The Right Kind of Stupid

by John Oakes

  "Just us?" he asked.

  "Yep."

  "We aren't waiting for...anyone else?"

  She looked at him, puzzled. Then she raised an eyebrow and inquired, "And for whom would we be waiting?"

  Cody shot one last desperate glance over his shoulder.

  "No whom. No...no one."

  "Certainly no one male or middle-aged?"

  "So you're a lawyer," Cody said in an even tone, trying to clarify but not offend further.

  "The people of Harvard University and the Texas bar seem to have agreed on that much."

  Five seconds in and he'd already put his foot in it.

  "Oh you just didn't say exactly," Cody said weakly. "So you're my Grampa's lawyer?"

  "Yes. I'm the executor of your grandfather's will."

  "And you were like assigned to it, or..."

  Her face darkened.

  "Aww shit," Cody sighed. "My grampa was a bit of a good ol' boy."

  She didn't respond.

  "No offense, I'm just confused why he'd hire you."

  "Maybe because I'm very good at what I do."

  "I don't know. Kinda doubt that," Cody said ponderously.

  Her expression was hardening further.

  "No, shit, that isn't what I mean. It's not the reason he would hire you, is all. Him, not me. I..." Cody paused to take a desperate breath. "You met the man right?"

  "Of course."

  "How much time did you spend with him?"

  "Enough to learn that if he wanted something it was for a good reason and there was no talking him out of it once he was decided." He felt heat behind her professional tone.

  "Ok, so you definitely met the man." Cody tried to smile apologetically. "Hey Miss..."

  "Carson. Kelly Carson." She handed him a card from a holder on her desk and gave him a terse smile. "Attorney at Law."

  "Right, hey, I'm sorry Ms. Carson. I'm not sexist, I swear. I loved Murphy Brown."

  "I think I understand what you were trying to say Mr. Latour, but for the sake of clarity, we at this firm pride ourselves on the quality of our representation, not how much we conform to stereotypes."

  Cody looked down, thoroughly chastised.

  Kelly folded her hands on her desk and said, "Now, Mr. Latour, I called you in last because your grandfather's wishes regarding your inheritance are by far the most complicated." She motioned again for him to have a seat, but a photo on the bookshelf behind her desk distracted Cody. He walked around the desk and looked at it more closely.

  "Is this you?" He couldn't help but smile.

  Kelly spun in her chair.

  "I'm afraid so."

  "That goddam fish is bigger than you are."

  "I was only 16 in that picture, but yeah it was the biggest tuna the boat captain had ever seen."

  "You like to fish?"

  "I do. It's relaxing. Don't care for cleaning them though."

  "My fishing buddy just went to the great Bass Pro Shops in the sky. Maybe you and I should go sometime. I'll even gut."

  She chuckled. "As charming as that sounds, it would be a grave conflict of interest."

  Cody didn't know what that meant, but he was familiar with the sound of a woman saying no.

  "And what's this here?" Kelly was wearing a headscarf and holding a binder in the picture. "Are you one of them secret Muslims my friend TR goes on about?"

  "It was model UN. I was representing Algeria."

  "Algeria? You're European?"

  A puzzled expression crossed her face followed by a smile and then another even more puzzled expression.

  "No. It was for school. Like a club. You get to pretend you're a diplomat and solve international issues."

  Cody cocked an eyebrow. "Sounds awful. School was hard enough without throwing world peace on top of it."

  "Well, I just loved getting to help the citizens of the world. Or pretending to anyhow."

  "Why are you in San Antonio lawyering for rich assholes then?"

  "I wouldn't put it quite like that. I grew up I guess. Can't play dress up forever."

  Cody finally made his way to the chair on the other side of the desk, and Kelly turned to face him. She folded her hands on the desk and scrunched up her mouth for a moment before speaking.

  "It's common for an inheritance to have stipulations attached. These can range from strong suggestions, to legally binding conditions, such as how the money has to be spent or how long before it can be spent, things it cannot be spent on, etcetera. The stipulations your grandfather put on your inheritance are the most..." She paused to choose her words, "complex and difficult to meet that I have ever seen or heard of."

