Don’t hope for too much, she told herself. Don’t hope.
It was a half-hour drive through bright snow, the flakes turning to stars in her headlights. It was a “good snow,” as Patty’s mom, the winter lover, would say, and Patty thought how the girls would be playing in it all day tomorrow and then thought: Would they? What happens tomorrow? Where will Ben be?
Where is Ben?
She pulled up to the abandoned picnic area, the shelter a big slab of concrete and metal built in the ’70s with communal tables and a roof that was angled like some failed attempt at origami. Two swingsets sat beneath four inches of snow, their old black-rubber seats not swaying at all, as Patty thought they should. There was a breeze, why were they so still?
Len’s car wasn’t there. In fact, no car was there, and she started to fidget with the zipper of her coat, running a fingernail on each metal tooth so it made a clicking noise. What might happen: She would go up to the picnic bench and find Len had left her an envelope with a stack of money, a gentlemanly gesture she would repay. Or maybe Len had organized a bunch of folks who felt pity on her, and they were about to arrive and Wonderful Life her with cash handouts, Patty realizing everyone did love her after all.
A rap came on her window, bright pink knuckles and a man’s thick torso. It wasn’t Len. She rolled her window partway down and peered out, ready for him to tell her to move along, lady. It was that kind of rap.
“Come on,” he said instead. He didn’t lean down, she still couldn’t see his face. “Come on, we’ll talk up on the benches.”
She shut off the car, and pulled herself out, the man already walking up ahead, bundled under a thick ranch coat and a Stetson. She was wearing a wool hat that had never fit right, her ears always popped out, so she was already rubbing at the tips when she reached the man.
He seemed nice, was what she thought. She needed him to be nice. He had dark eyes and a handlebar mustache, the tips drooping off his chin. He was probably forty, looked like he might come from around here. He looked nice, she thought again. They settled down on the picnic benches, pretending they weren’t covered in snow. Maybe he was a lawyer? she thought. A lawyer Len had talked into representing Ben. But then why would they be meeting out—
“Hear you got yourself some trouble,” he said in a rumbly voice that matched his eyes. Patty just nodded.
“About to foreclose on your farm, and your boy’s about to be arrested.”
“The police just want to talk to him about an incident that—”
“Your son is about to be arrested, and I know what for. In this next year, you will need money to fend off your creditors, so you can keep your children at home—in their own goddam home—and you will need money for a lawyer for your son, because you do not want your son to go to prison labeled a child molester.”
“Of course not but Ben—”
“No, I mean: You do not want your son to go to prison labeled a child molester. There is nothing worse you can be in prison than a child molester. I seen it. What they do to those men, a nightmare. So you need a very good lawyer, which costs a lot of money. You need one right now, not weeks from now, not days from now. Right now. These things get out of control fast.”
Patty nodded, waiting. The man’s speech reminded her of being with a car salesman: you had to do it now, and this model and at this price. She always lost these conversations, always took what the salesman insisted she take.
The man pressed his Stetson down, breathed out like a bull.
“Now I myself was once a farmer, and my daddy before me and his daddy before him. Eight hundred acres, cattle, corn, wheat, outside Robnett, Missouri. Fair amount, like your operation.”
“We never had eight hundred acres.”
“But you had a family farm, you had your goddam land. It’s your goddam land. We been swindled, farmers. They say ‘plant fencepost to fencepost!’ and we goddam well did. Buy more land—they say— cause they ain’t making more of it! Then whoops, sorry, we gave you some bad advice. We’ll just take your farm, this place been in your family for generations, we’ll just take this, no hard feelings. You’re the jackass believed us, not really our fault.”
Patty had heard this before, thought it before. It was a raw deal. Let’s get back to my son. She leaned on one haunch and shivered, tried to seem patient.
“Now I’m no businessman, I’m no accountant, I’m no politician. But I can help, if you’re interested.”
“Yes, yes I’d like that,” she said. “Please.”
And in her head she told herself, Don’t hope, don’t hope for too much.