Derek set the letter down on the podium very carefully.
He looked down at the red coffee can. Then out at the room. Two hundred faces looking back at him.
Dale Kruger, 84, sitting with his son, the John Deere dealer.
Harlan Petersen’s two boys, gray-haired now, who skipped their deer hunt in 1986.
Hank Sorensen, standing right in front of him, leaning on his cane.
“I didn’t know,” Derek said into the microphone. His voice cracked. “I swear to God, I didn’t know.”
“Course you didn’t,” Hank said gently. “Your dad never told a soul. That was Walt. He’d have rather died than have anybody think he was keeping score.”
Derek looked down at the manila folder in his hand. The stack of demand letters from his attorney in Minneapolis.
“I was going to send these to all of you,” he said.
“We know, son,” Hank said. “Word gets around.”
Derek closed his eyes.
Then he looked at me. I stood up from the front table and walked up beside him at the podium. I took the microphone.
“I’m Carol Lindquist,” I said. “Most of you know me. I’m Walt’s sister. And I’m the executor of his estate.”
I turned to Derek.
“Honey, I need you to understand something. Those IOUs in that can belong to your dad’s estate. Not to you. Not yet. The estate’s still open. I’m the one who decides what happens to them.”
Derek stared at me.
“Margaret Haugen explained it all to me,” I said. “And the law in Iowa says nobody can collect on a written IOU after ten years anyway. Nearly every slip of paper in that can is more than ten years old.”
I took a breath.
“But that doesn’t matter,” I said. “Because your father already decided. In writing. On Thanksgiving Day, 1986. Every IOU in that can was paid in full.”
I turned to the room.
“As the executor of Walter Becker’s estate,” I said, “I’m honoring my brother’s wishes. Every debt in that coffee can is forgiven. All three hundred and eleven of them. Forever. Margaret’s drawing up the paperwork Monday morning, and I’ll file it with the Clay County court myself.”
The room didn’t make a sound for a second.
Then Dale Kruger stood up. Then his son. Then the Petersen boys.
Then the whole room.
They weren’t clapping. They were just standing. Two hundred people on their feet in the Legion hall, for my brother.
Derek stood there at the podium with tears running down his face.
Then he did something I’ll never forget.
He picked up the stack of white demand letters. And one by one, slowly, in front of everybody, he tore every single one of them in half.
The rest of that lunch was something I’ll carry with me the rest of my life.
People started coming up to the podium. Not to get letters. To tell stories.
Dale Kruger told about the night in October of 1985 when his combine broke down with 300 acres of corn still standing and snow coming. Walt drove out at eleven at night with his toolbox and worked on that combine by flashlight until four in the morning. Dale’s IOU said $2,140.
“I tried to pay him back in 1994, when things got better,” Dale said. “Walt wouldn’t take it. He said, ‘Dale, that one’s already been paid. Don’t make me tell you twice.’ I never understood what he meant.”
He looked at Hank’s letter on the podium.
“Now I do,” he said.
Marlene Johnson came up with her granddaughter holding her arm. She stood in front of Derek and patted his cheek like he was a little boy.
“Your daddy fixed my husband’s truck nine times in 1985 and 1986,” she said. “We never paid him a nickel. I sold Mama’s piano because it was the only thing in our house worth anything. I’d do it again today.”
One after another, they came.
A man who’d been eight years old in 1986 told how Walt let him sit in the garage every day after school while his parents were at the bank trying to save the farm, and taught him how to change a tire.
He’s a diesel mechanic now. In Sioux City.
A woman told how Walt drove her to the hospital in Spencer in his tow truck when she went into labor and her husband’s car wouldn’t start. He wouldn’t even let her pay for the gas.
Hank Sorensen sat at the front table the whole time with his hand over his mouth, nodding.
When it was finally over, the VFW ladies started stacking chairs.
Derek was sitting alone at the front table with the coffee can in front of him and Walt’s letter in his hands. He’d read it about twenty times.
I sat down beside him.
“Aunt Carol,” he said, without looking up. “I got laid off in January.”
I didn’t say anything. I just waited.
“I didn’t tell Dad. I didn’t tell anybody. I owe almost sixty grand on credit cards. I’m about to lose my townhouse.” He laughed, but there was nothing funny in it. “I came home to bury my father, and I found a coffee can full of money, and I thought, finally. Finally, Dad’s going to bail me out one last time.”
“Oh, honey,” I said.
“I was going to send demand letters to the people who saved his life.” He put his face in his hands. “What kind of person does that?”
“A scared one,” I said. “You’re not the first man in this town to be scared about money, Derek. That’s what that whole letter is about.”
