Reflections on the Ninth Week of Winter – Zina―Yes. Meetings Past Bedtime―No.

Township Bell and Sign

While my stomach churned the pizza I’d gulped, I grabbed my coat and purse then dashed outside to hop onto the passenger seat of Stephanie’s SUV.

Her windshield wipers swished away the February evening rain, and the heated seat cushioned my back and bottom. “Aaaaaah.”

Stephanie giggled. Not wearing a coat, she sat behind the steering wheel in a flowing-rayon blouse and dress slacks―her outfit for administering Crawford County social programs. Turning her head, Stephanie peered through the rear window. “I love the heat on my back after working all day.” She reversed the SUV out of the driveway for the one mile trip to Nancy’s house.

I could have driven myself, but, at the auditor’s organizing meeting in January, I’d vetoed a 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. work schedule. “That’s past my bedtime.” We settled for working 5:30 to 8:30. The other two auditors concluded I didn’t like to drive at night―in truth I preferred snuggling under the covers after nine. Stephanie had said, “I’ll pick you up. I pass your house anyway.”

So, February 7^th, she drove us around a slick, muddy curve atop the rise on West Creek Road and headed toward Route 173. “Do you think we can find out why the supervisors spent two hundred ten dollars for boots and five hundred something on whatever that other item was?”

“The kitchen window replacement. We can search the minute book for explanations.” My stomach stopped churning. “I wonder if Nancy scheduled the meeting with Zina yet.” Zina, her name pronounced with a long “i” like in the word sign, became secretary-treasurer of French Creek Township through a covert, January plot. [See “Ch-ch-ch-ch -changes” January 13, 2019] She needed to input our auditor’s data on the state website and witness our signatures on forms.

“Tonight at eight. Zina’s coming to Nancy’s house after we finish our work.”

Yes! I could gather information for the mission from my writing friend and loyal reader Diana―Let us, your loyal readers, know how the first meeting with Zina goes.

After the short ride, Stephanie and I squished across Nancy’s soggy yard, entered her laundry room, and took off our wet shoes.

Nancy patted a carton on top of the washing machine. “Don’t touch any of these files. We’ve finished them.” She led us into the kitchen of her 1850 farm house and pointed to a carton on top of the dish washer. “You can go through these, but first I want you to check the report we’re submitting tonight.”

Stephanie and I sat at the three by four foot table pushed against the kitchen wall.

Nancy stood and waved a thirty page report at us. “This is where all those numbers you gave me go. In case I die, someone should know what the numbers mean.”

Stephanie and I exchanged a raised eyebrow glance.

Nancy took the paperclip off a stack of papers and handed them to me. “You check the copy for Mercer county.” She gave another stack to Stephanie. “You check the township’s. I’ll read from the state’s.” Page by page, line by line, Nancy read labels and numbers.

On the fifth page, I interrupted her. “Do you have Wite-Out?” I put my index finger under a number on an expenditures page. “This zero should be a four.”

Nancy leaned over my shoulder and squinted. “You’re right.” She rummaged through a canister of supplies and pulled out a bottle of correction fluid.

Two corrections and twenty-five pages later, Nancy sighed and collected the reports. “Now you know how to fill these in. So I’ll show you how to balance the tax collector’s report that puzzled Janet last Tuesday.”

“You’re not going to pop off yet, Nancy.” I peered at the spreadsheet she set before me. “Besides, I’m older than you.”

“It doesn’t hurt for you to understand.” She ran a finger down a column of numbers. “This is a record of the taxes coming in. Add these until you get a total that matches―” she whipped out the tax collector’s summary from a folder on the table, “―the number on this other list.” She pointed at the report. “It’s her periodic report to the county. Then start adding again. I checked last night. It all balances.”

Stephanie and I exchanged another raised eyebrow glance. Our do-this-do-that head auditor had morphed into a schoolmarm.

Township Building and Bell

Stephanie straightened in her chair. “I wanted to check the two hundred ten dollars for boots and the money for the kitchen window.”

I looked over my shoulder at Nancy. “We thought we’d find an explanation in the minutes.”

Nancy reached into the carton on the dishwasher and handed me a bound book. “This is minute book.” She laughed. “Go for it.”

