“…before the recorder closes at four thirty,” I told Eli through the open window of my car, and I put the old Buick into gear and pulled out of the lane in a cloud of dust. The brown envelope lay on the passenger seat beside my purse, with my father signature on it, and my brother signature, and the shaky signatures of two witnesses. It was a quarter past two. The county recorder office in Wooster was twenty two miles away, and I am seventy eight years old and have not driven faster than fifty five since 1994. I drove sixty three the whole way, with both hands on the wheel.
I made it with eleven minutes to spare. The recorder office was a long bright room with a counter and a clerk named Mr. Hartzler, a young man with a bow tie and the gentle, careful voice of a person who spends his days among old books. I put the paper on the counter. He read it twice. Then he asked if I would like to see the record book for the north forty, and I said yes, and he went into the back, and I stood at the counter with my hands folded and my heart knocking against my ribs.
He returned with a heavy ledger, bound in green cloth, and laid it open to a page from 1981. There, in faded ink, was an entry, and it said, in a clerk neat hand: Memorandum of agreement, Gerber to Gerber, north forty acres with dwelling and cider barn, filed Sept. 14, 1981. Recorded. I stared at it. My father had not only written the promise down. He had walked it into the courthouse three days after he signed it, and no one had told me, not even Eli. I put my hand on the page, and my eyes filled with tears.
A recorded memorandum from 1981, a drive to Wooster with eleven minutes to spare, and a golden stream of cider from an oak barrel.
Mr. Hartzler made me a certified copy. He stamped it, and signed it, and asked whether I had an attorney. I said I did not. He wrote down the name of a woman in Wooster, Ms. Yoder, a young lawyer who handled land cases, and he telephoned her himself, from the counter. She said she would stay late. I drove to her office in the lowering light and showed her the copies. She read them in silence, and then she looked up, and I saw that she was fighting a smile. “Mrs. Gerber,” she said, “your nephews have sold land they do not own.”
She explained it plainly. The developer title company had searched the records for the orchard but had missed the memorandum, which was filed under the name of the grantor, not the property. That was an old error, common in the county. The sale was scheduled to close in six days. Ms. Yoder said that if the memorandum were presented to the title company before closing, the north forty, the house, and the cider barn would be carved out of the deal. The developer would still have the rest. But Kyle and Brandon would receive far less than the one point seven million.
She telephoned Kyle that evening, on speaker, with me in the room. He was irritated, and then incredulous, and then silent. He said it must be a forgery. Ms. Yoder said that it was a recorded instrument, that his grandfather and his own father had both signed, and that the courthouse would be happy to show him the book. She said, politely, that she was going to deliver it to the developer attorney in the morning, and that if he wished to avoid a lawsuit, he should come to her office before nine.
Both nephews came. Kyle and Brandon sat in Ms. Yoder office in their expensive coats, looking like boys sent to the principal, and she showed them the memorandum, and the ledger page, and my father handwriting. Kyle read it three times. Brandon, who was younger, put his hand to his forehead. I watched them. I had not seen them since Paul service. They were big, soft, handsome men, with their grandfather jaw, and neither of them had ever picked an apple. Brandon looked at me and said, in a cracked voice, “Aunt Ruth, we did not know.”
I told them I believed that. I told them I did not wish to throw them out into the cold, and that the orchard was larger than the north forty, and that their share of the developer money, though smaller now, was still more than most families see in a lifetime. I proposed an arrangement. The developer would buy the southern two thirds of the orchard, as planned. I would keep the north forty, the house, and the cider barn. And the nephews would spend one weekend each autumn, for as long as I lived, picking apples with me.
They looked at each other. Kyle began to laugh, a short, helpless laugh, and said, “Aunt Ruth, I think that might be the best deal anybody has offered me this year.” They signed. The closing, six days later, went through with the revised boundary. The developer, a pleasant man from Columbus, shook my hand in the parking lot and told me he had always wanted to own a cider barn, and that if I ever wished to sell, he would be first in line. I told him he could stand in line behind Eli Hostetler.
That October, on the first crisp Saturday, I opened the barn doors and turned on the old press. Eli stood beside me, ninety years old, in his black Mennonite hat, with a jar of apple butter under one arm. Kyle and Brandon fed the apples into the hopper, wearing borrowed gloves, grinning like children. The cider ran golden into the oak barrel. I took a tin cup, dipped it, and tasted. It was sweet and sharp and cold. It tasted like 1947. I raised the cup toward the sky, and I said, quietly, “Thank you, Daddy.”