All of it, they said. Plus the accountant. Plus Gus’s tow, though Gus had never charged me a penny. When Hector drove that check out to Highway 23, Gus tried to give it back. Hector left it under the space heater.
Grant paid in full on the last day of February.
In March there was a moving truck in front of the big gray house. Gina sent me a Christmas card the next December with no return address. Inside she’d written, “I hope it snows on Juniper Court. I hope you’re the first one out.”
The board voted to pay me for plowing. Fourteen thousand eight hundred dollars, the same number that had been in Grant’s budget.
I said no.
I said put it in the road fund, buy new cutting edges for Jim’s blade, and find somebody younger than me to learn this, because I won’t be around forever, and neither will that truck.
