The buyer smiled faintly.
“Because your grandfather was not stupid.”
He continued.
“My father told him the figure would probably be shallow.”
“Unstable.”
“Hard to sell.”
“Then he came home and told my mother he’d found enough old quilted maple to pay for a new truck if he could get the old fool to sign.”
The boy’s jaw tightened.
The buyer raised one hand.
“I know.”
“I’m not proud of it.”
“You laughed at me.”
“Yes.”
The admission came immediately.
The boy stared.
The buyer continued.
“And then I tried to buy the pile for eight hundred.”
“Yes.”
“Then a thousand.”
“Yes.”
He looked down.
“I was doing the same thing.”
The sawmill office went quiet.
The boy had expected excuses.
Not this.
The buyer looked at him.
“When that burl opened, I knew what the triangle mark probably meant.”
“You could’ve told me.”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t.”
“No.”
“Why?”
The man breathed.
“Because for about five minutes I became my father.”
The boy said nothing.
The buyer looked toward the floor.
“I saw something valuable.”
“I knew you didn’t understand it yet.”
“And instead of helping you understand, I tried to buy the gap between what you knew and what I knew.”
The sawyer leaned back.
That was precisely it.
The buyer continued.
“I came back because I don’t want that to be the last decision I make about this collection.”
The boy crossed his arms.
“So what do you want?”
“To give you something.”
The boy immediately stiffened.
The man took an old envelope from his coat.
Placed it on the desk.
Inside were photocopies of photographs.
Black-and-white.
A younger version of the boy’s grandfather stood beside huge, grotesque maple trunks.
Another showed several burls loaded on an old flatbed truck.
Another showed the farmer, the grandfather, and a third man.
The buyer’s father.
The boy stared.
On the back of one photo, handwriting:
North grove pieces. Three tree set. Best figure I’ve ever seen rough. Would pay ten times if he’d stop being stubborn.
The buyer said:
“My father kept notes.”
The boy looked up.
“Why would he write that?”
“He wrote everything.”
The buyer gave a small smile.
“Buyers like proving to themselves how clever they were.”
The boy turned over another photograph.
A close-up of one burl.
The surface shape matched one in his pile.
Same protrusion.
Same split.