Sixty One Stones in the Back Acre

“My granddad had a brother Emil,” Mr. Stroud said. “He drank. They said he went out to Oregon and they lost track of him.” He read the line again. “Granddad looked for him. He wrote letters out there into the fifties.”

“He was eleven miles from home,” my mother said.

“I didn’t know this was here. I want you to hear that from me. Dick told me it was clear ground, and the deed said so, and I believed it.”

“Dick believed it too,” she said. “I don’t think either of you is a liar. I think nobody looked.”

“Is there anything left to do?” he asked.

“Row five has four to go.”

My mother picked up her trowel, turned it around, and held it out to him by the blade.

He looked at it. He looked at his good coat. Then he took the trowel, and he walked to the end of row five and got down on his knees in the grass, in front of forty people who had every reason not to like him, and he cut the sod for a man named John Pratt who was no kin to him at all.

Jeff carried him the stone. Kayla lettered it.

When he was done he stood and gave my mother her trowel back, handle first.

“There’s a meeting Monday,” he said.

“There is.”

“I’d like to be there, if nobody minds.”

“It’s a public meeting, Mr. Stroud. Sit with my daughter.”

Out Loud

Gene Pruitt, home from Lincoln, and my mother, and Darlene Voss had signed the call for a special meeting, and the clerk had posted it on the door of city hall and at the post office. City hall holds thirty, so they moved it to the fire hall and backed the trucks out onto the apron.

I would guess two hundred people. Men stood along the wall under the hose racks with their caps in their hands. Walt was in the front row in his seed corn cap, with his grandson beside him.

Mr. Stroud sat by me.

Dick Farris called it to order. He looked tired. He is not a bad man. He had coached Little League for twenty years and plowed half the widows in town out for nothing, and he had been trying to get a mower out of a fund with no money in it.

“There’s one item,” he said. “Mrs. Voss.”

Darlene stood up. She is not a woman who likes to stand up.

“I move to rescind the action of October twelfth authorizing the sale of the back acre.” Her voice shook and she steadied it. “Three weeks ago I voted aye because I was told that ground was empty. On Saturday I set a marker for a woman named Anna Novak. I am changing my vote, and I wanted to say so standing.”

“Second,” Gene Pruitt said.

“Discussion?” Dick asked.

Nobody had any.

“Then the clerk will call it.”

“Voss.”

“Aye, to rescind.”

“Beck.”

Ron Beck cleared his throat. “My dad mowed that acre for the city for thirty years. He’d have got off the mower if he had known. Aye.”

“Kolar.”

“I was wrong the first time. Aye.”

“Timm.”

Larry did not answer right away. The whole fire hall waited on him.

“We still need a mower,” he said. “I want that said. That part was never a lie.” He looked down at his hands. “I’ve got a great-aunt in row three I didn’t know I had. We’ll find a mower. Aye.”

“Pruitt.”

“I wasn’t here. I’m here now. Aye.”

“Krause.”

My mother had her hands folded on the table, the same as the first night.