The Coffee Pot at the Feed Store

Three weeks

It went that way every morning for three weeks.

The urn went on at 4:45. Harlan came at 5:02, every day, across the street with his walker. I started meeting him at the curb with a flashlight, after the second morning, because the streetlight on that corner has been out since summer.

The men came. Some mornings eleven, some mornings fourteen. A couple of the younger farmers started stopping in too, men in their fifties who had quit the cafe years ago because they did not have time to sit, and now came in for a mug to take out to the combine.

Dale started buying three dozen donuts instead of two. I tried to pay him for them and he would not take a dime. He said Joan would have skinned him.

The coffee can filled up twice. I took the money to the extension office in a bank envelope, and the woman there asked me if we had a fundraiser going. I told her we had a coffee pot going.

And twice a week, at eleven o’clock, I walked across Main Street, tied on my apron, and worked the lunch shift at the Main Street Cafe like nothing had happened.

That was the strange part. Brooke and Ryan never said a word to me about it. I did my work. I refilled waters and ran plates and wiped the green booths down. They were polite and careful with me, like I was a piece of furniture that might fall on them.

Jeff told me what was going on, though. Cooks always know.

“Mornings are dead, Deb,” he said one Thursday, while I waited on a patty melt. “I mean dead. Some days I do six breakfasts before ten. Ryan’s talking about not opening till seven.”

“In harvest,” I said.

“In harvest,” Jeff said. “Best three weeks of the year, Marlene always said. Now look.”

I did not say anything to that. I took the patty melt out to table four and came back for the next one.

Brooke

In the second week, on a Wednesday, Brooke came over to the feed store.

It was a little after six. Most of the men had gone. Harlan was still there, and Bill Fogel, and Dale was at the register ringing up a sack of sunflower seed for a woman from out on the county line.

Brooke came in with her coat open and her arms crossed, and she stood just inside the door like she did not know whether she was allowed.

“Can I talk to you?” she said.

“Of course,” I said. “You want a cup?”

She looked at the urn. She looked at me. She shook her head.

“You know what you’re doing to us,” she said. Her voice was tight. “You know exactly what you’re doing.”

“I’m making coffee,” I said. “I’m not selling anything, Brooke. Your door’s open. So is Dale’s.”

“Nobody’s coming through our door.”

“I didn’t ask anybody to come through Dale’s,” I said. “I didn’t call a soul. You can ask any one of them.”

Bill Fogel, at the end of the counter, said quietly, “She didn’t.”

Brooke looked over at him, and then at Harlan, sitting on his salt block with his mug in both hands. Something in her face changed. I think it was the first time she had really looked at him.

“Is he the one?” she said, low, to me. “Kaylee said there was an old man who left without paying. Or. I don’t know. She said he left.”

“He paid,” I said. “He just couldn’t drink it.”

She did not understand, so I told her. About June, and the sugar, and his hands. I kept my voice down so Harlan would not have to hear himself talked about.

Brooke listened. She touched that little gold necklace. And then her eyes filled up, and she turned around and went out the door without saying anything, and I watched her walk back across the street and sit down in one of her own green booths with her face in her hands.

Harlan said, “That the new owner?”

“That’s her,” I said.

“Seems young,” he said, and drank his coffee.