The deputy read the paper I pulled from under the porch board, took off his hat, and said, Mrs Combs, that was the day of the mine collapse. My granddaddy was one of the men Lester carried out. And then this big grown man sat down on Lesters front steps and cried.
Under the board by the front door, in an old Prince Albert tobacco can, was not a lease. It was a deed. Signed by the coal companys own president in 1958, for one dollar, to Lester Combs and his heirs, in gratitude for the events of March 12, 1958.
March 12, 1958, was the mine collapse. Lester, who worked those mines thirty-one years, went back into a caving shaft and carried men out on his back, one after another, and the companys president deeded him the land his house sits on, free and clear, out of gratitude, forever.
The coal company that came to evict me claimed they held the surface rights under a 1923 lease and that Lesters house was built by permission. But a deed beats a lease, and a deed signed by their own president in 1958 giving the land to Lester and his heirs ends the argument completely.
They said my husbands house was built on their land by permission. My husband carried their miners out of a collapse on his back, and their own president gave him the ground to thank him.
Lester built our front porch out of the wood from the old company store, and he always said those boards had a story underneath. I thought he meant memories. He meant a deed, in a tobacco can, under the board by the door, waiting sixty-six years for the day the company forgot what it owed him.
The deputy helped me get the deed recorded properly and took a copy to the company himself. The eviction was void. A lease cannot evict the owner of a recorded deed, and the deed had been Lesters, and mine, and our heirs, since 1958.
I still sit on Lesters porch every evening and wave at the cars. The deputy comes by sometimes with a slice of nothing, just to sit on the steps where his granddaddy came home from. We do not talk much. We do not need to. March 12, 1958 said it all.