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Phil could hardly believe it. “Are you saying the bank wants to take your farm because of a ten-dollar shortfall?”
“Bank fella says so. Says they can auction it off, but I’m guessin’ they already have a buyer lined up.”
“We’ll see about that,” Phil said.
“I don’t have twenty-five dollars just about now, Lawyer Parker.”
Sally Ann came out of the other room with a pot of coffee. She was wearing a dark blue dress and a pinafore of a slightly lighter shade. Her face, free of makeup, shone. Her blond hair was pulled back. Toomey was struck dumb.
“We’ll take your case, Mr. Toomey,” she said. “And because it’s our first, no charge no matter the outcome. Isn’t that right, Philip?”
“Absolutely,” Phil said, although he had been looking forward to that twenty-five bucks. “What’s the bank fella’s name?”
“Mr. Lathrop,” Toomey said, and grimaced like a man who’s bitten into something sour. “First Bank. He’s the chief loan officer, and in charge of mortgages.”
Phil presented himself at the First Bank of New Hampshire that very afternoon, and enquired of Mr. Lathrop if his bosses would enjoy a story in the Union Leader about a cruel bank that took a farmer’s property in the depths of a depression over a measly ten dollars.
After discussion, some of it fairly warm, Mr. Lathrop saw the light.
“I’m tempted to take you to court anyway,” Phil said pleasantly. “Unfair business practices… pain and suffering… financial deception…”
“That’s outrageous,” Mr. Lathrop said. “You’d never win.”
“Perhaps not, but the bank would lose either way. I think five hundred dollars paid into Mr. Toomey’s account would close this matter to the mutual satisfaction of both parties.”
Lathrop groused, but the money was paid. Toomey offered to fork over half, but Phil—with Sally Ann’s concurrence—refused. He did take twenty-five dollars when Toomey insisted, thinking of the Answer Man as he did it.
The news spread, both in Curry and the surrounding towns. Phil discovered several banks were using the same short-payment fiddle to foreclose on farms. In one case, a farmer in neighboring Hancock came up twenty dollars short three months before his mortgage would have been paid off. His farm was foreclosed and then sold to a construction company for twelve thousand dollars. Phil took that one to court and got eight thousand back for the farmer. Not full value, but better than nothing, and the press coverage was gold.
By 1939 his little office had been refurbished—new shingles and a fresh coat of paint. Like Sally Ann’s face, it shone. When the Sunoco station went bust, Phil bought it and added an associate just out of law school. Sally Ann picked out a secretary (smart but elderly and plain) who doubled as a receptionist to help him winnow his cases.
By 1941 his business was in the black. The future looked bright. Then, four years and two months after Phil’s encounter with the man sitting under a red umbrella by the side of the road, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
Not long before their wedding, Sally Ann Allburton took Phil by the hand and led him out onto the back lawn of the Allburton house in Wellesley. They sat on a bench by the goldfish pond, where a skim of ice had melted only recently. Her color was high and she wouldn’t look him in the face, but she was determined to say what was on her mind. Phil thought that on that afternoon she had never looked more like her father.
“You need to lay in a supply of French letters,” she said, looking fixedly down at their linked hands. “Do you know what I’m talking about?”
“Yes,” Phil said. He had also heard them called English caps and, as an undergrad, naughty bags. He had worn such a thing exactly once, on a trip to a house of ill repute in Providence. It was an expedition that still filled him with shame. “But why? Don’t you want—”
“Children? Of course I want children, but not until I’m sure I won’t have to come begging to my parents—or you to yours—to help us out. My father would love that, and he’d put conditions on it. Strings to draw you away from what you really want to do. I can’t have that. I won’t have that.”
She snatched a quick glance at him, reading his emotional temperature, then looked back down at their linked hands again. “There is a thing for women, it’s called a diaphragm, but if I ask Dr. Grayson, he’ll tell my parents.”
“A doctor is enjoined from such behavior,” Phil said.
“He would do it, just the same. So… French letters. Do you agree?”
He thought about asking her how she even knew about such things and decided he didn’t want to know; some questions should not be answered. “I agree.”
Now she did look at him. “And you must buy them in Portland, or Fryeburg, or North Conway. Far from Curry. Because people talk.”
Phil burst out laughing. “You are a sly one!”
“I am when I have to be,” she said.
His business prospered, and several times he and Sally Ann discussed throwing the French letters away, but in those first years Phil was working farmers’ hours, dawn to dusk, often in court, often on the road, and the idea of adding a kiddie seemed more like a burden than a blessing.
Then, December 7th.
