by John McEvoy
***
One week earlier Bledsoe had sat in the downtown Madison office of attorney James Altman, stunned by what he had just heard. The attorney, current head of a three-generation law firm that had handled the Bledsoe family’s business for years, had just finished reading aloud a previously unrevealed codicil of the will that had been made years before her death by Claude’s wealthy grandmother and benefactress, Matilda Webb Bledsoe.
Altman, a portly, vested, florid, and accurate imitation of his male forebears, was Bledsoe’s age. They had met only a few times. Yet, Altman seemed to take understated relish in reading from the legal document before him. Bledsoe, listening in disbelief, restrained his urge to leap across the polished surface of the antique rosewood desk and propel this smug attorney through the window onto State Street.
Most terms in the will were very familiar to Bledsoe. As the favorite grandchild of the late pharmaceutical heiress, he was the beneficiary of an unusual gift. Grandmother Bledsoe had established a trust fund for her young relative, an odd-looking but brilliant child she had taken a liking to from the time he first began trouncing her at chess when he was four years old. Provisions of the trust stipulated that Claude’s tuition, room, board, and “reasonable living and travel expenses be completely funded while he is enrolled in a degree program at the University of Wisconsin.”
The product of what his first psychology professor referred to as a “profoundly damaged home,” Claude had emerged from it with his considerable intelligence intact. With his IQ of one-hundred and eighty-two, he was easily able to identify a loophole in Grandma Bledsoe’s bequest that he could drive an armored truck through. He would not, he realized, ever have to work a day in his life as long as he attended UW as a full-time student. This appealed to Claude from several standpoints, not the least of which was the fact that it represented a resounding “fuck you” delivered to his father, who had unsuccessfully challenged the will in Dane County Circuit Court.
Starting when he was seventeen, Claude had taken advantage of the trust fund to earn undergraduate degrees in political science, music education, retailing, landscape architecture, English literature, food science, Native American Studies, cartography and information systems, computer science, interior design, agricultural science, French, and environmental science. He also earned an M.A. in comparative literature, and an M.S. in dairy science, and graduated from the law school (but never took the bar exam). Bledsoe had more classmates than anyone in the history of American higher education. He had planned on taking a degree in library science next year.
But now Bledsoe heard Altman saying, “Your grandmother made a major change in your trust fund shortly before she died ten years ago. That was when you were approaching age forty, and, in her concerned view, showing no signs of ever detaching yourself from student life. She was, as she phrased it, ‘Concerned that Claude might not realize his immense potential without a strong motivating factor.’ Her instructions were that you be apprised of this twelve months prior to your fiftieth birthday.”
Altman placed the document down on the desk. He said, “With that in mind, I asked you to meet with me.” To Bledsoe, it seemed the attorney took perverse pleasure in then asking, “Would your net worth currently be a million dollars or more?”
Bledsoe snorted. “Altman, as you well know I’ve been a full-time student. What money I made from part-time work, such as tutoring, would hardly elevate me to millionaire status. Why are you asking me this? What’s this about?”
The attorney sighed. “Well, Claude,” he said, tapping an index finger on the document that lay on his desk, “you seem to have a problem.”
The “problem” was in the codicil. It stated, in very clear terms, that if Claude accumulated a net worth of one million dollars by the time he was fifty, he would then inherit the entire trust fund, now valued at “more than fifteen million and growing,” Altman said, a trace of envy in his voice. “But,” he went on, evidently liking this part better, if Claude had not managed to achieve that monetary goal, he would not only not inherit—the trust would be divided among several of Grandma Bledsoe’s favorite charities—but his annual education stipend would abruptly cease.
Altman’s intercom buzzed, but he ignored it. He continued, “Your grandmother wrote that she was ‘very hopeful that the closure clause would never have to be invoked, that Claude will have used his great talents to reach the prescribed monetary level.’”
