The Will

by Reed Arvin

  ALSO BY REED ARVIN

  The Wind in the Wheat

  THE WILL

  A Novel

  Reed Arvin

  SCRIBNER

  NEW YORK LONDON TORONTO SYDNEY SINGAPORE

  SCRIBNER

  1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2000 by Reed Arvin

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  SCRIBNER and design are trademarks of Macmillan Library Reference USA, Inc., used under license by Simon & Schuster, the publisher of this work.

  Designed by Colin Joh

  Text set in Janson

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Arvin, Reed.

  The will/Reed Arvin

  p. cm.

  1. Inheritance and succession—Fiction. 2. Homeless persons—Fiction.

  3. Millionaires—Fiction. 4. Kansas—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3551.R85 W55 2000

  813'.54—dc21

  00–026012

  ISBN 0-7432-0148-5

  ISBN-13: 978-0-743-20148-3

  eISBN-13: 978-0-743-21317-2

  For my father, who taught me the meaning of integrity. Unlike this book, he cannot be bought.

  THE WILL

  Margaret Crandall fluttered open her eyes at five-thirty and felt the warm sheets and covers around her. She hadn’t needed an alarm clock in years; every day she awoke at the same time, her life a predictable routine of meals and laundry and sleep. She licked her lips, sighed into her pillow, and turned to wake her husband. He lay with his back to her, and she pushed him, her fingers spread against his cotton pajama top. Her hand pressed into his fleshy back, and he rotated forward slightly with the pressure. She pushed harder, and his arm fell suddenly, woodenly down over the edge of the bed. She lowered her hand and felt his skin; he was as cold and still as winter fields.

  She did not move. For several minutes she lay silently, her breathing unanswered, hands balled up at her chin. Then she rose, put on a pale pink robe, and walked out of the room. She closed the door behind her quietly, carefully, as though not to disturb her husband. She walked down the hallway to the stairs, descending into the living room. Her balance began to disintegrate as she walked, her equilibrium slipping further away with each step. She began listing, leaning. She entered the kitchen but came to a halt just inside the door; focusing her eyes unsteadily on the sink across the tile floor, she righted herself and began inching forward. After a few last steps she collided with the kitchen table, knocking two plates and a cup to the floor. The dishes spun lazily downward and broke into pieces as they struck the tile, scattering sharp, colored chips to every corner of the room.

  Upstairs, the dead man’s son awoke with the sound of smashing china. Roger, tense and listening, pulled on his pants and entered the hallway. He passed his sister Sarah’s room, descended the stairs, and saw his mother collapsed into an awkward sitting position on the kitchen floor, slumped over with her back to the sink.

  Roger took his mother’s shoulder in his hand; she moved easily in his grip, her limbs loose. At that moment the house was filled with a high-pitched scream of agony.

  Roger took the stairs three at a time. He entered the bedroom, saw Sarah, and understood instantly that his father was dead. Sarah was clinging to the body, her head buried in the chest. Roger disengaged her, her nails leaving marks in the pajama top as he peeled them back. He pulled her out into the hallway; she resisted, reaching back uselessly toward her father. But he was too strong, and forcing her away from the door, he managed to reenter the bedroom, close the door behind him, and lock it.

  Now the dead man and his son were alone. For a moment, he stood close by the door, staring. He could hear his sister whimpering and sobbing through the door, and eventually he moved away from the noise, walking slowly toward his father. A leg had fallen gracelessly off the bed during the struggle, and the body lay like an enormous stuffed doll, mouth open, limbs akimbo. Roger reached a hand out tentatively, but pulled slowly back; the eyes were still open, staring up at the ceiling. The son reached the bed and stood over the body, his eyes locked on his father’s. Then, with an abrupt motion, he reached out and slapped the dead man’s face, a brutal strike directly across the cheek. The crack of his hand echoed in the bedroom like a gunshot.