Stephanie left the table and pulled the check stubs from the forbidden box in the laundry room.

While she looked through the stubs to find a date for the expenditures, I opened the bound book and read the December 2018 pages. No mention of boots or a window. I flipped back to November. Still no boots or window, but I found the record of the payee and amount of the items. The minutes didn’t explain why the supervisors approved the expenditures. “No answers here.” I tilted the book toward Stephanie and pointed to the record of the two checks.

“Bummer.” Stephanie returned the check stubs to the laundry room box. “How will we get the answers now?”

Nancy chuckled. “I’ll call Sherian.” Nancy grabbed the phone off her counter and punched some buttons.

“She’s no longer secretary-treasurer.” Stephanie leaned her elbows on the table. “We shouldn’t bother her.”

“Sherian won’t mind. Anyway, these are her accounts.” Nancy greeted Sherian and asked about the boots and the kitchen window. “If there’s money for remodeling, we want our share.” Nancy belly laughed.

Stephanie and I paged through the minutes―boring.

Nancy muttered, “Uh-huh . . . uh-huh . . . uh-huh . . . okay. Thanks.” She put the phone on the counter. “Brian got tar on his personal boots doing township work so we bought him a new pair.” She reached in front of me, closed the minute book, and stuffed it into the carton on the dishwasher. “And the new township worker took the guard off the grader. It sprayed gravel and broke someone’s kitchen window. The township paid to replace the window.”

Stephanie clapped once. “Mystery solved!”

A knock and the swoosh of the laundry room door opening announced Zina’s arrival.

Nancy stepped into the laundry room. “Welcome. You’re right on time.”

I looked at the clock on the wall. Eight. Like I’d done during the other three auditor work sessions, I stood, got a glass from Nancy’s cupboard, and filled the glass with the spring water that ran into her basement and out of her faucet. Then I washed down my ropinirole with the mineral-flavored water. By 9:00, the medicine would calm my restless legs so I could sleep. Zina wouldn’t need more than a half hour to type the report into her laptop. Would she?

I scooted my chair beside Stephanie to give Zina and Nancy more room.

Nancy returned and handed us a fat file folder. “You can play with the payroll records while I help Zina.”

Play? Stephanie and I exchanged a third raised eyebrow glance.

I opened the file and pulled out time sheets for roadmaster Brian and Sherian’s tallies for his pay checks. Stephanie and I reached for calculators and added hours.

Carrying a computer case, Zina walked to the opposite side of the table. “Hi.” Her lips twitched in and out of a nervous smile.

Letting Stephanie add, I studied Zina while she opened the case and pulled out her computer―glittering silver earrings lined the rim of each ear. For loyal reader Diana, I concentrated. Crosses hung on the bottom of each ear lobe. On the left ear, a rhinestone crescent came next then a spray of tiny circular earrings that reached to mid ear. On the right, the earrings spread from the cross on the lobe to a clip at the top. Daisy, heart, and round stones were spaced in between. I forced my eyes away from the earrings to take in more of Zina for Diana. Round rosy cheeks, black hair pulled into a pony tail, and a low-cut sweater revealing cleavage that would distract any happily married husband.

“This doesn’t add up.” Stephanie pointed to Sherian’s totals for the roadmaster’s first January check.

Returning to the task at hand, I added Brian’s time sheet then Sherian’s columns―twice. “Sherian recorded four hours more than the hours Brian submitted.”

Stephanie pulled more sheets from the folder. “Let’s check February.”

Nancy leaned over Zina’s shoulder and pointed to numbers on the report we’d checked earlier.

Zina squinted, and her fingers tapped computer keys in an allegro tempo.

Terrific. I’d get home and into bed by nine.

Zina scowled and pointed at the screen. “They’re saying we have negative one dollar here.”

Nancy shook her head. “The bank doesn’t owe us a dollar. The shed loan balance is zero. The computer just rounded differently. We can change a number here―”she pointed to the screen “―to make it come out even.” Nancy reached for the correction fluid and changed a number on the government reports.

“It’s their mistake, not ours.” Zina straightened in her chair and scowled. “I’ll call them in the morning and get them to fix it. I want things done right.”

Great. That meant the two were almost done. I’d get to bed by nine, and Zina wanted things done correctly even more than Nancy.

