The Note the Bank Called After the Drought

“Two farms in the last eighteen months,” said Barbara. “Both within twenty miles. I started counting after the Hendricks place went. Both had a note called or not renewed, and both sold within about sixty days to the same man.”

“Marsh.”

“Doug Marsh. Or an outfit with a name like Cedar Bend Land that he drives the trucks for. My Jolie works the front counter at the county recorder’s. Deeds are public record.”

Barbara’s daughter Jolie had spent her lunch breaks for three days pulling the deeds. Both were sold off called notes. One went for $4,300 an acre and the other for $4,800, in a county where decent ground trades at $8,000 to $9,500. Both to the same buyer.

Both notes had come across the same loan officer’s desk.

“I thought it was just bad luck,” Barbara said. “A bank that doesn’t like farms. Then I went and sat with Gina Hendricks and the Dunlaps, and every one of them told me the same thing. The nice young man at the bank had recommended Marsh. Recommended him. Like a plumber.”

“And Gina says Marsh made a point of saying he was well thought of at the regional office,” she said. “Had a way of dropping Susan Pratt’s name.”

I sat there with the legal pad in front of me.

I will tell you what I did not have. I had no proof that Mabry took a dime. I had no proof that Marsh and Mabry were anything but a banker with a favorite buyer and a buyer with a favorite banker, and that is not a crime in any county I know of. What I had was a date in an old man’s diary, a calendar square, two deeds, and a bank that would not let me sell thirty acres at a fair price.

“Well,” Barbara said. “What do we do?”

“We don’t shout,” I said.

“No?”

“We don’t hire anybody and we don’t post anything on the internet. That’s a mess they can call unfair.” I pushed the legal pad to the center of the table. “We do it the way Ellsworth Tillman did. We show up. And we let the people who can fix it see what we see.”

A chance

I did one more thing first, and I did it because I was raised to give a man one chance before you go around him.

On Thursday morning, the thirteenth, I drove to the bank. I did not make an appointment. I stood in Mabry’s doorway until he looked up.

“Mr. Becker.”

“I won’t stay,” I said. “I came to tell you that I know about the ninth of October.”

His face did not change. That was the thing. A truthful man would have asked what happened on the ninth. He didn’t.

“I don’t follow,” he said.

“I think you do. I think you’ve got until the end of the day tomorrow to pull that notice and consent to Kessler’s thirty acres. You do that, and not one person outside this room hears a word about it. I’ll go back to the farm and pay the note the way I paid the last ten.”

He leaned back in the chair. For a moment I saw something go across him, something that was not the vest or the laminated card. It looked like a boy being told he has done wrong.

“Mr. Becker,” he said, quieter, “do you know what happened to my father?”