The Bank Card He Called Severance
The bank on Main Street
The bank in Hollis is First Farmers State, and it sits on the corner of Main and Second in a squat limestone building with a flag out front and a night deposit slot worn smooth by fifty years of hands. I have banked there my whole life. My daddy banked there. We used to keep our own account there, Roy and I, back when there was an “us” to keep an account.
Inside it was too bright and too cold, the air conditioning going hard even in spring, and it smelled like floor wax and the burnt pot of coffee they keep for customers on a card table by the door. My taped shoes squeaked on the tile. There was a clock on the wall behind the tellers, and it said 10:42, and I remember that because I stared at it the whole time I stood in line so I would not have to look at the two men in golf shirts ahead of me who smelled like aftershave and easy mornings.
When it was my turn I went to the young teller. Her name tag said Kayla, and she had gentle eyes and a ponytail, and she gave me the automatic smile they train them to give.
“I’d like to withdraw everything on this card, please,” I said, and I set it on the counter and slid it across, and I was proud of how steady my hand was.
She picked it up and swiped it and typed. And then her smile went, just like that, the way a cloud takes the sun off a field. She typed again, slower. She turned the card over and looked at the back. She looked at the front. She asked to see my ID, and I gave her my license, and she looked from the license to the screen and back, and her fingers hovered over the keys like the keys had turned hot.
“Ma’am,” she said, very carefully, “can you confirm your full name for me?”
“Nadine Ruth Sutter,” I said. “Is something wrong?”
She swallowed. “Mrs. Sutter, there is not three thousand dollars in this account.”
The room went thin around me, the way the county road had gone thin the morning I fainted. I put my hand flat on the counter.
“Then how much is there?” I asked her.
She glanced back toward a glass-walled office. “I think I need to get my manager,” she said. “Can you wait right here? Please don’t go anywhere.”