10/18/2026
My brother-in-law charged me $40 to borrow the log splitter my husband had bought before he passed away. I paid without arguing, then spent hours cutting four cords of firewood with my sixteen-year-old son. We gave three of those cords to elderly widows down our road. But when I displayed the rental receipt at our local feed store, the entire neighborhood discovered what heâd done.
âForty dollars for the afternoon,â Dale told me.
He stood beside the splitter, resting his arm on its metal frame.
The machine was red, rated at twenty-seven tons, and equipped with a Honda engine.
My husband, Jim, had purchased it six years earlier for $1,400.
You could still see his name written in white marker across the fuel tank.
Jim died that April at forty-eight years old.
While our family was preparing for his funeral, his brother Dale had towed the machine to his own yard, half a mile from our house.
âIâll look after it for you,â heâd promised.
Iâd appreciated the gesture then.
But now it was October in northern Wisconsin, and cold weather was approaching quickly.
Along our fence sat a long stack of unsplit red oak.
Our only source of home heating was a wood stove, and since Jimâs death, we were surviving on my paycheck.
âYouâd pay ninety bucks a day at the rental yard in Rhinelander,â Dale explained. âForty is a special rate because youâre my family.â
He seemed almost pleased with himself.
My son Cole, who was sixteen, sat in our pickup with the heater running.
Iâd told him to wait there.
I wanted to remind Dale that the splitter had never belonged to him.
Jim had paid for it, and I was now its rightful owner.
But arguing wouldnât get us ready for winter.
And if Dale insisted on collecting rent for my property, I wanted written evidence.
âAll right, Dale. I appreciate it,â I said.
I handed him forty dollars in cash.
âWould you mind giving me a receipt?â
He laughed briefly.
Still, he pulled out a notepad from a parts supplier and wrote down the transaction.
One afternoonâs rental of log splitter.
He added his signature.
I folded the receipt and placed it safely inside my shirt pocket.
Cole waited until we were back in the truck before speaking.
âWhy did you pay Uncle Dale to use something Dad already owned?â
âGet your gloves ready,â I replied.
We started working shortly after noon.
I tied my hair into a braid and positioned the first round of oak on the splitter.
Cole collected the pieces and stacked them neatly in the truck bed.
Every time a log cracked open, the fresh wood released that familiar sour smell of red oak.
At about three, I went into the lean-to shed for our water jug.
There, I noticed Jimâs writing on the wall.
Heâd made a short list using his carpenterâs pencil.
Three womenâs names.
They were all widows who lived on Otter Creek Road.
Jim had always made sure each received a full cord of firewood every October.
He delivered theirs before he even began preparing our own supply.
He wouldnât accept payment.
The occasional homemade pie was all he ever brought home.
Since his funeral, none of those women had called to ask about their winter wood.
I couldnât blame them.
Asking a recently widowed woman for the free firewood her husband used to provide would have been difficult.
I returned to Cole.
âWeâre taking three cords to the ladies on the road.â
He understood immediately.
âThe ones Dad helped every year?â
âThatâs right.â
At twenty minutes before six, weâd completed our fourth cord.
My hands hurt so badly I struggled to straighten my fingers.
We hauled the splitter back to Dale before darkness fell.
âLet me know if you want to rent it again next weekend,â he said.
That night, Cole and I delivered the first load to Mrs. Hartmann.
We stacked the wood on her porch.
She was eighty-six and kept her house at only fifty-eight degrees to make her heating money last.
She stared at the wood with tears in her eyes.
âI was beginning to think nobody remembered us this year,â she said quietly.
On Monday morning, I visited the feed store at seven.
Near the coffee pot was a bulletin board where locals posted announcements.
I pinned up a handwritten index card.
Free split oak for widows on Otter Creek Road. Supplied using Jim Thorsonâs log splitter.
Beside it, I attached the rental receipt bearing Daleâs signature.
I didnât write a single word about the disagreement.
The papers spoke for themselves.
By the weekend, almost every regular customer at the feed store had read them.
Word eventually reached Mrs. Hartmann.
She had known Dale and Jim since they were children.
In fact, both brothers had been pupils in her fourth-grade classroom.
Using her cane, she walked into Daleâs yard that Saturday.
When he spotted his former teacher, Dale immediately removed his cap.
She approached him slowly.
âDale, I remember the boy you used to be,â she said. âYou werenât a selfish child. But pride has always been your weakness.â
He glanced uneasily at the log splitter.
Then Mrs. Hartmann said something that surprised me.
âItâs time you explained to this woman what youâve been unable to bring yourself to ask.â
Dale looked down at the cap in his hands.
He turned it over and over, avoiding my eyes.
For a while, the three of us stood in silence.
Finally, he raised his head and faced me.
When he began to speak, I realized there was something about the whole situation I hadnât known.
The rest of the story is in the first comment.
