The Night the Feed Store Burned

What Wendell Said

“My name is Wendell Teague,” he said. His voice was a hoarse rasp, but it carried through the whole room. “I’m eighty-one years old. I owned the feed store in Calder Ridge, Missouri, for fifty-six years, and my daddy owned it before me. It burned down two weeks ago. It burned down because I’m a stubborn old fool who was too lonely to sleep in his own house and too proud to tell anybody.”

He paused to catch his breath. Nobody in the room made a sound.

“I was asleep on a cot in my office next to a space heater I should have thrown away twenty years ago,” he said. “I don’t remember anything about that night. I don’t remember the smoke. I don’t remember waking up or not waking up. The doctors tell me if I had been in that room another five minutes, I would not be standing here.” He looked at the three board members. “I want you to understand that. I’m not being dramatic. I’m an old farmer. I don’t know how to be dramatic. Five more minutes and I’m dead.”

He turned slowly and looked at Wade.

“That boy came in after me,” he said. “He punched out a window with his bare hand. He grabbed a door handle hot enough to take the skin off, and he didn’t let go. He crawled into a room full of smoke on his belly to find me, and I weigh two hundred and ten pounds, and he dragged me out of there. Then he called for help and stayed with me till he heard the sirens. And then he ran. Because he knew exactly what was going to happen to him if anybody saw him there.” Wendell’s voice cracked. “And he was right. Because the first thing everybody in my town decided, when they saw that video, was that he did it. Including me. God forgive me. Including me.”

At the table, Wade had lifted his head out of his hands. He was staring at Wendell with tears running down his face.

“I gave that boy a job,” Wendell said, “because nobody else would. I’ll be honest with you. It wasn’t charity. I needed somebody young to throw feed sacks, and he was cheap. I paid him cash and didn’t ask questions. I didn’t ever sit down and talk to him much. I thought I was doing him a favor.” He shook his head slowly. “Turns out he was the only person in Calder Ridge who knew I was sleeping at that store. He caught me one night, setting up the cot, and I made him promise not to tell. And he never did. Not once. Not even when it would have helped him.”

He paused again, breathing hard. Nora could see his legs trembling. He did not sit down.

“I don’t know much about parole,” Wendell said. “I don’t know the rules. I know he broke one. He was out walking at one in the morning. I understand that’s against his curfew.” He looked at the board members, one at a time. “But I want to tell you what I’ve figured out, sitting in a hospital bed for two weeks with nothing to do but think. That boy walks at night because if he doesn’t, he’s afraid he’ll use. He walks the streets of my town in the dark, alone, in January, fighting the worst thing that ever happened to him, every single night, and nobody knows. And I sleep on a cot in my store because I can’t stand the quiet in my own house, and nobody knows.” His voice dropped. “Two lonely fools out in the dark, and neither one of us told anybody. And if he hadn’t been out walking that night, breaking his curfew, I would be dead.”

He looked straight at Dr. Moreland.

“So if you have to send somebody to prison for that curfew,” Wendell Teague said, “I’d ask you to consider sending me instead. Because he broke that rule to stay sober. And then he broke it to save my life. I can’t think of two better reasons to break a rule.”

“I can’t think of two better reasons to break a rule.”

He sat down hard in the wheelchair. Nora caught his arm. He was shaking all over, and his face was gray, and his eyes were wet. But he was smiling, very slightly.

The board deliberated for twenty minutes in a back room. When they came back out, Dr. Patricia Moreland read the decision in a clear, even voice.

The board found that a technical violation of the parolee’s curfew condition had occurred. The board also found that the violation had occurred under extraordinary circumstances, and that the parolee’s conduct on the night in question demonstrated exactly the kind of judgment and character the parole system hoped to cultivate. The violation would be noted in his file. There would be no revocation. The parolee would be released from custody that afternoon and returned to supervision. His curfew condition would be modified, effective immediately, to permit nighttime walks within the town limits of Calder Ridge, provided he carried a phone and checked in with his sponsor.

Then Dr. Moreland set down her paper and looked over her reading glasses at Wade.

“Mr. Corliss,” she said, “this board sees a great many people come through this room. We don’t often get the chance to say this. Thank you.”

The room came to its feet.

Wade sat at the table without moving for a long moment. Then he stood up, and walked slowly across the room, past Ashley Navarro and Denise Harlan, past the board members, to the front row, and stopped in front of Wendell Teague’s wheelchair. He knelt down on the beige carpet. He didn’t say anything. He just put his bandaged hands on the old man’s knees and bowed his head.

Wendell put one spotted, trembling hand on the back of the young man’s neck and left it there.

“Come on home, son,” he said. “We’ve got a store to build.”