Free Three Cans of Soup by Don Childers Page A

ornaments, looking for the one his mother had given them, Jerry spotted an old, yellowed envelope. Grabbing it, he bounded off with his prize. Bill caught the movement out of the corner of his eye.
    “Jerry, drop it!” Bill yelled. Jerry sensed a game and bounded off into the next room, gleefully placed a paw on the envelope and began to tear it open.
    “Jerry, damn it, I don’t have time for this,” Bill said as he lunged after the bounding dog. Finally cornering Jerry, Bill grabbed the envelope from his jaws.
    “Jerry, look at this, you tore it open. This might be something valuable like a lost lottery ticket or something.” Bill reached over and patted Jerry’s head, who suddenly realized he was not in serious trouble. He bounded off to search the growing pile of treasures on the living room floor.
    For some reason, Bill did not just toss the envelope away or stuff it back into a box. He paused and looked at it. It was an ordinary legal-sized envelope. On the outside was a faded date, “Christmas, Murray”. Finishing what Jerry had started, Bill saw three old soup labels fall to the floor and a note. The labels were from cans of Campbell’s chicken and rice, chicken noodle, and vegetable beef soups. The note said: “The best Christmas gift ever—from Mary Pond.” Bill turned the labels over and over in his hand. Then he remembered.

 
PART TWO: THE GIFT
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    It was almost three decades before. Bill was graduating from the University of Oregon. It was a time before iPods and MP3 players, before the Internet, and even before computers had become a household item. Mechanics sneered at the foreign cars that were making an appearance in the country. Bill had not always wanted to be a minister. In fact, he had started at the University of Oregon majoring in political science or “poly-sci”, as it was called. He hoped to be a community organizer and perhaps to do something to change the world, or at least his corner of the world. Bill looked the part. His long hair and beard and his well-worn jeans made his family suspect that he had indeed gone off the deep end.
    Bill’s family had attended church off and on. So when he had what he said was a religious experience in his junior year of college, they were as surprised as he was. Bill had just broken up with a girl, and his sisters always believed that on the rebound, he found God.
    So after his graduation from college, Bill enrolled in a seminary in Texas. In August he loaded up his old 1964 Dodge Dart and began the trek to Texas. The day he left for Texas, it was humid in Eugene, Oregon. His family had moved to Eugene when Bill was young, so it was natural for him to attend the University of Oregon. He could live at home and have more money for other things. Thus when Bill loaded up his Dodge for the trek to Texas it would be his first real time away from home.
    That day, as the last box was placed into the back seat of the Dodge, Bill’s father Milt, his mother Joyce, and his sisters (Julie who had just graduated from high school and Nicole, ten years younger), looked on. His mother made no secret of her feelings. Tears were welling up in her eyes as she said goodbye to her firstborn. Bill’s sisters would also miss him, but now each of them would have their own room. When the older brother moves, they had said to each other, they could spread out. They had actually hoped it would happen after Bill graduated from high school but no, Bill had stayed at home through college.
    It was his father that Bill would always remember. The two of them were both acting like it was no big deal but knew that it was.
    “Here, let me give you a hand,” Milt said. His hands were rough from years of working under the hoods of cars. He was a mechanic for the Chevrolet dealership in Eugene. He grabbed the rope that was wound around the car-top carrier that was perched on top of the Dodge.
    “I got it,” Bill said, but before he could react, Milt had a hold of the rope and