Merle Hansen came in for his cleaning at the end of May.
He was eighty-five now. Moving slower. It took him a minute to get settled in the chair.
“Your father-in-law’s been talking at the co-op again,” he said.
He said it before I’d even clipped the bib on him.
I stopped with the clip in my hand.
“Walked in on a Monday,” Merle said. “First week of April. Didn’t sit down.”
He looked up at the ceiling tiles.
“He stood at the end of that table with his coffee. And he told every one of us that what he said about you four years ago was a lie. And he was ashamed of it. And his son married the best woman in Buffalo County.”
He settled back in the chair.
“Then he sat down and talked about the markets like nothing happened. But nobody in that room is ever going to forget it.”
He opened his mouth for me.
“Thought you ought to know,” he said, “what’s being said about you.”
I fixed the clip on his bib.
My eyes were stinging. And I let them.
“Thank you for telling me, Merle,” I said.
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