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

And the surveyor’s receipt.

Forty dollars, paid in cash.”

He read the back of the receipt and shook his head.

“Dad wrote on everything.

He wrote the date on a feed sack.”

Then he cleared his throat before he answered me proper.

“A man who describes land wrong does not own it, Sam.

He has bought himself a piece of paper.”