Altman stopped reading. He looked over the top of his glasses at Bledsoe, now slumped forward in his chair, elbows on knees. He took in Bledsoe’s worn sport coat, unpressed khakis, worn cross-trainers. He could see Bledsoe was grinding his teeth, for his jaw muscles bulged as if his cheeks housed unshelled pecans.
The attorney coughed politely. He said, “I’ll ask again. Have you accumulated the sum specified by your grandmother, Mr. Bledsoe?”
Bledsoe didn’t bother to reply. Nor did he respond to Altman’s observation that “while a million dollars today isn’t what it was when your grandmother authorized the creation of this codicil, it is obvious that she had high expectations for you.
“You have a year in which to meet her challenge,” Altman concluded. “Good luck.” He rose and extended his hand. Bledsoe responded with a cutting look. His expression seemed to reflect a combination of surprise, regret, resentment, and rage. Spread across those broad, unattractive features, it made the attorney shudder. Bledsoe walked out of the office without saying another word.
In the elevator, Bledsoe startled a female paralegal when he said aloud, “Where the hell can I get a million that fast?” She held her files close to her breast and flattened herself against the elevator wall. Bledsoe did not notice her. He was running through his options. An obvious one would be to take a year off from his studies and play blackjack for a living in Las Vegas. He had made several lucrative forays there in the past. Bledsoe was very good at blackjack. But he knew that the casinos would eventually identify him as a card counter and consistent winner, and would then, in their unique interpretation of free enterprise, ban him from playing.
As the elevator reached one and the paralegal scurried out, Bledsoe’s thoughts returned to the jockey trial story. His interest in it previously had been purely academic. Not anymore.
Chapter Five
More than anything else, what Bledsoe felt was shock and a strong sense of betrayal as he walked out of the law building and took a seat on a park bench on Capitol Square, oblivious to the foot traffic going by. And it was shock that hit him hardest, simply because he had for the most part exercised complete control over his life. Smart, strong, and ruthless, Claude from early youth had shown the ability to plan, set goals, and meet them, whether it was in school, sports, scouting, or science clubs. He’d always done it with what his admiring grandmother described as “good old Bledsoe cocksuredness,” but what envious contemporaries and their parents often regarded as outright arrogance. Bledsoe abhorred surprises. Now, with the attorney Altman’s revelation about the will, he felt as if he’d been kidney kicked by a two-hundred-pound karate black belt holder.
A September breeze drifted through the square in downtown Madison, rearranging the fallen leaves. One of Bledsoe’s numerous former professors walked briskly past without saying hello. Bledsoe didn’t notice. Against his will, he was remembering two other horrendous shocks he’d suffered, memories of which he for the most part was able to repress. Not now, though, not today. Not after learning what Grandmother Bledsoe had done to him.
Sitting on the park bench, cracking his massive knuckles, Bledsoe’s earliest memory returned. On a winter night when he was just over three years old he’d been awakened in his red, wooden junior bed by the loud sounds of one of his parents’ frequent arguments. He heard his father’s baritone bellows, his mother’s shrieked responses, the sounds of glasses smashing, a face being slapped. Then his bedroom door banged open and his parents barged in, still screaming at each other. He could see the r
eddish imprint of his father’s hand on his mother’s otherwise pale face. He cowered in his bed, face turned away, hands over his ears. But his father grabbed the back of his sleeper and jerked Claude to his feet. The boy began to sob.
“Stand up, Claude,” his father ordered. Claude struggled to his feet, bewildered, blinking at the light that shone in from the hallway. He looked from one grim face to the other, wondering what he had done.
Speaking slowly, his words only slightly slurred by alcohol, his father said, “Your Mommy and I are going to live apart from now on. Think carefully, Claude: which one of us do you want to go and live with?” There was no answer. “Which one?” his father shouted, shaking him.
