Copper Kettle

by Frederick Ramsay

  “Well, of course they did. Now, look here.” Bradford shoved a stack of papers across the desk at him. “That top one is especially important.”

  Jesse picked up the first in the stack and squinted at it. Reading wasn’t his oyster but he could usually manage to get the gist of it with some help. He could make out the bold print at the top but the rest seemed a confusion of blurred symbols and lines. He held it closer to his nose. “I can make out it says this here is about the Leigh property.” Jesse dropped the paper back on the desk.

  “Mister Bradford, I am sorry, but could you read it out for me? I ain’t too quick in that department.”

  “Jesse, do you need spectacles?”

  “Me? I never thought about it.”

  Bradford rooted around in his coat pocket and produced a pair of steel-rimmed glasses. “These are store bought and not too strong. I use them to help me with the small print that some folks have gotten in the habit of inserting in contracts lately. Put them on and look again.”

  Jesse did as he said and picked up the paper again. This time he could make out the words and read them. The spectacles did the trick.

  “Well, looka here. Thank you, Mister Bradford. All this time I thought I was too dense to tackle this reading business. Where can I get me a pair of these?”

  “I got them from the Sears and Roebuck catalog. The thing is, you ought to get your eyes tested by the eye doc first. You might need stronger ones or corrective ones.”

  “No sir, these seem just fine. Sears and Roebuck, you said?”

  “Well then, you just keep them. I got me another pair around here somewhere. So what do you see?”

  “Well, sir, that’s another thing. I can for sure make out the words and could read them off to you, but that don’t mean they’re making any sense. This document is all in lawyer words, you could say. Maybe you should just tell me what it’s about.”

  Jesse slid the glasses back across the desk.

  “No, you keep them. The day will come when they might make the difference between getting rich and going broke. Okay, here’s the thing. You knew the land was entailed, right?”

  “Yeah. Serena said that was like them kings and dukes who leave all their stuff to the oldest male in the line, or something.”

  “Close enough. Ordinarily, it is a simple thing, but every entailment is a mite different. This one, for example, stipulated what happened if there is no male heir in the direct line. You understand that?”

  “Maybe. Does it mean that cousins and such don’t count?”

  “Very good. That is exactly what it means.”

  “So, I heard there wasn’t any men in Leigh’s line. Does it go to the women next?”

  “It could, but there don’t seem to be any women either, not counting cousins, of course.”

  So, then, what happens to the property?”

  “Ah, that is where it gets interesting. In this state, property is generally presumed abandoned if it has remained unclaimed by the owner for more than five years after it became payable or distributable.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means that if nobody has stepped forward to claim the property five years after the death of the owner, that is if there is no heir apparent, the property reverts to the state for distribution.”

  “But if there is a woman in the line somewhere, couldn’t she ask for the property?”

  “She could and she would probably get it. Fact is, nobody has stepped forward. Remember these folks went west and settled there. A tract of land on a played-out mountain in Virginia isn’t something for anyone to lust after, now is it?”

  “I reckon not, but if they knew the value of the timber on it, they might.”

  “Jesse, there is something you need to know. Hardly anybody not in the business has the foggiest idea about the value of trees and such. Also, Buffalo Mountain is a far piece to travel to, just to find out there’s a few hundred dollars in wood waiting to be harvested on it.”

  “More’n a few hundred, sir. So, where does that leave us?”

  “In a pretty good spot, actually. At my urging, the state has declared a presumption of abandonment on the property. They wouldn’t have even noticed before, because the taxes are all up to date. I had to point out to them the owner is long dead and gone. So, as it now stands, anybody who holds an interest, can put in a claim and if it is accepted they can buy it from the state.”

  “Buy it? What would it cost? Land up there ain’t worth a whole lot. Five dollars, maybe ten, an acre is what it goes for nowadays.”

  “Usually, the state will settle for back taxes due.”

  “But the taxes have been paid.”

  “Exactly. That raises an interesting legal question. If the taxes are paid, and in this instance, in perpetuity, what is the state’s interest in releasing the land, and if they do so, what happens to the trust that is attached to it?”

  “You’re asking me? I ain’t got the foggiest. What happens?’

  “Let me read this. It’s in the code.” Bradford leafed through a heavy leatherbound book, found the place he was looking for and looked up. “Let me borrow back those glasses for a minute,”

  Jesse handed them back. Bradford cleared his throat and read.

  A private trust requires a beneficiary that is definitely ascertained at the creation of the trust or definitely ascertainable within the period of the rule against perpetuities. Restatement §112. The members of a definite class of persons can be the beneficiaries of a private trust, but the members of an indefinite class generally cannot be.

  Jesse shook his head. “I have no idea what you just read is about. What’s that mean exactly?”

  “It means that there is sufficient ambiguity here for me to go to a judge and separate the trust from the property. You will jump in and offer to pay the back taxes—”

  “But there ain’t none.”

  “There will be the minute I get the separation. There’re always taxes due. You pay them and you get the land.”

  “Well, that’s just dandy, but where am I going to get the money for that?”

