January The Feedstore Opens Late
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
and