Who's sorry now? by Jill Churchill

we’ve met before.”
    ”I recognized you when the chief called you Robert. You’re the one who hauled out the typewriter.”
    ”I am. But credit goes to my sister for getting it as far as the front porch. Could I bring you a book to read, or a pot of coffee and a cup?”
    ”Too dark to read,” Parker said. ”But coffee would be good.”
    Robert took off in the Duesie and headed up the long winding road. He looked in the kitchen for a recipe book that would tell him how to make coffee, eventually figuring out that Mrs. Prinney didn’t need recipes. She had all of hers in her head.
    He made the best of a bad situation. The old stove was still barely warm enough to heat a pan of water. He put another piece of kindling into the stove. While it was warming up, he rummaged in the pantry to find the coffee. There should be directions on the package. There were none, so he guessed and put a half a cup of grounds in the tepid water.
    As he pulled the pan of water and ground coffee off the stove, he realized he had to strain it somehow. He looked in all the upper cabinets, then the lower ones, where he eventually found a strainer. The holes were fairly big, so he used a dishcloth in the bottom, thinking how very clever he was.
    He found a clean milk bottle waiting outside to be replaced, presumably by a milkman at some point in the future. He washed the bottle, carefully poured the coffee into it, wrapped it in a whole wad of dishcloths, and took it to the car.
    He was about to start the Duesie when he realized he hadn’t thought to put the cap on the bottle. What if it tipped over and spoiled the leather seat? He contemplated holding it between his knees, but he wouldn’t be able to use the brake, gas, and clutch if his knees were together. Finally he settled for grabbing an old jacket from the back-seat and tying the sleeves around himself and the bottle. It was uncomfortably warm, even in spite of the dishcloths padding it.
    As he pulled up in front of Mr. Kurtz’s shop, he saw that Mrs. Smithson was back, wearing a pair of trim trousers and a short-sleeved blouse. She was handing a thermos to Deputy Parker.
    Robert hopped out after untying his jacket and himself from the now tepid bottle and said, ”I brought coffee.”
    ”I thought you didn’t know how to make coffee? That’s what you said before,” she said. She took the bottle from him, sipped at it, and choked. ”Oh dear! This would keep any normal person wide awake for a week. Not to mention how gritty it is. You come over to my house tomorrow afternoon and I’ll teach you how to do it right and where to buy a thermos.”
    Robert thanked her in a thin, cold voice and added, ”I’ll do that.”
    A block away, he dumped the coffee out of the milk bottle at the side of the road and went home to bed.
    When Howard Walker returned the next morning with his consultants, Chief Coiling from Newburg, and a fire marshal he’d brought along, Deputy Parker was slumping in the rocking chair, holding one eyelid open with his finger.
    ”Go home, Ron. You look half-dead,” Chief Walker said. ”Get some sleep. I can handle this myself today unless something else turns up.”
    Parker tried to rise from the rocker and nearly toppled over. Walker caught his arm. ”It’s not far. Can you walk?”
    ”Barely,” Parker said bravely, stretching out one leg and then the other and setting out for his new lodgings over the greengrocer’s shop. He didn’t look as if he’d make it the two blocks without falling down Walker said to the other two men, ”It’s his first day on the job and I left him to guard the can overnight.” Both men laughed.
    Chief Coiling asked, ”How did you get rid of the dumb lump of a deputy you used to have?”
    ”I didn’t. He got a girl from Albany pregnant and had to marry her and live with her family.”
    ”Happy Families,” the fire marshal said with a wink. ”Now let’s look at this trash bin.” He put on a pair of fresh white cotton