  Cody's stomach tightened.

  "First, here is a list of things your grandfather has bequeathed to you that do not come with strings attached." She read off a few of the items, including his grandfather's ranch south of San Angelo, his cars, and more or less everything else on the property that did not belong to Ricky.

  "The next part is a bit trickier," Kelly said. "The bulk of your grandfather's assets were stocks, bonds, gold coins and bullion totaling many millions of dollars. He has bequeathed the vast majority of this sum to you. However, your receipt of this is contingent upon you accomplishing a...a sort of task your grandfather set out for you to complete. Is all of this clear so far?"

  "I think." Cody took a deep breath and exhaled heavily.

  "The task is for you...to earn one million dollars." She said the words as if she did not believe them herself.

  Kelly picked up an envelope from the desk and asked him to open it. The letter inside was written on a typewriter.

  Dear Cody,

  If you're reading this letter then it means you have not died before me because you tried to do a backflip off a freeway overpass on a four-wheeler or something stupider.

  Lawyer will fill you in on the details. Don't go selling everything off. Try to keep it and enjoy it. But do as you like in the end. Just don't sell the Chevelle. You can repaint, same color, but you never touch the interior. Oil the leather and keep it out of the sun it will last forever.

  I am sorry for dying on you but you know I will be with your mother now, who is the best person I ever met. To this day I do not know what she saw in your father. But at least it made him less of an ass for a few years there. I'll be sure to thank her for that.

  Think about what the nice lady tells you. Cute huh?

  Love,

  Grampa

  Cody looked up from the letter. How could Grampa be dead? It was like he was right there, speaking to Cody, making his jokes, griping about the Chevelle. He turned the letter over to see if there was more on the back.

  "That's it?" he asked.

  "He gave me detailed and explicit instructions. We can go over them now if you like."

  Cody felt a flurry of disjointed emotion clutter his mind, like silt being stirred up from the bottom of a pond.

  "So the gist of it is I don't get the inheritance if I don't get together a million bucks?"

  How pointless and impossible it was. Frustration welled up in him just asking the question.

  "Yes, that is the primary stipulation, but there are—

  "Why?" Cody said, exasperated. "Why do this? Why not just give it or don't give it? Why the games?"

  "That's not for me to say," Kelly said softly. She gave a sympathetic tilt of her eyebrows. "I can go over the details if—

  "Listen, ma'am, I don't know what sorta joke or stunt my grampa is trying to pull here. But there ain't no way I could..." Cody shook his head and exhaled heavily through his nose. He stared off at a spot on the carpet. "He didn't say why?"

  She shook her head. "I thought he might have said in that letter."

  "I'm sorry miss." Cody stood and said,

  "I'm afraid this will was a waste of your time."

  Chapter Three

  The Funeral

  Cody fidgeted with the lapels on his dead Grandfather's suit. It wasn't the suit being worn by the man in the
casket, but the one Cody had borrowed from him just to have something appropriate to wear.

  Was it borrowing if you could never give it back?

  What was Grampa wearing in that coffin anyway? He assumed it was a suit, but who knew? The casket was closed, apparently on strict orders from the deceased himself. No one was surprised. Bruce Latour would not have wanted people to see him lying down.

  Cody, like his Grampa, hated wearing suits. It reminded him of the hundreds of times he'd been primped and paraded in his younger years. As an adult, he'd shunned anything resembling fine dress. He was slightly taller and broader in the shoulders than his grandfather, so he felt claustrophobic in the getup, exacerbating his confused grief. The tie was worst of all. How could something that was an inch from choking you to death be fashionable? Was it some worldwide sex fetish that Cody hadn't received the memo on? He wrenched at his collar, trying to relieve the pressure on his throat and looked past the heads in the rows ahead of him at Grampa's simple casket. He hoped Grampa was at least wearing something comfortable.