  Tractors were running by sunup all over Cheney County the morning Tyler Crandall died; there was rain in the forecast. Kit Munroe, the chief of the Council Grove volunteer fire department, was already out working his fields when his wife received the call. She had to drive a pickup truck twenty minutes across five gated fields to find her husband. Munroe listened quietly, shut the tractor down, and rode back with his wife. He called for some help; Crandall was a big man, and it would take two people to hoist him onto a stretcher. He didn’t want the Crandall boy to have to do it.

  It was some work getting Ty up off the bed and onto the stretcher with any dignity. Munroe and Carter Dixon wrestled him to the stretcher, lowering it briefly to the floor to rearrange the limbs. Then Munroe pulled a white sheet up over the face and tucked it in over the head. He signaled with a grunt and they heaved the body up, steadying themselves.

  It was warming up outside, and Munroe and Carter sweated in the June sun as they hoisted Crandall down the front steps, down the long walkway to the driveway and the car. They loaded him in and Munroe slammed shut the big, swinging back door of the ambulance. The car pulled out into the driveway in a cloud of grit and gravel dust, and was gone.

  Roger entered his father’s office an hour later. He pulled the big chair back from the ornate desk and sat, feeling his weight in the chair, adjusting its height to fit his own lighter frame. After a moment he took a key from his pocket and unlocked the right bottom drawer of the desk. Inside were a black long-barreled revolver, a half-empty metal flask, and a large manila envelope. He grasped the flask and screwed open the top; sniffing the contents, he took a quick swallow. He was an experienced drinker, and his face was unchanged by the jolt of straight whiskey. He screwed the top back on the flask lightly and returned to the drawer. He removed the envelope, opened it, and pulled out several typewritten pages. He scanned the top page silently, his expression blank. Setting it aside, he picked up the phone and dialed.

  Earlier that morning Henry Mathews, Jr., had been fighting the usual Chicago drive-time traffic, another day of automotive peristalsis that left him switching radio stations obsessively, tapping on his steering wheel in time to the music. Calculations flickered behind his eyes as he glanced down at his watch; alternative routes passed briefly through his brain, were considered and discarded. He looked at a passing street sign and added minutes: nine for driving, three to park, five for the elevator. He didn’t like to be late, but Elaine had stayed over and she had been in a playful mood. After what she had put him through, he was lucky to be at work at all. He pulled into the underground parking lot at the Equitable Building on Michigan Avenue and grabbed a lucky parking spot near an elevator.

  Henry ascended several hundred feet from the shoreline of Lake Michigan to the offices of Wilson, Lougherby and Mathers, smiled at the receptionist, and turned down the long corridor toward the office of Sheldon Parker. He knocked at Parker’s door and stood silently in the hallway, knowing that Sheldon would make him wait. He pictured Parker leaning back in his oversized leather chair, hands locked b
ehind his head, a self-satisfied grin on his face. Parker managed eleven junior associates in the firm and, due to a personality clouded by a vague, broadly aimed sadism, took frequent pleasure in trivial abuses of his authority.

  Henry checked himself in a mirror at the end of the hallway, scanning for Parker fodder: dark olive sport coat, conservative but fresh; thin-striped shirt and silk tie; tailored pants, gold Gevril watch. His darkening blond hair was short and cut expensively, his pale blue eyes level and inquiring. But impeccable appearance just meant Parker would find some other topic upon which to focus his sardonic abuse.

  After several long seconds a muffled voice said, “Enter,” and Henry stepped into the office. As expected, Parker was smirking, a highly communicative expression composed of equal parts arrogance, power, and prissy tattletale. He looked for all the world like a high school principal, except for the nine-hundred-dollar suit. A small man, he had compensated for his lack of physical presence with a kind of overworked, slicked-down finesse. His hair was jet-black, with eyebrows Henry sincerely believed were regularly plucked to perfection. He was tanned—remarkably so, given that the summer was only beginning—and he radiated a sense of wealth so comfortably that it could only have been inherited. He was also brilliant, with a win rate in the 90 percent range, and Henry had settled in for a two-or three-year stint of pain at his feet, determined to glean whatever crumbs the man might let fall from his table.

