The Plate I Set for the Man Who Rents Dad’s Hay

The Testing Center

The second week of September I drove to Kearney to finish my paperwork and get my immunization records signed off at the college.

I came out of the testing center at two in the afternoon with a folder under my arm, and Wade Kessler was standing beside his pickup at the gas station across the street.

He saw me. He looked at the building I had come out of, and at the sign on it, and at the folder.

Then he lifted his hand like a man waving across a field, and I lifted mine back, and I got in my car and drove home and told myself it did not mean anything.

The next morning he came in at 6:40, same as always. Black coffee, cinnamon roll, corner stool. But when I set the cup in front of him he did not say thank you.

He said, “Saw you over in Kearney yesterday,” and he said it low, so Donna in the back would not hear.

I said I had some errands. He said, “At the college.” I did not answer. He turned his cup around on the saucer, slow, a full circle, and said, “Your dad know you’re going to school over there?”

I said it was not decided. That was a lie, and he knew it was a lie, and I knew he knew.

He nodded and drank his coffee and paid with his five and folded the one dollar into its little square, and on his way out he said, “Wouldn’t be right, leaving him alone out there. Not after everything.”

The Ask

It went on like that for a week. He would mention it every morning, never loud, always like he was only worried about Dad.

How Dale was not getting any younger. How it was a lot of ground for one man. How a girl like me belonged here, where people knew her.

Then on a Thursday, the last week of September, he stayed until the breakfast rush had cleared out and Donna had gone to the bank.

It was just the two of us and the hum of the pie case. He set his cup down and said, “I been thinking you and me should go to supper some night. Over to the steakhouse in Kearney. Since you like Kearney so much.”

I laughed, because I thought he was joking. He was forty-nine years old. He had known me since I was in a car seat.

He used to hand me suckers from his shirt pocket after church. I said, “Wade, come on,” the way you would say it to an uncle who told a bad joke.

He did not laugh. His face went red under the sunburn, all the way up to where his hair was going gray.

He said, “I’m serious, Katie. I’m not some old man. I got a house and a good operation and nobody to share it with, and you’re the only person in this whole town who still talks to me like a regular person.”

I told him I was sorry, I truly was, but no. I said it as gently as I could. I said he was a good neighbor and I hoped he found somebody, but it was not going to be me.

He looked at the counter for a long time. Then he said the thing.

“Well,” he said. “I see your dad at the co-op Saturdays. I’d hate to be the one to tell him his girl’s been sneaking off to Kearney behind his back and planning to leave him alone out there. But somebody ought to tell him. Unless you figure on staying put, and we go to supper, and there’s nothing to tell.”

He put his five on the counter. He folded his one dollar into its square and tucked it under the saucer.

He said, “Think about it,” and he went out, and the bell rang over the door, and I stood there holding a coffee pot until Donna came back from the bank and asked me why I looked like I had seen a ghost.