  "Man, fuck this noise," Cody said.

  His friend, Jason, leaned in from the right. "Don't say fuck in church," he whispered.

  "I don't give a shit about no goddam church."

  "Cody, shut your mouth before anyone hears you," Jason said. "What's gotten into you?"

  Jason was probably right, but he had lectured Cody about something-or-other every day since their dorm orientation, beginning of freshman year. Being in a bad mood already, it wore at Cody's patience. He turned like a mummy in his stiff suit toward Jason. "I'm sitting twenty feet from a box full of dead Grampa. How's that for starters?"

  "You just can't go cursing in God's house."

  "You talk as if he can't see the shit you do outside this building. You aren't even a Methodist."

  "Methodist, Baptist: it's all still Christian. It's not like it's a daggone mosque...and even then--

  A large, blond and bearded head poked over the pew between Cody and Jason's shoulders. The lower lip bulged, full of chewing tobacco.

  "I'd say fuck in a mosque," TR said. "Fuck those camel jockey terrorists."

  Cody whipped his head over his shoulder. His collar dug painfully into his neck which made the glare he shot back that much more malicious. The hulking, scruffy TR recoiled in his pew, but his eyes remained stubbornly defiant.

  "You shut your racist mouth, Tommy Ray," Cody whispered.

  In response, TR brought an empty water bottle to his lips and spat a slurry of tobacco and saliva into it. An elderly woman in a big black hat seated beside him made a feeble sound and brought a gloved hand to her mouth. Cody shook his head, turned back to face the front and took as large a breath as his suit would allow.

  "Listen," Jason continued, "just be respectful of the man's memorial service. If only for the mourners."

  Cody gazed to the front of the elaborately wrought, sunlit sanctuary. It was perhaps the closest the Methodists would ever come to a cathedral.

  "But since when did my Grampa give a...a crap about church services?"

  "He paid for the place. Don't you think he'd wanna use it at least once?"

  "He woulda hated this dick parade even more than me."

  "Dick parade?" Jason held up his hands in wordless frustration for a moment. "What does that even mean?"

  Cody waved a hand, palm up. "Look at all these fucking dicks...parading. Bunch of phonies man. I gotta spell it out for you?" His voice was growing louder. Cody tried to return to a hushed whisper.

  "Not one of them really gave a shit about my grampa. And look, there is chief dick now," Cody said, pointing up at the green-robed minister stepping up to the wide, ornate pulpit.

  "No doubt about it." Cody nodded firmly. "It's a dick parade if there ever was one."

  "You can't fault people for paying their respects, Cody."

  Cody let out a low chuckle. "I can when they're just here to kiss my Dad's ass! You still don't understand how these people work." He glanced around at the room full of men in expensive suits and women in ornate hats and gaudy jewelry. Subtle was not something Texas society did well.

  "And if they are here to pay their respects to my Grampa, it was to some Texas oil legend, not the real man."

  Cody turned away from Jason and looked to his left, down at the skinny man beside him with long, dark hair tucked behind his ears. He wore a powder blue suit and large, dark sunglasses that almost reached down past his drawn cheeks to touch the top of his Fu Man Chu. It was odd seeing Ricky without a trucker hat, like seeing a turtle without a shell.

  "Back me up here, Ricky. None of these people knew Grampa," Cody said with a nudge.

  Ricky just continued staring up at the coffin and gave a short, non-committal shrug. His boney hands fidgeted with a red lighter and his right leg was jiggling up and down. Silence was normal for Ricky. But there was something else now, a tension. Was Ricky nervous? Odd emotion at a funeral, but Cody couldn't blame him. Being around these people put him on edge too. Either way, Ricky wasn't coming to his defense.

  Cody just shook his head in frustration and began the business of gutting his way through the service.

  The minister spoke, a choir sang, the whole room rose to sing a hymn, and then it all seemed to repeat. All the while, Cody tried to focus on his anger at the charade, hoping it would steel him against the growing, stony sadness lodged painfully in his chest. It was difficult, as anger was not an emotion Cody usually struggled with, not in the bad way. So now when he needed it most, it was like holding a slippery fish.

