A minute later Jamie got down to business.
“Do you remember those things you said on our last walk home?” she asked.
I nodded, wishing she hadn’t brought it up.
“You promised to make it up to me,” she said.
For a moment I was confused. I thought I’d done that already with my performance in the play. Jamie went on.
“Well, I’ve been thinking about what you could do,” she continued without letting me get a word in edgewise, “and this is what I’ve come up with.”
She asked if I wouldn’t mind gathering the pickle jars and coffee cans she’d set out in businesses all over town early in the year. They sat on the counters, usually near the cash registers, so that people could drop their loose change in. The money was to go to the orphans. Jamie never wanted to ask people straight out for the money, she wanted them to give voluntarily. That, in her mind, was the Christian thing to do.
I remembered seeing the containers in places like Cecil’s Diner and the Crown Theater. My friends and I used to toss paper clips and slugs in there when the cashiers weren’t looking, since they sounded sort of like a coin being dropped inside, then we’d chuckle to ourselves about how we were putting something over on Jamie. We used to joke about how she’d open one of her cans, expecting something good because of the weight, and she’d dump it out and find nothing but slugs and paper clips. Sometimes, when you remember the things you used to do, it makes you wince, and that’s exactly what I did.
Jamie saw the look on my face.
“You don’t have to do it,” she said, obviously disappointed. “I was just thinking that since Christmas is coming up so quickly and I don’t have a car, it’ll simply take me too long to collect them all. . . .”
“No,” I said cutting her off, “I’ll do it. I don’t have much to do anyway.”
So that’s what I did starting Wednesday, even though I had tests to study for, even with that application needing to be finished. Jamie had given me a list of every place she’d placed a can, and I borrowed my mom’s car and started at the far end of town the following day. She’d put out about sixty cans in all, and I figured that it would take only a day to collect them all. Compared to putting them out, it would be a piece of cake. It had taken Jamie almost six weeks to do because she’d first had to find sixty empty jars and cans and then she could put out only two or three a day since she didn’t have a car and could carry only so many at a time. When I started out, I felt sort of funny about being the one who picked up the cans and jars, being that it was Jamie’s project, but I kept telling myself that Jamie had asked me to help.
I went from business to business, collecting the cans and jars, and by end of the first day I realized it was going to take a little longer than I’d thought. I’d picked up only about twenty containers or so, because I’d forgotten one simple fact of life in Beaufort. In a small town like this, it was impossible to simply run inside and grab the can without chatting with the proprietor or saying hello to someone else you might recognize. It just wasn’t done. So I’d sit there while some guy would be talking about the marlin he’d hooked last fall, or they’d ask me how school was going and mention that they needed a hand unloading a few boxes in the back, or maybe they wanted my opinion on whether they should move the magazine rack over to the other side of the store. Jamie, I knew, would have been good at this, and I tried to act like I thought she would want me to. It was her project after all.
To keep things moving, I didn’t stop to check the take in between the businesses. I just dumped one jar or can into the next, combining them as I went along. By the end of the first day all the change was packed in two large jars, and I carried them up to my room. I saw a few bills through the glass—not too many—but I wasn’t actually nervous until I emptied the contents onto my floor and saw that the change consisted primarily of pennies. Though there weren’t nearly as many slugs or paper clips as I’d thought there might be, I was still disheartened when I counted up the money. There was $20.32. Even in 1958 that wasn’t a lot of money, especially when divided among thirty kids.
I didn’t get discouraged, though. Thinking that it was a mistake, I went out the next day, hauled a few dozen boxes, and chatted with another twenty proprietors while I collected cans and jars. The take: $23.89.
The third day was even worse. After counting up the money, even I couldn’t believe it. There was only $11.52. Those were from the businesses down by the waterfront, where the tourists and teenagers like me hung out. We were really something, I couldn’t help but think.
Seeing how little had been collected in all—$55.73—made me feel awful, especially considering that the jars had been out for almost a whole year and that I myself had seen them countless times. That night I was supposed to call Jamie to tell her the amount I’d collected, but I just couldn’t do it. She’d told me how she’d wanted something extra special this year, and this wasn’t going to do it—even I knew that. Instead I lied to her and told her that I wasn’t going to count the total until the two of us could do it together, because it was her project, not mine. It was just too depressing. I promised to bring over the money the following afternoon, after school let out. The next day was December 21, the shortest day of the year. Christmas was only four days away.
“Landon,” she said to me after counting it up, “this is a miracle!”
“How much is there?” I asked. I knew exactly how much it was.