My granddaughter read the second deed out loud at the kitchen table, and when she got to the last paragraph she stopped, looked up at me, and said, Grandpa. Aunt Nita revoked the timber deed. In 1989. A judge signed it. Those pines are safe.
In 1988, Juanitas sister signed a timber deed on our forty acres, the one the paper mill waved at me as still valid. But she regretted it almost at once, and she did what too few people ever do. She fixed her mistake.
Her letter, folded in a little velvet pouch under the pincushion in Juanitas sewing basket, said it in her own hand. Nita, I signed something I should not have, and I fixed it. Behind the letter was a second deed, a revocation, taken before a judge in 1989 and stamped, canceling the 1988 timber deed entirely.
The paper mill either never checked for a revocation or hoped a grieving eighty-four year old man would not know to look. A canceled deed cuts no timber, recorded or not, and the 1989 revocation with a judges stamp ended their claim.
They came for eleven little longleaf pines, one for each grandbaby, planted in a row by the creek. Juanitas sister made sure, thirty-five years ago, that nobody ever could.
Juanita always said the important papers were in her sewing basket, and I always laughed at her. I am not laughing now. That little velvet pouch held the one thing that saved the trees she planted for our grandchildren.
I took the revocation to a lawyer, who confirmed it was valid and binding. The mill will not be cutting this winter, not along our creek, not the young trees with the wooden markers, not any of it.
There are eleven longleaf pines by the creek, one for each grandchild, with a wooden marker and a name by every one. They will grow tall and slow the way longleaf do, for a hundred years maybe, because a woman who made a mistake in 1988 had the decency to set it right in 1989, and my Juanita kept the proof under her pincushion for the day it would matter.