The Bank Put $4.7 Million in My Account by Mistake. Then It Froze Everything I Owned and Called Me a Thief

“Remembered what?”

“Who runs that bank.” She held up the phone. “Robert Hollingsworth. President and chairman. I just looked it up in the newspaper.”

“Mrs. Tackett, I’ve left four messages for his office.”

“You don’t call Robert Hollingsworth’s office.” She was already dialing a number written on the back of an envelope. “You call his mother.”

I stood there in the dawn with a stallion in a trailer and watched a seventy-eight-year-old widow call a woman named Doris.

“Doris? Imogene. Yes, honey, I’m fine. Listen, is Bobby up yet?”

It turned out that in 1972, Imogene Tackett had taught seventh-grade English at the junior high in Ardmore. And one of her students had been a skinny, nervous boy named Bobby Hollingsworth, who had failed her class and had to repeat it in summer school.

She’d tutored him herself. Every afternoon. For free.

Bobby came to the phone eight minutes later.

“Robert,” said Imogene, “this is Mrs. Tackett. Do you remember the difference between a one and a seven?”

By nine o’clock, my accounts were unfrozen. By ten, her money was in her account, with interest from March. By noon, the bank’s lawyers had sent us both an apology letter and a check for our legal fees.

Payroll went out on time. Every family got paid.

Red Arrow came back down the ramp and went back to his stall. He seemed relieved. So was I.

Imogene stayed for breakfast. She told my foreman his eggs were overcooked, and she told me I needed a wife, and she told the farrier his kids were the best-mannered children she’d seen in years.

Now, every Friday, there’s a pie on my office desk.

Payroll day.

The note on top always says the same thing, in perfect teacher’s handwriting:

“Count it twice, Jesse. Banks can’t.”