by E. Joan Sims
Cassie sighed again and patted her grandmother on the knee.
“Never you mind, Gran. We’ll find a way to take care of the farm. And it is a lovely little table. I saw Mrs. Dibber giving it the once over this morning. She looked like she wanted to take it home with her. I’m glad it’s staying in the family. I would hate for a stranger to have it.”
Cassie dug a match out of her shorts pocket and lit the fat citronella candle on the little wrought iron table. The pungent orange flame sputtered and hissed away at a few marauding mosquitoes.
I felt a niggling little irritation overcome my increasing weariness as I absorbed Mother’s words.
“Ernest Dibber told you about William’s will? What does he have to do with it? Aren’t you William’s executor?”
I saw her force her lips into a smile before she answered me. In the candlelight it looked more like a grimace. Maybe it was.
“No, Paisley. William made Mr. Dibber the administrator of his estate. He also gave him his power of attorney two weeks before he died. I can only assume it was because I was not here. You and I both know William would never have given the task to Joe Tom. The poor boy has no sense of responsibility.”
I was surprised, really surprised. It never occurred to me that Mother would not be settling what little estate William had. That was what I had come for. I told my agent that I would be here at least two weeks. I dreaded the job of helping Mother clean out William’s house and sort through old papers. Now that it was not to be mine, I was angry. Who was this Ernest Dibber after all?
Chapter Three
The heart of my mother’s house was a one hundred and thirty year-old log cabin. It had originally held four large rooms, or “pens” as they were called. There were two rooms down and two up on either side of a wide central hallway. The front door was on one end and the door to the back yard, the kitchen, smokehouse, and apple cellar at the other.
For some inexplicable reason one of the previous owners had cut off the roof and turned the two upper rooms into an attic. The windows had even been boarded over. With the loss of the upstairs, succeeding residents started expanding to the sides and the back. The smokehouse and apple cellar had been torn down to make room for an indoor kitchen and a huge wrap-around screened porch. When my grandfather Sterling and my father purchased the farm they added more bedrooms. It was also thanks to them that we had electricity and indoor plumbing.
To say the result of all these architectural additions was a hodgepodge of style was a great understatement. But somehow, through it all, the house maintained a certain elegance and beauty and I dearly loved every little nook and cranny.
Certainly there were plenty of bedrooms and lots of privacy. It was a good night for privacy. We were all exhausted. Cassie was getting surly, and Mother was enunciating even more clearly. We said our goodnights and went to bed. Cassie went to her room dragging a nighty on the floor like she did when she was three. All she needed, I thought fondly, was her Pooh bear.
I was too tired to shower so I just splashed warm water over my face and brushed my hair back. I ignored the perky little toothbrush standing in my old “Wonder Woman” water glass. My stomach was totally beyond being able to handle anything as minty as toothpaste. I took off my clothes, threw them in the direction of my open suitcase, and pulled on a nightgown.
The big four-poster bed was the same one I had since my sixth birthday. It was still high off the floor but I had not used the little bed step since that first year. When I pulled the bedspread back, I had to smile. Bless Mother’s heart! “Spare no expense where comfort is involved,” is her motto. Underneath, a pretty lace trimmed plissé blanket cover protected a soft, silky Pima cotton summer blanket and luxurious four hundred thread count sheets. Everything was a lovely feminine shade of pink. I felt like I was curling up in cotton candy. I stretched and yawned and settled back.
After about twenty minutes I realized that the soft old mattress which had cradled me for so many years and the fancy new bed linens had failed to lull me to sleep. I changed positions fifty times but nothing doing. I finally got up, slipped on a light robe and padded barefoot into the library. I quietly opened the French doors, grabbed a down cushion off the sofa, and lay down on my stomach in front of the screen door. I had been very silent in all of my movements and none of the crickets or croakers stopped their songs for a moment. A big cloud covered the moon. I could hear but not see the rustling of the leaves by the soft breeze.
I thought about all of the summer nights long ago when Velvet and I had escaped through our bedroom window to run barefoot and pajama-clad in the wet grass in search of adventure. We found it in daring to be up and about when all the world was sound asleep. As children, we never gave a thought to the snakes that surely must have come out of their cold damp holes to warm themselves against the stone walk still warm from the sun. Nor did we think of the wild foxes that came down the lane to hunt for a juicy baby bunny meal in the hedges near the house. I suppose, had we not been so full of giggles, we might have heard the desperate squeal of a mouse in a nighthawk’s beak or the squeaking of bats circling the chimney. And occasionally there must have been the horrid child-like scream of a rabbit being disemboweled by a big barn owl.
But those were adult thoughts, and I remembered none of that now. I did recall vividly how the roof shingles held the warmth from the hot summer day, and I remembered how scratchy they were on bare knees as we crawled up the slope to the top where we held hands around the chimney.
I have no memory of either fear or bravado, just the pure joy and freedom of doing as we wished.
We continued our nighttime forays for several summers, never telling anyone lest they drop a word in the wrong place. Our daytime world was very small. Everyone knew all our secrets, but our nighttime world was big as the wide star-filled summer sky and extended as far as we could roam in bare, dew-wet feet.
