for myself. I put it in the pantry account, in his name. And I made him a promise. “Son,” I said, “I am not going to leave you the house the way you thought. I am going to leave it to you the way a father should. When you have earned it.” He looked at me with tears in his eyes. “How long will that take?” I said, “I am seventy four. I would say you have time.” He laughed, a short startled laugh, and wiped his face on his sleeve.
He took a job with the city. Not a glamorous one. He applied at the transit depot, and they gave him a uniform, and a clipboard, and a bus to wash on the night shift. He washed them for a year, and then he trained to drive. I rode his bus on the first day of his first route, number twelve, my old one, and sat in the front seat with my hat on my knee. He pulled away from the curb as smoothly as I ever did. At the first stop, an old woman climbed aboard with a cane, and he lowered the step and offered his arm.
At the end of the route, he opened the doors and turned in his seat. “Dad,” he said, “how did I do?” I stood up, with some effort, and I gave him the highest compliment I knew. “You did not miss a stop,” I said. He grinned. It was the best smile I had seen on him in thirty years. I got off the bus into the late afternoon light, and I stood on the sidewalk and watched him pull away, with the number twelve glowing in the window, and I thought, there goes a man who is alive.