The Fence She Finished in His Gloves

The Bank and the Deputy

On Saturday my mother came down to sit with Brett so I could drive home. It is about ninety minutes from Wichita to our place, up the turnpike and then across on the two-lane through the hills.

I went straight to the bank in Cottonwood Falls. It was open until noon on Saturdays.

The loan officer, a man named Jeff Harlan who had gone to school with my older brother, pulled the account up on his screen and was quiet for a long time.

“It’s a business account in both names, Brett and Rod,” he said finally. “Either one can sign. Either one can withdraw. Casey, I’m sorry, but nothing about this was done wrong on our end.”

“He took every dollar while my husband was in surgery.”

“I know it.” He rubbed his eyes. “I’m not saying it’s right. I’m saying the bank can’t call it back. Rod had the authority. You’d have to take it up with him.”

I was not a signer on that account. I kept the books and paid the bills by writing the checks out and laying them on the counter for Brett to sign after supper. I had never once thought that was a problem.

From the bank I drove to the sheriff’s office. A deputy I did not know, a young man with a buzz cut and a kind face, listened to the whole thing and wrote a few notes on a yellow pad.

“Ma’am, I believe every word of it,” he said. “But two partners on a joint business account, that’s a civil matter. I can’t arrest a man for taking money he’s legally allowed to take. You’d need an attorney.”

An attorney. I thought about that the whole drive home. An attorney meant a retainer, and the retainer would come out of an account that had fourteen cents in it.

The Hensley Job

When I got home there was a message on the house phone. It was from Hap Hensley, who owned about four thousand acres of grass south of town and had been running cattle on it since before I was born.

“Casey, this is Hap Hensley. I’m awful sorry to hear about Brett. We’re all praying for him out here. Call me when you get a minute, would you. It’s about the fence.”

I knew what it was about before I called him back. The Hensley job was three miles of new five-wire barbed fence along the east side of his winter pasture, replacing a fence his father had built in the nineteen fifties.

It was the biggest job Moreland-Tillery had ever bid. Three miles is fifteen thousand eight hundred and forty feet, and at two dollars and sixty cents a foot, the contract came to $41,184.

Brett had bid it in August at that kitchen table. I had typed it up.

Hap had shaken his hand on the front porch and said he’d pay on completion, all of it, the day the last wire was tied, the way his dad always had.

The first half was done. Brett and Rod and our two hired boys had set every corner and every brace assembly the whole three miles in September, and strung wire on the first mile and a half.

The materials for the rest were already bought and paid for, sitting in our yard.

I called Hap back. He picked up on the first ring.

“How is he?”

“He’s alive,” I said. “They don’t know much more than that yet.”

He was quiet a second. “Well, I hate to even bring this up. But I can’t raise Rod. I’ve called him four times. My cows come home off summer grass the first of November, and that east side is wide open. I need to know where I stand.”

I sat down at the kitchen table. The checkbook was still there. The calendar on the wall still had Brett’s handwriting on it: Hensley, second half, start Oct 7.

“Mr. Hensley,” I said, “Rod is gone. And he took the money with him.”

I told him all of it. He listened without saying anything. When I was finished, he cleared his throat.

“How much is left to do?”

“A mile and a half. Line posts and five wires.”

“Who’s going to do it?”

I looked at the calendar. I looked at the checkbook. And then I said something I did not know I was going to say until it was already out of my mouth.

“I am.”