The older farmer had known her family for years. He had helped her father pull a tractor from mud once. He had brought food after her grandmother died. He had loaned a post-hole auger without asking for money.
Which meant when he told her she had made the stupidest land purchase he had ever seen, he believed he was offering useful wisdom.
Three weeks earlier, fifty acres of steep, abandoned ground had been offered at the county land-reclamation sale.
The parcel had accumulated unpaid taxes for so long that the county had stopped pretending anyone would bid a meaningful amount.
The deed came with problems.
No maintained road.
No electricity.
No functioning well documented.
No cleared building site.
No commercial timber worth harvesting without spending nearly as much to reach it.
And kudzu.
Miles, it seemed, of kudzu.
The invasive vines covered trees, fence posts, gullies, old stone walls, and whatever structures might once have existed there.
At the auction, the opening bid was one dollar.
Nobody raised a hand.
The clerk lowered his glasses.
“One dollar, folks.”
Silence.
The nineteen-year-old had gone only because she was curious.
Her family rented pasture.
Land—even bad land—was something they discussed the way other families discussed vacations they could not afford.
She had three dollars in her coat pocket after buying coffee.
On impulse, she raised her number.
“One.”
People turned.
A man laughed.
The clerk looked almost relieved.
“Do I hear two?”
A developer’s representative, apparently amused, lifted two fingers.
The girl looked toward him.
He smiled.
She raised three.
The representative dropped his hand.
“Not paying four for that jungle.”
The room laughed.
The clerk brought down the gavel.
“Sold.”
Three dollars.
Of course three dollars was not truly the entire cost.
There was a recording fee.
A transfer fee.
Future property taxes.
Liability.
Fence repair.
Brush control.
Years of work.
But the deed itself changed hands for three dollars.
By lunch, half the county had heard.
By supper, her mother had heard.
By evening, her father stood at the kitchen table holding the deed and asking the most reasonable question anyone had asked all day.
“What are you going to do with fifty acres of kudzu?”
The girl answered:
“Put goats on it.”
Her father stared.
Her mother covered a smile.
Her younger brother laughed so hard he nearly dropped his fork.
The older farmer next door came by the following morning.
He stood in the yard with both hands on his hips.
“You actually bought it?”
“Yes.”
“For three dollars?”
“Yes.”
“You know why nobody wanted it?”
“Kudzu.”
“Kudzu is the friendly part.”
“What’s the unfriendly part?”
“Everything underneath it.”
She had asked what that meant.