The Cowbell at the Two Mile Mark

“Jo, first place pays five thousand dollars,” Kurt said, and I could hear his truck idling and the wind coming across the phone. “She’ll understand. It’s a run. There’s another one next year.”

I was sitting in the break room at the nursing home in Chamberlain with half a turkey sandwich in my hand.

It was Wednesday, a quarter past noon, and the sun was coming in flat through the window over the microwave.

“She’s fifteen,” I said. “She made state as a sophomore. There isn’t another first one of those, Kurt.”

He let out a long breath, the one he used to let out when the baler broke. “I’m behind on her support.

You know I am. I’ve been behind since the plant cut hours. If I cash at the Ozarks, I catch it all up in one shot.”

“How far behind?”

“Twenty-three hundred,” he said. “Give or take.”

It was not give or take. It was twenty-three hundred and forty dollars, and I knew that because I kept the county statements in a coffee can on top of the refrigerator. I did not say so.

“Your name is on the travel form,” I said instead. “You signed it in August. You told her you’d drive her up Friday and take her to the pancake place Saturday after.”

“I know what I told her.” His voice went short and tired. “I’m telling you now. The tournament’s Saturday. I’m leaving tomorrow at noon to get there for practice day. I can’t be in two places.”

That was the moment. I could have argued. I could have told him what kind of man trades his daughter’s state meet for a lake in Missouri. I could have begged. I had begged him for things before.

But I thought about Ainsley hearing about this someday, hearing that her mother had to plead with her father to come watch her run.

I thought about what that would tell her. That she came second to a fish, and that even second place had to be bargained for.

So I did not beg. I set my sandwich down on the wax paper and I said, “All right. I’ll take her.”

“You’ve got work.”

“I’ll figure out work,” I said, and I hung up before he could tell me how to do that too.

I had worked at that home eleven years. I knew which residents wanted their oatmeal with brown sugar and which ones would only eat it if you said it was cream of wheat.

What I did not know was how to get three shifts covered in two days in a building that was already running short.

Friday day, Saturday day, Sunday day. I was the one who picked up for everybody else. I was not the one who asked.

I sat there a minute with the coffeemaker ticking. Then I went down the hall to the nurses’ station and stood there with my hands in my scrub pockets until the charge nurse looked up from her charting.

“What,” she said. “You’ve got a face on you.”

I told her. I told her short, the way you tell things at a nurses’ station, because somebody is always waiting. Ainsley. State. Sioux Falls. Kurt. The tournament. The three shifts.

She did not say anything for a second. Then she picked up the schedule clipboard off its nail and turned it toward me. “Ask the girls. If they’ll trade, I’ll sign it.”

Three of the younger girls were standing right there, passing meds and charting, and all of them had heard every word.