Nine Saturdays at the Sale Barn

Gene came to the barn every Saturday. He always had. He sat at the end of Marlene’s counter on the same stool he had sat on since before Randy was born, drank his coffee black, and watched the sale through the window into the ring.

That first Saturday, he saw us. He saw Hailey in her jacket by the south doors with her tray of rolls. He did not come over. He drank his coffee and watched the cattle.

I will not pretend I did not notice. I noticed every minute of it.

The second week we made three dozen. Word had gotten around. A rancher from down by the state line had told somebody, and that somebody had told the Ochs brothers, who were in Gene’s own hunting lease.

Hailey sold them each a roll. She was polite as could be. She thanked them and told them she was going to Indianapolis.

I watched one of the Ochs brothers glance over at Gene at the counter. Then he looked back at Hailey, and something passed over his face, and he put a ten-dollar bill in the cash box and did not take any change.

That week came to one hundred twenty-one dollars. Hailey wrote it on the tape.

The third Saturday, a woman I did not know came up and asked if we took orders. Her husband was hauling cattle all day and she wanted a dozen for the drive home. I said sure. We made four dozen and sold every one, and the box came to one hundred forty-six.

By then I had worked out the rhythm. Friday afternoon after school, I mixed the dough. Hailey came home from practice and rolled and cut. We baked in shifts, two pans at a time, because my oven runs hot in the back corner and I had to turn them halfway.

Randy came in from the field one Friday evening and stood in the kitchen doorway, dusty to the knees, looking at every flat surface covered in rolls cooling on racks.

“It smells like your mother’s house in here,” I told him.

He did not say anything. He just went and washed up and came back and started frosting rolls with a butter knife, very carefully, like he was patching a tire. His were lopsided. Hailey said they were the best ones.

He talked to Gene again that week. I know because he told me in the truck on the way home from church.

“I asked him to just tell the boys he couldn’t do it,” Randy said. “Get his share back, or sell it to somebody.”

“What did he say?”

“He said he’d look like a fool.” Randy shook his head. “I said he looked like a bigger one sitting at Marlene’s counter every Saturday while his granddaughter sells rolls in the hall.”

I put my hand on his arm. That was as close to yelling at his father as Randy has ever come in his life, and it cost him.

The fourth Saturday, something changed at the barn.

There is an old rancher named Clifford Penner who has been coming to that sale since the Eisenhower years. He walks with a cane now and he does not buy cattle anymore, but he still sits on the bleachers in the ring and nods at every lot like he is about to bid.

That morning he stopped at our table and leaned on his cane and looked at Hailey’s jacket for a long time.