The Bookkeeper Across the Tracks

Sunday Dinner

We always eat Sunday dinner at Harold’s after church. We had all through the harvest, too, though nobody had said much at that table in three weeks except “pass the potatoes.”

That Sunday Cindy made a roast. Kyle had driven home from Brookings for the weekend, and he could feel it the minute he walked in.

He looked at his dad, and his grandpa, and me, and he went and washed his hands without being told, which he has not done since he was nine.

We said grace. Harold said it, the same one Walt used to say, short and plain. Then we passed the roast around and nobody ate much of it.

It was Craig who started it. I had not asked him to. I had not even told him what Cindy and I found on Thursday, beyond the bushels.

He set down his fork and he looked at his father across the table.

“Dad,” he said. “I’ve kept my mouth shut for a month because Lori asked me to. I’m done.”

Harold looked up. He didn’t say anything.

“Lori’s kept your books for nineteen years,” Craig said. “She’s never missed a close. She’s never been short a farmer a dime. She did it for twelve dollars an hour and you never raised it once. And then you gave it away and offered her ten, which is less than the law allows, and you didn’t even know that, because she’s the one who would’ve known it.”

His voice didn’t go up. That’s how I knew how angry he was. Craig gets quiet when he means it, like his mother did, people tell me.

“I’d have said something that day,” he went on, “but she wouldn’t let me. She said she didn’t want me to have to choose between you and her two weeks before harvest. Think about that, Dad. You put her out of her job and she was still worried about you and me.”

Harold set his napkin down beside his plate. He looked very old all of a sudden. He looked his whole seventy-two years and a few more.

“Dwight Larson’s hauling to the co-op,” Craig said. “Elmer Mertz. Tom Olson. Not because Lori asked them. Because they trust her. That’s what you gave away. Not a bookkeeper. The one person in this county everybody believes.”

Nobody said anything. Kyle was staring at his plate. Then Cindy put her hand on Harold’s arm.

“Tell her,” Cindy said. “Tell her what you told me.”

Harold cleared his throat. He took a long time.

“My dad paid you twelve,” he said to me. “And when he passed I just kept on. I never thought about it. Joan always did the paying before you, and I never once looked. I was wrong. Nineteen years wrong.”

He looked down at his plate.

“And I was scared,” he said. “Cindy’d lost everything once. I thought if she had her own job and her own check, she’d stay with an old man. I didn’t think about what I was taking from you to give it to her. I should’ve. Joan would’ve had my hide.”

“She would have,” I said. And I was surprised to find I was smiling a little, because it was true, and because I could almost hear her.

“I’d like to make it right,” Harold said. “If you’ll let me. I’ll pay you back what I should have been paying. I don’t know how to figure it, but you’d know.”

“I don’t want back pay, Harold,” I said. “I’ve got a job I like. Dale’s good to me.”