The Will

by Reed Arvin

  With the bird gone Henry made his way to a spot five feet away from Boyd and set down his briefcase on the sidewalk, just beyond the white spatters that made a broad semicircle around the bench. He decided to try his luck. He spoke the man’s name quietly, looking for comprehension.

  The Birdman whispered on, staring at his shoes, his expression unchanged. A disappointing, but hardly surprising beginning. Henry determined to press ahead. “I’m a lawyer, Mr. Boyd.” Under normal circumstances, those were words of power, guaranteed to gain the attention of their target. But Boyd gave no sign that they had meant anything to him.

  “I’ve got something important to talk over with you,” Henry said. “I need you to pay attention very carefully. Do you think you could do that?” The Birdman whispered on, his head dancing slightly back and forth.

  “Mr. Boyd, do you know who Tyler Crandall is?” At this, Boyd looked up, but not with any discernible expression of recognition. It was possible he understood; it was also possible that he was looking straight through Henry to a place that existed only in his own mind. Henry decided to interpret the glance as positive and press on until he had a reason to do otherwise.

  “Tyler Crandall?” he repeated. “Does that name mean anything to you?” To Henry’s consternation, Boyd’s gaze slowly floated downward, and he began to scrape his left foot around in a small circle.

  Apparently, the Birdman was as crazy as everyone thought after all. That meant that the legal proceedings would be much more complicated. It was a shame, Crandall leaving all that money to a person who couldn’t even comprehend what it meant. It was an irony that would certainly not be lost on Roger, who had longed for that same money every day of his life. It’s over, Henry thought. All that remained was to get a little due diligence off his chest, to get through the facts with Boyd whether the man was capable of understanding them or not. Then he could file to be excused and to have someone local appointed.

  “Look, Mr. Boyd,” Henry said, “I’ve got some very important information to pass on to you. What I’m trying to tell you, Mr. Boyd, is that Tyler Crandall is dead.”

  The whispering stopped. The wind blew several old leaves out past the Birdman’s feet, and they tumbled over his filthy shoes, catching for a moment on the bench, then fluttering away into the grass beyond. Henry stood still, captivated in the new silence, pondering its meaning. The brim of Boyd’s hat moved up and down a few times, but he still said nothing. “Did you understand me, Mr. Boyd?” Henry asked. “Do you know who Mr. Crandall is?”

  The Birdman tilted his head slightly, peering up from the bench, revealing dry, cracked lips. They parted, dry skin pulling apart, and he spoke in a gravelly voice, metallic and cloudy from disuse. “Mathews?”

  Henry stared at the man, surprised to hear his own name. “That’s right. Henry Mathews.”

  Boyd scrunched up his face. “Law-yer,” he said, stretching the word out.

  Henry nodded. “Wilson, Lougherby and Mathers, in Chicago.”

  The Birdman smiled slightly, skin cracking softly back from his heavily chapped mouth. “Law-yer,” he repeated dreamily. Then, softly, even intimately, he whispered, “The day of the Lord is at hand.” With this proclamation, he began mumbling again, picking at his dirty fingernails and cuticles. Henry gritted his teeth; in his newly urbane existence, he had become fastidious.

  “I’d like to ask you a few questions, Mr. Boyd. And I want to start by asking what your relationship was to Tyler Crandall.”

  The Birdman fixed Henry in a sudden, intense gaze. Henry found himself drawn in, unable to look away. “The Lord speaks to me,” Boyd said. “Right to me, like you and me are talkin’ now. What he says is a secret. But I’ll tell you if you want to know.”

  Henry searched Boyd’s eyes, looking for coherence, for anything that said the man had some place of reality within him. But he couldn’t ignore the invitation; he had watched, secreted behind a tree, too many times as a boy not to want to know the answer. He nodded yes.

  The Birdman grinned up at him, a scarecrow with a brown-and-gray beard. “It is a terrible day when the Lord stretches out His hand in sulfur and towers of flame. When the day of the Lord comes, the truth will be let loose on every bastard who walks this town. Whatever is held in secret will be shouted from the rooftops. Be ye ready, for ye know not when comes the day of the Lord.”

