The Girl Who Tried To Buy One More Empty Chair

“How much for an empty chair if my mama is still coming back?”

That was what the little girl asked me while I was trying to get a supper hall's old heater to stop knocking.

She held $2.40 in a folded paper house. The coins had bent its little front steps.

I set my wrench down.

“Who's selling you a chair?”

She pointed toward my sister.

I had come to Dock House in Houma, Louisiana, to fix a boiler. I had not come to see Della. For nine years, I had done a fair job of keeping those two things apart.

I had a gray beard, broad shoulders, and a blue work shirt with a burn mark on one cuff.

The girl studied that cuff.

“Are you the man who fixes warm?”

“Most days.”

“Could you fix a place being saved?”

Across the hall, eighty-six supper guests sat under paper lanterns. They were eating rice and chicken at tables our father had built. Dad had started Dock House as a meal hall with four rooms upstairs for families who needed a short place to stay.

He had died eight months before that Thursday.

My sister Della wore a cream pantsuit, square gold glasses, and a smile that stayed in place when her eyes went cold.

She saw the girl beside me.

“June, we discussed this. Twelve dollars for supper. We cannot keep a second place for someone who isn't coming.”

She spoke across three tables.

The girl shut her paper roof over the coins.

“Mama said Thursday.”

“Your mother made other choices.”

A fork stopped halfway to a man's mouth. A woman pulled out the chair beside her, but Della waved her away.

“Please don't reward this. Her mother already took nine hundred dollars from this house.”

June's chin sank into her collar.

I had heard my sister use that voice on grown men. Hearing it used on someone whose shoes did not reach the floor made me stand up.

“Give me two supper tickets,” I said.

“Ray, this doesn't concern you.”

I laid down $24.

“Two tickets. And a receipt.”

Della tore them from the roll hard enough to split one.

I put June's money back in her hands.

“What's your last name?”

“Bell. I'm seven.”

“I'm Ray. I'm forty-nine, which means I ought to know where the good chairs are.”

I moved two chairs beside the heater, where there was room for a plate and a paper house.

Miss Alma came from the kitchen with chicken cut into small pieces.

“I kept her dinner,” she whispered to me. “I didn't know Della would make a business of it.”

June ate three bites before she spoke again.

“Mama's at the hospital where the buses turn.”

“How long?”

“Since Monday. She called the kitchen. She said Thursday if the doctor said yes.”

Della came over with her ticket money box.

“The hospital asked me to collect the child. I've kept her here three nights. Now we're arranging something more suitable.”

“Did her mother ask you to do that?”

“Her mother can't pay her room bill. What difference does it make?”

“A fair amount.”

June stopped chewing.

“Am I the bill?”

I pulled my chair closer.

“No. You're June.”

Miss Alma put a glass of milk down with both hands. Then she stayed beside us.

Della told me not to turn a busy night into a family fight.

“Then lower your voice,” I said.

She walked away.

I asked June if her mother had a phone. June gave me a number from a card tucked into her sock. I let her watch me dial it.

A recorded voice said the phone could not take calls.

June stared at the empty chair.

“That doesn't tell us anything yet,” I said.

“Mama said if the phone quit, to find the man in this picture.”

She unfolded the paper house. Inside, beside the coins, was a small photo of Dad and me standing by a boiler twenty years earlier.

My throat tightened.

“Who gave you that?”

“Mr. Mercer. He said his boy could fix almost anything.”

Dad and I had barely spoken in his last nine years. Della had told me he wanted it that way.

June reached into her canvas bag.

“He gave Mama a letter too. She said I had to keep it dry.”

She handed me a sealed envelope, wrapped in a bread bag.

On the front, in Dad's crooked writing, were seven words.

For Lena Bell. Please Find My Son.