Nine Saturdays at the Sale Barn

“I don’t want him to be ashamed,” she said. “I just wanted to go.”

“I know you did.”

“I keep taking him a roll,” she said. “Because he’s still Grandpa. You know? He taught me how to back a trailer. He sat in the stands at every single judging contest. He came all the way to Manhattan in May.”

“I know he did.”

“I just want him to eat one,” she said, and that was when she finally cried. Not about the trip. About her grandpa not eating the roll.

I held her there on the shoulder of that county road with the combine going and the dust blowing, and I prayed the way I pray when I don’t know what to ask for. I just said his name, and her name, and then I said, Please.

The ninth Saturday was the tenth of October. Final payment was due to Mr. Kraus on Monday.

It was a beautiful fall morning. Cool and bright, the kind of blue sky you only get in Kansas in October, when the wind finally lies down. Emmett had a big run of calves that day, close to two thousand head, so the barn was packed by seven.

We had made six dozen. Randy took Friday off from the field to help us bake. It was the first day he had missed in harvest in eleven years, and he spent it frosting rolls with a butter knife and burning his fingers on the pans.

Saturday morning, he did not go to the field either. He carried the table in and then he stayed, leaning against the doorframe of the south doors with his arms crossed, watching his daughter work.

Hailey had on her jacket. Zipped to the collar.

Emmett got on the microphone before the first lot even came into the ring.

“Last Saturday, folks,” he said. “Hailey Pittman’s rolls. She flies to Indianapolis in two weeks. Let’s send her with something.”

The line was out the doors before he finished talking.

Silas Stucky was first, like always. He gave her a twenty for one roll. Clifford Penner came on his cane and bought two. The Ochs brothers came. Ted Friesen came, and he had not been once before, and he put a fifty-dollar bill in the box and would not look at me.

Marlene came out of her own cafe and bought a dozen to put on her counter, so nobody would go without.

We were down to the last dozen before nine o’clock. The cash box was so full the lid would not close.

Hailey had not taken her grandpa his roll yet. She had been too busy. I saw her look down the hallway at the counter, and then she looked at the last dozen on the tray, and I could see her figuring.

That was when Gene stood up.

He set his coffee cup down on the counter, very carefully, the way you set down something you are afraid of breaking. He walked out of the cafe and down the hallway toward us. He walked slow. He is seventy-one and his knees are bad and every man in that hallway watched him do it.

He stopped in front of our folding table. He did not look at me. He looked at Hailey.

“I’ll take the last dozen,” he said.