The Cows I Milked One Last Time

The Truck in the Elevator Lot

My first day at the elevator was a good day.

The work was hard and loud and new and it filled my hands and my head so I did not have too much room to ache.

Ray put me on the scale in the morning and the dryer in the afternoon and he said I caught on quick, which I knew I would, because I have never once been afraid of work.

I came home that night sore in new places and Joy had supper on and the kids wanted to hear about the big augers, and for a few hours it was only our own little house and our own little family and no farm at all.

The second morning, the Friday, Joy dropped me at the elevator at six and I went in and clocked on.

It had snowed in the night and I was out in the yard with the loader pushing snow off the scale when a truck pulled into the lot and parked and sat there a while with the exhaust going.

It was Delbert’s truck. The old red Ford he has had twenty years.

I shut the loader off. I walked over, not knowing what I would find, my heart going hard. He rolled the window down.

His face was gray and tired and his arm was in a sling, the one the cow had bruised, and he looked at me through the open window for a second before he spoke.

“The barn’s awful quiet without you in it,” he said.

I did not say anything. I did not trust my voice.

“I milked them New Year’s night,” he said. “Took me till nine.

I milked them again yesterday morning and yesterday night and this morning, and it like to killed me, Marty, and I have had a day and a half to think, standing in that pit where you stood every day for fourteen years, about what you did for me and what I paid you for it.

And what my son called you at my table while I sat there and ate my potatoes.”

His voice went then, the way an old farmer’s voice goes, which is almost not at all, just a tightening.

“I come to ask you a question,” he said. “I come to ask what a fair wage is. For the work you did.

I never once asked that question in fourteen years and I am ashamed of it.

So I’m asking it now, in your new man’s parking lot, where I had to drive to find you.”

I stood there in the snow in the gray morning light with the elevator legs clanking behind me and I did not know what to say to him.

Ray’s job paid twenty-four an hour. I told Delbert that. I did not say it to shame him.

I said it because he had asked a plain question and it deserved a plain answer.

Over four thousand a month, I said, with insurance, the real kind, and a Saturday now and then, and a retirement.

Delbert nodded slow. “I was paying you two thousand,” he said. “And calling the house wages. And letting my boy call you the hired man.”

He looked down at his sling. “I can’t pay you what the elevator pays, Marty.

I want to be honest with you, same as you’re being with me. A dairy this size can’t carry a twenty-four-dollar man.

But I can pay you a sight more than two thousand. And I can put your name on it.”

“On what,” I said.

“On the farm,” he said.

“I’ve had the lawyer draw up nothing and I’m not going to insult you with a promise you can’t hold in your hand.

I’m just telling you what’s in my heart standing here. When I’m done, and I’m near enough done, that place goes to you and Joy.

Not to Kurt. Kurt wouldn’t know which end of a cow to point at the pail. It goes to the two who stayed.