STICKLER AND ME
By MORLEY TORGOV
Author of The Outside Chance of Maximilian Glick
Published by Bev Editions at Smashwords
ISBN: 978-0-9878146-0-9
Copyright © 2002 Morley Torgov
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
For their encouragement, advice and assistance, my thanks to Beverley Slopen, Lynn Henry, Joy Gugeler, Joanne DeLio, Marvin Cohen, Henry Campbell, Anna Pisani and, of course, Anna Pearl.
Table of Contents
For Benjamin, Sydney, Allison, Rebecca and Marshall
Let’s say I’m strolling along a beach somewhere. Suddenly I stub my big toe against something hard that’s stuck in the sand — a bottle that has obviously drifted ashore. I pick it up because, who knows, maybe there’s an urgent message inside. I manage to extract the cork and out pops a genie. Grateful to be released, the genie says to me, “Benjamin Marshall, you are now fourteen years of age and therefore old enough to know what you want most in life. Ask, and it shall be granted.”
The truth? I wouldn’t have a clue how to answer. I still haven’t figured out what I want most in my life.
But I will tell you this: If the genie asked what I did not want most, I could give my reply in less time than it takes to say “Ben” (which is what I prefer to be called).
What I would not want most is to be able to see into the future. Futures, I’ve learned, are dangerous things … full of people you’re not sure you want to encounter, things you never expected to hear, corners you never expected to turn and — above all — trouble, serious trouble, you never expected to get into.
How have I come to know this? Because about this time one year ago, when I was thirteen, I made a decision about how I wanted to spend July and August of that summer. Without realizing what I was getting into, I opened a curtain, stepped onto a strange stage and found myself right in the middle of …
Well, it’s taken all these months to record what I saw and managed to piece together from the recollections of other people involved one way or another.
Where to begin? Like all stories, this one begins with a question.
“You’re sure about this, Ben? I mean, it’s not too late to change your mind, y’know.”
My mother was standing in the doorway of my bedroom, arms folded, watching me squeeze, push, twist and jam the last item on my list — a pair of sneakers that smelled like a gymnasium — into an already crammed duffel bag.
I pretended I hadn’t heard her question. “My sweatshirt,” I said, remembering it was nowhere to be seen, “you didn’t put it in the laundry, I hope?”
“Which sweatshirt?” My mother’s face was all innocence. I could tell she was playing dumb.
I said, rolling my eyes, my tone of voice menacing, “C’mon, Mom, you know which sweatshirt. Where’d you stash it away?”
It took a split second for her expression to change to bossy. “You are not taking that sweatshirt to Port Sanford, Ben. I absolutely forbid you to wear that rag outside of this room. Your grandfather will be nothing short of mortified if you show up on his doorstep with that tasteless, disgusting, insulting — ”
“Okay, okay,” I said quickly, raising my hand in a gesture of peace. “I didn’t think Gramps was so darn sensitive.” “That’s right, Ben, you didn’t think.”
I wasn’t ready to give up totally without an argument on the subject. “I still don’t see what’s so tasteless, disgusting and insulting. All it’s got printed across the chest is FIRST THING, LET’S KILL ALL THE LAWYERS. I think Shakespeare said it in one of his plays. It’s funny. Besides, I didn’t buy the sweatshirt, Dad did.”
“Which is the second reason why you’re not to take it with you.”
“The first reason being what?”
“The first reason being that my father … your grandfather… is very proud of the fact that he’s been practising law for nearly fifty years. He would definitely not find your sweatshirt the least bit amusing.”
I said, “What would bother Gramps more, the idea of killing all the lawyers, or the idea that Dad bought me the sweatshirt?”
“Take your pick,” my mother replied.
It was no secret, at least no secret in our immediate family, how much my grandfather and his son-in-law disliked one another. My physics teacher would have explained it as a simple example of two substances with similar inherent properties repelling each other — a fancy scientific term for two men with one thing in common: each one was positive he and he alone had all the right answers to all the questions in the world.
My parents’ divorce a little over a year ago, just before my twelfth birthday, certainly did nothing to smooth out the relationship between my grandfather, Ira Lamport, and my father, Talbot Marshall, whom Gramps referred to always with a slight sneer as “my son-in-law, the great surgeon.” Naturally Grandfather took Mom’s side; after all, she is his daughter.
“Is Gramps still in a lousy mood?” I asked. “I mean, about the divorce and all?”
“Your grandfather is a proud, stubborn and lonely man, Ben. He’s been that way for a long time. Our marriage, your father’s and mine, was one rock in his path, our splitting up was another. Honestly, I can’t guarantee that spending the summer with him up in Port Sanford is going to be a bowl of cherries. Not for you, not for him. That’s why I repeat: Are you sure you don’t want to change your mind and take advantage of our offer?”
“Our offer? — ”
“Your father and I agreed that we’d share the cost if you preferred to spend July and part of August down east at Camp Pinestone. That way, if he’s not tied up at the hospital, your father can spend some time with you on visitors’ days.”
Without any enthusiasm, I said, “That’d sure be a big thrill.”
“And when I get back from doing my research in France you and I could maybe hop in the car and take a trip down to the States … Lake Placid, the Adirondacks … something like that.”
“You’re forgetting something, aren’t you?” I said.
Mother frowned. “Forgetting? What?”
“That I got kicked out of Camp Pinestone last summer. I wasn’t even there a whole week.”
“That’s all in the past, Ben. We have to learn to put things like that behind us and get on with our lives, just as your father and I are doing.”
