Chapter 15 Wyatt
The bank is on the corner of Fifth and Allen, opposite the courthouse and two doors down from the hardware store.
I have parked the truck across the street where I can see the front door of the bank from the cab.
I have been parked here for the better part of an hour.
My appointment is at ten. I need to be inside in twelve minutes.
I make myself look up. The bank has its front door propped open with a sandbag against the autumn wind.
A woman in a navy coat goes in. A man in a feed cap comes out.
The lights in the window are on though it’s full daylight, and someone has put a paper turkey up on the inside of the glass, the cut-out kind a child would make, with a fan of red and brown feathers. Thanksgiving is three weeks off.
Eleven minutes to ten.
I let my hands off the wheel and I work them, one at a time, against the thigh of my jeans.
I have not slept properly in I don’t know how long. I’ve been getting up earlier than I need to, doing the morning round of the cattle in the dark and coming back in to find that it is still too early to start cooking breakfast for Matthew and Caleb.
I open the glove box and pull out a manila folder with the word BANK written on the tab in my mother’s handwriting.
She kept the bank correspondence in this folder for as long as I knew her and when she died I kept everything in it that was already in it, and put the new things in it as they came.
I open it.
The top thing is the letter from August. Notice of arrears. Two missed scheduled payments. Please contact the office at your earliest convenience.
The second thing is the letter from September. Notice of arrears. Three missed scheduled payments. We strongly urge you to contact the office to arrange a meeting.
The third thing is the letter from last week, which is the one that got me into the truck. Notice of arrears. Four missed scheduled payments. A meeting has been scheduled for the date and time below. Failure to attend may result in formal proceedings.
I know I should have contacted them when I missed the first payment, but what were they going to do? I don’t have the money. I just don’t. I can’t pay money that I don’t have.
There’s an offer from the Linden Group in the same folder. I have read it more times than I want to admit.
It’s not enough to settle the mortgage. The compensation offer covers about seventy-two cents on every dollar I owe. I would walk off the land with no land and debt that I will be paying off for the rest of my life.
The other thing I have done, which the bank doesn’t know about, is talk to the realtor. I drove down to Eastfield last Thursday morning. She was kind and said she could list it for me but everyone knows what is happening in Parish Ridge. No one is going to buy a ranch without water.
Now it’s eight minutes to ten. I don’t want to go in there.
I push the door open and I get out.
The bank has a green carpet and a row of three teller windows on the left and a waiting area with three chairs on the right, and a coffee machine in the corner.
The receptionist is a woman in her fifties with reading glasses on a chain around her neck and a neat sign on the front of her desk that says ‘Please wait to be called’.
I don’t need to wait long.
“Mr. Briggs. Mrs. Holloway will see you now. Down the hall, second door on the left.”
I take my hat off. I have come in with my hat on, like I have been raised better than to do, and I take it off now and hold it against my chest.
The door is open. The woman behind the desk is maybe fifty-five, wearing a grey sweater set with a small gold pin on the lapel.
“Mr. Briggs. Carol Holloway. Please come in. Sit down.”
I sit, putting the folder on my lap. I put the hat on the folder.
“Thank you for coming in,” she says. “I know it’s a long way.”
“It’s not so far.”
“It is for the people we deal with. We’d see you locally if we could. As you know.”
“I know.”
“Can I get you anything before we start? Water, coffee?”
“No. Thank you.”
“Okay. Mr. Briggs. Wyatt. May I call you Wyatt.”
“Yes.”
“Wyatt. I’d like to start by saying that I appreciate that this is difficult and I want you to know that whatever we discuss in this room is between you and me.
We’re not in the business of catching anybody out.
We’re in the business of finding a way through.
So I’d like, if you don’t mind, to start by hearing from you.
In your own words. About where things stand. ”
I look at the hat. The hat is not going to help me either.
I make myself look at her. Her eyes are a soft brown behind the reading glasses. She waits.
“The south well went dry in April,” I say.
The words come out smaller than I want them to. I clear my throat. I try again.
