Five Cows and One Plate of Pie

The Talk

Dale went out to the Brandviks’ that afternoon. Lyle was short five head, five old black cows, just like the stub said.

Dale wrote it up and took Lyle’s statement and drove into town to talk to the barn office.

By Monday the talk had beaten me home. I have been delivering mail on that route for nine years, so I know how fast word travels out here.

It travels faster than I do, and I drive fifty miles an hour on gravel.

The barn office girl told her mother, who told the women at the Methodist quilting group, who told their husbands at coffee.

By the time it reached the convenience store at the junction, the story was that a Voight had sold stolen cattle, and the check had gone to Kendra.

Nobody said Cody. People said Voight, and the Voight they saw every single day was the one in the little car at their mailbox.

On Monday a woman I have known since grade school turned her grocery cart around in the canned goods aisle when she saw me coming. She did not even pretend she had forgotten something.

On Tuesday one of the men at the elevator said, loud enough for me to hear through the open door while I was dropping their mail, that the Voights were all the same, they would steal the shoes off a dead man.

I did not say anything. I put the mail in the tray and said “Have a good day” like I say four hundred times a day. Then I got back in my car and drove to the next box with my jaw so tight my teeth hurt.

Tuesday night my sister called from Scottsbluff and asked if I wanted her to come up. I said no.

She asked if I was sure Arlene would come to the cafe. I said I was sure, and then I lay awake half the night not being sure at all.

Because what did I really know? I knew Arlene had taken the check. I knew she had said noon.

I did not know what Lyle had said to her when he came in from breaking ice, or what the women at quilting had told her since.

Sale Day

Wednesday was cold and clear and still, for once. The wind had laid down overnight.

I drove into town at 11:30 and the sale barn lot was already full of pickups and stock trailers, a lot of them backed up to the unloading chutes.

November is the fall calf run out here. The barn sells every Wednesday, and in November it can go from ten in the morning past dark.

You can hear the calves bawling in the back pens from the parking lot, hundreds of them, all at once.

The cafe is on the front of the barn, through a glass door off the lobby.

Long counter, ten or twelve stools, a row of booths along the windows, pie case by the register. You can hear the auctioneer through the wall the whole time you eat.

Everybody goes there on sale day. Ranchers, buyers, haulers, the vet, the brand inspector, the wives who came along to get out of the house.

If you want something known in our county by suppertime, you say it at that counter on a Wednesday.

I walked in at ten minutes to twelve. Every stool but two was taken, and every booth.

And when the door shut behind me, the talk along that counter did not stop exactly, but it went thin, like somebody had turned it down.

Cody was at the far end of the counter. He was sitting with two men he hauls for, both of them with their caps pushed back, both of them working hard at their coffee. Cody saw me and looked down at his plate.

I did not go to him. I went and stood by the pie case near the register, where the two empty stools were, and I did not sit down, because I had said I would wait for Arlene and I meant to wait for her standing up.