Then he hung it back up. Not by the door anymore. In the middle of the back wall. Right where everybody could see it the minute they walked in.
And around it, he started hanging other pictures.
Earl Lindquist on his combine. Ruth Abernathy in front of her hair salon. Miguel Ruiz and his whole family in front of Casa Ruiz on the day it opened in 1981, and again in front of it last year, with Tommy in his apron. Marlene Voss’s grandson Kyle in the cornfield his great-grandfather almost lost. Shelly at her window with a coffee can full of roses.
Pictures of customers. In their work clothes. With dirt on their knees and grease on their hands and flour on their aprons.
He asked everybody to bring in a picture. Most of them did.
There are sixty-three pictures on that wall now.
And at the top, above all of them, he hung a little brass plaque. He had it engraved at the trophy shop on Route 9.
