The Ticket She Marked Paid in Full

The Men at the Counter

I need to tell you about those three men, because what they did and did not do that morning matters to the rest of this.

Virgil Snell is eighty-two.

He farmed two hundred acres of fescue and soybeans until his knees quit, and he still buys his own mineral and carries it to the truck himself, one sack at a time, and will not let anybody help.

Don Akers is in his seventies and runs a cow-calf operation south of town with his son. He tells the same story about the blizzard of ’79 every January, and every January we let him tell it.

Ray Whitlow is the youngest of them, sixty-eight, a retired rural mail carrier who keeps a few goats and more opinions than goats.

He reads the paper at my counter so he does not have to buy one.

That morning all three had on their caps and work jackets and were standing at the end of my counter with their hands folded on it, the way they always do. They are not gossips, exactly.

But they are the men who tell the rest of the county what happened, and by Monday noon whatever they saw would be known at the café, the sale barn and the bank.

Earl knew that. I think that is why he said it to them and not to me. He wanted the story told his way before I could tell it mine.

Standing there behind that counter in my green store vest and gray flannel shirt, my shoulder-length auburn hair, my reading glasses pushed up on my head and a black marker in my vest pocket, I felt the old heat climb up my neck that I used to feel when I was twelve and got called on in class.

I had a few seconds to decide who I was going to be.