I slid the little green notebook out of my purse and opened it to the last page. The paper was soft from forty years of living in a shirt pocket, and the pencil lines were faint but steady, in the square hand of my husband that I would know anywhere. “Ruthie,” my sister said again, “what does it say?” I cleared my throat. The chicken and dumplings were going cold on the stove, and the clock in the hall chimed four. “It is dated the second of March, the year before he passed,” I said. “It says, Ruth, if you are reading this, then Wade has probably done something. I hoped I was wrong. I am not often wrong about people.”
I read on in a voice that shook. “Wade is a talker, and he has a good heart that has never been given a job to do. He took eight hundred dollars out of the register at the shop in 2009, and I let it lie, because he cried. I think he has been waiting for somebody to catch him ever since. When he comes to you in my name for money, do not give it. Be hard on the deed, Ruth, and soft on the boy. There is a letter for him in the shop safe. The combination is our wedding date.” I closed the notebook. Wade had gone the color of the tablecloth. His Bible lay on the table in front of him like an exhibit.
“He wrote about me?” Wade whispered. “Uncle Bill knew?” “He knew everything, Wade,” I said. “He kept a notebook for forty years because he believed that the truth is easier to carry when it is written down.” My sister put her hand over her mouth. She is a proud woman, and I have never in my life seen her cry in front of anyone. “Wade,” she said through her fingers. “Mrs. Dobbs is eighty five. She sold her late husband watch to give you twenty dollars.” Wade covered his face with both hands. “I know,” he said. “I know she did. I have thought about that watch every single night.”
A last page in a green notebook read aloud at a Sunday supper showed a nephew what his uncle had known all along.
I let him cry for a while. There is no use in speaking to a man while he is still wrapping his mind around himself. Then I got up, went to the stove, turned off the burner, and set a bowl of dumplings in front of him. “Eat,” I said. “Then listen.” He lifted the spoon like a boy of ten.
I told him what I knew, which was a great deal. The casino in Tunica had a record of every one of his visits. Nine thousand, two hundred dollars of the money given by my Sunday school class had been lost at a blackjack table by the second week of March. And Brother Carl had telephoned the sheriff on Friday, on his own, because the story did not sit right with his conscience.
“Aunt Ruth,” Wade said, in a small cracked voice, “you are going to send me to prison.” “No,” I said. “I am going to send you to Sunday school.” He looked up. I took a folded paper from my purse and laid it beside his bowl. “Tomorrow morning at nine, you will stand up in front of the Dobbs class, and you will tell them every word of the truth. You will not make excuses. You will not use your voice. You will just say what you did. And then you will begin paying back every dollar, out of your wages, to every person who gave, starting with Mrs. Dobbs.” I could see him thinking about it, the humiliation. I let him think.
Wade did it. I want to be fair to him. He stood in the back room of the church on Monday morning in a borrowed tie, with his hands shaking so hard that the paper in them rattled, and he told eleven retired schoolteachers and three widows and the man who drives the school bus that he had stolen from them. Nobody spoke. Then Mrs. Dobbs, small as a sparrow in her wheelchair, said clearly, “Young man, that was the hardest thing you ever did, and I am proud of you for it.” Wade sat down on a folding chair and wept. The whole class got up and gathered around him, and one old man patted his back like a drum.
I paid the class back the full nine thousand, two hundred dollars myself that same afternoon, out of the timber money, which I had never told anyone about until that day. Four million dollars is a hard thing to hold when the people you love are counting. But I decided, standing in the church parking lot with the checkbook, that it was not enough to be careful with my husband money. I had to be generous with it. Wade signed a note to repay me, at one hundred dollars a month, with no interest, and Sheriff Perkins let it be known that he considered the matter closed.
In the shop safe was a single envelope with the name of Wade written on it in pencil. I gave it to him without opening it. He read it standing in the back office of the old tire shop, with the smell of rubber and oil around him, and when he finished he folded it very small and put it in his shirt pocket, where my husband used to keep his notebook. He never told me what it said. But the next week he took a job at the tire store on Gloster Street, changing tires, and he showed up at seven every morning in a clean uniform with his name stitched on the pocket.
In September the church dedicated a new fellowship hall, which I had paid for in full, and I asked that it be named for no one. The pastor insisted on a plaque anyway. It says, in plain brass letters, For Bill, who wrote everything down. At the ribbon cutting, my sister stood beside me holding my arm, and Wade handed out programs at the door in his good suit. When Mrs. Dobbs rolled past he bent and kissed her cheek, and she patted his face and said, “The Lord is not through with you yet, honey.” I think she is right.