They Sent Me to Prison for the Family Fire, So I Came Home to Sell the Ranch Out From Under Them novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Ten Thousand in Cash

Josu offers her ten thousand dollars to sign and warns her she does not know what she holds, and leaves a second copy of the transfer that names only the blood heir per a Reno clinic's record.

The sheriff didn't come up the walk.

He stood at the bottom of the porch steps with his thumbs in his belt and looked at the lilac.

"Ms. Etcheverry," he said.

"Your father tells me you've left your approved address."

"My parole officer approved this one at ten," I said.

"She's calling me at eight to confirm.

"You can call her yourself."

He took a breath through his nose.

He was a heavy man who had known my father thirty years, and he looked as though he'd been woken up for it.

"Josu," he said, "if the officer's logged it, I've got nothing."

"She's confused," my father said.

"She's been through a lot."

"She's standing right here," Ansel said.

"I can hear what you're calling her."

My father looked at Ansel for the first time.

It was the look he gave a ram he'd bought and found lame.

"Brand inspector," he said.

"You take a lot on yourself for a man who owns nothing.

"My family's business is our own."

"The sale yard is my business," Ansel said.

"So is whatever drives up to my grandmother's porch at one in the morning."

The sheriff cleared his throat.

"Josu, go home."

My father stood a long moment under the porch light, with his hat brim shading his eyes.

Then he laughed once, softly, and the sheriff went back to his truck without another word.

"I'll have a minute with my daughter," my father said, "and then I'll go."

He came up the steps slowly.

He was bigger than I remembered, and older, and gray in the eyebrows.

He had cried into the microphone two hours ago, and he looked as though he might again.

"Maite," he said.

"Mija.

"I know we hurt you."

"You were in the audience for it," I said.

"Your mother and I are old.

"We did what we thought was right, and we did wrong, and we want to make it right."

He reached into his jacket and brought out an envelope.

It was fat.

"There's ten thousand in there," he said.

"It's yours, no strings.

"There'll be more after the closing."

I looked at the envelope.

I thought about what ten thousand dollars would do for a woman who had left Carson City with forty-one dollars on a debit card.

"No strings," I said.

"Not one."

"Then give it to me without the paper."

"You'll sign at the bank, mija.

"We'll put you in a house, and no one in this valley will say your name again."

"That's a string, Josu."

His face changed.

The softness went out of it slowly, from the mouth first, the way color goes from a hide left in the sun.

"You do not know what you hold, girl," he said, very low.

"Nobody's asking you to be clever.

"Sign the paper, and let us all be done."

"What do I hold?"

He didn't answer.

He put the envelope on the porch rail beside the shoebox of letters.

Then he seemed to change his mind and took it back into his jacket.

He took a folded paper out of the other pocket and set it on the top step.

"The buyer gave us a fortnight after tonight's scene," he said.

"The closing is nine o'clock, Monday week, at the bank on Idaho Street.

"That's a second copy, in case you tore up the first for show.

"I know you did it for show."

He went down the steps and got into his truck, and he didn't look back at the house.

I picked up the paper.

It was the same three pages.

The yellow flag was gone, and someone had underlined a line above the signature block in pen, probably my father, probably tonight.

I read it under the porch light.

It said that Maite Etcheverry, daughter and sole blood heir of Josu Etcheverry as recorded by the Reno clinic's identification of that year, would transfer the grazing rights and the water.

"Read this," I said.

Ansel took it and read it.

His lips moved slightly.

He read with his whole face, like a man checking a brand against the book.

"The ranch is deeded to Josu," he said.

"I've seen the paperwork on the sheep.

"He doesn't need your signature to sell his own deed."

"So why does it say blood?"

"It says per the record," Ansel said.

"The grazing rights are in a trust.

"My guess is the trust says blood, and the record says you."

"You're guessing."

"I'm a brand inspector.

"I know what it looks like when a man needs a name on a paper for the sake of the paper."

I sat down on the top step.

I thought of the clinic in Reno, a squat tan building I had been taken to at seventeen with a social worker.

They had swabbed the inside of my cheek, and a nurse had said brightly that it would take a week or two.

Nine days later my father had come to the group home in a clean shirt.

My mother had stood behind him with her purse in both hands and had not looked at me.

"Why does a sheep ranch need a clinic's blood?" Ansel said.

"I don't know."

"I think you should find out before Monday week."

I looked at the paper in his hands, at the pen underline, at the three pages of my name.

"I'm going to find out," I said.

"And then I'm going to sell it to someone else."

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