The Ground Uncle Rented for Ninety

“Did he say he’d tell her?”

“He said he’d think about it.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all.” Marlin cleared his throat. “He leaves for Arizona on the twentieth, Carrie. I looked it up. He’s got a lot in a park near Yuma.”

“I know.”

“I’m sorry. I’d like to say it again. I’m sorry.”

“Say it to her,” I said. “On March first.” I took the pages to Mom on the second Sunday of November, after church.

I did not do it in front of the roast. I waited until she had eaten, and the dishes were in the rack, and the light through the window over the sink had gone thin and gray.

I put the photocopies on the table in front of her chair. “Mom, I need you to read something, and I need you to read all of it before you say anything. Can you do that for me?”

She looked at my face a long time. “Is somebody sick?” “No. Nobody’s sick. Nobody’s hurt.” She put on her reading glasses.

I will not forget the next twenty minutes. She read the first page. She turned to the second. She put her finger on a line and traced it left to right, the way she used to follow the words when she helped me with my spelling.

Alford Brockman. March 1. $31,200.00. Alford Brockman. December 1. $31,200.00. “Who is this from?” she asked. “Marlin Haugen. He farms your back forty and your north field. He farms all two hundred forty. He has for nine years.”

“Marlin Haugen,” Mom said slowly. “Roy’s friend. His daddy was Roy’s friend before him.”

“He rents it from Alford.”

“Alford rents it from me.”

“Yes, Mom.” I watched her work the arithmetic. I have to tell you that my mother kept the books for that farm for forty-one years, in a green ledger on the end of the table, down to the penny, every feed bill and every vet call. She was not a woman who could not do the sum.

She was a woman who did not want to. “Sixty-two thousand,” she said finally. “Alford told me ninety dollars was the going rate.”

“I know.”

“He told me that, Carrie. He sat right there, in that chair, and told me.”

“I know.”

“Mom, he owns no equipment. You pay the property tax. He paid for nothing.” She sat very still.

“He sat at your father’s funeral,” she said.

“I know.”

“I made him a plate. I wrapped him a plate to take home, Carrie. In foil.” That is when my mother cried. She cried without any sound, with her hands in her lap, the way she did at the graveside, and I came around the table and knelt beside her chair and held her.

I am not going to tell you everything she said. It was between the two of us. But somewhere in the middle of it, she said, in a small voice I had not heard since I was a girl:

“I thought he loved us.”

“I think he did, Mom. In his way. I think that is what makes it so hard.” She held on to my sleeve with both hands.

“I’m so tired of being the one who gets fooled,” she said.

“You’re not going to be,” I said. “Not anymore.”