The Grain Elevator Kept A Record Nobody Wanted

The weighbridge at the elevator is dumb and honest. Truck rolls on, it prints a ticket, and the ticket goes in a folder that nobody reads until the co-op audit in February.

In February, the auditor found my truck weighed in twice on the night of 9 August, four minutes apart, identical to the kilogram. Same load, same driver code, two tickets. She asked me, politely, whether I had been running a fiddle.

Here is what I remember about 9 August. I remember the queue. I remember losing the radio to static about eight miles out, which happens in a storm and there was no storm. I remember reaching the elevator, and then I remember reaching the elevator, and I want you to understand that I do not mean I remember arriving twice. I mean the memory has a seam in it, like a video that has been cut and taped and the tape shows.

Between the two tickets there is nothing at all. Not blackness. Nothing. Ask me what I did between 22:41 and 22:45 and the question does not land anywhere.

The other drivers that night are a farming family and a hired man from three counties over. The hired man quit two weeks later. The family said the night was normal.