Chaneysville Incident (31 page)

“That’s right,” the Judge said. “I happen to know he bought it in 1946. He had held an option on it for some years. He could have sold that option for a lot of money. He took the land.” He looked at me quizzically. “How did you know…”

“That’s the way he would set it up. She gets the house as long as she needs it, and then the whole Hill becomes a single parcel…”

“Well,” he said, “not the whole Hill…”

“No,” I said. “No, of course not. He’d split it in two. He’d leave Bill this side. And me the far side.”

He was staring at me.

“That’s right, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” the Judge said. “Essentially. Although your real property includes several other small parcels of land scattered around the County. I’m not sure what they were. I imagine they had something to do with his…business.”

“Great,” I said. “He made Bill the biggest slumlord this side of Pittsburgh, and he turned me into a moonshiner.”

Nobody said anything then; we sat there and listened to the sounds my mother made, taking shorthand.

“Does she
have
to do that?” I said.

“It’s one of the provisions of the Will,” he said. “All right, Mrs. Washington?”

“Yes,” she said. Her voice was strained. I realized that she had known about the Will—nobody had had to tell her to take it all down.

“That’s pretty much all of it, in terms of property. There were strictures and provisions, most of which do not apply any longer. You were not to be permitted to make any alteration in the property on the Hill, for example, until both Joshua White and John Crawley were deceased. But one proviso does apply: you were not to take possession of your portion of the estate until such time as you came to call for it.”

He paused again. My mother’s hand went scratch-scratching across the paper. I could hear that, and his breathing, which was slightly ragged, and Scott’s breathing, which seemed even more ragged. And I could hear my own. “You understand, John, that I do not have the power to end the trust. You still have to call for the property, of your own initiative.”

“I understand,” I said.

He waited again, while my mother caught up, and I listened to the breathing again. But it was different now: the Judge’s breathing seemed easier, calmer than it had been; now it was Scott’s breath that came harshly, Scott who breathed with his mouth slightly open. I twisted slightly in order to look at him; his face was composed, and he sat with his legs crossed in a pose of seeming calm. But I knew by his breathing, and by the desperate light in his eyes.

“Those trusts and their endowments comprise the major financial portions of the estate,” the Judge said. “It is, of course, yours now. One fund has become rather depleted, since the Hill no longer brings in the income it once did, but the financial portion of the estate is intact….”

He paused again, waiting. We all listened to my mother’s pencil on the paper. When she stopped, the Judge took a deep breath. “The financial portion,” he repeated, “is intact, and it is yours whenever you choose to call for it. However, there is another proviso: when you do so you must also take possession of the nonfinancial portions of the estate.” He stopped, looked at me expectantly.

Suddenly the room was quiet. My mother had stopped taking down the Judge’s words, and the scratching sound of pencil on paper had cut off abruptly. And everyone in that room except me was holding his breath.

“What happens,” I said, “if I never call for the property?” As soon as I said the words, the silence was gone; they were all breathing again, not easily and deeply, but breathing.

“If you don’t call, the trusts continue.”

“Perpetually?” I said.

The Judge hesitated. “I’m not sure. I think your father was certain you would call. But if you do not, I suspect the courts would simply direct that the trusts be continued, and that suitable disposition be made of the…other materials. But that would not happen until you were deceased; until then, you might call at any time.”

“I see,” I said. “And you would continue as executor?”

“I or the firm.”

“Randall,” I said.

“Yes, Randall.”

“Humph,” I said. “So my choice is to either become a slumlord or let good old Randall bide his time until you die and then start squeezing the last drop of blood out of a bunch of lame old ladies and half-blind old men.”

“John,” Scott said, “I know you don’t trust me, but I wouldn’t do that.”

“You
can’t
do that,” the Judge said. “The Will’s instructions are quite specific and the restrictions on the trustee are clear. For one thing, the rents are pegged at the level they occupied when your father died, so long as the same tenants are in occupation.”

“Glad to know you’re so restrained, Randall,” I said. “Not to mention magnanimous.”

Scott didn’t say anything; he looked slightly murderous, but he didn’t say anything.

