Eduardo's Arc

Chapter 35 of 60

Eduardo was pulling nails from the second wall board when the man came up the drive. He wore a gray coat and carried a leather folder under his arm. Eduardo did not know his face, but he knew the walk. He had walked like that himself, years ago, to other men's doors. The man stopped at the bottom of the steps and looked at the sagging roof, the cracked siding, the boarded window. Then he looked at Eduardo. He said a name Eduardo used to gamble under. He said a number. Eight hundred and forty dollars, plus interest, from a game in a back room seven years ago. Eduardo set the hammer down on the porch rail. He remembered the game. He remembered the marker he had signed with a false name so his father would never find out. He had left town the next week and never paid. The man opened the folder. Inside was the marker with Eduardo's own handwriting on it. He said if Eduardo did not settle, he would file at the county and take the deed. He said the house was worth more than the debt, so the court would give it to him easy. Eduardo felt the old pull. Lie. Deny the signature. Say the name on the paper was not his. The man had no proof of the face behind the name. He could walk away clean. He looked at the marker. He looked at the paper strip inside the door where he had written every honest day. He thought about the four rules. No debts. He had missed one. He had forgotten this one because he had wanted to forget it. "It's mine," Eduardo said. "I signed it." The man's face did not change. He waited. Eduardo went inside. He came back with his bank book and the small tin from the shelf. Between them he had six hundred and twelve dollars. Everything he had saved from the feed store. Every wage he had not yet spent on boards and nails. He counted it onto the porch rail. He told the man he was short two hundred and change. He said he would bring the rest inside of thirty days. He would sign a new paper in his real name, at the tea house, in front of a witness. The man looked at the money. He looked at the house again. He said he could file tomorrow and get all of it. "You could," Eduardo said. "But you'd wait longer for your money and pay a lawyer to get it. Take what's here. I'll bring the rest." The man took the cash. He wrote a receipt in the folder and tore off a copy. He said thirty days. Then he walked back down the drive. Eduardo stood on the porch with the empty tin in his hand. The house was still his. The savings were gone. He picked up the hammer and went back to the wall.