  Bradford sat back in his chair and studied Jesse for a full minute. “Here’s what I will do. I personally am not interested in the timber business. I tried it ten years ago and lost a pretty big piece of my shirt. So, here’s my offer to you. I will pay the tax on your behalf for a percentage of the profit you make on turning it around. I assume you will sell the timber rights and eventually the land.” Jesse frowned at the last. “Or if you keep the land, I expect you’ll sell the timber, so I will take ten percent of the profit of either or both. That is an investment in you, you could say.”

  “Ten percent is pretty steep, sir.”

  “You have a better plan? Remember I am doing all the legal work here and, to be frank, I could do it without you and take the whole thing for myself and then you’d end up with nothing. So, do we have a deal?”

  Without having done a careful inventory, Jesse reckoned there could be as many as ten harvestable trees on each acre, some more, some maybe not as many. That’s a hundred trees. Depending on the type, they would go for anywhere between ten and twenty dollars each. The black cherry near the Spring House, for example, was at least six feet around and had no rot. Well, none that he could see. That one alone would sell for a small fortune. So, one hundred trees at an average of twelve dollars plus or minus makes, if he figured it right, twelve hundred dollars. Bradford’s cut of that would be one hundred and twenty dollars and the rest would be his.

  “Yes, sir, I reckon we do.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Bradford tapped a call bell on his desk and moments later, his door opened and the plainest woman Jesse had ever seen entered. She couldn’t fairly be described as ugly. She was not. Her plainness had more to do with her mien and dress. In truth, she had that fine bone structure
that a dozen years later would define a certain movie star. She wore a dark gray skirt which missed hitting on the floor by no more than a half inch and a marginally lighter gray shirtwaist. Her hair matched her gray outfit and had been pulled back into the tightest bun he’d ever seen. Jesse didn’t know much about women, fashion, or hairstyles, but he did wonder if that bun didn’t yank her features back so hard as to be painful. The expression on her face suggested it might.

  “Miss Primrose, I will need a standard contract establishing a business arrangement between Mister Jesse Sutherlin and myself as regards the distribution of profits from the sale of certain goods and services. Wait, maybe a Memorandum of Understanding would serve better.”

  “Mister Bradford, if all that chat with Miss Primrose is about what we just made a deal on, it ain’t necessary. Where I come from, a man’s word is his bond. You shake on a deal, it’s done.”

  “And what if one of the parties doesn’t fulfill his end of the bargain?”

  “It don’t happen. At least not more’n once. If you cheat someone on the mountain, you’d best catch a train to Texas, or Mexico, or one of them other foreign countries out that way ’cause you can for sure expect to see somebody with a Remington single shot on your doorstep the next day and the undertaker be standing right behind him.”

  “Miss Primrose, I will not need that writing after all. Thank you. Why don’t you take an early lunch?”

  The woman graced Jesse with what could pass as a smile…or not…and left.

  “What about that trust money which pays the taxes, the trust business? What happens to it?”

  “Well, now, here’s my idea on that. A piece of land the heirs might have deemed useless won’t stir their bones much, but if I separate the money from the land, well, I reckon there will be plenty of interest in the former. If whoever legally owns that land gets the idea there is money that could come their way, why he will be mighty happy to see the property off the books. A smart lawyer will find a way to put all that cash in their pocket, don’t you think?”

  “And you are the smart lawyer to do that.”

  “Could be, could be.”

  “Lordy, you people must take lessons from weasels. You said you saw a coroner’s report on Albert Lebrun.”

  “I did. Not much there. The boy got himself stabbed once in the neck and a couple of times in the chest. The coroner says the neck wound is what killed him, something about being behind the left clavicle…that’d be the collarbone…and the blade cut the ascending aorta, whatever that is. Big blood vessel in the chest up high, they tell me. Doc says he’d have bled to death inside thirty seconds.”

  “Less time than that. That would have been the first cut. The others are just ‘to be sure’ stabs.”

  “To be sure stabs?”

  “Yeah. You can’t always tell about knife stabbing or any other kind, for that matter. Folks are put together different, so you poke him once and then, when he falls, you stick him once in the heart. In this case seems he got that twice.”

  “You know that? How?”

  “It’s what the Army teaches and what every knife-fighter knows if he wants to stay alive.”

  “If you say so. Does knowing about the wounds help?”

  “A little maybe. It would be nice to know the angle the knife made on that neck stab.”

  Bradford scanned the report. “If I read this correctly, it was straight down or maybe slightly anterior. I think that means toward the front. Mean anything to you?”

  “Some. How about the chest wounds?”

  Bradford leafed through the pages. “Umm…it says the first was in his right thorax…that’s his chest.”

  “Yes, sir, I know.”

  “And the other missed the heart as it entered left to right. Neither one of them went in too deep, it says. That’s it. Well, I got a date in court in a half hour, Jesse. Good talking to you. I’ll let you know about the property settlement as soon as I have something.”

  The two men stood, shook hands and went their separate way, Bradford to the courthouse and Jesse, home.

