The Deed I Almost Signed Away

“Walt,” he said, “you do not sign two hundred acres over to anybody at a party. You want to give the boy the farm, God bless you, we do it right. We do it in this office, on paper, recorded at the courthouse, with everybody sober and thinking straight. You hand him something pretty at the wedding if you want the moment. But the real signing happens here, and it happens after they get back from wherever they’re going. Do not record a thing until then.”

I argued with him. I wanted the moment. Sam did not budge.

“Give him a framed copy and a hug,” he said. “The deed sits in my drawer, unsigned by you, until you both come in on the fourteenth and do it clean. That is how a careful man gives away a farm.”

I did not know it then, but Sam Ruthven saved everything I have with those four sentences.

So that is what I did. At the reception I handed Kyle a framed copy, a beautiful thing Carol had made up at the print shop, gold lettering, the legal description of the land, my signature printed on it in fancy script. It looked exactly like a deed. It was not one. The real paper sat in Sam’s office drawer, and I had not signed the true copy yet. We were set to do that on the fourteenth, four days after the wedding, both couples in Sam’s office, done right.

Megan read that framed copy like it was the real thing.

She read the signature line, and she looked at Carol.

And Gary Prewitt’s camera in the coat room saw everything that came after.

Come alone

The drive out to the Norwood took twenty minutes and felt like two hours.

The Norwood Supper Club sits out on the state road between Harlow and Delphi, a low brick building with a gravel lot and a sign shaped like a walleye. It has been the place in this county for a wedding or a funeral lunch for longer than I have been alive. Friday nights it is fish fry and old couples two-stepping to a jukebox. It is not a fancy place. It is our place. Which is part of why what I saw there hit the way it did.

Gary was waiting at the kitchen door like he said. He did not shake my hand. He just put one of those big hands on my shoulder and steered me in past the walk-in cooler and the dish pit to the little office where he keeps the safe and the liquor inventory.

There was a monitor on the desk. Old thing. Grainy.

“After the theft last spring,” Gary said, “I put a little camera up in the coat room. Above the rack. Insurance made me. Nobody thinks about it. Half the time it don’t even work.” He would not look at me. “It worked Saturday night, Walt.”

He pulled a chair out for me.

“I about didn’t call you,” he said. “I sat on this all day yesterday. Prayed on it. But you’re a friend of thirty years and if it was me, I’d want to know. So I’m going to step out and check on the dinner setup, and I’m going to let you watch this by yourself. You take whatever time you need.”

He set a paper cup of coffee down next to the monitor, and he left, and he shut the door.

I sat down in Gary Prewitt’s office chair, and I pressed play.