  Henry watched silently. Suddenly the Birdman asked, “H.L.’s boy?”

  “That’s right,” Henry answered, coming back to himself. “I’m his son, Henry Junior.”

  The Birdman bit a cuticle and a substantial piece of dirt came unstuck from his finger, drifting lazily down to the ground. “What he send a junior for?”

  “My father’s dead, Mr. Boyd. For several years now.”

  The Birdman continued biting at his fingernails, and then jerked his head up, squinting in the sun. “Guess that’s why he didn’t come then.” Hearing his father’s name in the Birdman’s mouth gave Henry an uncomfortable feeling. Boyd stopped picking at himself and looked up intently once again. “You was around here, back in the day,” he said. “Come to steal my sermons.” He grinned. “I know you, boy. You came with them boys who threw rocks. You was gonna be a preacher, like me, ain’t that right?”

  Henry didn’t like the Birdman knowing things about him, because there wasn’t any explanation for how he could find them out. But his curiosity had been aroused. “How did you know that?” he asked. “I never said anything to you about that.”

  “I heard it,” Boyd said, smiling his gap-toothed smile. “I ain’t deaf. Just c-r-a-z-y.” He whirled his finger around his ear. “But I don’t see no preacher in front of me. I see a law-yer.”

  “I changed my mind.”

  Boyd squinted, regarding him closely. “I reckon my sermons is safe, then.”

  Henry shook himself loose from the Birdman’s stare. He felt a sudden compulsion to press ahead with the will; there was no way of telling when he would be able to talk with Boyd again, especially without the bird around. It was now or never. The courts would have to sort it all out later. “Mr. Boyd,” he said, “Tyler Crandall’s death concerns you directly. Mr. Crandall has named you as a beneficiary in his will.” Boyd said nothing. He scanned the sky, apparently looking for the vulture. Henry pressed on. “The fact is, Mr. Crandall has seen fit to leave you a substantial amount of money. A great deal of money. So I need to go over some things with you. I need to help you understand.”

  The Birdman now began to move. He lifted up a foot and scratched a leg with an old, worn-out shoe. The smell was assaulting Henry’s nostrils, and it was all he could do to stand so close. Boyd rumbled up off the bench, the smell wafting off him as he moved. For the first time, the years that had added up on the man were apparent—as a boy, Henry had watched Boyd scoot across the park, lambasting kids intent on bothering him. But it was now obvious that his years of inactivity had taken their toll. “You’re a liar, junior Henry,” he said. “This must be a new game. Them kids used to throw rocks at me. Now dressed-up junior Henrys come to pester me. Go to hell, boy. Crandall didn’t give me nothin’.”

  “I can tell you that he did, Mr. Boyd,” Henry said levelly. Boyd had apparently understood, even though he didn’t believe it. And why should he? Henry thought. In a way, Henry was relieved; that was, in its way, a sign of rationality. “Look, Mr. Boyd, I don’t think you understand the dimensions of what I’m talking about here,” he said. “Mr. Crandall has left you an estate worth over three million dollars. You may soon be the richest man in Cheney County, Mr. Boyd.”

  Boyd waved Henry off. “Bird?” he called testily, starting to shuffle away.

  “You really should take a look at this.” Henry searched quickly through his briefcase and pulled out the papers. A thought occurred to him: “You do read?” he asked. “I’ll read it if you like.”

  Boyd whirled around angrily. “Who sent you, junior Henry?” he rasped. “Who sent you to pester? I’m gonna set my bird on you.” He
shuffled toward Henry, who stood his ground in the face of the smell by an act of will. When they were less than a foot apart, Boyd looked down at Henry’s shoes, two cushions of soft, brown Italian leather. His eyes traveled upward, taking in every article of clothing. He seemed to be making an accounting of some kind. Suddenly, he reached up, and for a moment Henry thought he was going to strike him. But instead, Boyd made an exaggerated sign of the cross. His hands moved slowly, describing great lines two feet across. “All ye bastards who are heavy laden,” he said, “ye of the talon and the claw, come unto me. I will give ye rest.”

