The two-sentence contract

The Kennel Lane coal yard's first contract with this firm is two sentences long. It has been renewed every spring for a hundred and twenty-eight years. I have thought about why more than is healthy.

"Hesketh to carry coal, weekly, weather permitting. Hesketh to be paid, weekly, weather permitting." That is the whole document. No signature block in the modern sense, no term, no break clause, no force majeure. Weather permitting is the force majeure, the term, and the break clause, all in two words that both parties can read off a barge in the rain.

The solicitors who have seen it over the decades have reacted in two ways. The good ones laughed. The rest wrote long letters explaining what it lacked, and the yard kept the letters in a drawer marked weather permitting.

Here is what I think the two sentences actually do. They name the thing being done, the rhythm of doing it, the only force that cancels it, and the obligation that runs the other way, in the same breath. Carrying and paying are the same clause, not two. Neither side can hold the other to a standard the first sentence doesn't set, because there is no second sentence to hide in.

Every spring the current yard owner and our current master renew it in the same handshake, over the same ledger, and every spring some visiting student of business asks what the review process is. The review process is the winter. If either side had failed the winter, there would be no spring.

The original document hangs framed in the coal office. The drawer of letters is real, fictionally speaking.