“Do you have any further questions, John?” the Judge said.

I had a few. I wanted to know what those other parcels of land were. I wanted to know what those “nonfinancial portions” of Moses Washington’s estate were. I wanted to know how I was supposed to come calling for anything without knowing there was anything to call for. But I knew better than to ask any of those questions; any historian who was worth his footnotes would know that. For any complex issue is surrounded by a maze of questions, most of them obvious, most of them meaningless, and all of them false. A bad historian picks the wrong ones and spends his time researching the useless. A mediocre historian tries to answer them all and spends his time doing background for conclusions that, when stated, will seem hopelessly obvious. A good historian looks at the issue and does…nothing. He sits and thinks and tries to find the few questions that are significant and central, hoping that one is so much a cornerstone that answering it will answer all the rest. And so I sat and waited, listening to them not breathing. I didn’t know. I just didn’t know. So I asked the unobvious, and hoped.

“Yeah,” I said. I tried to sound casual. “All I want to know is, why does Randall want my permission to pay for Old Jack’s funeral?” I heard a catch in Scott’s breathing.

“What?” the Judge said. He looked a little annoyed, as if I were taking up his time with the trivial.

“I said, ‘Why does Randall want my permission to pay for Old Jack’s funeral?’ ”

“Well, I don’t know,” the Judge said, “but I presume that, even though you do not have control over the decision until you call for the property, Randall wanted to make sure you would not protest the expenditure as excessive at a later date. A prudent course…”

“You don’t understand,” I said. “Randall didn’t want me to approve anything. He didn’t want me to concur with anything. He wanted me to agree to let
him
pay. Personally.”

“Ah, John,” Scott said quickly, “I think you misunderstood me.”

“Like hell,” I said.

There was a long silence; the room was even quieter than it had been before, for no one was breathing, not even me. And then I suddenly realized that I had asked precisely the right question; it was so perfect that it answered itself. “Never mind,” I said. “I know why. Because as trustee he would have to pay anyway, but if he had my permission it would never occur to me to go toddling down to the undertaker to find out who had picked up the tab, and then come toddling up here asking questions, and there won’t be any kind of accounting, and nobody will ever figure out the nifty little shenanigans good old Randall has been up to with the trust funds. Tell me, Randall, how much did you steal?”

It was wrong. I knew that as I said it. I had extrapolated too far with no data.

“The financial portion of this estate is absolutely intact,” the Judge snapped. “I told you that. And I’ll thank you to refrain from making loose accusations.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I went too far. I skipped a step or two. Because the first thing that would happen if I came up here asking questions is that I’d find out about the Will, and then maybe I’d want to take the property out from under good old Randall’s thumb—”

“What do you mean, find out about?” the Judge said. I hadn’t been paying much attention to him; I had been caught up in the existential beauty of my own half-witted decipherings. But there was something in his voice that made me focus in on him now, made me realize that I had done it all wrong. Again.

“You thought I knew,” I said.

“You didn’t,” he said.

We sat there for a long moment, looking at each other. “No,” I said. “No, I didn’t know anything. I don’t know anything. I don’t know what’s going on here….” I realized that my voice was climbing in both pitch and volume; I couldn’t do anything about that. But at least I knew the next question. “Who,” I said, “does the will say is responsible for informing the heirs of their inheritance?”

I didn’t really need to ask. Because suddenly I knew why I had known nothing of this, and why the matches had been placed that way: they were waiting for my hand. Because Moses Washington had known that one day I would go climbing up into that attic, had believed I would follow the clues he had left there, and find my way to this place. He had been half right: I had tried. And failed. All I needed was confirmation.

“No one,” he said. “It was not a part of the Will. Your father said he would make the charge personally.”

I closed my eyes then, and folded my hands over my belly, trying to find some comfort in the darkness, and perhaps a little warmth. But then I heard the Judge saying: “To your mother.”

I refused to look at any of them—especially at her.

“John,” she said finally.

“Shut up,” I said. “You don’t want to talk when you’re supposed to, you just shut up now, and let me think.” Which was nonsense; I couldn’t think. All I could do was shiver in the silence.

