The Oaks on My Side of the Creek

Wade

We all stood there in the bottom a while. The mist was gone by then. The sun was in the tops of the oaks and the leaves were coming down one at a time, the way they do in the last week before everything is bare.

Wade had walked a little away from us. He was standing by the three trees in the sand with his hands in his coat. After a while I went over to him. I didn’t say anything. I just stood next to him.

“I paid too much for this place,” he said finally. Not to me exactly. To the stumps.

I waited.

“I got laid off from the plant in Columbus in January. Twenty-six years. I took the buyout and I thought, this is it, I’m going to do what I always wanted. Little farm. Some cows. I went to that auction and I got going and I couldn’t stop bidding.”

He shook his head. “Paid nine thousand an acre for ground that’s worth six. Then the well pump went. Then the barn roof. I’ve got thirty head of cows and no hay in the barn and winter coming.”

“So you sold the timber.”

“So I sold the timber. Floyd paid me half down. Nine thousand dollars.” He looked at me. “I already spent most of it on hay. It’s sitting in my barn right now.”

He rubbed his face with both hands.

“I didn’t look at your map on Sunday,” he said, “because I didn’t want to know. That’s the truth. The listing said the creek, and I wanted it to be the creek, so I decided it was the creek.” He looked at the stump. “I’m not a thief, Laura. But I guess I was willing to act like one if nobody made me look.”

I believed him. That is the plain truth of it. I had come out to that bottom ready for a crook, and I got a scared man with thirty cows and a bad bid.

But I also knew something else. Being scared doesn’t put a tree back up.

“Those three oaks,” I said. “They’re mine.”

“I know it.”

“I want to be paid for them, Wade. Fair stumpage. Not three times. Just what they’re worth.”

Floyd had come up behind us. “Law in this state would let you ask for three times,” he said. “Since we’re being honest.”

“I know it,” I said. “I don’t want three times. I want what’s fair, and I want him to be the one who pays it.”

Floyd nodded slowly. “Those three were the best on the bottom,” he said. “I’d have given four hundred apiece for them. Twelve hundred dollars.”

Wade didn’t argue. He didn’t even blink. He took a checkbook out of his coat, right there in the woods, and wrote it out on the hood of the side-by-side while we all stood there. His hand was not steady. He tore it off and handed it to me.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry about your grandpa’s trees.”

“Thank you,” I said. And I meant it.