The Boy Who Bid on Her Steer

What came after

I would like to say the whole thing was fixed that night. It was not, but things changed.

A barn full of people had watched the top row sit on their cards while a twelve-year-old held her steer at a dollar ten. They watched a fourteen-year-old walk in and do what the grown men would not. That is not something a small town forgets, and it is not something those men could explain.

By Monday, the story had been told at every coffee table in the county. Nobody was talking about Kristen Haas making a scene, because I had not made one. They were talking about the top row.

Two of the co-op men called Ben that week. They did not apologize exactly. Men like that do not. But one of them asked if Ben would come to the members’ meeting in December and say again what he had said in March, because a lot of members wanted to hear it.

Curt Lange did not call. He quit coming to the café on Tuesday mornings for a while. Somebody saved Ben’s chair again.

At the December annual meeting, with the members in the room this time instead of just the board, the land deal came up for a second look. There were a lot more hands in that room than there had been in March. The co-op let the purchase go, and Curt’s family kept their eighty acres.

The members asked Ben to run for the board again. He said he would think about it. He is still thinking about it, and I suspect he will say yes.

The fuel bill went back to the end of the month without anybody saying a word about it. That is how it is done where we live, too.

The thank-you cards

Every 4-H kid in our county writes a thank-you card to the buyers. It is part of the deal. You do not get your check until your letters are turned in to your club leader, and the buyers keep them, some for years.

Maddie wrote three. She sat at the kitchen table the next Tuesday night with a box of plain cards and a picture of her and Boone that I had printed at the drugstore.

She wrote Doc Miller first. She thanked him for coming to the fair and for buying Boone, and she told him she wanted to be a vet someday, which was news to me.

She wrote Gail at Farmers State second. She thanked the bank, and she said she would put the money in her savings account there, which is where it went.

She saved Tyler’s for last. It took her the longest. She wrote one card, tore it up, and started again.

I did not read it. It was not mine to read. She sealed it, and then she asked me if I would give it to him on the bus when school started, since he was still on my route.

I did. The second week of school, when he got on at the eleventh stop, I handed him the envelope and told him Maddie had asked me to. He said “thank you, Mrs. Haas,” and walked to the back and sat down.

I did not see him open it.