The House Cow My Father Gave Me

The man in line

My father came on a Saturday in late September.

I did not see him at first. It was a busy morning, cool and bright, and I was at my folding table by the barn door with the cash box and the cooler, making change and writing down names for butter.

The line went down the drive and out to the road. People talked to each other while they waited. That was half of why they came.

I was handing a jug to a woman from Ash Grove when I looked past her and saw him.

He was the fourth man back, in his good tan Carhartt jacket and his seed cap. He was standing between a young father with a baby in a carrier and Mrs. Haskins, who was eighty-three that year and who kept glancing up at him like she was not sure he was real.

He was not looking at me. He was looking past me, at the little pasture by the road, where Pearl stood at the fence with her head over the wire.

My hands kept working. Nine dollars. Thank you. See you next week. Nine dollars. You want butter? I’ll put you down.

Then the young father stepped up with his baby, and then Mrs. Haskins, who patted my hand and said, “Well, honey,” and nothing else, and then it was my father standing at my table.

Up close he looked old. I had not stood this close to him in a long time. There was white in his eyebrows now, and he was thinner in the face, and his hands were the same hands, cracked across the knuckles.

He had nine dollars in his hand. A five and four ones, folded once.

“One gallon,” he said.

I could have given it to him. I could have pushed the money back and said, Dad, don’t be silly. Everybody in that line would have understood.

I took the nine dollars and put it in the cash box. I handed him a gallon from the cooler, cold and sweating in the glass.

“Thank you,” I said. “See you next week.”

It was what I said to everybody. He heard that. I saw him hear it.

He did not leave. He stepped to the side, out of the way of the line, and he stood by the fence with the gallon in his hand and waited. He waited forty minutes, until I sold out and turned the sign around.