My wife, Theresa, was sitting next to me. She had her hand on my knee under the table, and she’d been pressing down the whole time. The way you hold a gate shut in a north wind.
I stood up. I shook Don’s hand. I thanked him, because my mother raised us to thank people.
Then I went down the stairs.
That’s the only time a lawyer comes into this story.
Outside it was twenty degrees, with a north wind, and the sky was the color of a galvanized stock tank.
Theresa caught up with me at the pickup. She keeps the books for the vet clinic in town, and she doesn’t say a word about anything until she’s got it added up.
“Call a lawyer of your own, Wade,” she said. “Not Don. Somebody from Grand Island.”
“No.”
“Twenty-two years. You have twenty-two years in that ground.”
