She Paid $55 for a Sealed Farm Barrel — 24 Days Later, Everything Changed
Chapter 7
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They went inside. She put the cutters back in the cigar box on the shelf, next to the little lead tag. Every seal on the canister stayed whole.The phone rang on a Tuesday evening, twenty-four days after the sale."Is this Junie Halverson? My name is Maren Okonkwo. You wrote me a letter."Junie stood up so fast her chair fell over.The woman asked her to go out to the canister and read her the numbers on the lead tags slowly, and then the words painted on its side. She did.On the other end of the line, there was a silence so long she thought the call had dropped."Junie," the woman said, very carefully, "has anyone broken any of those seals? Even one? Even a little?""No, ma'am. Nobody's touched them.""Good. Don't let anybody. I'm going to make one phone call tonight, and then I'm going to drive down there and bring someone with me. Your letter said you wanted witnesses when it was opened.""Yes, ma'am. My grandpa said—""Your grandfather knew exactly what he was talking about. Pick a Saturday. Invite your witnesses."So Junie made a list at the kitchen table: her mother; Wendell; Garrett Moe, who had sold it; Neil Lindquist, whose great-grandfather had stored it; Mrs. Hartley, who wrote the weekly paper; Mr. Odgaard, who taught the agriculture class at the high school; and at the bottom, in her neatest handwriting, Cal Rudd."Why on earth Cal?" her mother asked."Because he's the one who said it was trash. He ought to see."Cal took the invitation at the coffee counter in front of everybody and read it out loud in a mocking voice. "Wouldn't miss it! I'll bring my own wire cutters in case the Department of Agriculture forgets theirs!"The whole counter roared.On Saturday, Karen borrowed eight folding chairs from the Lutheran church and set them in a half-circle on the gravel, facing the canister. Wendell pulled the blue tarp off and folded it, and for the first time in seventy-five years, the old canister sat out in the full October sun: bolted shut, caked in dust, all six of its wheat stalk lead tags hanging whole on their wires.The witnesses came: Garrett Moe in his straw hat, Neil Lindquist back from Minneapolis, Mrs. Hartley with her notebook, Mr. Odgaard with his reading glasses pushed up on his forehead. Cal came last in his red jacket with a bag of sunflower seeds. He did not sit in a chair; he leaned against his truck with his arms crossed and grinned at everybody.