The Water I Hauled for Orville

Sunday

The thing I did not know was that Leola had been talking.

Not gossiping. Leola does not gossip. She just told a few people after church that Orville Kuhn was getting his water hauled by the girl next door, and that was all she said, and she let them do the arithmetic.

I learned about it the Sunday of the fourth week. Rory and I came home from church at about a quarter past twelve, and I went over with the truck like always, because it was a hauling day.

When I pulled into Orville’s yard there was already a pickup there. It was Garland’s, from the co-op, with a 200-gallon tank on the back. Behind it was a young farmer from up the road with a stock tank of water, and behind him an old wheat man from north of Zurich, with a spray tank he had rinsed out three times and said so.

Three trucks. Three tanks. Lined up in Orville’s dry yard behind my flatbed like the line at the grain elevator in July.

“What is all this?” I said.

“Leola said you could use a hand,” Garland said. He was already uncoiling a hose. “Cistern’s going to need topping off. Figured we’d all just bring one.”

The men from the co-op had come straight from church. They had their good shirts on and they had rolled the sleeves up. Rory got out of our truck and went over without a word and started helping Garland with his valve.

On Orville’s porch, on the rail beside where Leola set her pies, there was a coffee can. A big one, the three-pound kind. Somebody had cut a slot in the plastic lid.

“What’s that for?” I asked.

“That,” said Leola, from the porch swing, where I had not even seen her sitting, “is for Orville’s late fee.”

I watched the young farmer walk up the steps, take a bill out of his shirt pocket, fold it, and push it through the slot. Then Garland went up and did the same. Then the old wheat man, and then two more men from the co-op. Nobody made a speech about it. They just went up one at a time, like they were putting in the collection plate.

Orville sat in his chair on the porch with his hands on his knees. He did not say anything. I am not sure he could have.