Part 3 — The Appraised Number
The second tape began with a long squeak, a thump, and Pappaw clearing his throat the way he always did before a tune.
“Three hundred ninety thousand dollars, Hollis. That is what the whole forty acres came to in 2019, and I paid a man from Greeneville forty dollars to say so in writing.”
“One eleventh of that is thirty-five thousand, four hundred and fifty-four dollars. That is a fair price for Randalls share. Not a dime more, no matter what the developer whispers in his ear.”
Randalls lawyer wrote the number down, even though he did not look pleased to do it.
The judge, a gray-haired woman with half-glasses, asked whether there was an appraisal. I pulled a plain brown envelope out of the banjo case, and she read it right there from the bench.
It was dated 2019, signed and sealed. The number was exact.
“Pappaw also says,” the judge read aloud, smiling a little, “that the other ten heirs may pool their money and buy Randall out, and that the court is welcome to hold the funds until it is done.”
Pappaw had spent ninety-one years learning that the surest way to keep a family together was to write the plan down in pencil and trust the people in it.
Vernell stood up from the second row in her church dress. She had come in her housecoat to the porch that day, and she had thought about it for months.
She said, to the whole courtroom, that she had been wrong to tell me to let the land go. She put five thousand dollars on the table in front of the clerk. Then a cousin put down three thousand. Then another.
The judge declared a recess and let the cousins gather in the hallway. In forty minutes they had raised the full thirty-five thousand, four hundred fifty-four dollars, with seven cousins pitching in and me adding the last of my mill pension savings.
Randall took the check from the clerk. He stood very still, a man in a clean vest with nothing left to say.
He finally asked what Pappaw had left on the tape for him. I told him I did not know, because it was still playing.
We stood in the courthouse hallway and let it run. At the very end, Pappaw said, “Randall, I never held a thing against you. I only held on to the land. Come to the porch some evening and I will show you how to play Shady Grove.”
Randall wiped his eyes and said the words I had waited for all spring. He was sorry.
The deed was recorded in the names of the ten of us in June. A week later the whole family met on the porch with covered dishes and a fiddle player from church.
I hung the banjo back on its nail and played it badly, the same old tune, until the light went. Then I stopped in the middle, the way he always did.
“That is all the tune I have today,” I told the porch. “Tomorrow has another.”