The woman who walked through my office door was sixty two years old, in a blue cardigan and sensible shoes, with a worn leather purse over her arm and a face that had cried a great deal in the last week. I am Earl Ray Dunlap, seventy two, president of Volunteer Community Bank, and I rose from my granddaddy oak desk to greet her. “Tanner, Brooklyn, this is Janet Prescott,” I said evenly. “She telephoned me yesterday afternoon. She is the mother of this young man, and she has something to say about page nine of his application.”
Janet Prescott sat in the third chair without looking at her son. She opened the loan file in her lap and pointed to a signature at the bottom of page nine, where a guarantor was listed. It read Janet L. Prescott, in blue ink, with a flourish on the J. “Mr. Dunlap,” she said, in a steady voice, “I never signed this. I am a retired school nurse. I do not guarantee loans. And the two hundred thousand dollars that Tanner told you he borrowed from his father in law is not from his father in law. It is from my retirement account.”
The wife of Tanner, Brooklyn, in the big sunglasses, turned to her husband. “You told me your mother gave you that money,” she whispered. Tanner opened his mouth, and I saw that he could not make a sound. His mother continued, in the soft way of women who have spent forty years calming sick children. She had learned of the withdrawal when the brokerage sent a statement. She had called her son six times, and he had not returned a call. She had driven to his house twice and found the curtains drawn, and she had sat in her car in the driveway for an hour each time, praying. Yesterday, she had called the bank.
A loan file with one forged signature gave one bank president the length of a breakfast to bring a young couple back to the truth in Maryville.
I gave my terms across the oak desk, folding my reading glasses. “Young man, I do not decline a loan because of how a man treats me at breakfast. I decline it because of page nine. A forged guarantee is a felony in the state of Tennessee. I will not report it, today, on three conditions. You will return every penny to your mother by the end of the month. You will apologize to a girl named Kaylee at the Cracker Barrel. And you will work Saturdays on my farm until I say otherwise.”
Tanner slumped forward in his chair and covered his eyes. “Mr. Dunlap, I had nothing left,” he said, in a cracked voice. “Brooklyn wanted the studio, and I wanted her to be proud, and I had already spent the money on the lease and the equipment. The business was failing before it opened. I signed the name of my mother because I knew she would say no, and I thought I could repay it before anyone noticed.” He wept. “I talked about you at breakfast like you were nothing, and you are the only person who has not thrown me out.”
But Brooklyn was not a woman to accept such terms. She suddenly leaned over the desk, snatched the loan file out of the lap of Janet Prescott, jumped up, and ran for the office door, her heels slipping on the polished floor, meaning to reach the elevator and destroy the page. She flung the door wide. Brenda, my assistant, stood in the doorway. Behind her stood Hank, the bank guard, a retired Marine. And in the lobby, holding an apple pie, stood Kaylee, the girl from the Cracker Barrel.
Brooklyn stopped in the doorway of the office with the file crushed against her white coat and three people in front of her, the morning sun pouring through the tall bank windows, the whole lobby of tellers watching. Kaylee stepped forward holding a paper bag. “Mr. Dunlap, you left your hat on the bench, and I wanted to give it back,” she said, trembling. “I am sorry if I am in the way.” Brooklyn stared at the girl she had insulted. Her face crumpled. She handed the file to Brenda and sat on the lobby bench.
The consequences were just. Tanner repaid his mother in full, by selling the studio equipment and taking a job at a hardware store. He drove to the Cracker Barrel on a Tuesday morning and apologized to Kaylee and to me, in front of the checkers board. Brooklyn left him for a time, and then returned, humbled, to marry him a second time, in a courthouse, with Janet in the front row. And on Saturday mornings, in work boots, Tanner mucked out my stalls and fed my cattle without a word of complaint, and by the end of the first winter he could name every cow on the place.
In the name of my granddaddy, who founded the bank in 1931, I started the Dunlap Family Fund. It pays for small business loans and financial classes for farm families and young entrepreneurs and for scholarships in agriculture and banking, in Blount, Knox and Sevier counties. In the first year we made forty one small loans and taught eight hundred students. One was a twenty four year old beekeeper from Townsend who walked out of the bank with her first approved loan in her hand, and kissed it.
On a cool Tuesday morning in October, I sat at the counter of the Cracker Barrel on Alcoa Highway in my Carhartt jacket and my muddy boots, eating eggs. Tanner sat on the stool beside me, in his own clean jeans, with red clay on his boots. Kaylee refilled my coffee and poured one for him. When she walked away, he leaned over and whispered, “Mr. Dunlap, I smell like a feed store.” I told him it was the finest smell in the world, and we clinked our cups while the whole restaurant smelled of biscuits, hickory smoke and Tuesday.