The Barn the Adjuster Called Rotten
Whitcomb read it. “Those two,” he said to me, “I’ll give you. The sill and the corner post. Everything else on these tarps is sound timber that a hundred and twenty-five mile an hour wind broke. That’s a covered loss. I don’t need to be convinced of it any further.”
“I can’t promise what I haven’t put on paper,” he said. “But I’m withdrawing the June 24th determination. The barn will be re-adjusted as a covered windstorm loss, and since Mrs. Oberg wrote the replacement cost endorsement on your policy in 2011, it’ll be paid at replacement cost up to your limit. You’ll get the actual cash value within fifteen days and the balance when you show receipts for the rebuild. You don’t need to sign the release. Tear it up if you like.”
“Thank you.”
“Thank Mrs. Oberg. And Mr. Davenport’s watch.” He almost smiled. “And Mr. Hanke? I’d take it as a kindness if you didn’t call the newspaper.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“I know you weren’t.” He stood up from the bucket. “That’s why I’m saying it.”
I went around behind the shed to the hydrant to wash the dust off my hands. I stood with the water running and my eyes shut, and when I opened them the adjuster was standing at the corner of the building with his hands in his windbreaker pockets.
“I’d like to say something without anybody listening,” he said.
I turned off the water.
“I put my probe in the north sill and found rot, and I stopped. The guideline we use on storm claims says to look at age first on any structure over fifty years. I had thirty-eight open files and nine days of storm work behind me. I know that is not a reason. I wrote the word rotted on what I expected to find. I never put the probe in a post. If I had, I’d have known in thirty seconds, and I stood in your barn and told you it fell because it was old.”
He stopped. He was not crying and he was not asking for anything. He looked like a man reading out a total.
“I’m going to ask Mr. Whitcomb for my last twenty files from May. I wrote age and deterioration on eleven of them.”
I dried my hands on my pants. I thought about what to say to a man who was thirty and had put me through a month of no sleep.
“The sill was soft,” I said. “You got that part right.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Put the probe in the post on the next one.”
“I will.”
He nodded once and walked back around the corner. I stayed by the hydrant a minute longer with the water off.
When I came out front, Whitcomb was standing at the white car with Maxine, and I stopped at the corner of the shed, because I had a feeling about what he was asking her and I wanted to hear it said.
“Mrs. Oberg. Do you keep a March file like that on every farm on your book?”
“Every one. Photographs and notes. Some go back to 1985.”
“I’d like copies of the file for every one of your farms that took a denial this season.” He opened the car door. “Not for this claim. For the ones where we wrote age.”
“I’ll have them to you Monday,” Maxine said. “And Mr. Whitcomb, I charge for copies.”
“Send me an invoice.”
“I will.”