The Girl Who Paid the Rent in Quarters

What a farmer said

At about the ninth stack, one of the older men on the steps cleared his throat. His name was Abe, and he had farmed the ground across the creek from us for forty years. He had a dairy once. He had sold his cows the same year my husband’s father had.

“Russ,” he said. “What’s she paying for?”

Russ did not answer right away.

“Two hundred ten dollars of rent,” I said. “We paid six-forty on the first. Her dad had back surgery in June.”

“Two-ten,” Abe said, like he was writing it down. “And what’d you lock up?”

“The barn,” Russ said.

“With what in it?”

Russ looked at him then. “Her goats,” he said.

Abe nodded slowly and did not say another word. He did not have to. Every man on that step had milked something twice a day for some part of his life. Every one of them knew what it means to lock a milking doe away from her milker in August.

Noelle kept counting. I do not think she heard any of it.

Russ’s reason

I want to tell this part honestly too, because I learned it later, and it matters.

Russ Hiltner was not a rich man. He owned the house we rented and two other places in the county, and he farmed about four hundred acres, most of it rented. That spring his own landlord had raised the cash rent on two of his farms by sixty dollars an acre.

The bank that held his operating note had called him in July. He had been short on the payment, and they wanted him current before harvest.

He was not just locking our barn. He had been at every one of his rentals that week, chasing every dollar that was late. Somebody told me later he had put a lock on a machine shed over in the next township, too.

I believe he was frightened. I believe frightened people do mean things they would not do on a better day.

That is a reason. It is not an excuse. There were three goats in a hot barn with full udders, and an eleven-year-old girl who had raised them from the bottle. He knew that when he bought the lock.