It took three weeks to work out what we agreed on, and a lot of coffee. We met at Mr. Haskins’s desk, then at my kitchen table, and once in the cab of Dale’s rented Ford during a rainstorm, parked at the gate.
I didn’t sell him the strip. I want to be clear about that. It was the first thing I told him.
“I’m not selling it, Dale. Not for any price.”
“I’d pay. Whatever you want.”
“It’s not about the money.”
He stared at me with wide, tired, confused eyes. “Then what is it about?”
“Dad wanted the strip held. Not spent. Held.” I folded my hands. “Here’s what I’d like to do. I keep the strip. It stays in my name. But I grant a permanent, recorded easement, for access through the gate and along the lane, for the well and the water lines, and for the drainage tile. It goes on record with the Register of Deeds. It belongs to the farm itself, not to any one person. Whoever owns the Dekker ground, now or a hundred years from now, gets to use the gate, drink from the well, and drain through the main.”
He sat very still.
“Forever?”
“Forever. You. Whoever comes after you. Whoever buys it, if you sell.”
“But then you’d be giving up…”
“I’d be keeping the gate,” I said. “I’d just be promising to leave it open.”
“And what do you get?”
“The strip can never be sold separately from the farm, or developed, or subdivided. When I die, it goes into a trust with Mr. Haskins’s firm as trustee, so it stays with the land.” I looked at him. “And you take care of the tile. You keep the main clean. You maintain the gate and the culverts. You pay to repair the well when it needs it. Those are the conditions. You learn the farm.”
He was quiet for a long time.
“And the back eighty?”
“Sell it if you want to. With the easement recorded, a buyer will pay full price, because the access runs with the land. A bank will lend on it. A title company will insure it.”
Mr. Haskins drafted it. Dale’s lawyer in Omaha reviewed it and called Dale back after an hour.
“He said it’s the best deal he’s ever seen a landlocked owner get,” Dale told me. “He said, ‘Mr. Dekker, your sister could have bled you dry. Sign it before she changes her mind.'”
“I won’t change my mind,” I said.
“I know you won’t,” Dale said. “That’s what scares me.”
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