Three Old Farmers and a Locked Door
He said it to the table. His voice was cracked and low, and nobody in the world heard it but Drew, standing in the door with his hands at his sides, and me.
“The shop closed in March. I didn’t tell anybody. I took a line of credit against the house in Grand Island, and then another one, and then I started covering the first with the second. Janice doesn’t know. The bank has been calling since July. I thought, if the place sold fast, I could make it all go away before anyone found out, and I’d split it fair with you and Jeannie. I thought if I did it quick enough, I would not have to look at any of you.”
Drew said, “Dad.” It was all he said. He crossed the kitchen and pulled out the third chair and sat down, and I was glad he had.
I did not hug my brother, and I did not scold him. I’d like to say I had some grand wisdom, but I only had what I’d had since Thursday night, which was a column of figures.
“Here is what I can do and what I can’t,” I said. “I can’t pay your debt, and the estate can’t either. Dad’s beans go to the estate, to the elevator at Alma on his name, with a ticket for every load, and they are not yours alone and not mine. There is corn behind them. Ed’s boy Garrett has wanted to rent ground for two years at a fair cash rate. That is time, Roger. It is not a rescue. What it means is that nobody has to sell a man’s house out from under his sister in three weeks to find it.”
He nodded at the table.
I got a legal pad from the drawer by the phone, where Dad had always kept one, and I wrote three lines on it in my bookkeeper’s hand. Judy Pruitt may live in the farmhouse until the estate is settled. Nothing on the home place is sold or listed before spring. The three of us will meet at this table in April. I tore the page off and slid it across, and I put a pen on top of it.
“Dad would have wanted it at the table,” I said. “So we will do it at the table. But I want your name on that. If you break it, I will call Mr. Engel, and I will not feel one bit bad about it.”
“That’s fair,” Roger said. He signed it. Drew signed under him, as witness, without being asked.
I had one more thing, and I said it quietly, because I am not a woman who raises her voice.
“The $11,400,” I said.
He looked up.
“I paid the home nurse out of my own pocket for eleven months when Dad’s Medicare ran short. The oxygen, the aide on Tuesdays and Fridays, the bed. It’s in my ledger, every receipt. I never meant to ask for it, and I’m asking now, so there’s no confusion. It comes out of your share when the estate settles. Not a penny more.”
“Done,” Roger said. He didn’t even hesitate.