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Black Boy Bought 19 Acres Nobody Wanted — Then His Plow Hit Something Buried Below

Black Boy Bought 19 Acres Nobody Wanted — Then His Plow Hit Something Buried Below

Chapter 13

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The sheriff shook his head. "Could be months, maybe longer. These land cases move slow."Marcus looked toward the southern corner of the property, where the old oak stood bare against the gray November sky. Vault 4 was somewhere beneath it, and now he couldn't touch it.When he got home that evening, Grandma Ruth was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea she hadn't touched. She had already heard about the lawsuit from a woman at church."Is it true?" she asked.Marcus nodded.She looked down at her hands. "I shouldn't have gotten my hopes up," she said softly. "I should have known better."Hearing her say that hurt worse than anything the attorney had said.He needed a lawyer. The only one who had talked to him was Harold Jennings, a semi-retired attorney in his seventies who ran a small practice out of an office above the hardware store in Independence. Harold read the court papers and the ledger, peering through thick glasses, and then leaned back in his chair."I'll take it," he said. "But I can't do it for free, Marcus. I'll give you the lowest rate I can. You'll still owe me for filings and time."Marcus agreed; he didn't have a choice.The bad news didn't stop there. Winter was always slow at the diesel shop, and in late November, Uncle Walter called him into the office: two big trucking contracts had ended, and Walter had to cut hours; Marcus would be down to three days a week until spring. Walter apologized twice. Marcus told him it wasn't his fault, and he meant it. But on the drive home, he ran the numbers again, and they didn't come out right, no matter how he arranged them.That left one thing he could still do: the seeds. If he could prove the seeds were alive, maybe the reserve would mean something no matter what happened in court; maybe it would be enough to show people what those twenty-four families had built.
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Black Boy Bought 19 Acres Nobody Wanted — Then His Plow Hit Something Buried Below

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