The Feed Bill a Stranger Paid

“Walt’s grandson,” Emil said, and shook his hand with his dry grip, and that was the whole of the conversation. They went to look at the crawlspace.

It took four hours. The old tank had rusted through at the seam, and the pump switch was chewed. Nathan lay on his back in the crawlspace with a flashlight in his teeth while I handed him wrenches through the hatch, and we both swore a good deal that I will not repeat.

Emil sat in a lawn chair on the grass beside the open hatch with the dog at his feet and supervised. Mostly he told us we were doing it wrong.

When we were done, the pump held pressure for the first time since August. Emil went into the kitchen and ran a glass of water at the sink.

“That’s about right,” he said. That was all. We loaded the old tank into the pickup. Emil pressed an egg carton into Nathan’s hands, a dozen brown eggs with straw still stuck to a couple of them, and said, “My neighbor’s hens. Don’t tell her I gave them away.”

Tuesday came. I did not need mineral, but I drove to the co-op anyway.

It was Gary’s last week. The filing cabinet in the back was gone. In its place stood a stack of flattened boxes and a floor sweeper, and the whole store smelled of the new floor wax they had put down for the regional people.

Gary was at the counter, with both hands flat on the wood. I told him about the check, the porch, and the pressure tank, and he nodded the way a man nods at weather he forecast.

“I need a fifty-pound sack of dog food.”

“What kind?”

“The kind a collie mix with one ear up would eat.”

Gary almost smiled. He went to the dock and came back with the sack on his shoulder, and he rang it up on the old register, which still had a handle on the side, and I paid cash.

I had thought about having it put on an account. I decided against it. I carried it out to the pickup myself.

I drove up the gravel to the Dorn place with the sack in the bed. It was a bright, hard afternoon and the sky was a clean cold blue, with the ash trees in the lane showing yellow at the top.

Emil was already on the porch. He had been there awhile, I could tell, because the cushion on the kitchen chair had a dent in it and the coffee in the Pyrex pot had gone cold. There was a second cup on the arm of the chair, turned upside down on a saucer, waiting.

I pulled the dog food off the truck bed, hoisted it onto my shoulder, and climbed the steps. The collie mix came with me, nose working, tail going so hard his whole back end swayed.

I set the sack down by the porch rail, where the old dog would find it. I took my hat off and hung it on the post. Emil turned the second cup over.

He poured. The windmill turned in the field, squeaking on every pass.