The woman in the navy blazer stood up from the corner table with a sheet of paper in her fingers, torn neatly from a small notebook, and walked to the center of the terrace. She was not a tall woman, but she carried herself like a person who is used to rooms going quiet. Everyone on the terrace seemed to watch her as she crossed, the ice sculpture of two swans melting behind her, the string of white lights shivering in the wind. “My name is Diane Holloway,” she said. “I am the president of Lakeshore Community Bank. My maiden name was Stanek.” She turned to Marcus, who stood at the microphone with his hands loose at his sides. “I believe you have been planting the fields of my father.”
Gary, standing beside the cake with his glass of Johnnie Walker, did not seem to understand. “Your father?” he said. “Mrs. Holloway, I think you must have the wrong…” “Mr. Wozniak,” she said, “I do not have the wrong man. My father is Joseph Stanek, eighty one years old, of County Road 12 in Waterville. He lost his wife in January, and then the river came up in April and drowned every acre he owned. He called me on a Tuesday and said he was going to sell the farm. He said he could not face another spring.” She looked at the notebook page. “Then, the next week, he called again and said, a miracle has happened. The co op has sent a man to plant my fields.”
She smiled, and it was a sad and tender smile. “I run a bank. I know what a co op donation looks like, and I know that no co op has ever planted three hundred acres at night with its own seed. So I made a few calls. The seed dealer in Napoleon told me who had bought forty thousand dollars of soybeans on a credit card. A neighbor told me who had driven a tractor past her window at two in the morning for eleven nights in May.” Her voice wavered. “Your nephew has never told my father the truth, and I never will, because he does not want it known. But I wanted him to hear it from someone, once.”
A page torn from a bankers notebook at an anniversary party showed a boat salesman what his nephew had done for a widower.
I could not look at my son. I could not look at anyone. My eyes were running, and my husband, Tom, put his arm around me, and I felt him shaking. Marcus stood at the microphone with his head down and his boots together, as he used to stand in the office of the principal when he was nine. He cleared his throat. “Mrs. Holloway,” he said, “Mr. Stanek has had enough taken from him. I did not want him to take pity. I only wanted him to have a crop.” She nodded. “He thinks the world of the co op,” she said, “and I will let him go on thinking so. But I am glad to have met you.”
Gary was standing with his glass lowered, the color of old candle wax. He was a handsome man once, a salesman, broad shouldered, with a thick head of silver hair, and tonight he suddenly looked sixty seven years old. “Diane,” he said. “Mrs. Holloway. I think there has been a misunderstanding about the farm. It was a joke. A family joke.” “I know it was a joke, Mr. Wozniak,” said Diane Holloway. “I read the page I wrote to myself during it.” She held up the notebook sheet. “I jotted down one line. Would you like me to read it?” Gary said nothing. “It says: Gary Wozniak, line of credit, four hundred sixty thousand, renewal due November. Character?”
The terrace was silent. “I have a policy,” the banker said, “that I do not decide a renewal on a feeling. I decide on numbers. Your numbers are mediocre, Mr. Wozniak, and have been for two years. The bank has been generous with you because your reputation in the community is for being a friend to the little man.” She tilted her head. “Tonight I discovered that your reputation is for being friendly with the little man when he is making you look good. I will be reviewing the renewal very carefully.”
I will say this for my brother. He stood there under the lights of his own anniversary party, with three hundred and twenty people watching, and for a while he said nothing at all. His wife, Patricia, a gentle woman who has spent twenty five years apologizing for him, took his arm. She whispered something in his ear. He nodded. Then he put his drink down on the cake table, and walked to the microphone, and took it, with a hand that trembled, from my son.
“I owe my nephew an apology,” he said. “I have owed it to him for fifteen years. I mocked him tonight in front of everybody for the work that feeds all of you. I cannot undo it. I can only say that I am sorry, Marcus, and I am ashamed.” His voice broke. “I have sold boats my whole life to men who do not fish. I do not know what a day of real work looks like. Your uncle is a fool.” There was a pause. Then, from the back of the terrace, a farmer in a feed cap shouted, “Hear, hear!” And the whole crowd applauded, wildly, and Marcus, red to the roots of his hair, put his hand out, and his uncle shook it.
Diane Holloway renewed the line of credit in November, with new covenants and a thorough audit, and she made one personal request. Gary was to donate a thousand dollars every month, for a year, to the Waterville flood relief fund. He did it, and then he kept doing it. He drives out to the farms on Saturdays, now, in a pair of borrowed boots, and he carries sacks of seed and holds gates open. He is terrible at it. He drops things.
In April, Marcus planted his own soybeans, and Mr. Stanek planted his, and on the first warm evening, they sat together on the old man porch with two bottles of root beer. The fields stretched away green and wet to the river. Mr. Stanek was telling a long story about the flood of 1969. Marcus listened, and nodded, and every so often said, “Is that right?” At the end, the old man leaned over and patted him on the knee. “You know, son,” he said, “somebody planted my fields last year. I never found out who.” Marcus took a long sip of root beer. “Must have been the co op,” he said.