Between sobs the boy kept replying, “Don’t know, don’t know,” even as his father shook him again before releasing him and turning away. The boy threw himself down on the bed, burying his face in the pillow. He cried himself to sleep, aware only of his mother’s hand stroking his back before she left and the verbal battle resumed behind the slammed door of his parents’ bedroom. It was a night he would dream of for years.
Bledsoe’s parents never carried out their repeated threats to separate. Claude’s sister Emily was born a year later, his brother Edward two years after that. But the parental warfare continued sporadically. Not a night went by that Claude did not fall uneasily to sleep, fearing he’d be again awakened and confronted with the awful choice his parents had given him. This continued until Claude was nine years old. Until the mid-December night that his mother drove her Volvo, doors locked, accelerator floored, off the end of a pier leading into Lake Monona, crashing through the ice, her two younger children securely belted in the seat behind her. In the years that followed, Claude spent the school year living with his embittered, alcoholic father, the summers at the home of his doting grandmother. Only once was the boy able to bring himself to ask the question that had tormented him since his mother’s final night: “Why didn’t Mother take me, too?” In reply, his father backhanded him across the kitchen, Claude cracking his head on the edge of the stove. He never asked again.
***
Bledsoe got to his feet and began to walk slowly around the square. He passed food and crafts stands that were being set up for the weekend’s popular farmer’s market. He stepped around a man unloading pumpkins from a large wheelbarrow. All he was aware of was an overpowering sense of betrayal. How could his loving “Gram” have done this to him? He felt a rush of anger, anger of the sort he’d previously experienced just twice in his life: the lingering rage directed at his father in the wake of his mother’s suicide, and, five years later, the sudden explosion of rage directed at his cousin, Greta Prather.
Walking the Madison square this late afternoon, it came back to him in a torrent of unwanted remembrance: his fourteenth summer, that long ago August when he’d been so desperately in love with Greta; their last night together swimming in the small, spring-fed lake on their widowed grandmother’s estate in northeastern Wisconsin.
Claude had had a lingering, lacerating crush on Greta since he was a twelve-year-old sixth grader, the strongest and smartest boy in his private school class, possessed even then of a freakish physical strength and extraordinary intelligence that served to set him well apart from his classmates. He was an odd-looking youth that they referred to as The Weirdo—though never to his face, no, they weren’t brave enough for that.
Other family members became aware of Claude’s crush, especially a couple of his uncles, who kidded him frequently. For the most part Claude ignored the jibes of what he thought of as “those idiots,” concentrating instead on Greta when he saw her at family gatherings three or four times a year.
In her generous fashion, Greta was invariably kind to Claude during the summer vacations and holidays when they were together. A tall, statuesque young woman who worked part time as a model while attending Wellesley, she was used to attention and accepted it gracefully. In his wallet Claude kept a photo of Greta in her high school prom dress, the face of her date for the occasion trimmed out. He wrote letters to her reporting his progress in school and sports, what music he’d recently discovered, the books he was enjoying. He never stated his feelings for her, convinced as he was that Greta was well aware of them. He knew the right time would come in which to confirm that.
That August was one of the warmest on record in Wisconsin’s north woods. The rambling, old log house built by his paternal grandparents a half-century earlier had no air conditioning, and that summer, for the first time anyone could remember, even the protective stands of pines and birches could not thwart the heat, even after sunset.
Shortly after eleven o’clock that night, Claude heard light footsteps on the creaking staircase outside his bedroom. Minutes later he looked out his window and saw Greta walking across the lawn toward the pier and the lake. He quickly put on his swimsuit and moved quietly down the stairs and through the dark, silent house. He knew they would be alone at the lake, the other family members and guests long since retired after a long day of boating, swimming, then volleyball and croquet on the vast green lawn leading down to the shore.
Greta was in the water, floating on her back, when Claude walked out onto the pier. She smiled when she saw him and gave him a languid wave, face pointed toward the stars, her long black hair floating in the water. He dove in neatly and swam with powerful strokes fifty yards out into the cool water before turning back to join her.
