The Lost Bet by Wendell Berry, 1992
The magic trick:
A story that feels like a tale shared across generations
Another Tol and Miss Minnie story from Wendell Berry today.
This one presents a good opportunity that while Berry certainly should be considered literary fiction – with all the serious analytical opportunities such a term implies – he’s at his heart a teller of tales. His stories typically feature something that happens – you know, like a plot. There is a beginning and, most crucially, there is a defined end. They are episodes. They aren’t moods or anecdotes that drift off at the end with an ethereal feeling in the breeze. These are the kinds of stories that someone would tell and retell to their family and friends, so that they become almost like community legends.
“The Lost Bet” qualifies as such a tale.
And that’s quite a trick on Berry’s part.
The selection:
This time I am going to tell you about, Tol was looking for navy beans. He and Miss Minnie always grew a big garden and put up most of the stuff they needed, but something they never tried to grow was navy beans. And so one of Tol’s regular fall chores was to buy a two-bushel bag of them, which was usually enough to see them through the winter – some to keep and some to give away, according to the first rule of the Proudfoot household.
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