Her Father Never Missed a Game Until That Friday

Coffee at the Corner Café

Annika worked Saturday mornings at the Corner Café on Main Street, carrying plates of eggs and hash browns to farmers and retirees and the occasional lost traveler off the highway. She had worked there since she was fifteen. She knew who drank decaf and who wanted their toast dry and who would leave a two-dollar tip on a three-dollar check because they had known her mother.

The county road crew came in at a quarter to seven every Saturday, five or six of them, and took the big round table in the back corner. They drank coffee like it was a competitive sport and argued about everything: the Hawkeyes, the price of diesel, whose turn it was to pay. Her father used to sit with them, years ago, before he started taking his coffee in the plow shed instead. Annika had never thought much about why.

Mitch Kaldahl was the oldest of them, a short, barrel-chested man in his sixties with a gray crew cut and hands like baseball mitts. He had driven a county plow for thirty-one years. When Annika brought the coffee pot to their table that Saturday, eight days after the regional final, he looked up at her and his face did something complicated.

“Hey, kiddo,” he said. “Tough one in Carver Falls. Heard you hit two big threes.”

“And missed the big one,” Annika said.

“Happens to the best of them,” Mitch said. He hesitated. “Your dad doing okay? He looked pretty rough at the shed Monday.”

Annika filled his cup slowly. She thought about her grandmother at the kitchen door. Not why. Where.

“Mr. Kaldahl,” she said. “Can I ask you something? Where was my dad Friday night? During the game. He won’t tell me.”

The table went quiet. The men looked at each other. Somebody cleared his throat. Mitch set his coffee down and studied her face for a long moment, as though deciding something.

“He didn’t tell you,” Mitch said. It was not a question.

“He said the roads were bad.”

Mitch let out a long breath through his nose and shook his head slowly. “Well, that’s about the most Pete Brandvold thing I ever heard.” He pushed the empty chair beside him out from the table with his boot. “Sit down a minute, kiddo. Lou won’t mind.”

Annika looked toward the kitchen. Lou, the owner, was watching through the pass-through window. He gave her a small nod. She sat.

“Friday afternoon,” Mitch said, “about two o’clock, the state patrol started saying they might close the interstate. Wind was picking up, ground blizzard coming. County called everybody in. We all knew you girls had the regional final in Carver Falls, and we all knew there was only one way home if the interstate closed.”

“Highway 9,” Annika said.

“Highway 9.” Mitch turned his coffee cup slowly on the table. “The county’s got that road split up in sections. Each driver takes a stretch. The stretch from the Carver Falls county line east to Halvorsen, that’s thirty-eight miles. It’s the worst stretch on 9. Open fields both sides, nothing to stop the wind. And the Rush Creek curve is right in the middle of it.”

He looked at her, and his eyes were kind.

“Your dad hasn’t driven that stretch in eight years,” he said. “Not once. Not since your mom. He asked the county to put him on the south routes, and they did, and nobody ever said a word about it. Everybody understood.”

He paused.

“Friday afternoon,” he said, “he walked into the shed and asked for it.”

Annika sat very still.

“I told him I’d take it,” Mitch said. “I told him go to your game, Pete. Go ring your cowbell. I’ve got this. And he looked at me and said, ‘No, Mitch. Not tonight. Tonight it’s mine.’” Mitch shook his head. “I’ve known your dad since he was nineteen years old. I never saw him look like that. Like a man walking into a fire.”

“No, Mitch. Not tonight. Tonight it’s mine.”

Around the table, the other men were nodding slowly, looking at their cups.

“I don’t understand,” Annika said, though she was beginning to.

“That bus you rode home on,” Mitch said quietly. “That plow in front of it, all the way from Carver Falls. Two and a half hours. Who did you think was driving it?”