  The two men were locked eye to eye for a long moment. Henry was irritated to find Boyd’s words moving through him, hitting him in an irrational but exquisitely responsive place. Rest, he thought. Whatever that means. He shook himself free from Boyd’s gaze. God, I need to get back to Chicago.

  Boyd was speaking. “Give me them papers,” he said. Henry cautiously handed over the white papers, and Boyd grasped them roughly with his dark, soiled fingers.

  “Your name appears on page two,” Henry said, pointing. The Birdman turned to the page and stared for some time, picking at his right ear, digging his fingernail far into the orifice. Eventually he looked up at Henry. He appeared, for the moment, surprisingly coherent. “This here says I own the granary,” Boyd asked. “That right?”

  That, indeed, is the question, Henry thought. For now, however, he simply nodded.

  “And them rental houses. Them people livin’ in my houses now, ain’t that what this paper says?”

  “The paper says that, Mr. Boyd.”

  “And the wells, how ’bout them?”

  “The oil wells, yes. They’re about played out, I’m afraid.”

  The Birdman looked up at Henry, his face tilted to the side. “And the bank.” He said the word with emphasis, as though it were separate in his mind. “That mine, too?”

  “Just the building, Mr. Boyd. Not the assets themselves. But everything on the list, Mr. Boyd. All the buildings, the land, the money, everything.”

  Boyd watched Henry for a while, obviously thinking. After a moment he said in a clear voice, “Let’s go see my buildings.”

  The statement jarred Henry. “What do you mean?”

  “Junior Henry don’t hear too good, I guess.”

  “You’re saying you want to leave the park?”

  Boyd held up the papers. “See my buildings.”

  Henry pictured the Birdman strolling through one of the Crandall businesses proclaiming himself the new owner. It would certainly be the worst possible way to announce to the town the contents of the will. And Roger’s reaction to an event like that was easy to predict: immediate, harsh, and ugly. “I’m not sure that would be in your best interest,” he began. He was forced to stop; Boyd, bafflingly, had let the papers fall to the ground, and was now walking away. Henry was flooded with frustration. “Look, Mr. Boyd, I can’t possibly help you if you don’t pay attention.”

  Boyd turned back. “Junior Henry don’t use rocks no more.” He gestured to the scattered pages on the ground. “Got papers now.”

  “This isn’t an attack, Mr. Boyd. What you’re asking for is complicated.”

  Boyd shuffled away, mumbling softly to himself. He moved off the pavement toward the playground, his eyes scanning the skies. Henry watched him walk away, when a thought came to him. He’s testing you. If you don’t give in, he’ll never believe another word you say. Henry shook his head, forced to make a snap decision. If he couldn’t communicate with Boyd, legal forces would take their inevitable course. He didn’t want that to happen, somehow. Boyd seemed different to him, meeting him again as an adult. He wasn’t as frightening as he had remembered. His scowls were mostly bravura, the shell of a man living unprotected by shelter or sanity. And if Boyd needed a little protecting, Henry couldn’t think of a reason why he shouldn’t be the one to do it. So far in his career he had used his skills to peel back the protective covering of people and corporations for his firm, exposing them to the blistering attacks of Sheldon Parker. The chance to do the opposite, for once, was tantalizing to him, almost a kind of forbidden fruit. He toyed with the idea for a moment, drawn to it, but also aware of its implications. Then a thought came to him, magnificently clear, and once surfaced, unavoidable. If you say no to this, you are Parker. He repeated it to himself several times. You are Parker. You are Parker. If he had managed to avoid that conclusion, he might have been able to walk away. But he had let his guard down, and the thought had come. Now it was too late, and his need to take risks overwhelmed him. Suddenly, almost palpably, it was essential not to be Parker, to prove it to himself, like the ability to leap across a deep canal. He was grateful, in a way; Boyd had presented him with a perfect, neatly packaged opportunity, one that wouldn’t cost him more than he could pay: show the man the buildings. Enough to show he had played fair. Help the weak this one time, don’t eat them. Then fly back to Chicago, secure in your goodness. Hold this memory like a battering ram when you needed it, when you feel yourself growing Parker skin. “Come back, Mr. Boyd,” he said earnestly. Boyd was some distance away by now, and he looked around, half turning. “It’s all right, Mr. Boyd,” Henry said. “I’ll take you to see the buildings.”