  Just when he thought his resolve would ebb and grief might overtake him, his gran took the pulpit to deliver the family's eulogy.

  Her kind face radiated serene calm over the audience. It eased Cody's pain, if only a little. He was also happy to see that she had forgone wearing black, and instead chose a pastel purple jacket and skirt that brought out the natural color in her cheeks and the warmth in her eyes.

  "Most funeral services would not be so delighted to hear the deceased's ex-wife lead them in their remembrance," Grama Irene began. "However, I am a woman of uncommon grace."

  Gentle laughter spread through the congregation.

  "How does one sum up a man like Bruce Latour? How does one pay tribute to the humongous life he led? Well, the difficulty is, in attempting to do that, I would be failing precisely the same way I failed to rein him in during our young years together. To attempt to constrain Bruce in life was as futile as it would be now for me to constrain his memory in parting, by way of some summary. He was a man that defied reason, whether he did it stubbornly or simply by the nature of his actions. It took me many years to understand that a man like Bruce was a force of nature, like any of your tornadoes, sudden squalls or earthquakes."

  Laughs bubbled up again out of the crowd.

  "The greatest gift I can give him in death is the best I learned how to give in life: to celebrate his immense quality, to cherish his goodness and his nobility, to forgive his transgressions, his passions, and the numerous china shops he left shattered in his wake. To simply love him in the terrible ferocity of his crashing waves, and fear him even in the tranquil beauty of his warm, transparent blue."

  The crowd was transfixed, perfectly silent.

  "But he isn't this world's problem or pleasure anymore. Let's just hope the angels don't lose too much in heaven's pool halls before they realize Bruce is hustling them."

  Gran knew to begin and end on a joke, just as Grampa would have. People laughed and actually applauded in small golf claps around the room when she was done.

  Cody saw placid faces smiling to one another in agreement or perhaps sharing an anecdote of their own with their neighbor. Then Cody happened upon two faces that were neither speaking, nor smiling. In the front pew off to Cody's right, Leroy Latour, a stocky man with a balding pate, sat with his face stern and unmoving, looking older than a man in his early fifties and too serious even for a man at his father's funeral.

  To hi
s father's right, across the aisle, sat Monica Van Zyl-Latour, celebrating the death of her second husband.

  Celebrating indeed.

  Monica was garbed in a black dress that would have served a dance club better than an occasion of mourning. Her silky, brunette hair was tinged with blonde highlights and sat on toned shoulders. She wiped at eyes that Cody would have guessed were incapable of producing tears, either as a result of plastic surgery, or by their simple cold nature. But no, there were indeed tears.

  Tears of joy probably.

  Cody had never experienced them himself, but Monica's glistening cheek was proof enough that they existed.

  Chapter Four

  Tagg

  A white tent had been erected behind the church to shelter the reception from the rain that always threatened San Antonio in the fall. Cody's father stood dutifully at its edge. A line of people passed him, offering their sympathies. But Leroy was dispassionate, like an usher taking tickets for a show.

  Cody and Jason stood beneath the tent in the most logical place: far away from Leroy and close to the bar.

  "Look at the ass on her," Jason said, tipping a glass to his mouth. "I bet you could bounce a Sacajawea dollar off that." Jason shoved his free hand into the pants pocket of a dark grey tailored suit.

  "Yeah, great," Cody said without looking wherever said ass was.

  Jason looked up at him and cocked an eyebrow. "It ain't like you to be so difficult. Seriously, what's got your nipples chapped? You're bumming me out."

  Cody looked at Jason, incredulous. "Bumming you out? This is a funeral, not a frat mixer."

  "Oh, don't gimme that shit. Maybe this is how I grieve. Ladies here need my comforting embrace. No one likes a funeral-pooper, Cody."

  "I thought you couldn't say shit in church."

  "We ain't in church, we're in a tent."