If Sons, Then Heirs: A Novel

by Lorene Cary

  Selma talked fast, her low voice even lower. Rayne wanted her to stop talking, and he shook his head gently as if to ward off more information.

  Selma continued trying to explain: “Okay, so that’s the Broadnax field. Now, the other part is the heir property. That’s from way, way back. Used to be shared across the three brothers, and the people at the county claim that everybody owns it now: all the heirs, every single soul descended from them three. How’s that gonna be? Everybody gone, everybody paid off a hundred years ago, and now I gotta go ask Mother-May-I to pass it on?

  “You know they don’t tell that mess to nobody but black people. They say everybody owns it, and then force a sale for a price that can’t nobody but a big developer can pay. That’s why ain’t hardly none of us got any land lef’.”

  “Nana,” Rayne said, pleading, “I’m here all week, and we can talk.”

  “I’m finished. That’s it. I ain’t tryin to overload you. But just so you know: anybody wanna come down here and live, you know it’s always been open to ’em. And I hope you’ll honor that, ’cause it’s only right. Economy like it is, hey, worse come to worse, they can always come on down, fix up a little piece of shack, get a trailer used or something, okay. But some one body has got to own it is what I’m saying, or else they can always take it.”

  “Okay, Nana, but what are you trying to get me to do?”

  “So what we gotta do is go through the papers we can find, and prove that King owned this land, and that he meant for it to go to his issue. The county and the state—it’s none of their business.”

  “So, Nana, wait a minute, you’re telling me that if we wanted to sell the land, we couldn’t. It cannot be sold by you or by us or Granddaddy Bobo or my mother or any of us?”

  “Your mother?” Selma made a snort. “Well, do Jesus, where’d that come from?

  “To answer your question, no. That’s what I been tellin you. ’Cause the county keep saying we don’t have no clear title. The county say that Amos and Richard and all their children, and all of King’s issue, right down to you, they all own the same itty-bitty shares. For fifty years, where have they been? And before that?”

  “Nana, you don’t own the land?”

  “Me? No, baby, me ownin the land was never the issue. I been holdin it, is all, but I’m the second wife with no children. I am not an heir. Not noways an heir.”

  “So, they say everyone owns it?”

  “They are a forfeit, baby. Listen, man and woman live together for fifty, a hundred years, when he dies, the state say: she’s his wife. All those years count the same as a license. Same with land. Everybody knows that. Possession is nine-tenths of the law. Your great-grandfather farmed, and sent Amos a share until finally Amos wrote ’im said: take my share. ’At’s a quitclaim, same as.

  “And Richard leased his part to Pettiford, for fifty years—and it’s over. Lease is up. It’s a forfeit, I tell you. You hear me?”

  No, Rayne did not hear her anymore. All he’d heard was that she did not own the land. And if she didn’t own it, then she couldn’t—and he couldn’t—sell it, and his loosely formed idea of using the proceeds to set her up in a long-term-care facility wouldn’t work. And, he could see, she had no Plan B. In fact, her Plan A required him to set aside his life and attend to this land.

  Now Rayne spoke firmly. “I gotta get Lil Man to bed.” He indicated the boy with a nod and stood.

  “I know they talk about me like a dog up there,” Selma continued, “’cause I ain’t Needham blood, but best proof, I’m here, ain’t I? I’m here payin the taxes and they up there eatin Twinkies.

  “But it’s gonna be yours. I was gonna talk to you tomorrow, but might jus’ as well start it now. Case I’m not here in the morning.”

  “Oh, Nana.”

  “Might as well say it. Okay, and here’s the thing. They keep talking ’bout you need a will. I gotta have his will in order to prove I own the land to will it to you. Now, here’s the thing: I could have swore your great-grandfather wrote his will and put it in our strongbox under the stove in the kitchen. Under the floor there under the stove, so no one could get to it by accident. Please look and find it while you’re here. Lookit: then we can go to a lawyer while you’re here and get started.”

  Rayne transferred his weight from one foot to the other. He was too big for the trailer. And he was sorry to know that Nana Selma, who above anyone else in the family had always looked out for the children, could not stop herself from talking even when Khalil needed to go to bed. He’d wanted Khalil to feel the delicious gift of Selma’s total, delighted, fixed attention. But she could not collect herself to give it to this new adopted boy.

