The Mule and the Drive-Through
A retired mule named Ernest wandered into the bank's drive-through lane and ordered the only thing he knew how to order.
Ernest is a mule I inherited with the farm, along with a bad septic tank and a framed photo of a man I have never met. He is nineteen years old and he has no job, which suits him. His whole life now is eating, and standing near the fence, and thinking about whatever it is mules think about. I would have sworn he never left the pasture, but I am forced to say the pasture was not as secure as I believed.
One Friday morning I was getting my pickup tires rotated in town when a call came from the teller at the bank on Garriott. She said there was a mule in the drive-through lane. I said that sounded unlikely. She said she was looking right at him, and he had been there for ten minutes, and he was holding up a line of three cars. She said nobody had the nerve to honk. I said I was on my way.
I arrived to find Ernest standing at the pneumatic tube with his big head tilted toward the speaker box like a customer who has all day. The man in the car behind him was filming. The teller leaned out of the window and said, over the intercom, can I help you. Ernest, being a mule, said nothing, and she said, I will take that as a no. Then she sent a little canister down the tube with a note in it. It said, Please remove mule, and I have it framed in my kitchen.
I led him out by the halter with the whole bank staff watching from the windows. Somebody had given him a carrot and he was in no hurry to leave. On the way home I asked how he got out. I found the gate chain unhooked, which I blamed on the goats. But then I read in a rural life guide that mules are known to remember routes they follow only once, and I think Ernest had followed me in the truck, years ago, and simply held on to the memory. Now, whenever I go to the bank, he stands at the pasture fence and watches me go. I once heard the story retold on farm radio, with a different mule and a better ending.
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