My Great-grandfather Turns 12 Today (8 page)

“The bank?” Aunt Mary asked.

“Easy, Sean,” Uncle Peter said.

“I don’t think it’s good news, Pa,” he said and Uncle Peter nodded.

“No,” Charlie’s dad said, “but it’s something I’ve been half expecting.”

Chapter 12

Bad News

“What is it, Peter?” Aunt Mary asked and she sounded worried.

“Mr. Braxton told us this was coming,” Uncle Peter said. “Remember? He warned us several months ago.”

Aunt Mary nodded.

“First, let me make sure I know what I’m talking about,” he said. He tore open the envelope and quickly read the one-page letter that was inside. “Uh huh,” he said.

“Uh huh, what, Pa?” the oldest boy, Sean, asked.

“Mr. Braxton has sold some of his bank notes to someone else.”

“What?” Pat asked.

“A bank makes loans,” Uncle Peter said, “so people can have money for things like land or a house.”

“Did the bank loan us money for our land and our house?” Charlie asked.

“That’s right,” Uncle Peter said. “That’s called a mortgage. And every month we make a mortgage payment. We pay off a little bit of the loan until we’ve paid off everything. And the bank charges interest on the loan. We pay back more than we borrowed because we’re using the bank’s money. That’s how it makes money.”

“So what did Mr. Braxton do?” Sean asked.

“When a bank needs more money, for whatever reason, sometimes it takes some of those loans and sells them to someone else. Then people like us make our mortgage payment to that someone else.”

“Oh, Peter,” Aunt Mary said, “not . . .?”

Uncle Peter laughed. “Who else?” he said.

“Who?” a bunch of the kids asked.

“Mr. Meyer’s bank now holds the deed to the farm,” Uncle Peter said. “We’ll be making monthly payments to him.”

“Julius Meyer?” asked Brigid, the oldest girl. “The one who used to be Mama’s boyfrrr . . .” She clapped her hand over her mouth.

“Julius T. Meyer,” Uncle Peter said. “One and the same. The very fellow who had such a crush on your mother when she was just a lass.”

“Mr. Meyer was your beau?” Sissie asked.

“Her what?” I whispered to Charlie.

“Boyfriend,” he whispered back.

“He was not my beau,” Aunt Mary said. “He was simply a gentleman caller. On occasion we attended the same dances.”

“And did you dance with him, Mama?” Sissie asked.

“Did she!” Uncle Peter said. “Well, I’ll just say she did. He was quite a dashing fellow, you know. Son of a banker. Finest clothes. A matched team and brand new buggy.”

“So why didn’t you marry him, Mama?” Sissie asked and Aunt Mary blushed.

“She met a farmer,” Uncle Peter said. “Son of a farmer. Old clothes. One mule and a used plow.”

“Who was that?” Sissie asked.

“Papa,” Brigid said. “She met Papa.”

“I fell in love with a farmer,” Aunt Mary said. “A big, strong, handsome man who worked so hard and was so kind and gentle and sweet and I love him still.”

“I hope she means me,” Uncle Peter said and everyone laughed. “And I hope that beautiful woman made bread pudding for dessert because this happens to be the handsome farmer’s son’s birthday.”

“That’s me,” Charlie said. “And it’s Michael’s birthday, too.”

“Is that right, Michael?” Aunt Mary asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

“He’s twelve just like I am,” Charlie said.

“Well, now,” Aunt Mary said, “isn’t that grand?”

We finished dinner and then Aunt Mary left the room and came back with a large cooking dish and set it on the table. It was filled with some kind of chunky glop.

“No cake and candles, huh?” I asked and everyone looked at me.

“Cake and candles?” they asked.

“You know,” I said. “Make a wish and blow out the candles.”

“Blow out what candles?” Pat asked.

“You put little candles in a cake,”  I said. “Then you light them and make a wish and blow them out. And sing ‘Happy Birthday.’”

“Sing what?” Aunt Mary asked.

“Everyone does,” I said. “Everyone in . . .” Charlie gave me a hard kick under the table. He was barefoot but it still hurt.

“Vaudeville,” he said. “Everyone in vaudeville.”

“Sing it,” Pat said.

“No,” I said, “I couldn’t . . .”

“I never heard of anybody in vaudeville who didn’t love to sing,” Uncle Peter said. “Go ahead, Michael. We’d enjoy hearing it.”

So I sang it. Then we all sang it. Then we had the bread pudding. It was okay. It had a lot of sugar in it.

“Pa?” Sean asked while we were finishing up with our dessert. “What does the letter from the banker mean, exactly?”

“It means,” Uncle Peter said, “now we owe the money to Mr. Meyer. We’ll make the monthly mortgage payments to him.”

“But . . .” Aunt Mary began to say something and then she stopped. She looked worried. No, more than worried. She looked scared.

“But,” Uncle Peter said, seeming to read her mind, “we were behind in our payments to Mr. Braxton. He let us fall behind so we could buy seed and other necessities this spring. And when the crop comes in this fall, we would have paid him back.”