Stephanie nudged me with her elbow. “The February numbers are off too.” She set her calculator in the table. “Sherian doesn’t make usually make that many errors.”

I looked at Stephanie’s totals. Another anomaly in Sherian’s figures? I would test Zina.

Organizing Meeting Minutes

“Zina, can you explain why Sherian’s payroll numbers don’t add up? They’re off by four dollars in the beginning of January and off again in the beginning of February.”

“Give me the dates. I’ll look it up for you.”

“January first through fifteen, two thousand eighteen.”

Zina typed and stared at her screen. “I’m not finding it here. The township pays on the fifteenth and the end of the month. But hours are calculated by the week because of overtime.” She held up her hands and spread them apart. “Weeks start on Sunday and go through Saturday. We’d need a calendar to see what day January first was.”

I held up Brian’s time sheet. “So if January first was Monday and Brian plowed snow four hours on Sunday, those hours would count in the week?”

“Yes. payroll is complicated.” Zina pouted.

I muttered to Stephanie, “You would think they could make a line for numbers carried over from the previous month.” And without a 2018 calendar or the December 2017 time sheets, we couldn’t check Sherian’s totals.

Nancy gave me a we-don’t-need-that-amount-for-our-report-anyway look.

Yawning, I decided Zina knew how to handle the secretary-treasurer job.

While Zina watched, Nancy, Stephanie, and I put our signatures on the three government reports and the report for the Meadville Tribune. I yawned again and tucked my calculator into my purse. Time to go home.

Nancy gathered the government reports, put paperclips on each one, and handed them to Zina. Nancy kept the report for the newspaper in her hand and took a step away from the table. “I wanted you to know that the salaries went up more than ten thousand dollars this year, and the roadmaster accumulated over a hundred hours of overtime. But the new worker only worked full time in one pay period.” Nancy placed the report on the table in front of Zina. “That’s why I mentioned it in our report. We didn’t receive any new revenue to pay for the increases.”

Zina’s eyes widened. “That’s a lot of overtime!” She studied the report. “I’ll make a chart of the overtime for the last four years. When the supervisors see that, they’ll understand the problem.”

A band of pressure encircled my head, and my brains felt like they floated in helium. I checked the clock. Ten minutes after nine.

Uh-oh.

“Another thing,” Nancy peered over her nose. “Sherian’s firing was done secretly. That wasn’t right.”

As if Nancy had aimed a semi-automatic at Zina, she threw up her hands. “I just offered to help at the December meeting. I’d heard they needed to write a grant for the roads, and I know about grant writing. I would gladly have helped Sherian. I had no part in what happened to her.”

Nancy scowled.

Stephanie shrank.

I needed an ax to cut through the tension in the kitchen. Maybe humor would help. “Congratulations. You discovered a new way of getting a job. Maybe you should patent it.”

Zina laughed.

Stephanie chuckled.

Nancy’s lips twitched. “Another thing . . .”

My stomach churned. I put my head on the table. While Nancy lectured Zina about how things go in the township, I took yoga breaths and willed myself not to vomit.

Nancy kept talking.

Should I interrupt her?

Don’t be rude. Let the schoolmarm talk.

But I might vomit digested pizza onto her floor―

You’re having a vertigo attack. You probably won’t vomit.

If only I got to bed on time . . .

It’s nine thirty. She can’t drone on much longer.

Breathe―yawn. Breathe―yawn. Breathe―yawn.

I raised my head to look at the clock. Nine thirty-five. “I’m feeling sick. I should have been in bed awhile ago. I need to go home.”

Nancy stopped lecturing.

Zina and Stephanie gathered their belongings and hustled to put on their coats.

Standing, I wobbled to the laundry room, slipped into my coat, and stooped to put on my shoes. I grabbed onto the washing machine to stand.

Stephanie offered her arm. “Let me help you to the car.”

While I hung onto Stephanie, our feet squished through the soggy lawn. I collapsed on the passenger seat―cool from the long meeting, but I didn’t care.

While Stephanie reversed the SUV out of Nancy’s driveway, I said, “Thanks. There’s no way I could have driven tonight.”

I leaned back, closed my eyes, and drew two conclusions from the night’s work.

Zina―yes. Meetings past bedtime―no.

Township Bell