Rosettes on the Church Steps

The farm store

I want to be fair to Gordy here, because I have thought about this a great deal. I did not suspect him that Saturday.

I was angry at the whole idea of somebody stealing from my mother, but I did not think it was him.

Gordy had been married to my sister for twenty-three years. He coached Little League.

He sold crop insurance and farm policies out of a small office on the highway, and he did fine at it, or we all thought he did.

On Tuesday afternoon I left the bus garage early to pick up a case of windshield washer fluid for the route vans.

The farm store out on the highway sells it cheaper than anywhere in town.

Gordy was ahead of me in line. He did not see me.

I was two people back, behind a farmer buying fencing staples, and Gordy was at the counter with a small black box under his hand.

“That’s the good one,” the girl at the register said. “My dad has that same scope on his deer rifle. Six hundred twenty-nine, tax included.”

Gordy paid in cash. He counted out twenties from a fold in his shirt pocket, one at a time, onto the counter.

I watched him do it. Thirty-two twenties. I counted them because I could not help it.

Then he picked up his box and his receipt, said thank you, and walked out the front door into the afternoon sun without once turning around.

I paid for my washer fluid. I carried it out to the bus garage van. And I sat in the driver’s seat in that parking lot for a long time with the engine off.

Here is what I knew. At Sunday dinner three weeks before, Gordy had told all of us that money was tight.

Crop prices were down, farmers were cutting back on coverage, and he had a letter from the county about his own taxes on the acreage.

He had said it at Mom’s table. Mom had passed him the potatoes and told him things always come around. Marit had looked at her plate.

Here is what I did not know. I did not know where those twenties came from. Nobody could know that.

Twenties are twenties. Mom’s six hundred forty dollars had been mostly fives and tens and ones, anyway, the way bazaar money always is.

But a man who has just told his family money is tight does not usually walk into the farm store three days later and pay cash for a six hundred dollar scope.

And that was what stuck in me like a fishbone.