Wednesday morning I drove to the dump to get rid of a broken-up old bench for my dad. I spun the pieces as far as I could get them into the trash pit, it only took a couple of minutes. As I was climbing back into Dad’s van I noticed that the almost-past-middle-aged woman in the next parking space over was having trouble dislodging rotten chunks of drywall from the pile in the back of her junk trailer. The wood was studded with nails. I looked at my work gloves, noticed that she was working with bare hands, and decided to help.

     As I came around the van pulling on the gloves I said something like “I know you could handle this yourself, but that wood is full of nails, and I’ve got gloves, so I’m going to help you take care of it.” And then I got a look at her face, and said, “And also I know you. You’re Elme. We used to play soccer together, when I was a kid, with John Kostenbauer and all those other crazies. My name is Rob.”

     It had been a pickup soccer game for grown-ups and teenagers, back before the high school had a soccer team. I played every week and so did Elme.

     She didn’t remember me at first. It had been twenty-seven years, minimum. Then it came back to her. As we worked she filled me in on the status (grandparents), or fate (dead three years ago), of some of the people I’d liked most.

     When we finished emptying her trailer I told her that for years I’d felt terrible about the last time I’d seen her. After I’d left Springfield Oregon for college, sometime during my freshman year, my Dad took me out to a pancake house for breakfast. I had no money. Dad was picking up the check. To my surprise, Elme was our waitress, I hadn’t even known that she worked there. We said hi, we talked a minute, and then when we left Dad gave her a nickel tip.

     Twenty-seven years later, I accidentally made it up to her.