“…It was against your farm, Mama,” Becky said, and she pressed the envelope into my hands on the dark porch, in the cool Hill Country night, with the fiddle music still floating over from the barn. I did not open it. I only held it, the way you hold a letter from a doctor, and looked out across the live oaks. A coyote called somewhere. Becky was crying quietly, her blue dress wrinkled, her hair coming down from its pins. She said, “He used your signature. Last year. He told me it was for the insurance. I did not read it. Oh Mama, I did not read it.”
I opened the envelope under the porch light. It was a deed of trust, recorded in Taylor County, in the name of a private lender called Sutter Capital, on my farm of one hundred and sixty acres, my home of fifty two years. Lance had signed it as my agent, under a power of attorney that I had never given. The amount was ninety thousand dollars. The interest rate was something I would have called, in my feed store days, highway robbery. The date was eleven months ago. I read it all the way to the end, without a word, while Becky waited.
When I looked up, I was smiling, and it frightened her. “Mama?” she said. I patted her knee. I told her I had known about it since February. I had gone to town for a new battery, and the clerk at the county courthouse, a girl I once gave a job to, had mentioned that a deed of trust had been recorded on my place. I had said thank you and driven straight to Mr. Tolliver, who handled Earl estate. “Honey,” I said, “I have been waiting to see what Lance would do with it. And what you would do when you found out.”
A paper cup of black coffee, a forged signature on a deed, and a note that was quietly bought in March.
Mr. Tolliver had been wonderful. He read the document twice, then called Sutter Capital, a two man outfit in Lubbock, and told them politely that the power of attorney was a forgery. They were frightened, because they had made the loan on a forged paper, and they were willing to settle quickly. I had bought the note from them in March at a discount. Ninety thousand dollars face value, sixty one thousand dollars paid, with the lien released. Lance had no idea. For three months, every payment he made on that loan, he had been making to me.
Becky stared at me. “You bought his debt,” she said. “Mama, you own his loan.” I said, “I own the note, and I have thrown the lien in the stove.” I felt almost sorry for the look on her face. Then she laughed, a high, shaky, helpless laugh, with her hands over her mouth, and I laughed too, two women on a porch in the dark in fancy dresses. When we could breathe again she asked what I planned to do. I said I planned to go back in, have a piece of cake, and dance with my granddaughter.
I did. Kaylee swung me around the floor to a Bob Wills tune, her veil flying, while a hundred and fifty guests cheered. The groom, a kind young man named Mateo with a firm handshake, pressed a glass of champagne into my hand. Lance sat at the head table with his arms crossed, sulking, watching a cup of black coffee being refilled for me by a barn waiter, again and again, without charge. At ten o clock he caught my eye across the room. I raised my cup. He looked away.
On Monday morning, in Mr. Tolliver office, I sat across from my son in law with a folder on the desk. Lance had been summoned. He wore a golf shirt and looked at his shoes. I laid the note in front of him, and the forged power of attorney, and the lender settlement. I told him that he owed me ninety thousand dollars and a considerable amount of explanation. I told him I could take him to court and he would very likely lose his license to sell insurance. He went the color of cheese. “Opal,” he said, “please. I will do anything.”
I had thought about this for months. I told him what I wanted. He would cancel the note by working it off, in plain monthly payments to Becky and Kaylee, not to me. He would attend financial counseling with Becky every month for two years. He would put his wife name on every account he had ever hidden from her. And he would, every single morning, bring me a cup of coffee at the farm, whatever the price, and ask me one question about my day. He looked at me, speechless. “Lance,” I said, “you have never asked me a single question in twenty six years.”
It was a hard first month. He came at seven every morning, red eyed and stiff, in his good shoes, and handed me a paper cup over the porch rail. He asked whether I had slept well. He asked about the weather and the cattle. By the second month he was asking about Earl, and listening to the answers. By the fourth, he was washing the cup. In April he stayed for breakfast. I never told him I had already planned to forgive the note in full. A person has to earn the forgiveness before he can recognize it, and I was in no hurry.
This morning the cup was warm, and black, and the sticker on the bottom said three dollars and seventeen cents. Lance had kept the receipt. He put it in my hand. “Opal,” he said, in a voice I had not heard before, “I would like to buy you another one.” We sat on the porch for an hour, watching the light come up over the pasture. Kaylee is expecting in June. They plan to name the baby Earl, if it is a boy, and Opal Jean, if it is a girl. I said that was too much. Lance only smiled, and refilled my cup.