“You had plenty of time when you were up half the night playing cards. You had time when you were throwing money away too.”
“And when you borrowed under a signed note without even reading it, you weren’t in much of a hurry then either.” Those words hit him harder than shouting would have. So it was worse than I’d imagined.
A few weeks earlier, my father hadn’t just gotten into debt. He’d already signed papers. Most likely he’d clung to one last hope of winning it back, and instead handed them the rope they were using to drag him down.
Now they were tightening that rope. The bald man lifted the paper a little higher, as if he wanted the whole yard to see it. “It’s all right here in black and white. Deadline’s passed.”
“You didn’t pay the money back, so the collateral comes to us. Either you sign the transfer calmly right now, or we do this another way. But one way or another, this gets settled today.”
My father finally looked up at him. There wasn’t a trace of defiance in his eyes. Just the tired, sick look of a man who knew he had nobody to blame but himself.
Still, he was trying to hold onto the last thing he had. “It’s not just land,” he said quietly. “I kept that lot for my son.”
The bald man gave a dismissive little smile. The one in the leather jacket slapped him on the shoulder like he’d just heard a good joke. “For your son?”
“Well, your son isn’t here. But the debt is. And you’re here, so that’s who we’re talking to.” I gripped the strap of my bag so hard my fingers dug into the canvas.
For a moment I saw flashes of childhood. That same lot. A string line stretched where a fence would someday go. Old stakes in the ground. My father hammering them in at dusk after coming home from work.
Back then he used to say there’d be a house there one day. Nothing fancy, just ours. So no matter where life took me, I’d always know I had a place to come back to.
And now a bunch of strangers stood under our apple tree talking about that land like they were splitting up a sack of feed. My father understood that perfectly well too…
