There was a young man in a blue suit behind the counter instead. Thirty, maybe. Thin. Very clean. His hair was cut short and combed with something shiny. He had on a white shirt so starched it could have stood up by itself, and a tie the color of a robin’s egg.
His name tag said BRANDON PIERCE, BRANCH MANAGER.
I’d heard about him.
Everybody in Millbrook had heard about him. He’d been transferred in from the city in April. The corporate office sent him. Heartland Bancorp, out of Des Moines, who bought most of Farmers & Merchants back in 2015.
He’d only been here two months. But people talked.
He’d taken the peppermint bowl off the counter. Said it wasn’t hygienic. Ruth Abernathy at the beauty shop said he’d made her fill out a form to deposit her Social Security check. Earl Lindquist said Brandon had asked him if he was “sure” he wanted to withdraw two hundred dollars from his own savings.
“Like I was a child,” Earl said at the diner. “Like I didn’t know my own mind.”
I’d thought they were exaggerating.
I slid the check under the glass.
“Good morning,” I said. “I’d like to cash this, please.”
He looked at the check.
Then he looked at my boots.
Then he looked at George’s hat. At the dirt on my knees. At my hands on the counter, the knuckles big and knotted from arthritis, the fingernails black from the tomato bed.
I watched him look at all of it.
Then he leaned toward the glass and talked very loud and very slow.
“MA’AM. DO YOU HAVE AN ACCOUNT WITH US?”
He said it like I was a foreigner. Or a child. Or someone who’d wandered in off the highway by mistake.
“I do,” I said.
“I’LL NEED TO SEE SOME IDENTIFICATION.”
I’m seventy-nine.
My hearing is better than his manners.
I didn’t say that. I just reached into the front pocket of my work shirt, where I keep my license in a little plastic sleeve, and I handed it to him under the glass.
