Seasons of a Small Town

Her name is Ruth Vanderslice and she has worked the counter at Wheatland Feed and Supply for forty-two years, the first fourteen beside her husband Carl, the last twenty-eight after him. The store is hers now in name but has always been hers in practice, the way a house in this country is always the wife's house, regardless of whose name is on the deed. She arrives at six forty-five and unlocks the back door and the back door knows her. She puts her lunch pail on the top of the file cabinet where it has gone for forty-two years, an old green metal pail that was her father's before it was Carl's before it was hers, dented on one corner where Carl dropped it once in 1983 and she did not let him replace it. She turns on the coffee. She turns on the heat or the fan, depending. She unlocks the front door at one minute of seven and stands behind the counter and waits for the first man to come in, which is always Earl Nygaard, and has been always Earl Nygaard since Carl died, not because Earl needs anything that early but because she is alone in a building and Earl does not want her to be alone in a building. They do not discuss this. They would not know how. There is a calendar from the John Deere dealership behind her left shoulder, a pegboard of hand tools to her right, and at her elbow a small tin box where she keeps the receipts from the previous day, and the order of these