The Hay That Came Home Again

Mrs. Hruska’s ledger

I had to go through town to get to Gene Pokorny’s, and I needed salt and mineral for the cows on summer grass regardless.

Hruska Feed and Supply has been on the south side of Broken Bow since before I was born. Mrs. Hruska has run it alone for twenty-two years. She keeps the charge accounts in a green ledger under the counter, by hand, and she knows what every operator in three townships owes to the penny.

She came around the counter and held me a minute. She did not say anything foolish about God’s plan. She just held on and then let go.

“Four bags of mineral and six salt blocks,” I said. “On our account.”

She wrote it down. Then she kept her pen where it was.

“Karen, I’m going to ask you something that’s none of my affair.”

“Go ahead.”

“Dwayne was in Monday at closing. He put seventeen hundred dollars cash on his bill. It’s the first money I’ve had from him since Christmas.” She took her glasses off. “Where does Dwayne get seventeen hundred dollars in the first week of June? He hasn’t got a calf to sell until fall.”

I had not planned to tell anyone but the three who had the bales. But she had asked me a direct question, and I was not going to lie to that woman across her own counter.

So I told her. Same words, no more.

Mrs. Hruska did not gasp. She put her glasses back on and turned the ledger around and looked at a page for a while.

“I was fifty-one when Ed died,” she said. “The week after the funeral a man from the co-op sat right there on that stool and told me a widow didn’t need a feed store. He had a number all ready.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him to get off my stool.” She shut the ledger. “You go see Gene. Leave Dwayne’s bill to me.”

I did not ask her what she meant. I found out later, and I will get to it.