Everyone laughed. Then one of the board members called out: “Yeah but, Doyle. What we want to know is, which one is it you’re too fat for?”
Then people did laugh. They turned to look at Doyle’s wife who was sitting at the head table beside Doyle’s vacated chair. She was a small plump kindly woman with white hair, and now her face was suddenly red and her hands were playing in embarrassment with a clubhouse napkin. Doyle spoke again:
“Course,” he said, “I suppose I could always lose some weight. I mean I might even manage to get skinny again. Don’t you think?”
People laughed once more, and when he carried the box over to his chair and set it down and then bent and kissed his white-haired wife loudly on one of her red cheeks, kissing her with obvious good humor and genuine affection even after more than forty years of marriage, people applauded.
So that much of Doyle Francis’s retirement banquet was a success. People in Holt felt good about it. And I believe they felt good about the final proceedings that night too.
Because what happened next was the public announcement that Jack Burdette had been chosen to succeed Doyle Francis as manager of the Co-op Elevator. Arch Withers made the announcement. Leaning heavily on the lectern, speaking solemnly to the audience, he said that he and the board recognized that it would be hard to fill Doyle’s shoes, but that they had decided to look no farther than right here at home. After thinking about it thoroughly they had come to a unanimous decision; they had all agreed to promote Jack to manager.
People applauded once more. Everyone approved. And while Jack walked up the lectern to shake hands with Arch Withers, one of the farmers in the audience said: “Well at least his feet are big enough. Burdette ought to be able to fill Doyle’s shoes, or anybody else’s, with them big boats.”
Sitting in the middle of the room at one of the long tables, Wanda Jo Evans might have said something about Jack’s having clean socks too. But she didn’t—although when I looked at her there were tears shining in her eyes, tears of love and approval, I suppose, but also of private expectation. For I think Wanda Jo Evans must have thought that now, with his promotion, Jack might want to settle down, that he might be ready to make their relationship—that almost-eight-year-old Saturday night transaction of theirs—not only a weekly exchange but a daily and permanent condition.
*
Then it was 1971. It was spring. Jack had been the manager of the Co-op Elevator for about six months. At the beginning of April that year the board decided to send him down to Oklahoma, to Tulsa, so he could attend a weekend convention for the managers of grain elevators. It was the board’s belief that it would be worthwhile for him, and the elevator too, if he would attend the convention, sit in on the seminars and workshops, and then return with the latest predictions about the futures market as well as any new information he might collect about the prevention of grain dust explosions. An under secretary of agriculture, several economists and university scientists were to be there, to lead the workshops and seminars.