Seasons of a Small Town

The feed store did not open on time that Monday, and for a long while no one in Wheatland seemed bothered. The cold had the weight of an agreement. Three pickups idled in a row along the curb, their exhaust going straight up in white columns, and the men inside them watched the locked door without impatience, the way men here watch any door they expect to open eventually.

At seven minutes past the hour
the widow came down the alley
with a paper sack of kolaches
she had made for no reason
and the key already in her glove.
She did not apologize.
She unlocked the door
and held it open for the cold
as if the cold were a customer too,
as if it had been standing in line.
Inside, the overhead bulb
took its long moment
and then agreed to be a bulb.
The calendar on the wall
still said December.
She did not turn the page.
She put the coffee on first,
then the heat,
then the register,
in that order,
the way her husband had taught her
when the store was his
and the morning was a thing
you argued with
until it gave in.

No one mentioned that she was late. They came in and stamped their boots and leaned on the counter the way they had leaned on it in November and would lean on it in June. The dog by the stove opened one eye and closed it again.

Out on the highway
a semi went by
full of somebody else's cattle
going somewhere warmer.
The sound of it
hung in the air
for a count of four
andthen was gone
and then was snow.
The boy who delivers the paper
pedaled through the cold
with his hood up
and his face down
and the paper hit the door
like a small fist
that was not angry,
only tired,
only wanting someone
to know it was here.
A man at the counter
said to no one
that the river had frozen clear
down past the elbow
and you could see the stones.
Another man
took this under advisement.

It is the first week of the year in Wheatland. The Christmas lights on Main are still up but no longer plugged in. The Methodist church sign says WELCOME 2026 and under that, in smaller letters, DON'T TAKE IT PERSONALLY. Somebody's joke. Somebody's prayer.

I walked to the post office
at nine in the morning
and the sun
was a coin held up
against the grey cloth
of the sky
and gave no heat,
only the idea of heat,
which was enough.
Hollis was at the corner
in his long wool coat
that has been his long wool coat
for as long as anyone remembers,
and he lifted one hand
in the smallest possible wave
and I lifted mine
and we did not speak,
because there is a kind of speaking
in this town
that does not require the mouth.
The coach came out of the diner
with his thermos refilled
and his cap pulled low,
already thinking
about August two-a-days
in January,
already standing in the heat
he would have to stand in,
the way a farmer in January
is already standing in his field.

By mid-morning the feed store was full and quiet in the particular way the feed store is full and quiet, which is a sound like a room breathing. The widow rang up a bag of scratch grain and a jar of vitamins and a card of fencing staples for a man who had not bought anything yet this year.

She said, You been alright?
He said, I been alright.
She said, And the knee?
He said, The knee is the knee.
She said, That'll be