The Check I Wrote at the Feed Store

The hood of my truck

Ward was staring at the concrete. His face was the color of the feed sacks.

“Let it go, Garnet,” he said, low, just to me. “It’s done. You didn’t have to do that.”

“It’s not done,” I said.

I had brought my checkbook, but I had left it in the glove box of the truck on purpose, because I did not want to write it at Mavis’s counter like I was buying feed. I wanted it to be its own thing.

I walked out the side door into the wind. I did not look back, but I heard the boots behind me. Half the line drifted out onto the loading dock to see what I was doing. I guess they figured they had paid for the first half of the show.

The sun was bright and cold. The wind was out of the northwest at about thirty and it wanted my hat, so I pulled it down hard. Out past the lot the pastures ran flat and tan all the way to the sky.

I got my checkbook out of the glove box and laid it on the hood of my white pickup. The hood was still a little warm from the drive in.

Ward had followed me out, slow, on that cane. He stood beside me in his olive jacket with the collar turned up and did not say anything.

I wrote it out careful, because my hand was a little cold and I wanted it right.

Pay to the order of Ward Fenley. Two thousand one hundred and no cents. In the memo line, “Nov. through Jan.” And my name at the bottom.

I tore it out and held it out to him.

The check

He would not take it.

“I’m not a charity case,” he said. His voice was rough. “I don’t need you paying Lamar’s debts, Garnet. That’s between him and me.”

“It’s not charity,” I said. “And it’s not Lamar’s debt anymore. Lamar can pay me back if he ever feels like it. That’s between him and me now. This is just your wages.”

He looked away, out at the road. A cattle truck went by, empty, rattling on the highway.

“And it’s not the only thing,” I said. “The outfit I manage has sixty miles of fence and I’ve been riding most of it myself since my hand left at Thanksgiving. My knees aren’t much better than yours anymore.”

He almost smiled at that.

“Monday morning,” I said. “Fifteen an hour. Paid every Friday, by check, no matter what cattle are doing. I’ll clear it with the owners, but they’ll say yes, because I’ll tell them they’re getting the best fence rider in the county.”

“Garnet.”

“And I’ll keep a tailgate backed up to the corral for you. You won’t have to ask.”

He stood there a long time. The wind blew his jacket against him. On the loading dock, nobody said a word. They were just watching.

Then he took the check.

He did not look at it. He folded it in half, and in half again, and he took out his wallet, the old brown Army-issue one he has carried since basic training, worn white at the corners. He slid the check in behind his ID card and closed it.

His hand was not quite steady doing it. I saw that, and I looked away so he would not know I had seen it.

“Thank you,” he said. Just that.

“Don’t thank me,” I said. “Thank me Monday when you see that north fence.”