Greta said the heat had kept her from sleeping. He told her he knew what she meant. Then she stood up in the water, which was less than three feet deep this close to the pier, and shook the moisture from her hair. Her tanned shoulders gleamed in the moonlight. Claude felt himself grow hard as he dog paddled toward her and rose to his feet. With a lunge he moved to her and put his arms around her. He cupped her face in one of his large hands and kissed her hard, his other hand on her back, pressing her to him. It was a moment he had long imagined.
To Claude’s enormous surprise, Greta planted her feet and tried to push him off. Her eyes were wild as she leaned away from him, fighting to free herself. He would not let her go. He barely heard her whispered protests. He pulled the strap of her swimsuit off her shoulder and grasped her left breast. He tried to kiss her again, but she turned her face to the side, her mouth tight with fright. “Stop it,” she begged. “This is a mistake. Let me go, please. We’ll just forget this ever happened.”
Even more excited now, he yanked down the top of her swimsuit and again thrust himself against her. “What’s wrong with you?” he said harshly, his lips against her neck. “We’ve been heading toward this for years. Don’t you know that?”
Greta fought harder. When she started to scream, he quickly covered her mouth with his hand, then looked down at her with a combination of astonishment and growing rage. How wrong he had been! How had he managed to so misread the situation, to misinterpret what he’d been sure was her returned love? Greta’s was now a face he barely recognized, so full of loathing were her eyes as they burned into his.
Claude knew now that Greta would never, ever forgive him for his actions this night, that her report of what he’d done could destroy him. He could not permit that.
With a sudden move, he wrapped his left leg behind her knees and kicked her feet out from under her. She was now on her back, partly under the water, and he straddled her, one hand still covering her mouth, the other clamped on her shoulder. She thrashed beneath him. His heart pounded as he pressed her head down beneath the water. For a few moments he watched her face, contorted by pain and terror. Then he turned his face to the night sky for the minutes it took until she was at last limp beneath him.
A huge cloud momentarily covered the moon as he dragged Greta’s body over to the pier. He pulled the top of her swimsuit back into place. Carefully positioning her lifeless head, he rammed it against one of the pier’s stanchions. The resulting wound on her forehead was visible to him as moonlight flooded back down. It would appear that she had so
mehow slipped and accidentally struck her head, then fallen into the water unconscious and drowned.
Claude trotted through the shadow of the pines to the rear entrance of the old house, then slipped silently up the stairs to his room. He felt enormously tired, yet at the same time exhilarated. Yes, it was a terrible shame what Greta had forced him to do this night. But he’d at least rid himself of what he could now recognize as a ridiculously useless obsession.
The next morning Claude helped in the search once his beautiful cousin was discovered to be missing. He pretended to break down when Greta’s body was discovered down the shoreline. Relatives comforted him for what they believed to his wrenching grief at this tragic loss of the love of his young life.
Whenever he looked back on that fateful August night, Bledsoe was always amazed and embarrassed. How could he have allowed his teenage hormonal seiche of love and lust to threaten his promising future? What regret he felt had nothing to do with Greta’s death—there was no way he could have allowed her to live, and ruin him—but was over his stupid misperception. He vowed to never again find himself in a situation he could not completely control.
Deep in thought, Bledsoe made three complete tours of Capitol Square as he pondered his plight. Make a million dollars in a year? For him, now, it was truly all or nothing at all. He knew he’d find a way.
Glancing up at the electronic clock on a bank across State Street, Bledsoe smiled. He realized he still had time to make his three o’clock class, an elective in the physical education department that he’d really begun to enjoy. He felt better already. He quickened his pace.
Chapter Six
Later that same September afternoon in Madison, anticipation was running high at Doherty’s Den, a popular saloon on University Avenue. Seated at the long mahogany bar were a couple of dozen people, mostly men, mostly students, a few townspeople sprinkled among them, all eagerly awaiting the start of Mystery Hour, during which all drinks were sold at half-price.