The Counter That Moved Across the Highway

April

On the second Tuesday in April, Ron Schaefer walked across the highway.

He did not drive. He walked. It was a warm day, almost fifty degrees, and the snow in the ditches had gone to brown water. He came across the highway in his work coat, looking both ways twice, like an old man, though he was only sixty-three.

He came up the ramp and stood at the edge of the dock and looked at my pallet and my plywood sign and the clipboard with Emma’s cow on it, which I had kept using all spring.

“Brittany,” he said.

“Ron.”

He did not say anything else for a long while. I waited. I had learned to wait from Walt.

“Marlene had four,” he said finally. “You know that. Four in six years. I was working seventy hours a week over there, building up the store after Dad died, and she raised them by herself.

“I’d come home and she’d be standing at the sink crying, with a baby on her hip and two more hanging on her legs, and I’d go back to work because I didn’t know what else to do.”

He looked down at the concrete.

“When you told me you were having your fourth, all I could see was her at that sink. And I thought, I’m not going to do that to another woman. I’ll let her go and she’ll stay home and she won’t have to wear herself out on my account.” He shook his head. “I told myself it was a kindness. That’s what I told myself.”

“It wasn’t your decision to make,” I said quietly.

“No,” he said. “Marlene told me that, too. More than once.” He almost smiled. “She also told me it was against the law and that I was a fool. She wasn’t wrong on either one.”

He looked across the highway at his store, at the empty lot, at Kassidy’s little car.

“I’ve had this store thirty-one years,” he said. “I never once had a March as quiet as this one. Walt Engen hasn’t been in since the day after. The Olsons haven’t been in. Kevin Bauer sends his hired man.” He swallowed. “I watched my counter go quiet, and every day I knew why.”

“I’m sorry, Ron. I didn’t do it to hurt you.”

“I know you didn’t. That’s the worst part.” He took a breath. “I came over to ask you to come back. Twenty-two an hour. You can take whatever days you need for the kids. Doctor appointments, school programs, all of it.”

Twenty-two dollars an hour. Six dollars more than I had made for eleven years. I thought about the Suburban we still did not have.

“No,” I said.

He nodded slowly, like he had expected it.

“But I’ll tell you what I will do,” I said.

He looked up.

“I’ll keep my ranchers. I’ll keep taking their orders and doing their deliveries. But I’ll order everything through your store, and you’ll pay me eight percent on what I sell. And I won’t stand on this dock in the cold anymore.”

“Eight percent,” he said.

“And one more thing. You hire my sister Jenna to run your counter. She’s got two kids, and she’s going to have sick days, and you’re going to let her have them. Eighteen an hour to start.”

He looked at me for a long time. Then he did something I did not expect. He laughed, a short tired laugh, and rubbed his face with both hands.

“Marlene said you’d say something like that,” he said. “She said you’d be smarter than me about it.”

“Is that a yes?”

“That’s a yes.” He held out his hand, and I shook it. “And Brittany. I’m sorry. I mean it. I was wrong, and I was wrong in front of the whole town, and you didn’t deserve it.”

“I know you mean it, Ron.”

He turned to go. Then he stopped at the top of the ramp and looked back at the clipboard.

“Who drew the cow?” he asked.

“Emma.”

“Tell her it’s a good cow,” he said, and he walked back across the highway.