Beautiful Faith

Rory and I pulled up to the LJC Feed store at 5:15. Amid the nursery selections and shelves of bagged feed, a double glass door peered darkly from under deep eaves, marred by the ugly, orange "CLOSED" sign.
"Gah! I thought they were open until 6!" I gripped the Bruiser's steering wheel, the Bruiser that was running on a half tank of gas (actually, two quarter tanks) and whose loud purr proclaimed how happily it devoured heaps of gas and how it would gladly return back up the hill, devouring even more. "Can you see the hours on the door?" I asked Rory, morbidly curious.
Meanwhile a red pickup truck was pulling out. It drew up alongside and the driver's window rolled down. The driver made motions, a tall, dark, lean man. I rolled my window down after a blank moment of 'is he going to ask me a question I can't answer or does he want something or am I doing something wrong?' taking up valuable response time. I'm sure I gaped at him, open-mouthed the entire time.
"You need something in the store?"
I admit my hearing is bad enough that I had to simultaneously reparse the sounds he made, interpreting a sentence, while trying to figure out what was going on. Rory was way ahead of me. He leaned over, which would normally put him in my lap, but in the Bruiser he was still several miles away. "No, that's all right."
Comprehension struck me and I gave the driver my best grateful grin. "I guess we'll just have to come back tomorrow."
"Because if it's something important I can get it real quick. It's no trouble."
"Well, we're out of rabbit food," I admitted.
"But we can just give them some greens to get them by until tomorrow," Rory assured him.
"It's no trouble," the driver assured us, and he parked his truck again.
I maneuvered the Bruiser into a parking spot, hopefully not looking too much more idiotic than a four year old trying to steer a shopping cart, and we followed him into the garage. He chit chatted cheerfully as we looked for the rabbit feed, to no avail. They had the small bags in there, but the big bags were inside the building.
"Sometimes they leave this door unlocked," he said, trying the door into the main building. It wasn't.
"That's all right," Rory said. "We'll just come back tomorrow."
"I have a key to the main building," he said. "It's no trouble."
Warm with guilt, we followed him to the glass doors and he let us in. We located the bag in short order, and the man hefted it. Rory got out some cash, reading the price. $6.99. "How about ten dollars," I offered. "That should cover the tax and everything."
"Naw," the man said, carrying the feed out. "You just come in tomorrow and pay."
Rory made small Irish hospitality protesty noises (they're very cute.)
"We do have to come back for alfalfa hay," I said. "We'll definitely do that."
"But--" Rory continued to make incomplete prostesting noises, waving the $10 bill.
"This is why I wanted to own a feed store," the man said.

Loyal customers for life. I didn't even have to drive in the next day--I didn't want to pick up hay in the rain so I called in, hoping I could say or do something and save starting up the Bruiser. It turned out they could take my credit card info over the phone, after I explained the circumstances. "And could you write a thank you note for me for the guy? I think he said he was the owner."
"What did he look like? Tall? Dark hair?"
"Lean?" I added.
"That's Gordon."
Thank you, Gordon. You'll be seeing us at the store often.