They Sent Me to Prison for the Family Fire, So I Came Home to Sell the Ranch Out From Under Them novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: Sold Out From Under Them
The Basque festival came round again in October, and this time they asked me to speak.
The committee chairman came to the dish room to do it, with his hat in his hand and a program under his arm.
He was a stout man in a wool vest.
"It would mean a great deal to the valley," he said.
"We'd like the co-op to open the dinner, and we'd like you to be the one."
"I wash pots," I said.
"Yes, ma'am," the chairman said.
"We're told you also tore up a deed."
I laughed and said yes.
The tent stood behind the old fairgrounds, the same white canvas under the same long lights.
I stood at the head table in a green dress that Amaia had sent from Carson City.
She had pleaded in March, and the judge had given her four years.
She took them without a word.
In her first week she wrote me a letter that said: I am where I should be.
It said: I have never been so tired and so clear.
It said: tell Iker the dog's ears need looking at.
I had written back.
It was the first letter I ever mailed to that prison, and I put it in the box myself.
The tent was full.
More than two hundred had crowded inside.
Ansel sat at the end of the table in a white shirt and a plain tie with the stamp back in his breast pocket.
The county had given it back in June.
In September they made him chief inspector, over a loud objection from the east rail and a very quiet vote from the west.
He wore the gray jacket, and he had stopped looking uncomfortable in it.
I stood up, and the chair scraped.
The whole tent went quiet.
The chairman held out the microphone, and I took it.
It was cold.
"Good evening," I said.
"Most of you know me."
Somebody laughed, kindly.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of They Sent Me to Prison for the Family Fire, So I Came Home to Sell the Ranch Out From Under Them are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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