The Hired Man Has Milked Our Cows for 34 Years. At 83, Dad Decided to Give Him Half of Our $12 Million Dairy

Efraín didn’t want to tell it. You could see that. He stared at his hands, rough as tree bark, for a long time.

“It was nothing,” he said.

“It was everything,” said Dad. “Tell them, or I will.”

So Dad told it.

In the fall of 1991, milk prices crashed. Dad had borrowed against the farm to build the new barn. The bank called the loan. We had sixty days to come up with forty thousand dollars or lose the place.

I was twenty-one. Merle was seventeen. I remember Mom crying in the pantry. I don’t remember how it ended. Nobody ever told us.

“Efraín had been with us one year,” Dad said. “He’d saved every dollar he made to buy a house for his wife and his baby boy. Forty-one thousand dollars, in a coffee can.”

Efraín shook his head, still staring at the table.

“He brought me that can,” Dad said. “Then he worked two years without a paycheck so I could pay the bank back first. His wife cleaned houses in town to feed them.”

Dad reached into his shirt pocket and laid an old, stained paper napkin on the table.

In faded ink, in my father’s handwriting: When this farm can afford it, half is yours. — L.S. 1991.

“I’ve owed him half for thirty-four years,” Dad said. “I’m done owing.”

Merle was white.

“Dad,” he said. “You don’t understand. I need my share.”

“You’ll get your share. Half of half.”

“That’s not enough.” His voice broke. “I took a home equity loan on my house to cover a deal that fell apart. I’m two hundred thousand behind. The bank sent the letter last month.”

The kitchen went silent.

Efraín finally looked up.

“Mr. Lyman,” he said. “I don’t want half.”