The Counter That Moved Across the Highway

“Kassidy asked me to spell my name yesterday,” he said.

I did not know what to say to that.

“I’ve been buying from that store for sixty-four years, since I was thirteen and my dad sent me in with the grain check,” Walt said. “Spelled my name for nobody. Then yesterday some girl asks me to spell Engen, and then asks me what kind of mineral I use, and I tell her the usual, and she says, the usual what?”

He took off his glove and put his bare hand on the top sack, flat, like a man checking a horse.

“So I asked her where you were. And she said Ron let you go. And I asked why. And she said she wasn’t supposed to say, but she thought it was because of the baby.”

“Walt,” I said.

“I’m not done,” he said. He was not angry. He was just a man who was used to finishing his sentences.

“Brittany,” he said, “I’ve never been buying from a counter. I’ve been buying from the person who knows my cows. My wife knew that. She used to say it was the only reason I went to town.” He nodded at the clipboard. “What’s my order?”

I did not look at anything. I did not need to.

“You’ve got sixty-two head calving,” I said. “Your first-calf heifers are in the east lot and they started last week. You need four sacks of high-mag a week until grass, two more than usual because of that slough water. And you’ll want a bag of colostrum in the pickup at all times, because you hate driving to town at night.”

Walt looked at me for a long time. Then he reached into his coveralls and pulled out a checkbook so old the cover was cracked.

“Make it six sacks,” he said. “And two colostrum. And put Emma’s cow on my receipt.”

He wrote me a check for three hundred and thirty-two dollars, leaning on the pallet, in slow careful old-man handwriting. Then he carried the first sack to his pickup himself, even though I tried to stop him, and I carried the second one, even though he tried to stop me.

When it was all loaded, he stood by his door and looked across the highway at the feed store. Then he looked at me.

“Ron’s a good boy,” he said. “He’ll figure it out. But not before I tell everybody at the café that the counter moved.”