I go out to the original parcel sometimes — the few acres my father farmed and loved and apologized for. The deposit is elsewhere on the land now, being worked properly; but I’ve kept his old creek bed and the scrubland he knew, untouched, the way it was when he stood on it not knowing what he had. I stand where he stood. I tell him what the dirt turned out to be worth. I tell him it wasn’t worthless, that he never left me nothing, that he left me everything, disguised as a degree Chloe called useless and dirt she called poverty.
Chloe I don’t think about. She was a lesson, and I learned it, and the lesson cost me less than the fortune I gained. She looked at a man on the worst day of his life and saw only what he lacked. My father looked at that same man his whole life and saw what he could become. One of them was right.
I do one thing that matters to me now.
I fund geology scholarships — for poor students, first-generation students, the ones whose families sell land and cocoa farms and everything they have to buy their kids an education that people like Chloe will call worthless. I tell them what I learned hauling concrete blocks with a first-class degree in my pocket:
