The Pay at the Sale Barn Cafe

Don’s face went red under the brim of his hat. It started at the collar and climbed. I had never seen him red before.

He set his fork down very carefully, the way you set something down when you want to throw it.

“This isn’t the place, Casey,” he said.

“I know it isn’t, sir,” I said. “I’m sorry for that. I mean it. But he asked you twice in private, and both times you told him later. We don’t have later. Our house payment is due Friday.”

The man beside Don set his fork down. Then the man beside him did the same.

I saw it go down the row like that, fork after fork, until nobody at that long table was eating anymore. A plate of eggs went cold in front of every hat.

Don looked past me at Travis. “You put her up to this?”

“No, sir,” Travis said. His voice was quiet and steady. “She’s speaking for both of us. I’m standing right here.”

Then he said the thing I had not known he was going to say. “Eleven years, Don. I never missed a day you needed me. I’m asking for October. That’s all. I’m not asking for November.”

Down at the end, Hank Riggs pushed his plate away and turned his chair around to face us. He did not say a word. He folded his arms across his chest, and he looked at Don, and he waited.

I want you to understand that nobody at that table said anything to Don. Not one of those men took my side out loud. They did not have to.

Every one of them had hired hands. Every one of them had made payroll in bad years. They just sat there and waited to see what kind of man he was going to be.

Don looked down at his coffee a long time. When he finally spoke, it was so quiet I almost did not hear him.

“You know how this year’s been,” he said.

“I know, sir,” I said.

“It’s been hard on everybody.”

“Yes, sir. But it wasn’t Travis’s arm that made it hard.”

Don set his coffee cup down. He looked down the row of hats, one man at a time, all the way to Hank at the end.

Something in his face came loose. I have seen that look on a man at the clinic when we tell him the old dog is not going to make it.

Then he reached into the pocket of his tan canvas jacket and took out his checkbook.

He did not have a pen. The man beside him handed him one without a word.

Don looked around the table for something flat to write on, and there was nothing but plates and cups, so he pulled the sugar caddy over in front of him, the metal rack of white packets and pink packets, and he laid the checkbook on top of it.

He wrote it slow. His hand was not steady. I watched him write the date, and Travis’s name, and then three thousand two hundred and no cents, and then he signed it, and he tore it out along the perforation, and it took him two tries.

He did not hand it to me. He stood up, and he came around the end of the table, and he held it out to Travis.