Ollie's Apology

Beat and a Bad Starter (Chapter 1)

I stopped into our local QuikMart the day, 16 years ago, Beth Peterson arrived in our town with her baby—Ollie—Oliver Peterson. I was just finishing putting gas in my car when she drove in.

She pulled up in front of the convenience store and got out, scowling and looking exhausted. And, no wonder. She'd just driven a thousand miles by herself with a four-month-old in a high-mileage, road-dirty car that you could see through the windows held everything she owned. But, despite all that, even from a distance, she was really an exceptionally attractive woman.

It was a nice day and her windows were down and you could hear the baby squalling. She walked around and retrieved him from his car seat, grabbed the diaper bag, and lugged them both up to the front entrance of the business. I held the door open for her. She entered and went directly back to the ladies' and didn't even say “thank you.” But I didn't hold it against her because I could see she was beat. We heard the lock on the ladies' room door click into place.

I went over to the coffee bar to get a cup and there was the usual group of old guys—retired farmers and what-not—that hang out at a couple of tables QuikMart has set up there. But none of them was saying anything, so I took my time. I added an extra hazelnut creamer and then I sat down in one of the empty chairs and made like I needed to stir the coffee some more. Still no one said anything. I knew what they were waiting for. Finally, I laid down my stirrer, took a loud, long sip, set the paper cup back down on the table, and said, “Florida plates.”

Hmm, a couple of them grunted, but no one had anything more to say after that, so we sat there in silence until, eventually, the lock in the door of the ladies' clicked open and Beth came back out with her baby. He was quiet now. She didn't even glance our way as she walked up to the counter and asked for a pack of Marlboro Light 100s. She paid for the cigarettes and out the door she went.

From where we were sitting, we could see the rear end of her car, but Beth didn’t back out of her spot. She just sat there. Then, another customer walked in and, when the door opened, we could hear Beth’s car making that click-click-click sound of a starter gone bad.

I got up and went over to pay for my coffee and, by the time I got outside, several of the fellas were already out there and I heard one of them saying to her, through her open window, “Sounds like you got a bad starter there, Miss.”

Beth didn't even respond. She just turned the key again. Click-click-click. We all exchanged glances and I said, “Where's your final destination, then, Miss?”

Beth just kept staring straight ahead through her windshield, her hands gripped tight at 10 and 2 o'clock. And then she said, “Here.” And when she said “here” she started crying and covered her face with her hands.

Now, no group of aging agrarian gallants is going to walk away from a crying woman a thousand miles from home with a baby and a broken down car and so arrangements were made. We found her a place to stay, and got her car fixed and all, and she found a job at the first place she applied—the Dairy Queen. And that's how Beth Peterson and her boy, Ollie, came to live with us in Osage Grove.

And for all these years, everybody assumed that when she said her destination was “here,” she said it in a throwing-in-the-towel kind of way, and so we did what we could to lessen the blow, as it were, and make her life a little easier. Mainly that consisted of helping her out with her chronic car troubles.

It wasn't until the events of the story I am about to tell you occurred 16 years later, when Ollie was a junior in high school, that we learned that, when Beth said “here,” it was, in fact, the case. Osage Grove was her actual destination.

But, no one ever suspected the real reason she had come to our little town and she never told anyone. Though, all things considered, you can't blame her for that.

Not the Right Kind of Question (Chapter 2)

Dylan Bendicksen pulled into the parking lot of Bendicksen’s Greenhouse, his father's greenhouse/hardware store/lumber yard/farm supply, and parked next to the stock tanks and pallets of landscaping stone at the end of the parking lot. As he sat in his car until the song he was listening to finished, his father exited the front of the business carrying a bag of potting soil for the old lady following behind him. The old lady clicked her keys and a trunk popped open along the line of cars.

The song ended and Dylan got out and walked toward the entrance, meeting his father on the way in.

“Where's Ollie?” Roger Bendicksen asked his son. Ollie Peterson had been Dylan's best friend since, well, since either of them could practically remember and Roger is—or was—something of a father figure to Ollie. “Wasn't he supposed to help you deliver the order up to the old Hartmann place?”

“Yeah, he's coming,” Dylan replied. “Turner called him into the office after last period.”

“Mr. Turner,” Roger Bendicksen corrected his son. “Not in trouble, I hope.” Hal Turner was the principal at the high school.

“Nah, he didn't do anything wrong,” replied Dylan. “He asked a question during History and Deb Eccleston went ballistic and called him an antisemite and a Nazi.”

Roger stopped what he was doing. “In class?”

“Yeah. She said he murdered her whole family in the Holocaust. Then she started crying and ran out of the room. It was nuts.” Dylan reached around the office door and grabbed the keys for the delivery truck. “But, really, Ollie didn't do anything wrong.”

“Why’d he get called into the principal's office?” Roger asked, following his son through the back of the store and toward the loading dock.

“I don't know for sure, but it probably had something to do with Deb Eccleston's mom. Josh Champion saw her coming out of Mr. Turner's office during last period.”

Deb Eccleston and her mother, Cherry Eccleston, only moved to Osage Grove about a year ago. And let me just say I'm not the only person in town who thought Cherry Eccleston went way out of her way to make herself known here right off the bat.

I'll bet even Roger Bendicksen would agree with that assessment. He told us that when Cherry Eccleston first moved to town and went to Bendicksen's to get some keys made she made a remark about the “Merry Christmas” sign they had up—something to the effect that not everybody celebrates Christmas.

The Ecclestons were from New York City and had moved into the house Deb inherited when her father, Bryce Eccleston, died. Bryce was from this town, originally, but went away to college and never came back. He married Cherry out in New York. Neither Cherry nor her daughter, Deb, would in a million years have moved to Osage Grove by choice, but Fate can be a mischievous little imp and it was Fate that brought them to our little town. And, with their arrival, the population of Jews in Osage Grove exploded from zero to two.

I'll just add this: Roger Bendicksen is the kind of guy that, I'll bet you money, has a “Happy Holidays” sign up in his store this coming Christmas.

Anyway, Roger gave Dylan some particulars on the Clift order—Fred and Jo Anna Clift are the retired couple that bought the old Hartmann place up southwest of town—and then he asked, “So, what was the question Ollie asked that set the Eccleston girl off?”

“Well, in History we are studying about the Holocaust and Ollie asked why we always study that genocide but never talk about the genocide occurring right now in Gaza.”

“That was it?”

“That was it.” Dylan went to get the delivery truck to back it up to the loading dock. It was another order of boxes of mosaic stones—natural stones, so they were heavy. But before he left the dock he turned and, noting the thoughtful look on his father's face, said, “Everybody thought it was a legit question, Dad, and that Deb way overreacted.”

“Well, it doesn't sound too serious. We do have the First Amendment, after all,” Roger said. “But,” he added after a moment, “that's probably not the kind of question you want to be asking.”