  Boyd stopped and looked back; Henry looked for gratitude in his eyes, or at least comprehension. But there was nothing. Henry stooped down and picked up the papers, reordering them and brushing them off. He held them up for Boyd, a gesture of reconciliation.

  Boyd walked back and slowly took the stack from Henry, his grimy hands touching Henry’s fingers as he did so. Boyd looked down at the papers, then squinted back up at Henry. He repeated this motion several times, his face scrunched up in dark wrinkles. There was a fleck of spittle on his lip, a white patch, which, in spite of his repugnance, Henry couldn’t take his eyes off. At last a smile broke over the Birdman’s face. “You know not when comes the day of the Lord,” he said. “It’s a terrible day if you ain’t ready.”

  The lighting was notoriously poor in the large subcommittee chambers of the Kansas legislature, and in the gloom the thin wiggly lines that covered Amanda Ashton’s prized chart had begun to converge, blurring and blending into black spaghetti on a rectangular paper plate. She stared at a three-foot-wide display, refocusing her eyes for the fortieth time, and adjusted her glasses for long-range squinting.

  “What I do know, Senator,” she said, “is that there are nearly two thousand aging oil wells across the state that are reaching the end of their structural lives. The wells and the pools around them contain thousands of pounds of highly poisonous chemicals, all surrounded by salt. So when I see the saline level in the subterranean aquifer rising sharply, that concerns me. It should concern all of us.”

  Senator Carl Durand, chairman of the oil and gas committee of the Kansas state senate, gazed at Amanda with a brittle, pasted-on movement of the lips that could be construed as a smile. He was a large, bull-like man with a rough, ruddy appearance: reddish, weathered skin, a fleshy, mottled nose, and thick eyebrows. He wore a light brown corduroy coat, a flannel shirt, and a bolo tie. “What concerns me, Miss Ashton,” he replied icily, “is the fact that people have a right to be left alone from meddling bureaucrats. They don’t need their fields dug up, and they don’t need their business disturbed. What is the compelling interest here? The state’s full of salt, Miss Ashton. There’s a salt dome in Jefferson County big enough for all the french fries in Paris.” The small crowd in the chamber, consisting mostly of oil company lobbyists, chuckled appreciatively.

  Amanda glanced surreptitiously at her watch: she was now entering her third hour of testimony. Each loathsome minute had made her a wiser, albeit lonelier woman. She had begun the morning eagerly, determined to make a coherent case for the most comprehensive environmental action the state had ever undertaken. Now, embattled and frustrated, she counted her losses. Not that she had expected it to be easy; Durand was himself a retired oil wildcatter who had made millions in speculat
ion across the Midwest. His drilling days were over, but he still ran an expansive energy distribution system in many rural areas throughout the Midwest. He was the oil industry’s best friend in the senate, and his perspective on exploration was well known.

  “The problem, as you know very well, Senator, isn’t the salt itself. The salt is just a messenger. The real problem,” she said forcefully, “is the ticking time bomb that comes later.”

  A couple of reporters glanced up at Durand for a reaction, but the chairman had chosen this moment to turn his back and was speaking quietly to a young, athletic-looking aide. They conferred for some time, and Amanda felt the energy from her statement drain away into an awkward, waiting silence. After what seemed like an eternity, the assistant nodded silently and disappeared through a door behind black curtains. When Durand turned back, he was serene, even good humored. “You were saying, Miss Ashton?”

  Amanda pushed the specter of the senator straddling an uncapped oil well out of her mind. “I was saying that there is a serious problem out there, Senator, something that the salt is, in effect, trying to tell us.”