The Name on Our Mailbox

February

Gary called Doug that afternoon from the kitchen phone. I was at the sink and he did not ask me to leave the room, and I did not offer.

“Doug, it’s Gary Rasmussen. I need to ask you a favor, and I need to ask you something about that check.”

The co-op holds a winter member meeting the second Tuesday of February, in the same fairgrounds hall, with sloppy joes instead of ham. It is mostly about patronage dividends and the new fertilizer building, and it draws a hundred and fifty people on a good night.

That year it drew more. I do not know how word got around that Gary Rasmussen had asked for the microphone. In a town like ours, word does not need much help.

Tyler drove home from Ames for it. He sat on one side of me and Dad sat on the other, with his cane between his knees. Kim sat behind us. Steve and Carla sat at table six again, and Steve did not lift his coffee cup.

After the patronage report, Doug said, “Gary asked for a few minutes,” and sat down.

Gary went to the front in his barn coat this time, not the good flannel. He did not take a card. He put both hands on the sides of the little podium and looked at the room for a long moment.

“In January you all gave me Farmer of the Year,” he said. “I took it. I shouldn’t have. I didn’t plant that crop. I didn’t spray it and I didn’t harvest it.”

The hall went still. I could hear the furnace come on.

“My wife Deb did,” he said. “Deb Rasmussen. She planted nine hundred acres by herself starting April 24th. She ran the combine all fall. Our son Tyler ran grain cart on weekends, and her dad, Hal, ran it every other day, at 80 years old.”

He pointed, and people turned and looked at Dad, and Dad lifted one hand off his cane about two inches.

“I wasn’t laid up with my back,” Gary said. “A lot of you heard that. It isn’t true.

“I was in treatment for ninety days, ninety miles north of here, for drinking. I have been sober since the twenty-third of March. I go to a meeting every morning at seven at the Methodist church, and some of you know that, because some of you are there.”

Somebody in the back said, quiet, “Good for you, Gary.” I never found out who.