The Check I Wrote at the Feed Store

Sergeant

Monday morning Ward was at my corral at daylight. I had the tailgate down.

The outfit I manage belongs to a family in Amarillo who come up twice a year to hunt quail. They leave the running of it to me. They have about a dozen saddle horses, and most of them are too much horse for a man with one good knee.

But we had a gray gelding, about twelve years old, that the owners’ daughter had shown in 4-H a long time ago. He was steady and quiet and smart, and he would stand like a statue while you climbed on him from anything.

I led him out of the pen. Ward looked him over, ran his hand down his legs, checked his feet.

“What’s his name?”

“He doesn’t really have one,” I said. “The girl called him something fancy, but nobody’s called him that in years. We just call him the gray horse.”

Ward stepped off the tailgate into the saddle easy, like he had been doing it all his life. He gathered up the reins and the gray stood perfectly still under him.

“He stands good,” Ward said. “Stands like he’s at attention.”

“Then name him something.”

Ward thought about it a minute.

“Sergeant,” he said. “Every good outfit needs a sergeant. Somebody steady who shows up.”

He rode out toward the north fence with his fence pliers on his belt and a roll of wire tied behind the saddle. I stood at the corral and watched him go until he was just a small gray shape against the tan grass.

Church

That Sunday Jolene and I went to church like always. Lamar and his wife were in their usual pew, three rows up on the left.

I want to tell this part honestly, because I am not proud of everything I felt.

When we walked in, Lamar looked back and saw us, and then looked away. And for about the length of the first hymn, I felt pretty good about that. I felt like I had won something.

Then the preacher read from the parable about the servant who was forgiven his great debt and then went out and choked a fellow servant over a small one. I had heard it a hundred times, but that morning I heard it different.

I had not done what I did to make Lamar small. I had done it because Ward needed his wages and the whole county needed to know Ward was a man worth hiring. That was the whole of it. Anything more than that was not mine to want.

After the service Jolene went over and hugged her brother, the way she always does. He hugged her back stiffly. He shook my hand without looking at me. Neither one of us said anything about it.

Jolene was quiet on the way home again. Then she said, “He’s not sleeping. His wife told me.”

“I’m not either, some,” I said.

She smiled at me sideways. “You’re a good man, Garnet Pickrell. Don’t let it go to your head.”

The next Saturday

I was not at the feed store the next Saturday. I had a heifer calving and could not get away. But I heard all about it, because in that county you always do.

Lamar came in for his feed same as always. And Mavis, who had never in forty-one years said one word more than she had to, asked him if he had heard that Ward Fenley was working for Garnet and Tobe Halloran both now.

Buck was in line and said Ward was coming to his branding too.

One of the young men who day-works around the county said Ward had found a windmill on Tobe’s place that was pumping air and fixed the leathers himself the first day, sitting on the tank rim with his bad leg stretched out.

Nobody said a word about Lamar. Nobody said a word to Lamar. They just talked about Ward, the way you talk about a good hand. And Lamar stood there at the counter and heard every word of it.

He also needed a fence rider, of course. He still had forty miles of wire. And when he asked around in that line, nobody had a name for him. Not one.

Mavis told me later, “I didn’t say anything ugly, Garnet. I just told the truth about who was doing good work. Seems like that was plenty.”