The Counter That Moved Across the Highway

What I knew

I did not sleep that night. I lay next to Cody, who sleeps like a felled tree, and I went through the store in my head, shelf by shelf.

I knew every account. I knew that Walt Engen bought loose mineral by the ton in the fall and by the sack in calving season. I knew that the Olson brothers fought about everything except milk replacer, which they bought by the pallet, because their cows had poor mothering on that bottom ground.

I knew that Terry and Jan Wolf ran Herefords and needed a different ration. I knew which ranchers paid by check and which ones ran a tab until the calves sold in October. I knew which ones were proud and would not ask for credit, so you had to offer it like it was nothing.

I knew that in March, in western North Dakota, a rancher calving three hundred head does not have time to drive fifty miles to Dickinson for a bag of colostrum at two in the afternoon. He needs it close, and he needs it from somebody who already knows what he means when he says “the usual.”

And I knew that Kassidy did not know any of it.

At two in the morning I got up and found my phone. I had the cell number for Jeff Lund, the rep for the mineral company. He had been calling on our store for nine years. He came every other Tuesday and always brought donuts for the counter, and he always asked about my kids by name.

I texted him at two in the morning, which I would never have done on a regular night. “Jeff, it’s Brittany Holm. Ron let me go. Can I buy direct from your warehouse? Cash. One pallet.”

He texted back at 5:40. “Are you serious. I’m so sorry. Yes. Warehouse in Dickinson, I’ll meet you there at 7 tonight. Tell me what you want.”

The shed across the highway

My dad, Don, has a machine shed on the east side of the highway, right across from Schaefer Feed and Supply. It used to be a grain elevator’s storage building, and it still has a concrete loading dock, three feet high, with a ramp on one end.

Dad bought it when he retired from the county road crew. He keeps his old Ford tractor in there and a telehandler he bought at an auction and claims he needs. Mostly he keeps a coffee pot and a radio and a chair.

I drove over there Thursday morning after I dropped the kids off. He was in the shed with the radio on, sharpening a mower blade he would not need until June.

“Heard,” he said, before I said anything.

“Who told you?”

“Everybody.” He set the blade down. “You want me to go over there?”

“Why does every man in my life want to go over there?”

“Because we can’t fix it,” he said. “And we want to fix it.”

I told him what I was thinking. I told him about Jeff and the warehouse and the tax refund. I told him I wanted to use his dock.

Dad did not say anything for a while. He looked out the big shed door at the highway, and across it at the feed store, where Kassidy’s little red car was parked by the front door.

“You’re going to sell feed out of my machine shed,” he said.

“Off your dock. Just for calving season. Until I figure something out.”

“In March.”

“Ranchers don’t stop calving because it’s cold, Dad.”

He picked up his coffee cup and drank from it and set it down. “I’ll get the telehandler warmed up,” he said. “What time do you want that pallet on the dock?”