  Then it occurred to him that Khalil didn’t need Nana’s care as he had or as his grandfather Bobo had. Khalil’s own mother paid him that attention, and so could Rayne.

  “I’ve gotta get the boy back to the house,” he said firmly.

  “Okay, I’ll shut up.”

  Now what? was being answered on Selma’s terms. He’d been thinking about her care; she’d been thinking about the land. A will in a box under the floorboards? Heir property? Golf course lease? Rayne had private contracts, a municipal contract, a girlfriend, Khalil. This was the day he’d dreaded, when Beaufort County came to call.

  As if reading his thoughts, Selma said: “JJ and his son are pretty good with most of what you need. The place can still support a couple crops a few years till you get yourself together, decide what you wanna do. Funny,” she said, shaking her head, “those little nana goats are good business again. I used to have goats and they laughed at me. We got a young white couple make goat’s milk cheese and sell it to restaurants for something like twelve dollars a pound, wholesale.”

  Khalil’s wheezing had slowed, but not stopped. He looked up at Rayne, beseechingly.

  “Okay. Night-night.”

  “Unh-huh,” she said. “Just sleep on all this. I been meaning to talk to you for so long. And out there, seem like something said: ‘What are you waitin for?’”

  “Okay,” Rayne said to Selma. He propped Khalil up on his feet. “Okay, Lil Man,” he said to Khalil. Then to Selma again: “We here the whole week. We can talk some more.”

  “Will you look for the strongbox for me?”

  “I guess. Sure.” He and Khalil shuffled around the wheelchair, which sat between them and the door. Selma caught Khalil’s hand.

  Then, even as Rayne opened the door, Selma talked to his back: “Or, since you’re a builder, maybe you could use this property and develop it. Whatshisname, Pettiford’s grandson, he made a go with the new golf course. So, if you don’t wanna keep farming, you could develop the land. Every time you see development, it’s them makin money. You could build a resort same as they can.”

  “Whoa, Nana, I have got to get this boy to bed. Look, I think the medicine helped his asthma, but it got his face itching again.”

  “Did you drip some water in that calamine bottle?”

  “I told you I got a fresh bottle in the truck.”

  “You told me that?”

  “Yeah. Come on, let’s all go to bed.” He crossed to her in a long stride, squatted down, and looked her in the face. She had never been a big hugger and kisser, but she appreciated ceremony, and they did a traditional hug to signal good night. Rayne enveloped her and the wheelchair in his long arm. “Good night, Nana,” he said quietly, into her ear.

  “I’m sorry, baby. It’s too much. It’s just that I can’t never talk to you so far away, and then I call on the cell phone and you always on the job.” Then, as she put her face into his collarbone, she whispered: “Listen, Ray, you think you can move my bathroom?” Before he could answer she said, “But, nah, don’t bother, ’cause then what I’m gonna do in the middle of the night? I mean if you move the bathroom?”

  “Well, here, we’ll mark off where the old bathroom was and then we’ll have to lay out a big old litter box for you.”

  “Hah!” She laughed and then patted hi
s chest. “Been a long time, Rayne, since you come see me and make your old nana laugh,” she whispered. “I don’t know what happened to me out there. I just couldn’t breathe.” She breathed deeply again and looked at Khalil, who stood with his hand on the slightly open door. Smoke seeped in.

  “Has that happened before?” Rayne asked about her collapse. Later, he would tell Lillie as much as he could glean.

  “Yeah. Took me down out back of the old house. Last year. Fell right over. I woulda fallen out tonight if you hadn’ta caught me. I think I can pull a full day’s work, and then I get winded. Plus they not supposed to burn all that damn farm trash. ’S why they do it at night. Good wind come up, they burn up they own barns.”

  Khalil pulled at Rayne’s hand.

  “I feel your heartbeat,” Selma said.

  “That’s the good news.”

