The Prairie Rose
By then I thought I understood him. I thought he was a greedy small-town man who had found a way to pad his life with children’s money, and I wanted to hate him cleanly.
It was Royce who took that away from me.
He came home Saturday night from the co-op yard and sat across from me at the table, turning his cap in his hands, and told me what his foreman, Jerry, had said over a thermos that afternoon.
“Jerry says Dean’s truck is at the Prairie Rose most nights,” he said. “Back lot. Eleven, twelve o’clock. Everybody’s seen it, nobody’s said anything. The machines in the back room.”
Get a new story in your inbox every morning.
Facebook doesn’t show you every story we post. Our free newsletter does. Join 2,500+ readers.
The Prairie Rose is the bar and bait shop out on the county road, and North Dakota has video lottery machines glowing in the back of every bar in the state.
Sunday night I told Royce I was going to the grocery store for milk, and I drove out the county road instead.
The lot was gravel, with a handful of pickups, and one was a silver Silverado with a Stroud Insurance sticker on the bumper.
I parked at the far end by the dumpsters and turned off my lights. I did not go in. I sat there forty minutes with the engine ticking down, watching a door that did not open.
At ten to midnight it opened, and Dean came out alone.
He walked to his truck slow and a little bent, like a man carrying a sack of feed on one shoulder, and got in and shut the door.
He did not start the engine. He put both hands on the steering wheel and then put his forehead down on them, and the light from the bar sign moved across the back of his green windbreaker.
I did not feel sorry enough to forgive him. But I stopped hating him.
I stopped at the Casey’s for the milk I had claimed to need, and I drove home, and I told Royce everything while he warmed his coffee on the stove.
“He’s drowning,” Royce said.
“Yes.”
“That doesn’t make it right.”
“No,” I said. “But it isn’t the same as stealing for a boat. I’m going to do the same thing, Royce. I’m just going to leave a door open, in case he can walk through it.”