The Note the Bank Called After the Drought

The regional office

Prairie Trust keeps its regional office on the second floor of a brick building off the square in a county seat that is bigger than ours. There is a lobby with a gas fireplace, which was not lit, and a receptionist at a half-moon desk.

Eleven of us came through the door in our coats. The receptionist, a young woman with a lanyard, stood up halfway.

“Can I help you?”

“We’d like to see Susan Pratt,” I said. “We don’t have an appointment. We’ll wait.”

“She’s in a meeting.”

“We’ll wait.”

She looked at the line of people filling the lobby, the gray heads and the work boots and the young woman with the folder. She sat down and picked up the phone.

We sat. There were six chairs, so the older ones got the seats and the rest of us stood along the wall. Arlen took the leather chair by the window. Barbara poured coffee into paper cups and passed them down the row.

At twenty past nine, a woman came out through the glass door at the back. She was about fifty, in a gray suit, with reading glasses pushed up in her hair. She stopped when she saw the room.

“I’m Susan Pratt,” she said. “I understand you’re here to see me.”

Her voice was careful. The voice of a person who has walked into a room and counted it.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I’m Ron Becker. I left you a message on the fourth.”

She had the grace to flush. “I’m sorry. I did get that. It was passed to the branch.”

“Yes, ma’am. It was.”

“What can I do for you, Mr. Becker?”

“Nothing loud,” I said. “We’d just like you to read one page.”

I had written it on plain paper Sunday night. No accusations. Two dates, two deeds, two acreages with the price paid. At the bottom: October 9. Doug Marsh tells Arlen Tillman the Becker bottom closes first week of January. November 3. Notice of non-renewal on the Becker note. And the last line: The bank refused consent to sell 30 acres to Tom Kessler at $9,000. The bank’s officer then offered $4,500 an acre for all 142.

I held it out. She took it.

She read it standing, the whole room watching her face. She read it to the bottom, and then she went back to the top and read it again.

“Mr. Becker,” she said, and her voice had dropped, “who gave you the October date?”

“I did,” said a voice from the window.

Arlen Tillman stood up. It took him a moment. He put one hand on the arm of the leather chair and the other on his cane, and he came all the way up, eighty-four years old in his good coat. Nobody helped him. Nobody moved.

“Arlen Tillman,” he said. “Harlan Bend. I’ve banked with your people since they were Don Mercer’s, and my father banked with Don’s father.”

He opened the black book to a page he had marked with a feed-store receipt. He held it out to her in both hands, the way you hand a person something you do not mean to take back.

“I write down what happens every day,” he said. “I wrote this one the day it happened.”

Susan Pratt put on her reading glasses. She read the line once. She read it twice.

She was quiet for a long time. Out on the square, a truck went by.

Then she picked up the phone on the receptionist’s desk and said, “Get me the Harlan Bend branch.”