The Forty Acres I Gave My Bride

He held out his hand to me.

Hannah stepped in front of it. She took the folded deed out of her pocket, the dress had pockets, she’d insisted on pockets, and she pressed it into her father’s open palm instead of my hand.

“Read it, Dad,” she said softly. She didn’t say it mean. She said it the way you’d hand someone a letter you’d been saving for them.

Arvid looked at her, and then at me, and then down at the paper. He unfolded it right there, in the receiving line, with the line backing up behind him all the way to the coffee table.

Karen came up and stood at his elbow. She didn’t say anything. She already knew.

I watched him read it. He read slowly, the way he does everything. I could see him find the heading. The legal description, which he would have known by heart, because Grandpa’s forty was only four miles from his own home place.

I watched him find my grandfather’s name. Then mine. Then Hannah’s. Then the stamp with Monday’s date on it.

His jaw worked. The muscle in it jumped twice, under the skin.

The people behind him in line had stopped talking. Old Mrs. Halvorson, who was next, looked from his face to mine and put her hand on her husband’s arm to hold him back.

Arvid folded the paper very slowly, back along all its creases, and handed it to Hannah. Then he turned to me and took my hand.

He did not let go.

He held on long enough that it stopped being a handshake. I could feel the calluses on his palm and the old scar across the base of his thumb from a power takeoff shaft, back before I was born.

He opened his mouth, and the whole line went quiet.

“I spent forty years,” he said, and stopped. His voice wasn’t steady. I had never heard it not steady. He cleared his throat and started again.

“I spent forty years making sure nobody could ever take anything from her,” he said. “I never once thought about what I’d do if a man showed up who wanted to give.”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t trust my voice either.

“My sister,” he said, and stopped again. Then he shook his head, like that part could wait. “I was wrong about you. I was wrong in my own kitchen, in front of my wife and a lawyer. I’m sorry for it.”

He was still holding my hand. Everybody in that line heard him. Mrs. Halvorson had tears in her eyes, and her husband was studying his shoes.

“Thank you, sir,” I said.

“Don’t call me sir. My name is Arvid.” He squeezed my hand once more, hard. “We start planting the end of April, if the ground’s fit. Could use a man who knows his seed. If you’ve got the time.”

“I’ll make the time,” I said.

“Bring your order book,” he said. “Butterfield’s getting old anyway.”

He let go of my hand then, finally. He put one big arm around Hannah and pulled her against his chest, and she let him. It was the first time she had let him touch her since March.