  Parker gestured toward a seat opposite his desk. “You know something, Henry?” he began in his silky Ivy League voice. “These Monday morning shakedowns are my favorite time of the week. Know why that is?”

  Henry took the chair opposite Parker’s desk and set down his briefcase. The ritual abuse had begun. “No, Sheldon, I don’t.”

  “It’s because we both know our place. Every man has a part to play in life, and the universe decrees that he plays it. Otherwise, order breaks down.”

  “I thought that was how lawyers made money. Order breaking down, I mean.”

  “Of course. But our roles are decreed by fate. You, for example. What is your part in our little weekly drama?”

  “I am to deliver work to you so perfect it defies analysis.”

  “That is correct. And what is my purpose in this happy scenario?”

  Henry smiled. “Your role is to tell me I’m shit.”

  Parker’s eyes gleamed. “Henry, you’re shit.”

  Henry relaxed; the world was once again comfortably predictable. “Thank you, Sheldon. Was there anything else?”

  Parker grinned, his mouth a thin, shallow curve. “You think by agreeing with me you can avoid my pain. But I didn’t make partner by not picking up little misdirections. I’m afraid you have to sit here for the full hour while I deconstruct briefs you thought were works of art. Then I’ll bury you with research because you’re still young enough to be brilliant on caffeine and doughnuts, whereas I have better things to do with my nights. This is work, ironically, for which you will not receive one whit of credit. Long before it’s seen it will bear the proud name of Sheldon Parker.”

  “The universe does have a sense of humor.”

  Parker’s mouth widened into a smile. “Do you know why I like you, Henry?”

  Henry shrugged. “My innocence?”

  “Very droll.”

  “Is it possible I offer the firm something professionally?”

  “Be serious. You’re lucky you’re even here. I mean, the University of Kansas.”

  “Unlike you, Sheldon,” Henry replied, “I had to actually pay for my education.”

  Parker waved his hand dismissively. “You had some decent clerking . . .”

  “Excellent clerking, Sheldon. At the state supreme court.”

  “That would require calling Kansas a state, which, naturally, I won’t. But miraculously, you now find yourself living beyond your limited pedigree. You find yourself, in fact, buried in the legal backwaters of the firm of Destroy, Dismantle and Debase. You work sixty hours a week and have no life other than work at all. You have a girlfriend—inexplicably desirable, by the way—that you see intermittently. Perhaps you’ve developed the ability to write briefs and screw simultaneously. But that’s not what really amuses me, Mathews. What amuses me is the fact that every day you get up, look at yourself in the mirror, and tell yourself the same pathetic thing.”

  A trace of irony filtered involuntarily through Henry’s voice; Parker was being unusually wicked, and he was tired of playing whipping boy. “And what would that be, Sheldon?” he asked. “Please enlighten me.”

  Parker shrugged. “You tell yourself that if you can stand kissing my ass a couple more years, you will receive your payoff.”

  Henry responded with a grim smile. He had, in fact, muttered something very like those words to himself that morning. “What is the payoff, Sheldon?” he asked. “Now, with my nose shined so shiny brown, would be a golden time to remind me.”

  Parker smiled. “House in Lincoln Park, and a staggering capacity to borrow money.”

  “That’s it, then? That’s what I get in return for my immortal soul?”

  Parker looked at his protégé indulgently. “I understand you, Henry. You’re smart and ambitious, and you thought that made you special. Now, two years into your career, you’re realizing that it merely made you a cliché.”

  Henry contained the desire to execute a perfect backhand with a tightly strung tennis racket on Parker’s face by letting his mind settle instead on Elaine Mitchell’s immaculate backside, which an hour earlier he had been caressing with the kind of pleasure he sincerely hoped Parker had never experienced. Parker was smiling smugly, but then, predictably, his expression clouded. Henry knew what was coming. It followed in these sessions as night followed day.

