Ninety-One Thousand Five Hundred Pennies
Part One: The Buckets
Dale Heckert tipped the last bucket at four o’clock on a Friday.
I heard it before I saw it. A sound like hail on a tin roof, except it didn’t stop. It went on and on, a rushing, rattling roar, and then a heavy slithering thud as the last of it slid out of the bucket and spread across my driveway.
I was standing in the kitchen doorway with a dish towel in my hand. I’d come home early to make supper before the kids’ Friday cartoons.
I walked out onto the porch.
Ninety-one thousand five hundred pennies lay on my gravel.
