His voice broke on the nine.
“And I wanted them to hear it,” he said. “One more time. I wanted that auctioneer to say the name the way he used to, and I wanted those men in the front row to look at it like they used to.”
He shook his head. “And I didn’t think about you. Not one second. I thought about the name and I forgot the name was standing right there at the gate with a show stick.”
He looked at her. “That was wrong. I took your lamb from you in front of everybody, and I’m sorry. I’m sorrier than I’ve been about anything since your grandma.”
Juanita put her hand on top of his, the one on her shoulder. “You looked happy out there,” she said.
“When you were walking him. You looked happy, Grandpa. I just wanted to set his feet.”
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That was when Garth Kessler cried in a church parking lot in front of twenty volunteers and a line of cars out to the county road. Not loud.
Just his face in his hand and his shoulders going, and Juanita standing there patting his hand the way you pat a lamb that is scared of the trailer.
The Picture
Maggie took the picture about five minutes later, after Garth had wiped his face on his sleeve and laughed at himself and said, “Well, that’s enough of that.”
In the picture, Juanita is holding the check with both hands and Garth is standing next to her with his hands at his sides, not on the check, not on her.
He is just standing. His eyes are still red. She is smiling the smile she practiced for the buyers all summer and never got to use.
The paper in Kenton ran it the next Thursday on page three.
The caption said, “Juanita Kessler, 9, donates $1,746 from the sale of her market lamb to the church food pantry founded by her late grandmother, Lila Kessler. With her is her grandfather, Garth Kessler, who runs the pantry.”
Garth cut it out and put it on his refrigerator. Later he had Maggie print a big copy, and he hung it in the pantry, right next to the only picture they have of Lila standing in front of the first two shelves of canned corn.
The pantry bought peanut butter with part of it. A lot of peanut butter.
Garth sent Juanita a picture of a pallet of jars from the food bank warehouse with a note in his blocky handwriting that said, “Biscuit bought these.”
Gerald from the feed mill heard about the donation, the way you hear everything in a county our size.
He drove out to our place a week later in his mill truck and gave Juanita an envelope with two hundred dollars in it for next year’s lamb.
“Buyer’s bonus,” he said. “For the kid who set the record straight.”