Nate had come to the kitchen doorway.
He was standing there with his cap in his hand.
“Bring your light, Nathan,” Opal said. “Hold it here.”
He put his headlamp up to the door frame where her thumb was.
There were pencil marks in the varnish.
A whole ladder of them. Short level lines, one above another. Each one with a date next to it in a man’s square printing.
I’d scrubbed right past them a dozen times. I thought they were scratches.
Nate read them out loud. His voice wasn’t steady.
“Opal, six years, 1943.”
He moved the light up.
“Opal, nine years. Opal, twelve.”
He moved the light down. Near the bottom. There was one more line. Lower than all the others. In a different handwriting. A woman’s.
“Ronnie,” Nate read. “Four years. 1960.”
“I made that one,” Opal said. “The next year, we were gone.”
She told the whole story standing up. She wouldn’t sit down until it was told.
Her father died in 1957. He left the farm to her and her husband, Walt Schafer. Nate’s grandfather. A hundred and sixty acres and this house.
Walt was a hard worker. He wanted to do better than his father-in-law had done. He borrowed against the farm for a new tractor and a hog building.
Then came two bad years. One right behind the other. A sickness went through the hogs. And the bank called the note.
“They sold it right on the courthouse steps,” Opal said. “The same steps you two stood on.”
She looked out the kitchen window.
“Walt stood out there in the yard the week after, while they auctioned off all the machinery. I stood right here in this kitchen so I wouldn’t have to watch. And Ronald was five years old. He stood out there holding his father’s hand the entire time.”
She pointed at the window.
“I could see the two of them. Right through that glass.”
“Dad never said a thing,” Nate said. “Not one time. We drove past this house every single Sunday of my life on the way to Aunt Carol’s.”
“Your father has not turned his head toward this house since he was five years old,” Opal said. “Watch him sometime. He looks at the other side of the road. Walt did the same until the day he died.”
She shook her head slowly.
“They decided it was a shame. And they buried it. And I let them. Because back then, a man’s pride was about all he had left.”
Sophia Rivers is an experienced News Content Editor with a sharp eye for detail and a passion for delivering accurate and engaging news stories. At TheArchivists, she specializes in curating, editing, and presenting news content that informs and resonates with a global audience.
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