  “I always said you should be a comedian.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Khalil sat in the hard little wooden chair that King had made for Bobo while Rayne took the sheets off his old bed and, at Lillie’s request, slipped the thirty-year-old mattress into the plastic cover she’d packed. Puffs of dust wafted into his face as he worked.

  “How the hell did she have time to pack this thing?” Rayne said with wonder and irritation as he got onto his knees to close the stretched zipper.

  Khalil answered him: “Mommy keeps it in the closet in case Melvin comes over.”

  “That the boy who wets the bed?”

  “Not anymore,” Khalil said, defending his friend.

  “I used to wet the bed,” Rayne said.

  “Did you?”

  “Yep.” Rayne made himself remember how to fold corners on Selma’s thin flat sheets. The bottom one had a seam down the middle where she’d repaired it once already. “I used to think that was why my mother sent me to live down here.”

  “Why did she?”

  Rayne indicated the calamine lotion they’d grabbed on the way in. He sat on the side of the newly made bed. It made noisy plastic swishing against his weight.

  Khalil came to stand where Rayne could reach his face and hands with lotion. “Why did she?” he repeated.

  Rayne could not think of an answer that he wanted to stand by. “I don’t know, Lil Man.”

  “You gonna call and ask her?”

  “Maybe. But you know whose mother does have to be called.”

  Rayne had rubbed onto Khalil’s hands and face enough calamine lotion to make him feel as if he were wearing a mask. “Mine.”

  “And I’ve got to explain how you got asthma and poison ivy all in one day. We haven’t even been away from her for twenty-four hours. Shit.”

  “You cursed a lot today. How come? Are you mad at me?”

  Rayne laid a threadbare towel over the pillowcase. “I will be if you don’t stop talkin. Jeez. What they do, put talky pills in the water down here? Here, lie down. Least I can tell her that you are ‘resting comfortably.’”

  ———

  Lillie’s phone was off, which made Rayne think that she might be in a late study session at the hospital, where they regularly turned off their phones, or that she’d picked up a tattoo job, thinking to grab some extra “pin money,” as she called it, while she had no one to look after. He sent her a text saying that he’d be awake to talk for the next hour if she wanted. He hoped she wouldn’t call, and that when they talked in the morning, Khalil would be well enough so that this evening could be just a day-one blip.

  But first, he had to fall asleep. And with his heart beating fast from the inhalant, his skin itching, and his mind full of the day’s adventures, Khalil was having a hard time. He came into the kitchen, where Rayne was sitting at the table checking e-mails on his phone.

  “This the longest I been away from my mother.”

  “Man, stop it. You spend the weekend at Melvin’s and that other boy’s house—what’s the little blond boy’s name been playing with you since T-ball, him and his sister?”

  “Zachary Smith.”

  “You stay with Zach and Sam all weekend and don’t wanna come home. This hasn’t even been twenty-four hours.”

  Khalil edged his eyebrows up and down as if to massage the skin on his forehead under the calamine lotion.

  Rayne looked down at the floor so as not to laugh. “But this is probably the farthest you’ve been from her.”

  “Yeah. Really far. This really is the farthest.”

  “Feel like it, too, don’t it?”

  Khalil’s eyes threatened to tear as he said: “And I forgot to bring books. I’on’t even have one of my favorite books to read to go to sleep.”

  “Maybe there’s one at the bottom of the bag.”

  “No, ’cause we rushed my mom. Otherwise, she always remembers.” His breathing got more jagged as he got closer to tears. “And the pictures on that wall are weird. It’s weird in there. And I just met Nana Selma and all, and then she fell out and look like she’d gonna die…

  “Plus the mattress smell bad, all the way through the plastic. It smells funny. I can’t sleep here!”

  Rayne started to laugh.

  “It’s not funny.” Khalil perched on the edge of tears. “You’re making fun of me.”

  “No, I’m not, Lil Man. Look, Nana Selma’s okay. True enough, the mattress is mildewed. So’s the pillow; I’ll bet that’s the real problem. The damn pillow.”

  “Damn blanket, too.”

  Rayne laughed harder. “It’s a rough end to a rough day. But come on, I got something for you. Get my coat.”

  “No, I don’t wanna go outside anymore. It’s scary.”

