Hollis stepped aside, and I saw her at last, standing in the gravel of the dooryard in her work boots and a faded denim jacket, her arms wrapped around her ribs. It was my daughter, Crystal, and she was not looking at me. She was looking at her husband. Beside her stood a county sheriff deputy with a clipboard, and a woman in a gray blazer holding a laptop bag. In her hand, Crystal clutched a printout. It was creased and gray with her thumb marks. “Dwayne,” she said, and her voice was low and cold in a way I had never heard it. “I found this in your truck.”
It was the page from the website. Carbon monoxide: what are the warning signs in older adults? She held it up, and I saw that Dwayne had written something in the margin in blue pen. Do not run the unit after midnight. “I read it three times on the road,” Crystal said. “Then I called Hollis, because I did not know who else to call. He told me to bring it to the sheriff.” She turned to the deputy. “My husband put a new hose on the propane tank of my mother on Thursday night. And he increased her life insurance. I did not know. I swear to God, I did not know.”
Dwayne put down his beer on the porch rail, slowly, as if it might go off. He tried to smile. “Honey, you are upset,” he said. “Your mother has been confused. She asked me to fix the hose.” The woman in the gray blazer stepped forward. “Mr. Akers, I am an investigator with the Arkansas Adult Protective Services,” she said, “and I have copies of the insurance change form with your signature on it.” She gave a dry, small smile. “I also have a copy of the date it was filed. Which was the Monday after your mother in law moved into the coop.”
A propane truck pulling up on a Sunday gave one grandmother the weekend to bring her daughter back to the table in Harrison.
I came out of the coop in my housedress and apron, with my hands wrapped in a dish towel, and I walked slowly across the yard to where my daughter stood. Dwayne watched me come. I set my terms for Crystal to hear. The policy would be canceled that day and the money, if there was any, returned to the account of Clyde. The hose would be inspected by a licensed man, and Hollis would do it himself. And Dwayne would give a statement to the deputy about the hose, the policy, the six hundred dollars a month, and the toilet that did not flush. If he told the truth, I would not ask for the worst.
Dwayne did the one thing a coward does. He ran. He bolted off the porch, jumped the steps in a single bound, and dashed across the yard toward his truck with the keys already out of his pocket. He got three steps. Hollis, seventy one years old, and as round as a propane tank, stuck out one boot, and Dwayne went down face first in the gravel with a grunt that rattled the hens. The deputy was on him before he could roll over. “Mr. Akers, you are under arrest,” the deputy said calmly. “You have the right to remain silent.” The hens scattered. One of them squawked, indignant.
Crystal did not move for a long time. Then she crossed the dooryard in four long strides, knelt in the gravel in front of me, and took both my hands. “Mama, I am so sorry,” she said. “I laughed at Thanksgiving. I laughed when he said you were good for something. I laughed, because I was afraid of him.” She was shaking. “I let you live in a chicken coop and I never asked why. I do not deserve you.” I pulled her to her feet and held her against my chest. She was forty six years old, and she weighed less than she had when she was a girl. “Baby,” I said, “you came back. That is enough.”
The investigator took me aside after the deputy drove away. She explained what would happen. The propane line had been tampered with, she said, but not yet connected in a way that could harm me, because Hollis had stopped by early on Friday and found the hose before it was fully tightened. “Your friend likely saved your life,” she said. I looked across the yard at Hollis, who was sitting on the tailgate of his truck, drinking a cup of cold coffee, and I walked over and kissed his weathered cheek. He turned the color of a boiled beet. “Aw, Lorene,” he said. “Do not make a fuss.”
The money consequences were mostly justice. Dwayne was charged with attempted harm of an elder, insurance fraud, and theft of Social Security funds, and the judge set a bond that he could not meet. The six hundred dollar payments, every one of them, were returned to me with interest. The policy was voided by the company. I used a part of the money from my dumplings to move into a snug rental house in Harrison with a working toilet, a woodstove and a front porch with a swing, and Hollis came by on the first of every month with a thermos of coffee.
In the name of my husband, Clyde, who passed in the winter, and who believed that dumplings should be given and not sold, I started the Dumpling Pot Fund. It pays for safe housing and legal aid for older farm women in Boone and Marion counties whose children have shut them away or taken their money. In the first year, we helped twenty one women. One of them, a widow of eighty three, sat in the office with her purse in her lap and said, “I did not think anybody would believe me.” I took her hand. “Honey, I do,” I said.
On the birthday of Crystal the next year, I made a pot of dumplings, rolled thin with the broom handle of my mother, and I carried it to her house in a covered kettle. She opened the door in an apron, her hair pinned up, and the little ones ran past her to hug my knees. We sat together at her table. I ate in the dining room, in my own chair, and nobody told me to go anywhere. Crystal ate two bowls and wept a little into the second. “Mama, they taste like when I was five,” she said. I told her that was the point of them.