I took a step toward him. I don’t know exactly what I was planning to do. I just know I’ve never wanted to hit anybody so badly in my entire life.
Mom put her hand on my arm again.
“Jessie,” she said quietly.
“Mom, he’s…”
“I know what he is.”
Brent Hollis held up both hands, still smiling.
“Whoa, now. No need to get upset. I’m just a businessman buying feed for my company’s cattle. Same as anybody else.”
“You’ve got a feedlot in Guthrie County with three thousand head,” I said. “You’ve got suppliers in Omaha who deliver by the semi-load. You don’t need twenty bags from a little store in Redfield.”
“Every little bit helps,” he said.
That was when the office door swung open.
Travis came out carrying a binder.
It was a big, heavy, old-fashioned three-ring binder, the kind with a cracked green vinyl cover. It was covered in so much dust that when he set it down on the counter, a little gray cloud puffed up into the air. Someone had written on the spine in black marker, in big, blocky capital letters.
“ACCOUNTS — 1990–1995. H.D.”
H.D. Hank Dawson.
Travis didn’t even look at Brent Hollis. I don’t think he even noticed him. He opened the binder on the counter and started flipping through the pages.
They were yellowed and soft, filled with handwriting. Columns of names and dates and dollar amounts. Some of the pages had coffee stains. Some had fingerprints in grease or dirt. A few had little notes scrawled in the margins.
Travis turned the pages one at a time. Faster. Then slower. Running his finger down the edge of each page, looking for something.
Then he stopped.
He went completely still.
His finger was resting on one page, near the bottom. His lips moved, like he was reading something to himself. His face was white as a sheet.
“Travis?” Brent said impatiently. “I’m ready to load whenever you are.”
Travis didn’t answer him.
He was staring down at that page like it was a ghost.
“What is this?” he whispered.
Mom leaned over and looked down at the page. She looked at it for a long time. I saw her eyes move across the words, slowly, the way she reads the Bible on Sunday mornings.
Then she looked up at him.
“That’s what I came here to find out,” she said.
Brent Hollis looked back and forth between the two of them.
“Is there a problem?”
Nobody answered him.
I leaned over to see the page. Mom didn’t stop me.
The handwriting was big and slanted and pressed so hard into the paper that it had almost torn through in some places. I knew that handwriting. Every farmer in Dallas County knew that handwriting. Hank Dawson had written out receipts and order forms and Christmas cards in that same fat, slanted scrawl for forty years.
At the top of the page, there was a line of numbers.
The same six numbers Mom had written on the back of the receipt.
Underneath it, it said:
“ACCOUNT: TOM AND ELLEN CARTER.”
And underneath that, there was a single entry. A single line in the column marked “Amount Owed.”
$38,500.00.
Specialty: Quiet Comebacks & Personal Justice
David Reynolds focuses on stories where underestimated individuals regain control of their lives. His writing centers on measured decisions rather than dramatic outbursts — emphasizing preparation, patience, and the long game. His characters don’t shout; they act.