The Tab Book at the Corner Grocery

“In fifty-five years,” Ardith said, “Wendell Ostrom has never once been late. Not a week. Not a month. Not when his wife was sick. Not the winter the creamery cut his hours. Not once.”

The store was so quiet I could hear the clock over the meat case tick. Burl had his hat in both hands on his knee. Agnes was sitting forward on her chair.

“I hired you to run my store like a business, Jace,” Ardith said. “And you will. But this is a business. This is the best account I have ever had. My father would have let the roof fall in before he closed it.”

Jace did not answer. He looked at the ledger, and then for the first time that morning he looked at my father.

Ardith took a pen out of her apron pocket. Not a fountain pen, just a plain ballpoint from the bank.

She uncapped it with her teeth, the way her father used to, and pulled the little tab book toward her again.

She opened it to the next clean page. In her small round hand, she wrote across the top line, slowly enough that everybody near the counter could read it upside down.

Wendell Ostrom. Account open. As long as I own this store.

She signed it. Ardith Sell. And she put the date under it, Friday, and the year.

Then she turned the tab book around and slid it across the wooden counter to my father.

“Wendell,” she said, “you’d better sign for your groceries, or I’ll have to send Jace after you with a bill.”

Dad looked at the page for a long time. I saw his chin go tight, the way it does in church during “Abide With Me.” Then he reached into the inside pocket of his tan overcoat and took out his black fountain pen.

It is the same pen. My mother gave it to him the Christmas of 1970, wrapped in the funny papers because they could not afford paper that year. He signed his first tab with it in April of 1971.

He unscrewed the cap carefully and set it on the counter. Then he wrote the date, and $38.60, and his name, Wendell Ostrom, in his tall, careful hand, the same signature I have seen on every report card I ever brought home.

His hand shook a little at the end, on the m. It never used to.

He looked at it, and I think he saw it too, and he screwed the cap back on and put the pen away without a word.

I picked up my envelope from the counter. Ardith put her hand flat on top of mine before I could put it back in my pocket.

“Leave it, Marlys,” she said. “I’ll put it in the drawer in his name. A man ought to have something set by. Somebody might need it some day.”

I looked at Dad. He nodded once. So I let go.