The Ground Uncle Rented for Ninety

He looked at the bench. At the checks. At the lease. I saw him do the arithmetic in about two seconds, and it was a dreadful thing to watch, because I saw the exact moment he understood that every person in the shop already knew the answer.

“Now,” he said. “Arlis. Let me explain.” My mother did not look at him. She picked up the pen.

“You’ve had since November, Alford,” she said. “You called me six times. I was at my kitchen table every time.”

“Arlis, there’s more to it than a few numbers on a page.”

“I’m sure there is.”

“Somebody had to find a tenant.” His voice rose, a little. “Somebody had to do the work. Do you know how much running around that was? The phone calls, the arranging? You were grieving, Arlis. You couldn’t have handled it. I took it off your hands.”

“You did the work of finding him,” my mother said.

“I did. I did, and nobody ever thanked me.”

“Alford.” She turned then, with the pen in her hand, and looked at him. “That ground was already found. Roy found it. He found it in nineteen seventy-five, with his own two hands, and he planted it every spring for forty-one years.”

Alford opened his mouth. “Forty thousand eight hundred dollars last year alone,” my mother said. “I did the sum last November, at my own kitchen table. I kept your brother’s books for forty-one years, Alford. I just stopped checking yours.”

She bent over the bench. In a steady, schoolteacher’s hand, she signed her name on the landlord’s line. Arlis Joan Brockman. The M took a long, strong stroke, and the W after it a longer one, and when she had made the last letter she set the pen down very gently, the way you set down a spoon.

Verlene Haugen made a small sound in her throat. “Thank you, Marlin,” Mom said. “I’ll take my coffee now, if it’s still warm.”

Alford stood in the doorway a moment longer. I saw his hand tighten on the keys. I saw him look around the shop for one face that would take his side, and I saw him find Burl Coover, who sat next to Alford at the Lions Club every second Tuesday for twenty years.

Burl put his cap back on his head and looked at the welded gate. That was all. He did not say a word. But he turned his shoulder, and every man in that shop saw it.

“I’ll be at the office,” Alford said, to nobody. “If anyone wants to talk about it like adults.” He went out. The latch clanked. His truck started in the yard, and it backed too fast, and the gravel crackled under it, and then it was gone down the lane.

My mother sat back down on the steel stool by the stove. Her hands were shaking. I took them in mine. They were as cold as the morning.

“Carrie,” she said, very low.

“I’m here.”

“Did I do it right?”

“You did it perfectly.”

“I thought I might say something unkind.” She laughed, a thin, damp little laugh. “I had it all planned. I had an unkind thing for him. And then I looked at him standing there, and I thought, he’s an old man in a camel jacket, and he’s lost his brother.”