We all relied on Uncle Sloane to know what to do after the funeral. Minnie, his sister-in-law, a widow who lived with her nephew, had on her brown dotted Sunday dress and laid on the ham, black-eyed peas, biscuits, and green beans. She put all this on Uncle Sloane’s long dining table along with all the Jell-O salads, banana cakes and pies the neighbors had brought in.
Everyone came—my family, all the Mullinses and Marvella. After dinner Mother sat down in the rocker with the baby, and the twins fell asleep in Dad’s lap. Ted and Nelva Mullins were stuffed and collapsed on the big Victorian furniture in the parlor. The whole family hardly moved except the Mullins boys, who were scuffling under the dining room table, and Marvella, Sloane’s niece.
A woman about my mother’s age, Marvella, was Uncle Sloane’s closest and least favorite relative. I figured this out from listening. No one knew all the things I’d figured out except Sloane. He always saw me listening. And he gave me a glance now when Marvella brought up the Hutschenreuther plates.
“I wonder who’ll get the plates?” she said, addressing the lampshade next to her. She had on her purple suit with a lavender flower stitched on the shoulder in a permanent corsage. She’d done her hair a more innocent blond for the funeral.
“What plates?” It was Ted Mullins’ wife, Nelva, her face pulled tight by her skinned back hair; the rest of her was fat—soft and white and slick as Crisco. Ted Mullins was basically the same shape as his wife except his head was put on low, so his shoulders rose up behind his ears. Ted was Marvella’s second cousin. He and his wife and four kids had driven over from Seminole for the funeral.
“The Hutschenreuther plates, of course,” said Marvella fingering the lavender buttons down the hip of the tight suit. “The only thing of value the poor man had.”
Nelva Mullins pulled forward in the easy chair and her skirt rode up, showing large white knees above the rolled hose. “How valuable?” she asked.
Marvella ducked her head modestly, too polite, I guess, to discuss money. “Well goodness, I wouldn’t know,” she said, running a painted red nail along the edge of the big lavender flower. “The value of antiques goes up all the time, and these have been in our family for generations. Sloane’s granddaddy bought them in St. Louis. But when Wendell promised them to me, I did just happen to ask a friend in the business what they might be worth, in general terms, but that was several years ago.”
“Yeah?” Nelva Mullins said, pushing hard on the arms of the chair to keep her weight from sliding her back. “How much? In general terms?”
“Well, of course, it’s the sentimental value, something from the family, all those Christmas dinners for so many years—”
Nelva glared at Marvella.
“If the plates are perfect,” Marvella said, “perhaps fifty dollars a plate.”
“Good grief. How many are there?” Nelva asked.
“A perfect dozen, last time Uncle Wendell and I counted them. The day he promised them to me.”
“Ted?” Nelva said accusingly.
“I never heard anything about plates.” His chin on his chest, he was just beginning to doze off after his second piece of pecan pie.
“Don’t you think, Sloane,” she asked, “we ought to have the reading of the will now?”
Sloane had just gotten up to move a cut glass vase off a rather small table a couple of the Mullins boys were dodging around. He looked over at Marvella. “Why?”
“Well because,” Marvella said, “the Mullinses have come a long way. It’d just mean another trip with these poor children if they had to come back.”
“I would not be offended,” Sloane said, “if they left the children home when they come for the reading of the will.”
“Sloane, there is no sense in that,” Marvella whined. “We are all here. Sloane?”
He’d bent his knees to squint out the side window toward the driveway. Marvella probably thought he was having a staring spell and let herself go back to tormenting Nelva about the plates. Sloane plucked my sleeve, and we went outside through the back stairs hall.
When I saw the man standing beside his car, wringing his hands and saying, “Sloane, Sloane, I am so very sorry for this,” I thought he was a mourner come too late for the funeral. He looked much younger than Dad but had a bald head and a fat face, and with his hands clasped in front of his zipper, his whole soft body kept swaying with apology. “Sloane, if my daddy knew I was doing this to you on the day of Wendell’s funeral, he would just throw me right out of the firm, and I won’t blame you if you tell him, but—”
“What’s up, Randolph?”
