The Gate In The North Fence Line

The Envelope

He reached in his coat and took out an envelope. It was folded in half and soft from being in a pocket a long time.

“There’s six hundred dollars in there,” he said. “I sold Thea’s bottle calf to make it. She said I could.” He held it out. “I know it’s not twenty-two hundred. I’ll work off the rest. Your corrals need redoing. I can do it in the spring.”

I came up the steps then. I did not take the envelope right away. I looked at it in his glove, and I thought about Thea standing in the gap in August with her arms out and her braids.

“She said you could?” I said.

“She said it was only fair,” he said. “She said you built the gate so we’d have a way to come ask, and we hadn’t, and that was on us.” His mouth moved. “She’s nine. She said ‘on us.'”

I took the envelope then. It felt heavier than six hundred dollars.

“I have a semi of hay coming from Pierre on the twenty-second,” I said. “Thirty-four bales.”

He went very still.

“I don’t need thirty-four,” I said. “I bought big because I was scared. I could get through on seventeen if I’m careful, and if the slough grass holds.”

“Polly.”

“You pay half the load,” I said. “At cost. What I paid. Not a dollar more. And you keep the six hundred and put it toward it, and you redo my corrals in the spring like you said.”

He looked at the envelope in my hand. “You just took that.”

“I’m giving it back,” I said. “It’s Thea’s calf. It goes to her cows.”

He put his hand over his face. He stood there on my porch in the dark with the yard light on him and his cap crushed in his other hand, and his shoulders went once, and then again.

I did not say anything. I let him.

After a while he took his hand down and wiped it on his coat, and he said, “Okay,” and then he said, “Thank you,” and then he said, “I’m sorry,” all three in a row, like he had been carrying them up the lane together.

“I know you are,” I said.