  Parker’s voice dropped. “Yet one thing you withhold from me,” he said quietly. “This morsel you keep in the dark. It eats at me, and I don’t like that.” His eyes searched Henry’s face. “I speak of the little black spot on your otherwise stellar résumé, Henry. The failure. The disappointment. The only thing about you someone like me could possibly find interesting.”

  “You don’t find my excellence entertaining?”

  “God, no,” Parker said earnestly, leaning forward. “Look at it from my point of view. Before me flows an endless stream of superlative résumés, nothing but fawning recommendations. Losers don’t apply here, for obvious reasons. It’s a nightmare. You can’t think I would ever have hired you if you had been merely excellent. It was your disturbing flaw that made me care about you at all.”

  “I’ve wondered about that, Sheldon. Why would you hire less than the best? What’s this attraction to the fallen?”

  Parker smiled, perfectly aligned teeth in an alligator row.

  “Go ahead, Henry. Be my analyst. You tell me.”

  Henry knew the answer, judged his response, and took one of the reckless liberties that he risked from time to time, risks that none of the other junior attorneys at the firm dared. Lately he found himself going over the line more often with Parker, a kind of behavior not unlike being attracted to stepping off a cliff. It was dangerous, and it kept him sane. “Could it be that abusing armor-plated lawyers isn’t any fun for a guy like you?” he asked, his voice absolutely level. “That the masochist needs weakness to feed on?”

  The word “masochist” hung in the air like mustard gas, dangerous and mobile. Parker’s expression was very nearly unchanged; only his eyes widened perceptibly. After a long, perilous moment, he laughed. “There it is,” he stated, as though uncovering the determining fact in a difficult case. “You’re a piranha, Mathews. Presented with fresh meat, you can’t help yourself. You have to go in for the kill. That’s what makes you different from the other well-dressed robots around here.”

  Henry exhaled; once again, he had survived. It actually seemed that the more he pushed his luck, the more Parker appeared to enjoy it. It suddenly and horribly dawned on him that Parker might actually be one step ahead of him, in
control of the process, running him like a foreign agent. Was it possible that being turned into an impulsive asshole was part of Parker’s plan for him, a step in his training? The thought gave him a momentary sense of vertigo, mostly because that was exactly what he knew he was becoming: a dangerous, efficient mercenary. For lack of a better word, a Parker. Looking at his managing partner across the desk, he found that he wasn’t relieved, exactly, that Parker hadn’t fired him for his remark. “You love to use my little past excursion to bring that out in me, don’t you, Sheldon?” Henry asked. “Anyway, I never hid anything about that time, my so-called black spot. It’s all in the paperwork.”

  Parker smiled. “The subject graduates with a business degree, cum laude. How thoroughly blasé. But does he enter law school? He does not. He goes to Kentucky, land of marrying cousins, sagging porches, and outdoor appliances. What does he do there? He enrolls in an academically inauspicious seminary. He goes, ladies and gentlemen, to find God.”

  “Study God,” Henry corrected. “I spent some time in seminary after undergraduate school. What of it?”

  “And dropped out in the second semester,” Parker interrupted. “Three weeks from the end of an academic year.”

  “We’ve been through this, Sheldon. I changed my mind. Rather than finish the year, I dropped out. Four months later I was in law school.”

  “It wasn’t leaving seminary that was the mistake I’m so drawn to.” He leaned forward, putting his slender fingers on his mahogany desk. “Leaving seminary is something I have absolutely no trouble understanding.”

  “Then what’s bothering you, Sheldon? What is this fatal flaw?”

  “Entering it in the first place. It’s so wonderfully needy. So vulnerable and . . . hell, I don’t know, optimistic.”

  Henry stared at Parker, a man utterly at peace with his cynicism. “And for these few months of inquisition into the eternal I have a parson’s collar tattooed around my neck.”