“South well went dry. I’ve been trucking water in since. The house well is down to about eight feet and dropping. I’d guess it’s gone by spring. Maybe before.”
“Yes.”
“I can’t run the herd on hauled water. I’ve been selling animals.
I sold ten in June. Sold another fifteen at the August sale.
That’s about a third of the herd. The price was fine for August. It won’t be fine in November, because the rest of the valley’s selling at the same time for the same reason. ”
“Yes. We’ve seen that.”
“I missed the July payment. I missed the August one. Then September. October.”
“Wyatt.” She takes her glasses off. She folds them and lays them on the open folder. “I don’t need you to apologise to me for the missed payments. I need you to walk me through where you’re at, so that I can help you. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“What about Linden? We know they’ve made offers. Is there a reason you haven’t accepted?”
I work my jaw once. The folder on my lap is heavy.
“They made an offer on the land in May but it’s not enough.” I name the figure.
She nods and writes it down.
“And the outstanding on the mortgage is —” she names the figure, which is the figure on the September letter, which is the figure I have already done the arithmetic, “—roughly. With the arrears.”
“Yes.”
“I see,” she says, slowly. “And have you spoken to a realtor.”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“She said she’d could list it. She said she didn’t think she could sell it. Not for what I owe. Not without water and with everyone knowing what is happening with the development.”
She nods again, unsurprised.
“Okay, right,” she says. “All right. Then let me lay out the picture as I’m understanding it, and you tell me where I’m wrong.
You have a working mortgage on a property whose primary productive asset, the water, has been compromised.
The compensation offer that has been made by the developer is materially below the outstanding loan, and the open market is not going to make up the difference.
You have continued to make every effort to keep the operation running through partial liquidation of stock.
You have missed four scheduled payments and you have come in today, of your own accord, to discuss the position rather than wait for us to come to you. Is that a fair summary?”
I cannot speak for a second.
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
She puts her hands flat on the folder. She does not pick the glasses up. She looks at me for a moment without the glasses and her eyes are tired and steady and kind.
“Wyatt. I want to be very direct with you because I don’t think it serves you for me to be anything else. I’m going to tell you the options as I see them and then we’ll see what fits. May I?”
“Yes.”
“Option one. You take the Linden offer. We restructure the deficit as a residual unsecured personal loan in your name and we put you on a long repayment plan at a reduced rate. You walk away from the land with debt, but you walk away. The debt would be manageable on a wage. Are you working off-property anywhere?”
“No.”
“Could you? I mean, in principle. Are you the kind of man who “
“I could try, yes. There’s not a lot of work in Parish Ridge, but I could drive.”
“Right. Option two. You hold on. We agree a payment holiday, formally, for six months. We don’t accrue penalty interest during the holiday.
You see if the water situation improves, you see if Linden revises the offer, you see if a buyer materialises.
The risk is that none of those things happen and at the end of six months you are six months further into the same hole and we have to have this conversation again on worse terms.”
“And option three.”
“Option three is that I refer you to our specialist insolvency team.”
I look at the hat.
She continues, “It’s a structured process.
They’re a good team. They are not in the business of grinding people into the dirt.
They will sit with you and they will look at every asset you have, including the equipment and the herd and the truck, and they will work with the bank and with any other creditors to arrive at an arrangement that closes the position.
In some cases that is a negotiated discharge of the debt.
In some cases it is a managed sale at a price the open market won’t reach. ”
I do not say anything. I don’t like any of these options but I can’t see that I have any others.
She does not press. She lets me sit. She picks the glasses up off the folder and she puts them back on, and she waits.
The room is very quiet. Somewhere down the hall a phone rings twice and stops, and outside the window a truck goes past with a bad muffler.
“How long do I have?”
“On the missed payments, I can hold the formal process for another sixty days without going further up the chain. After that, it stops being my decision. I want to be honest about that.”
“Sixty days.”
“Yes. We can talk again in that window.”
“Okay.”
“I’d like you to think about which of the three options you want to walk into. I’d like you to take the weekend, at least. I don’t want you making this decision in this room.”
“Yes.”
“Wyatt.”
“Yes?”
“Are you okay?”