The Feed Store Note They Never Read

The note they never read

I opened the green folder again and took out the second set of papers. This was the one I had been waiting four months to put on that counter.

“Yesterday morning,” I said, “I approved a wire for one hundred fifty thousand dollars. You watched me do it. You thought I paid off the note on your store. You thought the debt was gone, the building was free and clear, and you could throw me out the next morning with a clean store and a clear conscience.”

I set the assignment of note on top of the divorce papers.

“I did not pay off the note, Wade. I bought it. Back in July. The bank sold your paper to a company. That company is mine. I own it by myself. Which means the store does not owe the bank anymore. The store owes me. You owe me. One hundred fifty thousand dollars, and I hold the lien on the building, and there is a clause in what you signed with the bank, the same clause that has been in there the whole time, that lets the holder of the note call the full balance due on default.”

Roy was not even there and I could feel him getting a phone call within the hour.

Wade picked up the assignment of note and his eyes went down the page and I watched him find the numbers, and the company name, and the little block at the bottom where an authorized signer had signed, and I watched him read the name of the authorized signer.

Marlene R. Tuttle.

His hands were not steady when he set it down.

“You can’t,” he said.

“I already did,” I said. “It’s done. It was done in July. You’ve owed me for two months and you didn’t know it, and this morning you decided to move your girlfriend into my house and put my mother’s photographs in a trash bag. So let me tell you how the rest of this goes.”