“I did what I thought best,” she said. I looked at her, expecting her to drop her gaze. But she did not.

“I’m sure,” I said.

“No,” she said. “You aren’t. You aren’t sure at all. And that hurts you, doesn’t it? See, I know you, John. You want to figure everything out. You go crazy when you can’t. That’s the way you were when you were a baby in your crib. I’d make you a toy and you’d take it and just sit there and look at it for a long time, you wouldn’t even touch it, and then you’d pick it up and poke it and squeeze it and then you’d go to work and tear the stuffing out of it. And when you’d torn the thing to pieces you’d sit there and giggle. Your father used to love that. He’d give you things to tear apart, just to watch you go at it. After a while he started giving you things that were harder and harder to tear apart. He’d bring them in and give them to you and wait and see how long it took you. And one day he finally got one that was too hard. I don’t recall what it was made out of—canvas, I think. Maybe burlap. But he made it, and he gave it to you, and he sat there all day watching you while you tried to tear that thing apart. You’d beat it and you’d bang it until you were tired, and then you’d go to sleep, and then you’d wake up and you’d beat it and bang it some more. He sat there and watched you do it. And when it finally dawned on you that you weren’t going to be able to tear the stuffing out of it, he sat there and laughed while you cried…. It almost made me wild, the sound the two of you made, him laughing and you crying. I couldn’t stand it. I can’t stand the thought of it now. And I couldn’t stand the thought of it when he told me he wanted to give you another toy. Because you see, John, he left you a good one. I don’t know what it was, but I know he spent all his time tearing it apart, just like you, and he never did. But I bet he went to Hell with a smile on his face knowing he was going to sit there by a warm fire and watch you beating yourself to death on it. But I didn’t let it happen. I didn’t tell you it was there.” She stood up, smoothed her skirt. “Tell him,” she said to the Judge. “Tell him it’s all his now. Tell him he can have those damned books, tell him he can spend the rest of his life up there, going crazy just like his father.” She folded her steno book with a snap, and headed for the door.

I watched her go, thinking how funny it would have seemed to anybody who knew: me slipping out of bed and going up there on tiptoe, and she walking around carrying a secret that wasn’t a secret anymore. But then I realized that there had to be more to it, more than the books. The books explained her. But they didn’t explain Scott.

“Mrs. Washington,” the Judge said. His voice was soft, but it stopped her in her tracks. She stood there for a moment, perfectly still, then she turned and looked at him over her shoulder, a wary animal peeking from cover. “Come back and sit down, Mrs. Washington,” the Judge said.

“Why?”

“Because I cannot continue unless all the principals are present. Those are the dictates of your husband’s Will.”

“My husband’s Will be damned,” she said. She turned her head back and walked towards the door.

But I got up then, got up and went and stood in front of her. “Sit,” I said.

She didn’t move for a minute, but then she turned and slowly went back to her chair.

“Thank you, Mrs. Washington,” the Judge said mildly.

She nodded and opened the steno book again.

“John,” the Judge said. “The next provision of the Will is, as your mother indicated, a bequest of books. The materials, described as ‘books and records,’ were to be kept in the premises described in the second trust, in the care and keeping of Yvette Stanton Washington until such time as you should call for them. Then you were to have the option of leaving them where they were or transporting them to another site. The only restriction is that you are not permitted to sell, bequeath, or otherwise divest yourself of their ownership until you have examined all volumes, including personal memoirs.”

I wanted to laugh; I wanted to die laughing. “I understand,” I said.

“Good,” the Judge said. He paused, looked at Scott, turned back to me. “The final item is a parcel described only as ‘miscellaneous documents of no financial value but great personal import.’ These documents were to be held by the executor—myself—personally, until such time as you should choose to call for them.” He stopped then, looked at Scott again. “I have to, Randall,” he said. And then he opened a drawer of that old wooden desk and brought up the folio. He dropped it on the desk; he didn’t lay it down, he dropped it, as if he were happy to get it out of his hands. It was then that my mother moved, jumping out of her chair and backing away and sagging into the one beside me. “Your legacy, John,” he said. “Your legacy. If you acknowledge that you have come to call for it.”