The Acre Under the Cottonwood

The eighth lot

Then she turned to Kenny, who had not said a word yet.

“And you,” she said. “You gave your acre away. Your grandpa’s acre.”

“I did,” Kenny said. “I’m not taking it back, Mom.”

“I’m not asking you to. I’d be ashamed of you if you did.” She put her finger on the map, on the empty rectangle beside the cottonwood acre, the eighth lot along the creek, the only one without a name.

All of us knew about that one. It was the acre with the old willow, where the creek bends. Marlys had been saving it for herself.

She had told the whole family years ago that when her time came, she wanted her ashes put under that willow, by the water where she learned to swim.

“That one’s yours,” she said to Kenny. “I’ll have Deb draw it up this week.”

“Mom, that’s yours. That’s your spot.”

“It’s still my spot,” she said. “When it’s time, you put me under that willow, and you keep the rest. A man who gives his own away should have one to come home to.”

Kenny walked out of the kitchen. He went out the back door and stood in the yard for a while with his back to the house.

When he came back in, his eyes were red, and he bent down and kissed his mother on top of her head, which I had never once seen him do.

What the family saw

I will not pretend it was all smoothed over that afternoon. It was not. The whole family had seen what happened in our yard, and the whole family had seen Kenny’s picture.

Jan told me later that her mother had not slept two nights running.

Marlys had to sit in her own kitchen that weekend and look at the truth. Her son had chosen my boy over her rule, in front of everyone, without saying a word against her.

And now the son her father had picked first had no acre on the home place at all.

That is a hard thing to face at seventy-one. I think it is a hard thing to face at any age. She faced it. She took the back off that frame and picked up the pen.