It was a Saturday afternoon. Derek was in the back office throwing old parts catalogs into a black trash bag. I was at the front counter making a list of Walt’s tools for the estate inventory.
I heard him go quiet.
When I walked into the office, he was standing on a step stool holding the red Folgers can in both hands. The plastic lid was off. He was staring down into it.
It was stuffed so full of folded yellow paper that some of it spilled over the edge.
“Aunt Carol,” he said slowly. “What is this?”
“That’s your dad’s IOU can,” I said. “From the farm crisis. And after.”
He climbed down off the stool. He dumped the whole thing out on Walt’s old metal desk.
Three hundred and eleven little yellow slips of paper. Some of them so old the ink had faded to brown. Some of them signed. Some of them just names and numbers in Walt’s handwriting.
Derek picked one up and read it.
“March 12, 1985. Dale Kruger. Rebuilt transmission, 1979 Ford F-250. $1,140. Signed, Dale Kruger.”
He picked up another one.
“September 3, 1986. Harlan Petersen. Combine repair, header and feeder house. $2,860.”
He kept going. Faster and faster.
“Mom never told me about this,” he said.
“Your mom knew. Everybody knew.”
He pulled out his phone. He started typing numbers into the calculator. I watched him do it. Slip after slip after slip.
It took him almost an hour.
When he finished, he turned the phone around and showed me the screen.
$84,600.
“Aunt Carol,” Derek said. His eyes were bright in a way I didn’t like. “This is real money.”
“It was real money,” I said. “Forty years ago. To people who didn’t have any.”
“Some of these people have plenty of money now.” He held up a slip. “Dale Kruger? Isn’t his son the one who owns Kruger Implement? The John Deere dealership in Spencer and Spirit Lake?”
“Yes.”
“And Harlan Petersen. Didn’t his family just sell their land to a wind farm company?”
“I believe so.”
Derek started sorting the IOUs into piles on Walt’s desk.
I felt something cold settle into my stomach.
“Derek,” I said. “What are you doing?”
“I’m figuring out who can pay,” he said.
I need to tell you something about Derek that he didn’t tell me until much later.
He’d been laid off in January.
The cybersecurity company he worked for in Minneapolis got bought by a bigger company in California. Two hundred people lost their jobs in one Zoom call. Derek was one of them.
He hadn’t told Walt. He was too ashamed.
He had a mortgage on a $640,000 townhouse in Edina. He had $58,000 on credit cards. He had a car payment on that Tesla. His severance had run out in April.
He was drowning.
And he was standing in his dead father’s office holding a coffee can full of money that, in his mind, nobody else was ever going to claim.
I didn’t know any of that then. All I knew was that my nephew’s eyes looked like a man counting chips at a blackjack table.
The next week, Derek called me from Minneapolis.
“Aunt Carol, I talked to a lawyer up here. Guy named Brandon Hale. He does collections.”
I sat down at my kitchen table.
“And?”
“He says a lot of these are probably too old to collect. But some of the more recent ones might still be good. Especially the ones people signed. He says a signed IOU is basically a promissory note.”
“Derek, these are your father’s friends.”
“These are my father’s debtors,” he said. “There’s a difference.”
“Your father never asked one of them for a dime.”
“Well, my father’s not here anymore.” His voice cracked a little when he said it. Then it hardened. “And I am. Brandon’s drafting demand letters. Every name in the can. He says even the ones that are too old to sue on, a lot of people will pay just to make it go away. Especially if they’ve got money now.”
I didn’t argue with him.
I’d watched my brother for seventy-four years. Walt always said, “You can’t talk sense into a man who’s already counting. You’ve got to let him count all the way to the end. Then show him what he missed.”
So instead of arguing, I said, “Derek. Walt’s memorial lunch is the third Saturday in April. At the Legion hall. Everybody in town’s going to be there.”
“So?”
“So bring the can,” I said. “Bring the letters. You can hand them out in person. Save on postage.”
There was a long pause.
“You’re on my side?” he said.
“Bring the can, Derek,” I said.
