The Checkbook My Brother Signed Alone

There were two other men ahead of us at the counter, one of them a farmer named Mike Ostrand from north of town who I’d known since grade school, both of them waiting on seed wheat tickets for next spring, both of them in no particular hurry the way men in a farm town never are at a counter, happy enough to stand and talk crop prices while Gib worked the register.

When it was our turn, Roy settled our fuel bill, plain and quick, and then I set my palms flat on the counter, and I said it plain, the way I had been turning it over in my head since July, not loud, not shaking, just asking a question the way you ask about the weather.

“Gib, can I ask you something. Who’s been signing for feed and seed on Dad’s account since March?”

Gib did not look surprised. That was the first thing I noticed, and it told me more than I expected it to. He reached under the counter for the ledger book, the real one, carbon copies going back years, and he opened it to the right month without having to hunt for it, which meant he had looked at that page before, on his own, for his own reasons.

“Dean’s been signing it,” he said. “Every ticket since the end of March.”

“Just Dean.”

“Just Dean.” Gib looked at me, and then past me, out the front window toward the loading dock, where Dean’s new truck sat idling, because Dean was two stalls over picking up a load of mineral tubs for the cows and had no idea yet that his sister was standing at the counter asking his name out loud. “Marge, I want to tell you something, and I should’ve told you back in the spring, except it wasn’t mine to tell and I kept hoping somebody would square it up without me having to be the one.”

Mike Ostrand, who had not quite finished his own business and had no reason to leave, stood there with his seed ticket in his hand and did not pretend not to be listening, and neither did the other man behind him, and I understood in that half second that whatever Gib said next was not going to be a private thing between the two of us no matter how quiet his voice stayed.