It’s a small bank. One big room. Four teller windows, though only one was open. Two desks along the side wall for loans. A little waiting area with three chairs and a rack of brochures nobody reads.
There were maybe six people in there. And every one of them heard it.
Behind me in line, a young woman with a toddler stopped bouncing him on her hip. I knew her. Kayla Brandt. Her grandmother and I were in the Garden Club together for thirty years. The little boy was named Wyatt. He had a drool bib with a duck on it.
At the loan desk, old Harvey Kessler, who’s been a loan officer at Farmers & Merchants since 1979, set down his pen.
The security guard, a big gentle boy named Tommy Ruiz whose mother I taught in Sunday School, looked at the floor.
People like you.
I wanted to ask what kind of people he meant.
