“Starting today,” Daddy said, “my rent goes straight into my own bank account. Not Darla’s. Mine. I’ll write the number down for you.” Ronnie nodded slowly. “Yes sir.” Then Daddy narrowed his eyes. “Ronnie, has my daughter asked you for anything else?” Ronnie turned his cap around in his hands. He looked at me, then at the corner post, then back at Daddy.
“She asked me last spring if I’d be interested in buying the place,” he said quietly. “Said you’d agreed to sell, since you’d never farm it again. She quoted me a price, Virgil. About half what it’s worth.” Daddy’s knuckles went white on the post. “And what did you tell her?” Ronnie swallowed. “I told her I’d think about it. She said she’d have the papers ready by Christmas.”
Daddy didn’t say a word on the drive home. He just held his hat in his lap. Monday morning, I drove him to the attorney who had drawn up his will thirty years earlier. Daddy revoked Darla’s power of attorney in his own shaky handwriting and named me and the attorney as co-agents. Then the attorney requested Darla’s records. Four years of rent, nearly a hundred and ten thousand dollars, had gone into an account in her name alone.
Darla came to the nursing home that Wednesday, crying before she reached his room. She said she’d been behind on her mortgage and meant to pay it all back. Daddy let her finish. Then he told her she had used his name on a lie, and that the only thing she would sign by Christmas was a repayment agreement. She signed it the following week. Wes drove over with a pie for Daddy that night.
The rent goes into Daddy’s account now, and it covers the gap on his bill with money to spare. The attorney made sure every dollar I had paid over four years came back to me from his account first. Wes and I put it straight into our retirement. Ronnie signed a ten-year lease on the 240 acres instead of buying them. He said he’d never have bought it without Daddy’s handshake anyway.
Every first Sunday, I put Daddy’s brown felt hat on him and drive him out to the farm. Ronnie always meets us at the fence. They talk about beans and rain and cattle prices, and Daddy rests his hand on that old corner post he set in 1958. Darla visits him now too. She brings the rent statement and reads it aloud. Last time, Daddy told her he was proud of her for showing up.