It was chilly out, and Sloane turned up the collar of his suit coat, put his arm around me, and set our backs to the wind. The man was holding out his hand toward a young woman standing on the other side of the car, and from the fearful look in her eye, she wasn’t about to come around to our side. She looked like a shy high school girl in a waitress uniform.
“Sloane, I should have called you. I should have called you weeks ago,” the man said.
“It’s cold out here, Randolph. What is it?”
“And now the funeral and all the relatives here. I was afraid you might read out an old will and things would be even worse.” The man took a deep breath and wrung his hands. “Wendell made another will.”
A will? This man was a lawyer, too.
“So?” said Sloane.
“Her!” the lawyer said looking guilty. “Her! He gave it all to her.”
The girl pulled her shrunk up old blue sweater around her and looked away.
“Who is she?” Sloane asked.
The lawyer now stepped closer to us so the girl couldn’t hear and whispered, “She’s a manicurist.”
“A what?” Sloane cupped his hand behind his good ear.
“That girl was giving Wendell manicures.”
Sloane leaned forward and squinted into the face of the much shorter man. “Are you telling me that my brother was getting his fingernails painted?”
“No, no, Sloane, just buffed up, probably, maybe the cuticle—”
“Men don’t do that in this town, Randolph.”
“Sure they do, Sloane, down at the barbershop, a few, the banker—”
“Wendell was not the banker. The man didn’t get a haircut more that three or four times a year. He didn’t like barbers.”
“She doesn’t work at the barber shop. She works over at Parisian Lady.”
“Randolph, you are impinging upon my credulity as well as my hospitality—”
“See! That’s why it was so hard to call you in the first place. I don’t know how they met, but the shampoo girl told my wife that after all the customers were gone, old Wendell would come around to the back door and she’d,” he nodded toward the manicurist, “let him in, and well, they’d sit at a little table in the back and talk while she—you know, soaked his fingers and—”
Randolph kept leaning closer and wincing and giving me dark looks. “Well, you know,” he said, “lotion and stuff, and a few weeks ago he came to my office and told me she was all alone with two young kids and asked me to make him a will leaving her his place. Now I’m sure that’s all it was, just the manicures, but now it’s his property, and for me to have to come over here at a time of grieving—” Randolph shifted his weight and reclasped his hands.
“A man,” Sloane said, “has a right to bequeath his property as he sees fit. Did you make the will?”
“Yes, sir, and I should have called you. When your niece, Marvella Ketcham, gets wind of this, there’s going to be a real donnybrook.”
“And did he sign it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And do you have it with you?”
Randolph took a tan envelope out from inside his coat and handed it to Sloane. “I am so sorry,” he said.
Sloane took the will, and we walked around to the other side of the car. The girl backed away from us and turned a little to the side. I could see that her socks had crawled down into her bunged-up
white shoes. Her face was thin, with blue gray circles under the eyes.
“Who was your husband, ma’am?” Sloane asked.
“Tommy Jarrett,” she said softly. “He got hisself smothered down at the grain elevator.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, ma’am.”
“And now I lost Wendell. I’m just bad luck for men.” She put her hand over her mouth.
“Wendell was seventy-eight,” Sloane said.
“That’s right, sir, thank you.”
Sloane opened the car door for her. Randolph trotted around the car and cupped his hand as though to keep the girl from hearing. “I don’t need to tell you how it’s going to be, Sloane. Sure as shooting. Once the relatives start squabbling, the gossips in this town will just blow this thing up bigger than— Then I don’t know how you’ll keep all that beauty parlor information from O’Brian at The Courier which will—”
“Randolph.” Sloane raised a hand to stop the sputtering. “Would you take Mrs. Jarrett home, please? I’ll call on you in your office Monday morning.”
