The Ground Uncle Rented for Ninety

There were people in the shop. I had not asked for people, but there they were. Marlin’s son Judd, leaning on a workbench. Two hired men by the parts bins. And an older farmer in a feed jacket, Burl Coover, who had come to pick up a welded gate and who looked, from the way he stood, like he had decided not to leave.

“Arlis,” Marlin said. He took a step toward her and stopped. “Mrs. Brockman. Thank you for coming.”

“Hello, Marlin,” Mom said. Verlene was already at her side. “Come sit by the stove, honey. Come sit and have your coffee. It’s cold out there.”

My mother let herself be led. She sat on a steel stool by the little barrel stove, and Verlene put the mug in her hands, and Mom wrapped both palms around it the way she does in church on a cold morning.

“Arlis,” Marlin said, “I owe you an apology I can’t pay back in money. But I can pay you the money.”

He had cleared the long workbench, wiped it down, and laid the lease flat in the middle of it. One page, typed by Verlene on the office computer. Beside it, laid in a neat row, lay the duplicate check pages. Nine years.

And on the top of the stack, face up, a single check. Mom stood and walked slowly to the bench.

She looked at the check first. It was written out to Arlis A. Brockman. Thirty-one thousand two hundred dollars. Dated March first.

She did not touch it. She looked at the lease. Two hundred forty acres. Two hundred sixty dollars an acre. Payable in two installments, March first and December first. A line at the bottom for the landlord, and a line for the tenant.

She read every word. I have never seen anyone read a one-page lease so slowly. The shop was so quiet I could hear the barrel stove tick.

Marlin stood with his cap in his hands. “Marlin,” Mom said, without looking up. “Would you do something for me?”

“Anything.”

“Would you say it plain? In front of these people? What Alford told you?” Marlin swallowed. He looked at his son, and at Burl Coover, and at the floor.

“For nine years I paid Alford Brockman two hundred and ten, and then two hundred and sixty dollars an acre for your ground,” he said, loud enough for the back of the shop. “He told me you had signed it over to him. He told me not to bother you. I did not ask. I should have.”

“And what did he pay me?”

“Ninety,” Marlin said. “Ninety dollars an acre.” Nobody moved. Burl Coover took off his own cap and held it against his chest.

“Well,” Mom said softly. She looked at the pen on the bench, a plain blue ballpoint, the kind that comes in a box of fifty.

Then the side door banged open behind us, with its loud metal latch, and the March sunlight swung across the concrete floor and made a long gold bar of the dust.

Alford stood in the doorway with his keys in his hand. He was wearing a camel-colored jacket I had never seen, and his silver hair was combed back, and his face wore the faint smile of a man arriving at a party he wasn’t sure he’d been invited to.

“Marlin,” he said. “Arlis. Carrie. Well, here’s a gathering.” Nobody answered.

“I got a message that Marlin wanted to see me about something,” Alford said, and the smile began to slide. “Arlis, honey, I did not know you’d be here. What is all this?”