The Ticket She Marked Paid in Full

Mitch Comes Home

Mitch got back from the dairy a little after one.

By then Don had called his son, and his son had stopped by the store for nothing in particular, and I knew it was already moving around town.

I told Mitch the whole thing in the office with the door shut. He listened the way he always does, leaning on the file cabinet with his arms crossed.

When I got to the marker, he let out a long breath. When I got to Virgil taking off his cap, he looked at the floor for a while.

“You all right?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I think so. I feel like I did something I can’t take back.”

“You didn’t do anything you need to take back,” Mitch said. “You let him off seven thousand dollars and you told him the truth. That’s a pretty generous way to be mad at somebody.”

“He’s going to tell Mama I humiliated him.”

Mitch thought about that. “Maybe,” he said. “And if he does, your mama is going to ask why. And then he’s going to have to tell her something.”

I had not thought of it that way.

I had spent three years trying to keep Mama out of it, and it had not occurred to me that the only person who could put her in it now was Earl.

That night I almost called her four times. I had the phone in my hand. Every time, I put it down.

If I called, it would be me asking her to take my side. I did not want a side. I wanted it over.

A Week of Quiet

Sunday at church, Mama was there in her usual pew, third from the front on the piano side. Earl was not.

She said his back was bothering him, and she patted my hand during the last hymn like she always does.

So he had not told her. Or he had told her something that was not the whole story. I sat through the sermon and did not hear a word of it.

Monday, two different women at the café asked Mitch if everything was all right with my family. Mitch said everything was fine, which is what Mitch says about everything short of a house fire.

Tuesday the feed truck came in from the mill at seven. Twenty-two pallets, mineral and cubes and sweet feed and dog food.

I unloaded every one of them myself with the forklift while Mitch checked them off the bill of lading.

Halfway through the load I caught myself crying in the seat, slow and quiet, the forklift idling, a pallet of mineral hanging in the air. I set it down square and soft before I wiped my face.

Wednesday afternoon Ray Whitlow came in for goat feed and mentioned, like he was talking about the weather, that he had seen Earl’s truck at the sale barn in Springfield on Monday with the stock trailer behind it.

“Sold some cows?” I asked.

“Sold six bred cows,” Ray said. “Good ones, too. Fall calvers. Didn’t figure that was the time of year a man sells his bred cows.”

It was not. Nobody sells good bred cows in October unless he needs the money worse than he needs the calves.

I knew that, and Ray knew I knew it, and he paid for his goat feed and left.

Thursday I drove past Mama and Earl’s place on the way back from a delivery, which I never do, and slowed down.

His truck was in the yard. The light was on in the kitchen. Everything looked like it always looked.

Friday night I lay awake and added it up all over again, not the ticket this time but the years. Thirty-six years of Earl. Softball games and forklift lessons and one Saturday morning.

I decided I would not take back the marker. But I decided something else too. If he walked back in, whatever he said, I was going to let him finish saying it.