“Do you think Julius will . . .?” she asked.

“Let us stay behind in our payments all summer?” he asked. “No, I think he’ll demand all the back money we owe.”

“How much exactly?” Aunt Mary asked.

“One hundred and fifty dollars,” Uncle Peter said and I laughed. Was that all? Everyone looked at me.

“That’s not a lot, is it?” I asked.

“Maybe not if you’re in vaudeville,” Pat said, “but a lot for most folks. A job in town pays three dollars.”

“An hour?” I asked.

“A day,” Charlie said.

“Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry, Uncle Peter. I didn’t know.”

“That’s all right, son,” Uncle Peter said. “According to Mr. Braxton’s letter, the money isn’t due until a week from Monday.”

“A week from Monday!” Aunt Mary exclaimed.

“And if we don’t pay it by then,” he said, “we lose the farm.”

Chapter 13

How to Save the Farm

“We lose the farm!” Aunt Mary said and now she really looked scared.

“If we don’t pay the money,” Uncle Peter said.

“We lose the
whole
farm just because of that money?” Pat asked.

“Those are the terms of the loan agreement,” his father said. “Mr. Braxton was willing to bend the rules a little because he knew we would pay him back in the fall. Apparently, Mr. Meyer isn’t.”

“Oh, that Julius!” Aunt Mary said.

“So,” Uncle Peter said, “the family will just have to make an extra one hundred and fifty dollars in the next ten days.”

“But we can’t . . .” Aunt Mary began.

“But we shall,” Uncle Peter said and laughed. “Come on.”

He led us all outside. By now all the clouds had disappeared and it was starting to warm up.

“It’s beautiful after an early summer rain shower, isn’t it?” he asked. “So fresh and clean.”

“Washes away all the smog,” I said.

“Washes away all the what?” Pat asked.

“Frogs,” Charlie said. “There’s not a frog to be seen.”

We left the small yard, passed a horse tied up to a post, and walked into the barn.

“You have gold hidden away in here, Peter Farrell?” Aunt Mary asked.

“Better than gold,” he said, taking a step up a ladder made of 2-by-4’s that had been nailed to one wall. “I have walnut.”

He easily climbed up the ladder and disappeared through a square hole in the ceiling. “Come on,” he shouted back down to us. “I can’t believe I’ve been able to keep this a secret.”

Sean clambered up the ladder, then Charlie, then the rest of us, even little Francis who was only about two years old.

“Papa?” the tot called out, as his mom helped him up the wooden rungs. “Papa?”

“Come on up, Frank,” his dad answered. “See what Papa’s got.”

The second floor of the barn was about three-fourths the size of the main floor. It was a loft, stored with hay and small farm equipment.

“Watch the edge, children,” Aunt Mary said, pointing to one side that was open to the ground floor.

“That’s so you can throw hay down to the animals, huh?” I asked Charlie and he nodded.

It was pretty dark up there until Uncle Peter lit a kerosene lantern. That helped some. “Back here,” he said, handing the lantern to Sean. He pulled away an old tarp and there was the most beautiful piece of furniture I had ever seen.

“Peter, what . . .?” Aunt Mary started to say.

“A sideboard,” Uncle Peter said. “I’m making it with lumber we had cut from that old walnut tree that blew down three years ago.”

“The walnut?” Aunt Mary said. “But you were saving that wood for something special.”

“This is special,” he said. “It’s being specially made for the Widow Dixon.”

“The old rich lady?” Charlie asked.

“Elderly,” his mother said.

“The very same,” said Uncle Peter. “She has a dining room set of the finest walnut. It’s been in her family for years but somewhere along the line the sideboard was lost or misplaced or stolen or ruined. In any case, she’s asked me to make her a new one.”

“What’s a sideboard?” I whispered to Charlie.

“What?” Uncle Peter asked.

“He said ‘What’s a sideboard?’,” Sissie answered.

“A sideboard is a cabinet for the dining room,” he told me. “For the finest dishes and sterling silver.”

“It’s beautiful,” Aunt Mary said. “It’s so beautiful.”

She was right. It was about eight feet long and two and a half feet wide. The top of it stood about four feet off the ground. There were three long drawers in the center and open shelves at each end.

“These will be covered,” Uncle Peter said as he pointed at the shelves. “I’m just finishing the second door.”

He bent down and picked up a piece of wood that was leaning against the side of the sideboard. It was two feet wide and would cover the shelves completely. There was an intricate design—three pine cones and the branch of a pine tree—carved into the center of it. It matched the carving that had been done on the front of each of the drawers.

“This was the hard part,” he said. “The drawers and this door are all done and I’m just about done with the other door. But by a week from Monday it will be all stained and varnished and polished and ready for delivery. Cash on delivery.”

I wondered how much.

“How much?” Sean asked, speaking for all of us.

“You’ve been working on this for months,” Aunt Mary said. “All those afternoons when you said you were out here fixing a harness or tinkering with a wagon’s axle or . . . or . . .”