  ***

  Jesse shrugged his coat closer when he stepped out of the Ford. Because of elevation, mountain folks got the change in weather before those in the valley did. It wasn’t frost time, but soon would be. A curl of smoke rose from the cabin chimney. A puff of wind blew it away. Jesse caught the scent of burning cherry wood. He walked around back and saw the wood pile had not been tended to. Abel had been off dillydallying, he supposed. Jesse shed his coat, grabbed the axe and began to split wood. His mother peered out the back door, saw him at work, sniffed and disappeared back inside. After he’d stacked a cord of new firewood, Jesse retrieved his coat and went inside.

  “There’s coffee on the hob,” his mother said. “Why ain’t you at work?”

  “I am something of a celebrated person nowadays, Ma. The boss thought I should lay low for a while.”

  “So, no fancy new icebox any time soon?”

  “I’m still being paid, if that’s what you’re angling after.”

  “I ain’t, but that’s good to know. So, where you been?”

  “I had to run down to Floyd to see my lawyer.”

  “Lawyer? Land sakes. Why?”

  “He’s helping me look into the Leigh property.”

  Addie harrumphed. “Seems to me they should have kept calling it Jacksonville. Why’d they change the name of the town to Floyd?”

  “To grow and prosper. It’s the county motto, ain’t it? We’re growing and prospering all over the place.”

  “Stuff and nonsense.” Addie studied her son. “You didn’t kill that Lebrun boy, did you?”

  “No, Ma’am, I did not.”

  “Well, that’s a mercy. I ain’t saying that the Lebruns aren’t in the need of a good lesson or two, but killing ain’t the answer to nobody’s problem. It seems to only make for more killing. If you live as long as I have you get weary of it. What is it with men-folks that they think having honor means killing everybody that don’t agree with them?”

  “Beats me, Ma. All the boys over there in France dying because some stuck-up aristocrat got a bomb dropped in his lap and over who gets to be in charge of what. None of it matches up with common sense, but we go over there to Europe anyway and a whole lot of good men are killed because of it.”

  “Does that mean you won’t be fighting John Henry Lebrun?”

  “I hope to goodness I don’t have to, but…” Jesse could only shrug his shoulders. Fate, he knew, wasn’t too choosy. At the same time he did not have “The Feeling,” so maybe not.

  “Pshaw, hoping and doing is two different things. You know that. Here, you set a spell and drink your coffee.” She handed him a mug with the symbols of the Norfolk and Western Rail Road emblazoned on it. “Your daddy brought that mug back from when he went over to Roanoke to look for work in the locomotive shops. He didn’t get the work, but he did bring home that mug.”

  “I know Ma. It was a favorite of his. I’m afraid I don’t have any useful souvenirs from my days traveling for the government.”

  “You stuffed things from the Army under your bed. What’s that if it ain’t reminders?”

  “Well, there is some wearable clothes. I reckon I could get to wearing them after a bit. Not right now. The leggings aren’t worth a hoot, but the boots is sturdy and the rest…well if it weren’t so Army, I could wear them. We’ll see.”

  “Waste not, want not, Jesse. If you can’t bring yourself to put them on, maybe Abel could. They’ll be big on him, but he’ll grow into them. Oh, and he didn’t want to wear his old coat ’cause it were a mite too small and his wrists stuck out a mile, so I done put one of your Army jackets on him this morning. You weren’t using it so I figured he ought to.”

  “Sure, that’s fine, Ma.”

  Jesse stood and went into the room he and Abel sha
red as a bedroom. He dragged his backpack and bundle of clothes out from under his bed. The clothes he sorted and put away or hung on pegs. Most of the men returning from overseas were happy to dump their gear on the pier. Some kept their tin hats and, except for the clothes on their backs, little else. Jesse kept it all, even his entrenching tool. The short little shovel had more uses than its name suggested. He lifted out the .32 caliber Colt 1903 semiautomatic pistol he’d been issued when he was promoted. He wished at the time he’d been issued the heavier 1911 forty-five that most of the other officers had, but he wasn’t in a position to complain.

  He’d inherited his father’s old Owlshead revolver. He’d give it to Abel on his birthday in December. The little .32 caliber pistol packed a little more punch and fit snug in his pocket. He’d been lucky with it. The enlisted men had to turn in their rifles and bayonets and most everything else. The officers got to keep their side arms. He put the pistol back in its holster attached to the Sam Browne belt and laid them both in a wooden box which he pushed back under the bed. He took the shovel and his trench knife and went to sit on the porch.

  He spent the next two hours sipping coffee and working with a whet stone. John Henry wanted to match blades. Jesse was willing to bet he’d never come across a fight like the one he had in mind.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  The heavy Mack truck bounced and rattled across the shattered landscape toward the front. Its solid tires rolled over barbed wire as if it was no more substantial than autumn leaves. The truck seemed impermeable to the bullets fired from a dozen German machine guns. Jesse screamed for the truck to stop, to go back. They were all going to be killed. The other passengers, soldiers with their helmets askew, their rifles held upright between their knees, sat stone-faced and silent. He shoved at one and then another, but they didn’t say a word. Then, someone tried to stop his shouting. Whoever he or she was shook his shoulder. He shrugged it off. He didn’t want to die. Not now, not yet.

  “Jesse!”