“Not today.”
I put my finger on the card.
“Is this still for rent?”
He looked at the card. Then he looked at me. And I watched him work out the rest of it without my having to say one word. Everybody in Phelps County knew the Olson boy was coming home.
“It isn’t much,” he said.
“Where is it?”
“Right behind the elevator. On the side street. It was my mother’s, the last eleven years of her life. I had a young fellow from the co-op in it till he got married in June.”
He was already taking a key ring down off a nail.
“Come on. I’ll show you. Roy, watch the counter.”
We walked. It was only a block and a half.
The trucks were lined up at the scale clear back to the railroad tracks. Corn heaped gold over the sideboards. The drivers had their windows down and their arms hanging out, visiting from cab to cab. The air was thick with that red chaff that gets in your hair and your teeth this time of year.