And that was that. Sloane was silent as we walked toward the house, and he patted me on the back as if to say don’t worry, but he wasn’t looking at me at all. We ducked into the back bedroom and he told me to close the door and stand watch. After puffing out a long breath, he sat down at his desk, opened up the will and gave it a quick look. Then he put it in the drawer, and sat awhile frowning at his desk. Finally, he took out a sheet of paper and began to write.
I listened at the door and could only hear Minnie cleaning up the kitchen and Ted Mullins snoring. The kids were running around in the yard, and I guessed everyone else was taking it easy.
After he got done writing, Sloane sent me to get Minnie out of the kitchen. She took off her apron and brought a kitchen chair into the living room for herself. The others began to wake up. Mother stood up with the baby and shook down her dress, and Dad yawned and adjusted the sleeping twins. Ted and Nelva shifted and blinked in their easy chairs. Marvella got out her compact and gave her new blond do a push or two. I could see her looking past her little mirror to give Ted and Nelva dirty looks.
Sloane took a seat in his big armchair, and I settled on the arm beside him. “This is not Wendell’s will,” Sloane began when everyone was paying attention. “This is a précis of his intentions.”
“What do you mean a pray-see?” Marvella was getting her back up already.
Sloane dipped his chin and glared over his glasses at her. “There is a lot of useless legal language in the will itself. This is just a summary of it, the who-gets-what of it, Marvella.”
“All right,” she said.
“To Alice,” Sloane began. My mother looked up in mild surprise. “—in whose kitchen I have drunk a thousand of cups of coffee, I leave the china cup and saucer her mother painted.”
“Oh, goodness,” Mother’s eyes got teary and she bit her lip. “I had no idea he would remember.”
“To my cousin, Ted Mullins, I leave all my farm implements.”
“Farm implements!” Nelva shouted. “There isn’t nothing out there that wasn’t rusted all to heck twenty years ago!”
Ted Mullins patted his wife’s hand, leaned over and said, “Scrap iron, Nelva.”
Sloane looked over his glasses at Ted. “Can you take care of this?”
“You bet.” Ted dipped his low head. “I figure six, eight truck loads. Just have to take Monday off.”
Nelva raised a superior smile in Marvella’s direction. She knew that six or eight truckloads of scrap iron beat out twelve perfect plates no matter how much they’d appreciated. Marvella clasped her hands on the purple skirt, pursed her lips and concentrated anew on Sloane.
Sitting on the arm of his chair I could read his elegant, spidery handwriting, so I was surprised when he said, “To Minnie, my sister-in-law, I leave my kitchen clock.”
Minnie, perched on the kitchen chair, jerked her chin and began to blink and look about in that clucky hen way of hers. “Kitchen clock?” she asked. “I don’t ever remember Wendell having a kitchen clock, do you, Alice? Marvella? A kitchen clock?”
“I believe this was a gift to him from someone,” Sloane said. “I doubt he ever took it out of the box.”
“Oh,” Minnie said, “well, that would explain it.” She folded her hands in her lap and sank again into stillness. Then her whole body jerked. “But did any of you give him a kitchen clock, I mean if you did, and you want it back—Alice? Nelva? Marvella?”
“I don’t believe,” Marvella said, “I can recall ever actually giving him a clock, at least not for the kitchen. Does it say specifically, kitchen clock?”
“Yes,” Sloane snapped, “and it says it goes to Minnie, his sister-in-law.”
Sloane then cleared his throat and adjusted his glasses. Suspense settled on the group, and he took up reading something that was actually on the page. “To my beloved niece, Marvella, I leave the plates.”
“Ohhh,” Marvella sobbed, “that sweet old man, that sweet, sweet old man.” The relief of it all took her, and she bent over her hankie and bawled.
There was one more item on the sheet of paper that Sloane held. He cleared his throat again to hush up Marvella and proceeded. “My land and house and furniture I leave to the orphans of my young friend whose life was snuffed out so early, Tommy Jarrett.”
“Ohhh,” Marvella began again, “isn’t that sweet.” Nothing could diminish her happiness. I knew that more than the plates, she had noticed that she was the only one called beloved. And now to have received her bequest within a will that stooped to care for orphans only increased her joy.
