Mr.Henderson sat in the green vinyl chair with mud still caked on the heels of his work boots.

He tapped his front teeth with his thumbnail while he waited for me to adjust the overhead light.

The fluorescent bulbs buzzed faintly above us.

“Well now, I suppose you hear every whisper, working in town,” he said.

I pulled my blue paper mask up over my nose. I didn’t want to talk about town gossip.

I just wanted to clean the plaque off his molars, but he kept talking.

“Are you having any pain in the lower left quadrant?” I asked.

“Your husband’s father has been running his mouth at the co-op.”

I stopped moving the overhead light and looked down at his chart.

“Walt was at the co-op?” I asked, making sure I’d heard him right.

“When was this?”

“Well now, yesterday morning around eight,” Henderson said.

He tapped his thumbnail against his front tooth again, a slow rhythm like a ticking clock.

“He bought a hundred pounds of seed and told everyone at the register that his eighty acres aren’t safe.”

I picked up my metal dental scaler from the tray and ran my gloved finger along its sharp curved edge.

Walt lived alone in the white farmhouse out past the county line, and Luke and I had just been there for Sunday dinner, where he had smiled the whole time.