Five Cows and One Plate of Pie

The check was made out to Kendra Voight, and the stub said five head, weigh cows, net $6,104.37.

I read it three times at my kitchen table with my coat still on, because I had not owned a cow in over a year.

I knew whose cows they were before I got to the bottom of the stub.

I think I knew the second I saw the sale barn’s name printed in the corner of the envelope that morning at the post office.

I carry a rural route out of the post office in town.

One hundred and twelve miles of gravel and county blacktop, a little over four hundred boxes, six days a week with a rotating day off.

That Friday I cased my mail at 6:40 like always, and there it was in the slot for my own address.

I remember thinking it was odd, and then I remember thinking it was probably a stray statement, and I put it in my own box at 2:40 that afternoon.

It was not a statement. It was a check for $6,104.37 for five cows sold through the ring that Wednesday, on the consigner account that still had my name on top of it.

Cody and I opened that account the second year we were married.

We had eleven cows then and a lot of plans, and the girl in the barn office typed my name first because I was the one standing at the window.

We sold the last of those cows the spring before the divorce. I closed my checking account with him, I changed the title on my car, I took his name off the electric.

I never thought about a card in a file drawer at the sale barn.

Cody still hauled cattle part time. He had a three quarter ton pickup and a twenty four foot gooseneck stock trailer, and he hauled for half the people on my route when they needed a load moved and did not want to make the trip.

I sat there with the check in one hand and the envelope in the other and I looked out the kitchen window toward the next section over, where Lyle and Arlene Brandvik run forty black cows on grass and cornstalks.

Nobody else on our road had cattle that would fit on that check. And nobody else had a man who used to feed for them.