“You didn’t,” Jack said. “I made my own choices, just like I always do. Besides, it’s nothing to get mad about. I didn’t think it’d be as cold as it was. But, hell, I’ve never been to Montana before, so how could I know?”
Now Morgan did stand up, the hot chocolate in his hand spilling over his wrist, but luckily any spillage landed on his sweatpants and not on Mabel’s spotless rug.
“Jack wanted that peach cobbler,” he said to Mabel. “I knew he did. I could have said, ‘Let’s get in the truck and go,’ and to hell with Young Tommy’s advice.” He sighed, shoulders rising and then slumping. “I could have. But instead, I said no and turned back to my work. Wouldn’t have taken us more than half an hour, and Jack wouldn’t have risked frostbite and hypothermia. So I apologize and promise to take better care of him—” He stumbled over the words but made himself continue. “To take better care of him in the future.”
The most important part of that, beyond the apology to Mabel, was his promise about Jack.
“I was overwhelmed and didn’t think things through as I should have,” he said. The words felt inadequate, so he repeated, “I’m sorry I worried you, Mabel. And I’m sorry—” He swallowed hard. “Can we still be friends?”
Mabel sniffed. “Yes, I suppose so.” He thought he could see relief on her face, and he suspected perhaps she disliked confrontation as much as he did.
“Thank you,” Morgan said. “Now, if it’s not too much to ask, I’m hoping you can help me with Aunt Oralee’s ledger. I can’t make heads or tails of it.”
Mabel nodded. “I expect I can. Come over to the kitchen table and bring your hot chocolate with you.”
It was good to sit down at the old-fashioned Formica-topped table edged with chrome, like the tables in the coffee shop. He took a sip of the hot chocolate and then set the mug aside, laying the ledger in its place. Mabel took it up and looked at him.
“So you’ve gone through this?” she asked, her thin hands on the edges.
“Yes,” he said. “I mean, I know how to read a ledger. But this one—it’s got names in it, though none that I recognize. It’s got amounts paid and owed, and I’ve tried, but I can’t figure out what they’re for.”
“It’s Toby and Oralee’s special ledger,” she said, the words coming out like a story from long ago. “Toby started it years ago. There are probably more of these somewhere, but this one, the current one, was at the bank, I think.”
“Yes, in a safe-deposit box.”
“That’s what I expected,” she said. “I think Oralee knew she wasn’t going to make it, so she got the box at the bank for safekeeping. But she used this ledger to keep track of float loans. Even after Toby passed, she kept those loans going.”
Morgan was baffled, and he knew his face showed it. He didn't know how to ask the right question to untangle this particular mystery.
“Ranches above the Yellowstone River, you see,” she said, “they have thousands of acres, high-end cattle, and money in the bank. Not some local credit union, mind you, but abank. They can get loans anytime they like, for any amount they like. Little farms, such as we have around Hysham, aren’t big or profitable enough to get loans. They provide business to our town, though, and the people who own those farms are our neighbors. So rather than let them fail, Toby and Oralee would order seed or tools or whatever they needed, with the promise to be paid back after the harvest. Except then they’d use the money that came in to order more supplies—seeds, tools, and what have you—for the next year.”
“So they never really got their money back,” he said slowly.
“No, they did not. They never made a penny and never charged interest. It was their promise to the town, their investment in the farmers. Folks thought it would come to anend on account of the Grange burning down and then Toby’s passing, but Oralee kept on with it.”
“Which is why you were all telling me that the feed and grain was the cornerstone of the town,” he mused. “But what about Gus Odell? He’s got plenty of money, and yet he’s got two pages in the ledger, like the others, and an order of pallets sitting under a tarp in the yard.”
“He’ll never pick those up,” she said, shaking her head with a smile. “He ordered them ages ago and paid for them. They’re for people who need them to keep hay bales or wood and kindling dry and off the ground. Everyone knows they’re there, and they take what they need. Return them if they don’t need them anymore.”
She turned the pages of the ledger slowly, as though she were going through memories. At the very end of the ledger, there was a pocket, and from this pocket she pulled out several sheets of paper and handed them to Morgan.
He unfolded the papers—college ruled notebook paper with the holes already punched, ready to be put in a binder. On the pages were the names from the ledger with their addresses and phone numbers and, he noticed, a very few email addresses.
“You need to decide,” she said. “Call these nice folks up and either ask them for the money they owe the feed and grain and be done with it, or ask them to come in and pay for their orders for next spring.”
Spring was when he’d planned to sell the feed and grain. And the exact time that all those small farmers would need their supplies to keep going.
When he’d arrived in town, his plan had been clear: Straighten up the books, sell the place, and go home to Denver. But that was before he knew Ambrose, and Maurice, and Neville, and Young Tommy and Deputy Hartland, and Shane and Julianat the Bean There, and Mabel and Mister Rocket. Before he knew Jack.
Now he knew why the books didn’t balance and why none of his columns of numbers had added up. Now he knew why everybody in town seemed to hold Oralee in such high esteem, with reverence and care. Why people spoke so fondly of her, and why they’d eagerly awaited the reopening of the feed and grain and been horrified by Morgan’s plans to close it and move on.
The whole local economy would collapse if he stuck to his original plan.
“What are these, then?” He pointed to the three letters that came after every name: Sun. Bar. Hon. Pot.
“Those are abbreviations for what they grow or produce,” she said. “Sun, sunflower seeds.Bar, barley.Hon, honey.Pot, potatoes.Whe, wheat.Alf, alfalfa.” She smiled as she traced the abbreviations one by one. “Goodness knows why Toby needed his special code, but he did.” She looked up at him. “Do you see?”
“Yes, I do,” he said. “But why haven’t they already paid, or ordered seed or whatever? Last year’s dates were in October. October’s nearly over now.”
