Samuel Reed Kept an Old Wooden Bat Behind the Pantry Door for Twenty Years

I stood there with the fork and the injunction and a sale date nobody in my family had said out loud.

The Hartwell Bank opened at nine.

I sat in the lot until ten past, cap in my lap, and then I went in and asked for the branch manager.

He had my file open before I finished talking.

“Pending encumbrance, Mr.

Reed.

It sits on the title.

I cannot lend against a property with an unresolved instrument.”