Mom called the refrigerator the icebox her whole life. On top of it, pushed back against the wall, sat a red coffee can with a plastic lid gone cloudy with age.
I reached up and took it down.
That was her egg money.
She’d sold eggs out of that kitchen door since 1991, the year I turned twelve. That was the year she decided the hens were going to buy the groceries. Three dollars a dozen, lately. Two for most of the years before that. It all went in the can. And it was nearly all ones.
I took the lid off and counted it out on the table, next to Lucille’s envelope.
A hundred and twelve dollars.
“What are you doing?” Lucille said.
“They paid two,” I said. “I’ll pay three.”
“For chickens.”
“For Mom’s.”
“Annette, you can’t even find them.”
“I can find twelve.” I put the money back in the can and pressed the lid down. “That’s a start.”
She didn’t have anything sensible to say to that.
I picked up the can and went outside to call my husband.
Dale drives the anhydrous truck for the co-op. And the last week of April is no time to ask a co-op man for a day off. He’d already used his three days of funeral leave standing next to me. Every farmer in the county wanted nitrogen on before the corn went in, and he was hauling tanks from before daylight until after dark.
He listened to the whole thing without interrupting. I could hear his truck idling.
“Two dollars,” he said finally.
“Two dollars.”
He was quiet for a second.
Dale loved my mother. She fed him every Sunday for twenty-two years and never once let him leave without a carton of eggs under his arm.
“Take my pickup,” he said. “The keys are on the hook. Put Duke’s crate in the back. The big wire one. It’ll hold six or eight if you don’t go far.”
Then he said, “Bring them home, Annie. I’ll be out there the minute I can.”
Our son, Colt, is fourteen.
I picked him up at the school at three-thirty with the dog crate already in the truck bed and the coffee can on the seat. And I told him what his great-aunt had done.
He didn’t say a word for about a mile.
Colt had been feeding those hens since he was big enough to carry the scoop. He’d fed them all four days since Mom died. Morning and night. He’d gathered the eggs and put them in the icebox on the back porch, the way she taught him.
“Did she sell Pearl?” he said.
“She sold all of them, honey.”
He looked out the window at somebody’s planter crawling across a field.
“Pearl’s seven,” he said. “She lays about one egg a week. Whoever got Pearl is going to eat her.”
“Then we’d better get moving,” I said.
Specialty: Quiet Comebacks & Personal Justice
David Reynolds focuses on stories where underestimated individuals regain control of their lives. His writing centers on measured decisions rather than dramatic outbursts — emphasizing preparation, patience, and the long game. His characters don’t shout; they act.