Remitter

The hold music is a pan-flute version of a song you used to dance to in a bar in Tucson.

You've been listening to it for twenty-two minutes, sitting on an upturned bucket behind the barn where the signal's best, the statement on your knee and your phone pressed to your ear so hard it hurts. Pistol lies at your feet with her chin on your boot, watching you like you might do something stupid.

You might.

Ain't no such fund.

Maybe Ysidro's wrong. Maybe it's some little church charity out of Riverton. Maybe some rich widow who likes cowboys. You've heard of that. You'll find out who, and you'll send a card, and you'll pay them back some day, somehow, and that'll be that.

The music cuts off. "Prairie Mercy patient accounts, this is Vonda, how can I help you?"

You give her your name and your account number. You tell her you got a statement that says your balance was paid by a relief fund and you'd like to know who to thank.

Keys click. A pause.

"Oh, yes, I remember this one," Vonda says, warmer. "We don't get a lot of these paid all at once. Let me see. The payment came in on February sixteenth. Cashier's check."

"From the fund?"

"Well, the cover letter said Wind River Cowboy Relief Fund. But the check itself was a cashier's check drawn on..." Keys click. "First Sweetgrass Bank. In Sweetgrass, Wyoming."

The world goes very quiet.

"Sir? Are you still there?"

"Yeah," you say. Your mouth has gone dry. "Is there a name? On the check?"

"I'm sorry, I can't give out information about third-party payers. Privacy. But your account's in good standing, Mr. Kestler. You don't owe us anything. Somebody must think a lot of you."

You thank her. You hang up. You sit there on the bucket staring at the dirt.

February sixteenth. You wrecked on the thirteenth. You were in surgery on the fourteenth. On the sixteenth you were lying in a hospital bed in a fog of painkillers, too out of it to know what day it was.

First Sweetgrass Bank.

You know exactly one person who banks at First Sweetgrass Bank.

No. You know a hundred. Ysidro. Imogene. Every rancher in the county. Half the town.

"It's not him," you tell Pistol.

Pistol doesn't say anything. Pistol just looks at you.

You don't go looking. That's what you'll tell yourself later.

The vet is supposed to come out tomorrow to check Chinook, and Imogene asks you to call and confirm, and the number is on a card in Bart's office, she says. Top drawer of the rolltop desk. Go on in, he won't mind.

He would mind. You know it the second you open the office door.

It's a small room off the kitchen, cramped and dim, smelling of leather and old paper. A rolltop desk older than the house. A window that looks out on the corrals. Stacks of feed receipts. A calendar from the co-op with every day crossed off in black ink. On the wall, a framed photo of Hjalmar on a horse, laughing, younger than you are now, with a little blond boy in front of him on the saddle.

There's another photo, smaller, stuck in the corner of the frame. You don't look at it. Not yet.

You open the top drawer.

The vet's card is right there on top, Dr. Esquivel, Large Animal, with a phone number. You take it. You should close the drawer.

Under the card is a blue folder from First Sweetgrass Bank.

And sticking out of the folder, just a corner, is a pink carbon receipt.

You'd never have noticed it, except for the word on it. You can see it from here. Half a word.

PRAIRIE M...

Your hand moves on its own. You slide the receipt out.

FIRST SWEETGRASS BANK. CASHIER'S CHECK, CUSTOMER COPY.

Date: 02/16.

Pay to the order of: PRAIRIE MERCY HOSPITAL.

Amount: EIGHTY-SIX THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED AND 00/100 DOLLARS.

Remitter: BARTHOLOMEW H. RENNARD.

You sit down. You don't decide to. Your legs just go, and the old desk chair creaks under you, and you're holding a piece of pink paper that weighs nothing and weighs everything.

Clipped behind it with a rusty paperclip are more pages. Thick. Legal. You know what they are before you read the heading, because you've seen your father sign them, once, a long time ago, right before he lost everything.

SECOND MORTGAGE AND SECURITY AGREEMENT. Borrower: Bartholomew H. Rennard and Imogene L. Rennard. Property: Rennard Creek Ranch, Sweetgrass County, Wyoming. Principal: $90,000.00.

Signed February fifteenth. One day after your surgery.

His signature at the bottom. Hard, slanted, pressed so deep into the paper you can feel it from the back.

You do the math. You can't stop yourself. Not after the second mortgage, the banker said on the porch. They won't extend. Ninety days. July thirty-first.

He didn't take a second mortgage because calf prices were bad.

He took it for you.

He mortgaged his father's ranch, his mother's home, the land his family has worked for four generations, and he sent the money to a hospital in Cheyenne under a made-up name, so a man who walked out on him ten years ago wouldn't have to know.

There's a third paper in the folder. Just a sheet of lined notebook paper, folded once. A draft of something. Crossed out and rewritten.

Wind River Cowboy Relief Fund is pleased to (crossed out) The Wind River Cowboy Relief Fund was established to help (crossed out) Enclosed please find payment in full for the account of Ethan Kestler. This is a gift. Nothing is owed.

Nothing is owed is underlined twice.

You press the back of your good hand to your mouth.

The photo in the corner of Hjalmar's frame. You look at it now, because you can't not.

It's you. Twenty-two years old, sitting on the top rail of the corral out there, sunburnt, laughing at somebody behind the camera. You don't remember him taking it. You don't remember being that happy. But there you are, in the corner of his father's picture, where he'd see you every single morning he sat down at this desk to do the books.

The floorboard creaks.

You look up.

Bartholomew is standing in the doorway. He's still in his work gloves, a smear of dirt across one cheekbone, his hat in his hand. He sees the folder. He sees the pink receipt in your fingers. He sees your face.

All the color goes out of his.

"Put that down," he says quietly. "Ethan. That wasn't for you to see."