Gradually the wooden floor’s wide hand hewn pine boards became more comfortable than any bed and I drifted off to sleep. I dreamed of flying high over the roof and chimney.
In my dream there were no clouds to cover the moon. Its white light crawled lazily over the big magnolia and brightened the leaves on the crepe myrtle and the wintersweet. I moaned and tried to wake up as I saw a dark figure enter my dreamscape. I feared the menacing sound of the heavy feet crunching in the gravel of the driveway. That dream sound startled me to wakefulness. I held my breath and listened intently for the footsteps. I heard only the soothing song of small night creatures. I relaxed and fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.
I awoke at six in the morning when Mother’s part-time housekeeper, Mabel, coaxed her noisy fourteen year-old clunker gingerly up the gravel driveway. The old engine coughed and choked, and backfired loudly as she turned it off. I forced my stiff and aching body up off the floor with enormous effort and shut the doors to keep out the noxious fumes emanating from her so-called automobile. The bed that had done nothing for me last night now beckoned with an undeniable allure. I tumbled in and soon found myself falling under the spell of soft pink.
I opened my eyes again four hours later. It did not take me any time at all to know where I was. The room was dear and familiar to me. I gazed fondly from one forever known item to another. The big bay window looked out over the front yard where my swing had been. The late morning sun filtered through the miniblinds and over a window seat that was home to a whole population of dolls and stuffed animals. The more beloved ones were missing button eyes and an arm or two. None had come through my childhood unscathed.
The bottom drawer of the tall walnut chest of drawers in the corner reportedly still held some of my baby clothes; however, since it had been stuck for decades this was impossible to prove. I harbored a secret dream that all my lost toys and comic books were in there, that they were safe and waiting for me like my favorite prom dresses which hung, sequined ghosts, in the back of the big walk-in closet.
Besides the walnut chest there were only a few other pie
ces of furniture in the room. The closet was fitted with shelves and drawers so not much else was needed. An old and very comfortable lady’s armchair and ottoman sat in front of the small fireplace. Bookcases on each side of the chimney reached to the ceiling and were filled with books of all my different ages.
The last piece of furniture was a small and intricately carved Victorian dressing table. It was a wedding gift to my grandmother and hers to me. My own wedding picture sat in front of the mirror in an ornate gold frame. I used to hide it whenever I came for a visit but it would magically reappear over and over to remind me of love lost. I tired of finding new hiding places, and then, finally, I no longer cared.
The room was a time capsule. It was full of both good and bad memories, all of them mellowed by the passage of years.
I stretched and heard my stomach grumble. It was reminding me that my normal breakfast time was several hours ago. Mabel made the best French toast in the western world. Maybe it wasn’t too late to beg her to indulge me.
Mabel made my French toast that first morning but that was the last we saw of her for a while since she had a new job at one of the hotels on the lake. She needed the security of a full-time paycheck to pay for something purchased on credit. She promised to call Mother when she had some free time. We all knew it would not be long. Mabel hated being tied down to a regular job.
Later that morning Billy’s wife telephoned. He had been helping one of the deacons of the Baptist church repair the steeple when he fell and broke his ankle. Billy would be laid up for at least a month. Mother didn’t have to worry about not being able to afford him for a while.
Cassie and I pitched in with a vengeance over the next week. She got out the tractor and mowed, then raked all ten acres around the house. I trimmed the walkways, borders, and flowerbeds and cleaned out all the dead weeds and grass. Fortunately, Cassie rescued a nest of baby bunnies before I annihilated them with the weed whacker.
The weather was wonderful. The days were getting shorter but they were filled with delicious mellow sunshine as yellow as the sweet Anjou pears that ripened on all six trees at once.
Mrs. Nick, our ninety year-old neighbor came up one day, and we all picked and wrapped as many pears as we could in newspaper to keep them from getting overripe. We made pear butter, preserves, and chutney out of the rest.
When the pears were taken care of, we went back to work on the house and yard. We cleaned out the gutters and fencerows and carried all the debris by the wagonload to the old dry pond bed where we lit bonfires every night. We showered off the dirt and grime and fell into bed too tired to eat only to rise early the next morning with the appetite of farmhands. Mother would cook us a big country breakfast and send us out to work again. At noon she made us fresh lemonade and pimento cheese sandwiches on wickedly unhealthy but wonderfully soft white bread. We ate on the patio, napped a short while in the sun, only to get up and stretch our weary city muscles and start all over again.
It was one of those sweet and well-deserved naps that Mother interrupted with the news that a registered letter had arrived from Ernest Dibber’s lawyer. We grumbled a bit and sat up while she opened it and began to read.
She suddenly turned white as a sheet and then just as quickly beet red. Alarmed I jumped up and caught her just as she started to tip over out of her chair. Cassie grabbed the letter when she saw her grandmother was all right. At least I would like to think she thought about that.
“Son of a bitch!” she exclaimed. “Son of a low down dirty bitch!”