Sloane folded the paper and everyone in the room rose as if they were floating up on clouds. Minnie brought the coats and covered dishes of leftovers for each family, and everyone kissed goodbye, especially Marvella, who couldn’t seem to get enough kissing and hugging. She kept right on crying as she went out the door.
Mother bundled up the baby, and I got the little kids into their coats while Dad warmed up the car.
“Uncle Sloane,” I whispered as the others were trooping out the door. “You made all that up.”
He pulled his chin down and looked at me over his glasses.
“And besides, Mother said you looked after Uncle Wendell all his life. He should have left it all to you.”
Sloane was looking at me but not saying anything. Then he glanced out the door at the rest of the folks at the curb. “Sometimes,” he said, “a brother—” He heaved a big sigh and placed his fingertips on the mahogany hall table. “Let’s just say, sometimes trying for justice is—is simply too ambitious, and—” It wasn’t like Sloane to sigh, staring at the floor, his eyes big behind his glasses. I waited ’til he went on. “And if you can’t get justice, well then, you try for peace.”
I wasn’t sure what he was saying. All fall I’d felt so good about being eleven, almost grown up, but now it looked like being a grown up was a sad thing, and even being a smart man like Sloane didn’t make it easy.
“You didn’t get anything either,” he said in his old jokey voice.
“Yeah, but I’m only a child.”
§
COMMUNITY ENHANCEMENT
2013
“This bunch could use some leadership,” Wynona Blosser whispered to herself as she eyed the Cadillac town fathers gathered around the long collapsible table in the low-ceilinged, windowless conference room under the Chamber of Commerce offices. The decision makers were here: Mayor Mashburn; his lawyer, Gavin McCall, who had for some reason brought his little, red-headed wife; the city manager; the city engineer; the manager of the electric company; and of course, herself, essential to this project as the president of the bank that would do the financing. That new reporter, O’Brian from The Cadillac Courier, who asked to come, had definitely been told, no. This was not a public meeting. Also present, of course, was Peanuts Murphy, the owner of the land the city was trying to buy. Sloane Willard, a retired lawyer, who for some reason carried a l
ot of weight in this town, had been invited by the mayor but said he had a conflict.
Since the late 70s—and this ground Wynona’s spirit down every time she looked out the window of her office at the bank—the land in question had included an abandoned pool hall and a falling-down bowling alley. The owner of these shabby properties had rented out the yards around these derelict establishments for open storage of scrap iron and used plumbing fixtures.
The problem tonight was that the mayor was allowing the city engineer to drone on about the possibility of toxicity in the soil under these eye sores, which occupied two city blocks in the center of town. Wynona crossed her legs to hold onto her patience.
At the start of this meeting she had made it perfectly clear what the group was supposed to accomplish: Buy the land. Cadillac had the opportunity to distinguish itself among Oklahoma towns by creating within its heart a town green on the model of a New England commons. The centerpiece, Wynona had said, would be a Victorian ice cream parlor surrounded by a garden containing a large, gazebo-like bandstand. All this group needed to do was to come to an agreement with Peanuts Murphy on the price of the land.
Oh, good grief! Gavin McCall’s wife kept asking the engineer questions about the soil. Wynona huffed and crossed her legs the other way. “Mrs. McCall,” Wynona interrupted trying to sound sweet, “maybe you could satisfy your curiosity about the soil some other time. This is a meeting to arrange a real estate transaction.”
The scrawny little thing stood up like everyone wanted to hear from her. “Mrs. Blosser,” she said, “the town should not make a deal for land it will never be able to build on, especially a park where it would be unhealthy for children to play.” The girl remained standing.
“Listen, Judy, honey—” Wynona started.
“My name is Judianne.”
“Listen, Judianne. In case you hadn’t noticed, what the town has right now are two falling-down buildings and a pile of toilets. Now is that the healthy playground our children deserve?”
“Esthetically it’s a crime, but the EPA will shut down your project if this land turns out to be a toxic waste site.”
Cadillac, Oklahoma Page 2