“That’s wonderful, Will. Give me a moment, and I’ll write up a receipt and get your change.”
“I’ll take the receipt, but let’s not figure the bill yet. I might not be done paying taxes.”
Mr. Blevins frowned at that. “Will, I assumed you knew… um… you see…”
“Yeah, I know that carpetbagger stole our farm. I’m not looking to pay it off. What did he buy it for, anyway?”
“Eleven dollars.”
“Eleven dollars?”
“Yes, sir. Eleven dollars and seven cents, if memory serves. And I believe it does serve. Because every time one of these Yankee snakes comes in here and buys out a family farm, it burns me like a red-hot brand. It was eleven dollars, seven cents. I’d stake my life on it.”
Will just stood there for a second, chewing on that. Eleven dollars and seven cents. His daddy had built that farm from nothing. Will had been born there, along with Rose, and two siblings who hadn’t made it and who now lay beside Daddy near the creek beneath tiny headstones.
Will had spent his whole life there up till the war, and from the age of nine, he’d been the man of the place, plowing and planting, growing and working, keeping the place running, fixing it up, improving things.
And now it was gone.
For eleven dollars and seven cents.
Realizing he’d been standing there brooding for a while, he said abruptly, “How about the Kitner place?”
“What about it?” Mr. Blevins asked.
“Any carpetbagger snatch it up yet?”
“No sir.”
“But it’s on the market?”
“Yessir, on account of back taxes, like almost every other place in the county. Except for the plantations and the ones the carpetbaggers already got. Burns me, them coming in here and?—”
“How much?” Will asked.
“How much what?” Mr. Blevins asked.
“How much for the Kitner place?”
“Oh, let me see.” He flipped a few pages in his book then leaned close and looked over his glasses at the number beneath which he ran his finger. “Mr. Kitner had a little over two full sections and some nice improvements on that ground. He owed back taxes totaling forty-four dollars and eighty-seven cents.”
“I’ll take it,” Will said.
Beside him, Maggie gasped.
He turned and smiled at her. “What? You told me to buy it for you.”
“I wasn’t serious. Will, that’s a lot of money. You can’t?—”
“I just did. If I pay off those taxes, the property’s mine, correct Mr. Blevins?”
Mr. Blevins frowned. “Well… yes. But… I hate to say this, Will…”
“What is it?”
“Well, you having worn the gray and all, you should know, the Reconstructionists are confiscating the properties of ex-Confederates.”
Will smiled. “Well, that won’t be a problem at all, Mr. Blevins.”