  “Get the coat, Lil Man. I’ll give you a piggyback ride.”

  When Rayne squatted to offer his broad back, Khalil brushed aside the heavy dreadlocks and reluctantly climbed on. Each step Rayne took vibrated Khalil’s own jangling body from underneath. Khalil laid his masked face at the base of Rayne’s neck, and then he closed his eyes. The warmth from Rayne’s body seeped into him. They walked to the truck. Rayne opened the cab and reached for the pillow and fleece blanket that he kept in the backseat.

  “Here,” he said, “this’ll keep your face off that stanky old mattress. Then tomorrow, if it’s not raining, we’ll take the slipcover off and put the whole thing out in the sun, okay?”

  Khalil nodded into the nape of his neck.

  “Okay, so now we’re going in. You know the drill: butcher begins to kill the ox; ox begins to drink water; water begins to quench fire…”

  “…Fire starts to burn the stick; stick starts to beat the dog; dog starts to bite the pig, pig jumps over the stile—”

  “And the old woman gets back to her home that night with a new pillow and blanket and a face full of calamine lotion and goes to sleep. Like you gonna do.”

  “I miss Mommy.”

  “Yeah. Me, too.”

  “Can we call ’er?”

  “Her phone’s off. She probably in the library, okay? Lie down, be quiet.”

  Rayne walked around the trailer on the way back. Within five minutes he could feel Khalil’s head bob and his arms relax. He took him to the house, laid him on the bed, and put the truck pillow under his head. He folded the fleece blanket into a pillow for himself, and lay down with the dust and mildew in his nose anyway.

  Selma had talked for so many years about “passing the land” to him that he’d assumed she owned it, and that it would pay for her retirement. Now that he knew she did not own it, he had to find out who did. Really. Not just in Selma’s willful mind. Although, Rayne knew, as Selma had always told him, if she hadn’t been willful from the start, she’d never have had the nerve to imagine herself with King; she’d never have raised his children and grands—and great-grands. She’d never have been able to hold on to it.

  Rayne fell asleep and dreamed about large dogs that tore at the bottom of a raggedy wooden door. It was a vaguely familiar dream, except that this time Khalil was with him, sleeping on the top of a bunk bed. Somewhere in the room, Sel
ma was sleeping, bundled in blankets. Rayne kept watch. He could see the dogs; snarling teeth under the door. They were huge dogs. He was wearing a sweater that Selma had knitted. He didn’t know how long the door would hold.

  ———

  In the morning, Rayne lay in the old bed that had been Bobo’s, then Jewell’s, then his, and determined to accomplish two tasks he did not want to do: call his mother and go to the town hall to begin to investigate the legal standing of the Needham land. So, he told himself, do them today, and get them over with. Later in the week, he’d take Khalil and Selma fishing, which promised to be a funny dockside pairing. He lay in bed for a long time, unwilling to begin. He imagined himself calling his mother’s number and just opening up gonzo-style, like: “Yo, this Lonnie. You know who the fuck I am. And you know why I’m callin…”

  Khalil was breathing easily now, face muscles relaxed. Seven years old was when they put children out in the field. Quarter-hands, they used to call them. But no one sent them out alone.

  “Yo, Jewell, you lef’ me on a train by myself. Like, what the fuck was you thinking?”

  ———

  Across the field, in her trailer, Selma went into and out of consciousness. She’d felt this before. She’d told Rayne about the fall, but not the other spells, because there was no way to explain how the feeling came from inside, as if she were an old motor, and one of her distributor caps had come off and she simply lost power. Then, something inside would right itself again, although there would be that interval, and she might fall or fall asleep or slump in her chair. Over time, she had to create exercises for herself to get her strength back. She sat in the chair and moved her right arm up and down, holding a can of beans. She smiled into the mirror, first one side, then the other, forcing herself to move the right cheek up high to bring it in line with the left.

  Then, because she found herself craving fish after these spells, she had the girl buy her cans of sardines and mackerel to keep on hand. She thought they helped her heal better than other foods. On her toast, she spread the cream cheese with salmon. She made the girl buy her tubs of those, too, three or four at a time, because the supermarket didn’t always carry it.