The Lamb Check She Gave Away

The Parking Lot

The pantry hands out food on Saturday mornings from the church parking lot.

They used to do it inside, but during the bad years everybody went to drive-through, and it worked so well they never went back.

Cars line up out to the county road and the volunteers load the trunks.

Garth did not know what Juanita wanted when I called. I only told him she had something for the pantry and wanted to give it to him herself, on Saturday, at the distribution.

He said, “Sure, sure,” and then he said, “Is she still mad at me?” and I said, “Ask her.”

We got there at eight. The lot was already full of folding tables and pallets of boxed food from the regional food bank, and a dozen volunteers in sweatshirts were stacking bags.

Garth was at the far table in his brown vest, arguing with a pallet jack. Maggie, the church secretary, had her camera.

Juanita had the envelope in both hands. She had put on her fair shirt, the white one, without anybody asking her to. She had made me redo her ponytail twice in the truck.

She walked across the lot by herself. I stayed back by the bags.

Garth saw her coming and set the pallet jack down, and wiped his hands on his jeans, and stood there with his cap in his hand like he had at the picnic table.

“Grandpa,” Juanita said. “This is for the pantry. It’s from Biscuit.” She held out the envelope.

Garth took it. He opened it and looked at the check. He looked at it a long time, the way she had at the mailbox.

His face did something I had never seen it do. It just came apart, slow, from the mouth up.

“Juanita,” he said. “Honey, this is your lamb money. This is a lot of money.”

“I know,” Juanita said. “I want Grandma’s pantry to have it. For the peanut butter.” Then she took a breath, the way she had at the gate before she stepped into the ring.

“And I want you to stand with me for the picture. Next to me. Not holding anything. Just standing.”

The volunteers had stopped stacking. A man in a pickup in the drive-through line had his window down and was watching. Maggie had her camera halfway up.

Garth got down on one knee on the asphalt so he was level with her.

It took him a while, because his knees are sixty-six years old. He put one big hand on her shoulder.

“I owe you something first,” he said. “I owe you a reason. Your daddy said I did, and he was right.”

Garth’s Reason

I came a little closer, close enough to hear. I do not think he minded. I think he wanted somebody to hear it besides a nine-year-old.

“When I was your age,” Garth said, “my daddy brought our sheep to that same fair. We had two hundred ewes. People came from three counties to buy Kessler lambs. Old Mr. Hartman, Val’s granddad, used to say you could tell a Kessler lamb from the bleachers by how he stood.”

Juanita listened. She did not fidget.

“Then your grandma got sick,” he said. “And the medical bills came, and the corn price went in the ditch two years running. I sold the flock. I sold the north ground and then the creek ground. Every time I signed something, I felt like I was signing the name away a piece at a time.”

He swallowed. A truck in the line idled. Somewhere a volunteer was snapping open plastic bags, one after the other.

“We’re down to eighty acres and no sheep,” Garth said. “And I walk into that fair every year and nobody says Kessler lamb anymore. They say, oh, Garth, how you doing, you still got that hay ground? And then you got a lamb, Juanita. Your own lamb. The first Kessler lamb in that ring in nine years.”