Mother steadied herself and took a deep breath. The color faded to a more normal shade in her face. I held her ice cold hands in mine.
“Are you okay, Mother?” I inquired anxiously.
“No, dammit!” Mother never, ever, swore. It was not “lady like.”
“What the hell is in that letter?” I always swore.
“Crap! That’s what!” Cassie could swear really well. “He left it all to that bastard!” she continued heatedly, “all of it except some piddling amount to Gran, his three cousins, and some old guy. Five hundred thousand goes to some church school and three million dollars to Dibber, Mom. Three million dollars!”
I sat down hard on the concrete patio still holding Mother’s hand. I almost pulled her back out of the chair.
“You have got to be kidding!”
Mother was a woman of steel now.
“No, darling, she is not kidding. There is nothing even remotely amusing about this. William left three million dollars to Ernest Dibber.”
“This is just not fair!” cried Cassie. “Gran, that’s your money! It doesn’t belong to some stupid stranger!”
“Let me see the letter, Cassie.”
She passed it over to me. I read quickly through the opening legal preamble and got to the meat of the letter. William had left each of his three cousins five thousand dollars. He left his old friend, Joe Parks, ten thousand and a Methodist seminary five hundred thousand. He bestowed thirty thousand on Mother. There was no mention of me, Velvet, or Cassie. That hurt. The remainder of the estate, the house and all the contents, including my great-grandmother’s table, he left to his “dear friend, neighbor, and caretaker, Ernest Dibber.” The estimate of the remainder of William’s estate, the stocks and bonds, and the contents of fifteen different bank accounts, was well over three million dollars.
We sat very quietly for a moment or two while the news sank in, and then we all started to talk at once.
“I can’t believe William had.…”
“My God, I don’t understand how.…”
And Cassie was still on, “Son of a bitch!”
Then we were quiet again. I looked at Mother and saw the unbelievable. I do not think I had seen her cry more than one tear since the copious amount she shed when my father died, but she was doing so now and with a vengeance. Suddenly I felt like a frightened little child. There was nothing I could do but reach out and take her hand. Cassie was equally stunned.
“Don’t you cry, Gran! You’ll see! I’ll get that creep if it’s the last thing I do,” she promised.
Mother wiped her eyes on one of the linen luncheon napkins.
“You don’t understand, darling. I’m not angry at that dreadful man. I’m angry at William!”
“But why, Gran?”
“Because he was a millionaire three and a half times over and he made my darling Abigail live a pauper’s existence, that’s why!”
She stood and paced up and down the patio.
“She had to mend and scrape and do without, and all the while he was counting dividends and interest in his miserly little head. Can you imagine how she must have felt?”
She stopped behind Cassie’s chair and gripped the back so hard her knuckles stood out like ivory knobs.
“When Abigail died, I went through her closet trying to find a decent dress in which to bury her. I found nothing but rags. I had to dress her in something of mine because I wanted her to look nice.”
She shook her head sadly.
“How could the man to whom she devoted her entire life treat her in so shabby a manner? How could William make his wife live in such abject poverty for so many years and then turn around and make a millionaire out of that obnoxious neighbor? William must have been out of his mind.”
The tears started to make their way down her cheeks again.
“If you all will excuse me I think I’m going to lie down for a while. I’m suddenly very tired.”
“Of course, Mother. Will you be okay?”
She nodded her head and walked slowly back to the house. Cassie ran ahead of her and opened the screen door to the porch. She gave her grandmother a swift embrace and ran off toward the lane that led to the back field.
I sat alone on the sunny afternoon patio with my thoughts whirling. Maybe a nap was the best thing when your brain was on overload. But I knew I could never sleep. Who would have ever suspected something like this? Certainly none of us could have imagined it, not in a million, not i
n three million years. That would be a year for every dollar. Wow! I thought, that is a lot of money. How does a man get that kind of money? Especially a man like William who was so quiet and unassuming. He had only held one job. He had never traveled outside of the state. When his parents went to visit relatives in Germany, William was in school and declined the invitation to accompany them.
That must have been it! He must have inherited a good deal of the money from his parents. I had heard him tell stories about his father, a good stout German who had come to Louisville with his family in the 1800s.
His grandfather was a successful merchant who opened several dry goods stores. When William’s father decided to strike out on his own, he had purchased a barge and gone down the river selling whatever the farmers needed. After meeting a Scottish farmer’s pretty daughter, he married her and settled down. The small coalmining town where they lived had neither dry goods store nor bank. He furnished both for the next few decades.
According to what I could remember of William’s stories, it was his mother’s thrift as well as his father’s success at making money that made their life so comfortable. She had sustained them during difficult times, most notably when the bank went under during the depression.
William had grown up in that little mining town, and when he showed no real talent for merchandising, his father sent him to school to study bookkeeping. He came back and worked for the bank for the rest of his life.
Ernest Dibber was the young man William trained to replace him at the bank when he retired. Dibber was a tax specialist, too. He’d probably prepared William’s taxes: the only other person in the world to know how much money William really had. My neck started to prickle as the hairs stood on end. There was something really wrong here!