The supervisor at the highway department read the second page I laid on his counter, the one stapled behind the 1970 easement, and then he read it again, and then he said, Mrs Mathis, whoever handled this left out a page. The state cannot run the bypass through the middle of your grove. Your husband saw to that.
Elmer did sign an easement in 1970. But he did not sign away his grove. Stapled to it, in his own hand, with a state engineers signature, was a condition underlined twice. The right-of-way was granted along the eastern boundary of the property only, and any state roadway was to follow that boundary line, never the interior. Elmer gave them the edge of his land and protected every tree in the middle.
The bypass the highway man wanted ran straight down the center, right through pecans that are taller than the water tower now. That violated Elmers condition plain as day, and a signed condition from a state engineer is binding on the state that signed it.
He told me Elmer never signed anything without telling me. He was right. Elmer told me, he just did it in 1970 and let me find the telling fifty-four years later.
The department went back to their maps. The bypass can follow the eastern boundary, the way Elmer wrote it, which costs them some engineering and costs my grove nothing. The orange flags came out of the middle of the trees.
My grandson still sells our pecans out of the back of Elmers truck at the farmers market every November. The trees Elmer planted as saplings are still standing, all forty acres of them.
That highway man smiled at me in the driveway, in my Sunday hat, so sure a widow would not know what her husband signed. Elmer knew somebody would come in a nice truck one day and smile like that. So he underlined it twice.