I told Kelly that if Trevors father is still the president of that bank in Billings, then he knows exactly what he signed. And he did.
The inspection sign-off was a real county form, required for a deck. It was also, in the paragraph above the line, an acknowledgment of the contract and the unpaid balance, the foundation of a mechanics lien. Trevor signed it. His father signed as a witness.
A county inspector came the next morning and put a red sticker on the deck, because the sign-off showed the job accepted but the contractor unpaid, which flags it. Then the inspector asked to speak with the witness. Alone. Out on the deck.
Trevors father is a bank president. He has signed and witnessed ten thousand documents. He understood in about four seconds that he had witnessed his own sons acknowledgment of a debt he was trying to dodge, that a lien would follow, and that his sons character was now a matter of county record with his name on it as witness.
Trevor told me carpentry is a hobby, not a career, and that at my age I should be grateful I still have something to do. His own father, a banker, knew the difference between a hobby and a lien.
Trevors father came inside, would not look at his son, and started packing. Before he left, he paid me the eight thousand four hundred dollars himself, for materials on a deck I built by hand over six weeks, and told me he was ashamed, and that Kelly deserved better, and that he would see to it.
Trevor would not come out of the bedroom. A man does not enjoy being out-classed by a retired carpenter and corrected by his own father in one morning.
I am sixty-eight. My knees are shot and my hands still work. I built that deck, cedar from the mill in Bonner, built-in benches, a pergola, solid as concrete and level to the laser. It is paid for now, in full, by a bank president who knows a real career when he witnesses one. Kelly and I are fine. Trevor and I have an understanding. It involves him paying his bills.