Store Up

Hey friends! We’re pushing forward with our CGD cattle drive, moving 111 verses from our Bibles to our hearts. Today’s story looks completely different than the journey we’ve been on, but have no fear—next week things will start looking familiar again.

Matthew 6:19-21 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where theives do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

“It’s gonna blow.”

Her voice was monotone, but Blaze’s eyebrows shot up. He wanted to joke with her like old times. Sometimes he would look at the back of her squarish head, the gray curls cropped short like she had always kept it, and pretend that nothing had changed. He wanted to say, “No no no, Aunt Min. We don’t joke like that around here.” But instead, he gently guided her tiny frame away from the screen door where she was looking out at the grain elevator across the road.

Settled into her chair, she grabbed the flashlight on the little table beside her. “I have my flashlight for when it explodes.”

Blaze nodded slowly, holding his tongue, and grabbed his work boots from beside the door. Certian phrases from the one million hours of training videos he had watched at the beginning of the summer came back to him. “Particulate matter in grain elevators is highly explosive.” “Keep equipment maintained to prevent fire hazards and explosions.” And his personal favorite “This job makes first responder work look safe.”

There was a knock at the door as he stood to grab his blue work shirt from the back of the kitchen chair.

“Hello, Blaze,” Mrs. Givens said, letting herself in. Her brownish-grayish straight hair was pulled back into a little pony tail. Something about it made Blaze think about a winter night when his mom was working “Dark and Lovely” into her shoulder-length hair.

“Sister Givens,” he said, nodding. “The hospice nurse called and said she’ll be a little late this morning. Will that work all right for you?”

“I think we’ll get along just fine,” Mrs. Givens said, taking Minnie Mae’s hand. Minnie Mae looked up at her with frightened eyes, but then the flash of recognition came and she smiled.

Blaze looked at both of them for a moment. As he walked out, it occurred to him that maybe he was thinking about his mom more these days as Aunt Min’s health declined. It felt good to walk out into the hot sunshine where all those memories melted away.

As he crossed the road, he tried to calculate in his head how much he would have saved up by the end of the month. He had already been on Realtor.com that morning, watching for new listings in the area. If just the right deal came up, he wanted to get on it as quickly as possible. The blindingly white silos of the elevator may have looked like explosion hazards to Aunt Min that morning, but they had always looked more like rockets to Blaze as he had grown up in the little town of Mt. Hope, Kansas—rockets ready to blast him into a new universe of possiblities.

Abe and Sapphire pulled into the parking lot of the Greyhound station ten minutes later than Eleanor’s scheduled arrival. The air conditioner was low on R-134a. Therefore the actual temperature in the Charger was not terribly cold, but the little grunts and lack of words had made the air in the vehicle downright icy. The frosted tips of Sapphire’s spiky hair fit right in.

When they stepped into the station and removed their sunglasses, they didn’t see her. But when a small person wrapped in an African print scarf and sunglasses approached them, they stretched their faces into fake smiles on the off-chance that this could be their darling neice.

“Abe. Sapphire.” Her words were clipped. She shifted the duffel bag on her shoulder.

“So good to see you, sweetheart!” Sapphire cooed, leaning forward and embracing her.

Abe saw his neice’s brows furrow, but he leaned down and patted her back anyway, hoping the sweet little girl he’d known was still in there somewhere. “Let me take your bag.”

On the ride back to Mt. Hope, icicles formed on Abe’s insides as each and every one of his questions and Sapphire’s were answered by snarky, sparse offerings. What on earth had he agreed to, telling his sister he would take on his neice while she took a job in the middle east for a year?

Lunch at home was even better. Sapphire pulled a pan of her homemade macaroni and cheese from the oven and set it on the kitchen table.

“We’re going to dine in the kitchen?” Eleanor asked flatly.

“Well, yes,” Sapphire replied.

“Mmmm.” Eleanor sighed. “Well, I will eat well and grow strong*.”

Abe pulled out a chair for Eleanor and sat down in his own seat. He spun his Cowboys at into the empty chair and ran a hand over his very white bald head. “Sapphire makes a mean mac ‘n cheese.”

“We know ballerinas need a lot of energy,” Sapphire said with a hopfeul smile.

“I am a dancer.” Eleanor sat straight-backed, still wearing the scarf and sunglasses, extending her hands to pray.

Sapphire glanced at Abe. Abe caught the signal. “I’m going to ask you to remove your sunglasses at the table, Eleanor.” He smiled. “Let us see those pretty green–”
But he stopped as the girl removed the glasses and set them beside her plate.

Eleanor’s eyes were brown.

Blaze hopped up the steps to the co-op office two at a time, threw the door open, and walked the carbon copy of the Chitwood’s chemical order to Abe’s office.

Abe’s desk had looked about the same for as long as Blaze could remember. The picture of Sapphire, stuck to the corner of his monitor, had appeared about the time that Blaze started seventh grade and realized he could buy Mountain Dew from the co-op’s vending machine. A framed verse sat beside a stack of manilla envelopes and Abe’s silver coffee tumbler. Blaze wondered if it would be his desk one day. Except I am never drinking coffee, he told himself.

When he returned to the front desk to finish filling out the paperwork for the Phostoxin treatment he would start when Abe returned, he could hear the farmers in the adjoining room talking politics. If I hear one more word about how stupid the democrats are, I’m going to explode, he thought.

He dropped the pen in his hand.

He’d thought it. He’d thought that awful word. Don’t think about it, he told himself. Don’t even think the word ‘explosion.’

He soothed himself with thoughts of ALL the cleaning he had done since he started. All the pulleys and gears and bearings he had checked and greased and replaced. He thought about how the windows in the top of the elevator positively shone.

And then there was that other awful word,“stupid,” spoken in the next room.

Blaze threw down his pen and stalked into the room. He imagined himself looking like Cam Newton, except maybe a foot taller and a little more chiseled, but the farmers, gathered around the table, drinking their coffee, didn’t even look up at him. The angry, articulate speech he expected to give came out, “I’m not sure it’s a good idea to call anybody stupid.”

They all looked up then. Blaze thought he had broken through to them, but then he realized they weren’t looking at him, they were looking past him, out the window.

That’s when Blaze turned and saw the fire.

* From the Langston Hughes poem, “I, Too”