I will not say what was on his face. It was not anger. He looked the way he looked at nine, when the tractor got away from him and rolled into the irrigation ditch and he understood that everyone was going to see.
“Mrs. Hargis,” the judge said gently. “Is there anything you would like to say?”
I had prepared three paragraphs in pencil. I left them in my purse.
“Only this, Your Honor. My nephew has been carrying a heavy load since spring, and I don’t believe it’s the one in his petition. I would ask the court to let him say what it is himself, and I would ask the people in this room to let him do it kindly.”
Get a new story in your inbox every morning.
Facebook doesn’t show you every story we post. Our free newsletter does. Join 2,500+ readers.
Kurt stood. His lawyer reached for him and he moved out of reach. For a long moment he did not speak. He looked at the bench, then at the table, then at me.
“Judge,” he said, and his voice cracked in the middle of it, “I’d like to withdraw it.”
“Mr. Stidham,” his lawyer said, low and urgent, “I strongly advise you not to.”
“I know what you advise.” He did not turn his head. “I’d like to withdraw the petition, please, ma’am. Aunt Lu does not need a guardian. I need a banker.” His hands were shaking. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, everybody.”
“The petition is withdrawn at the petitioner’s request,” Judge Sedillo said. She waited a moment. “Mr. Stidham, it took more to say that than it took to file. Hold on to that.”
The Ledger
He found me in the hallway an hour later by the table of biscochitos, after most of the room had gone out into the sun to stand around their trucks.
He had taken off the gray jacket. He stood in front of me in his shirtsleeves, a tall, tired man with gray coming into his hair, and for a moment neither of us said a word.
“You could have taken everything from me in there,” he said. “You could have said it out loud. The note. What I asked you for in March.”
“I thought about it.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because I’d have had to hold it the rest of my life. I’m too old to carry something that heavy up and down that hill.”
He laughed, and it came out half a sob. Then I opened my purse and took out the small green ledger I keep in the back of the shoebox, the one with the cracked spine, where I write down every dollar I have ever lent anybody. I turned to a page and handed it to him.
The first entry was from 2003. In pencil it said K. Four hundred dollars. Truck tires. Paid in full, 2004, in a coffee can of pennies and a note.
Below it was a second line, in ink, from March.
K. asked sixty thousand. Said no. Prayed after he left. Still no. Still love.
He read it twice. Then he stood in a courthouse hallway and put the heel of his hand against his eyes.
“Here are the terms,” I said, when he could hear me. “I will not pay your note. I told you that in March and it is still true. But Monday morning at nine you will bring every paper you own to Gwen Medlin at the bank. The loan, the lease, the letter with the date on it. I will sit beside you. Dena sits on your other side.”
“Aunt Lu, I don’t deserve that.”