My mother’s advice didn’t sound too convincing. “One cigarette … one crummy itty-bitty cigarette … the first time in my whole life I ever smoked … and ol’ Sourpuss Macklin says to me ‘Marshall, that’s a nicotine stain on your finger and a stain on your record; there’s no room here for kids who disobey the rules.’ And out I went.”
Giving me one of her patient smiles, my mother said, “Well, Ben, the good news is, you’re a year older and a year wiser now, and Mr. Macklin assures me you’d be welcome.”
“You mean,” I said, “the huge amount of money you’d have to pay to send me to Camp Pinestone would be welcome.”
My mother shook her head sadly. “I don’t know how, when or why you became such a cynic, Ben.”
“The answer’s easy,” I said. “Just watching you and Dad in action day after day, month after month, these last coupla years would be enough to make any kid think the human race was a big mistake.”
“And I suppose, Mr. Cynic, you imagine the next six or seven weeks with your grandfather will improve your outlook on the world?”
“Anything’s better,” I said, “than having to jump into an ice-cold lake at seven in the morning, or slogging through a swamp with a stupid canoe and backpack on my shoulders and mosquitoes up my shorts.”
My mother gave a deep sigh. “Some of the happiest days of my life were spent camping when I was your age, Ben. I loved the canoe trips, the clean air and clean water, being so close to nature.”
“Yeah, well, how come,” I said, “we never got a cottage like a lot of other people?”
“Because your father simply didn’t have the time. Summer weekends were often the busiest times for an orthopedic surgeon. Still are, in fact. You know … car accidents, boating accidents, things like that.”
“Plus,” I said, “the fact that you were always getting last-minute calls from your boss at the Gazette. Remember?
‘Allison, you gotta go here, Allison, you gotta go there.’ Always it was rush, rush. So it wasn’t Dad’s fault all the time.”
“Well, Ben,” my mother said, sounding resigned, “since you’ve made up your mind that getting to know your grandfather is preferable to communing with nature, you’d better take careful note of some important do’s and don’ts about being under the same roof with Ira Lamport.”
I pretended to reach for a note pad on my desk. “Should I be writing down these tips, Mom?”
“Don’t be a smart alec,” she said. “Just listen … for a change.”
“I’m all ears,” I said, trying to look serious.
“All right. Now listen carefully, Ben. You’ve always made a point of plugging your nose whenever he lights up one of his big cigars. Refrain from doing that from now on. At your grandfather’s age he’s going to smoke cigars whether or not you approve. Understood?”
I nodded yes. “What else?”
“He allows himself to say the word ‘damn’. Otherwise he frowns on foul language. I know that you and your friends have a whole warehouse full of four-letter words at your command, Ben. For the next six weeks or so, let not a single obscenity be uttered from your lips, certainly never in his presence. Is that understood?”
Again I nodded.
“Tip number three: He’s not a believer in ostentatious living — ”
“In what? — ”
“Let me put it another way, Ben. Your grandfather’s not a big spender. Never was, never will be. So, no wisecracks from you about his clothes, his car, his office furniture, the house. It’s been some years since you were up in Port Sanford, and you’re going to find that nothing has changed. Take things as you find them and try to make the best of it.”
I was beginning to wonder whether my choices for how I was to spend the summer consisted of two evils. Maybe Camp Pinestone was the lesser of two evils, after all. My mother seemed to sense the doubt that was growing inside me. “Want me to continue?” she asked.
“It’s beginning to sound like I’m going to reform school,” I said.
“Which brings up the most important point of all about your grandfather, Ben. He likes things done his way, and laws are like a religion to him. They are not to be broken … under any circumstances.”
“Does he know … I mean, about me being kicked out of camp last summer?”
“No. We told him you had to come home early because you were allergic to the dampness and moulds in the cabins. The point is, he plays everything straight … strictly by the books. You get the message?”
I stared down at the duffel bag lying at my feet. It was still open, its strings as limp as pieces of spaghetti. In my mind I had a vision of a man I didn’t get to see often and really didn’t know well, and a vague recollection of a town I hadn’t visited in something like three or four years. There was still time to unpack, to make other arrangements.
Smiling wisely, my mother said, “You’re having second thoughts, aren’t you, Ben?”
My mother’s description of my grandfather came back to me right then: “a proud, stubborn and lonely man.” Was it possible that pride and stubbornness could be handed down from grandfather to grandson like, say, a gold watch or a chess set or a shelf full of old encyclopedias?
Pride wasn’t out of the question, to be honest. I remember one morning, two years ago, my first morning in Grade Seven after summer holiday. Our new teacher, Mr. Abernethy, was doing roll call. One by one he said, “And what’s your name? And who are your parents and what do they do? And do you have grandparents? And what do they do?” I said that my mom was a journalist and my dad was a doctor. Not an ordinary doctor, I said, but a surgeon. Then I told Abernethy my grandfather was a lawyer, the kind that goes to court. “Well, well, Mister Ben Marshall, you’re following in big footsteps!” says Abernethy. For the rest of the term I was called “Mister Ben Marshall.” It was a joke, sort of. But secretly I was proud.
And stubborn? Oh, I could be stubborn, all right. “You’re more than just stubborn, Ben,” my mother would say, “you’re downright obstinate.” Usually she’d say this during an argument about my taste in music or literature or art. I was into comic books, but my mom and dad — can you believe this?— thought I should be reading the classics — Mark Twain, Dickens, Shakespeare. Shakespeare! Naturally I said no. That’s when I got the stubborn speech. I’m not sure why, but I began to take it as a compliment.
Maybe it was pride. Maybe I was simply being stubborn. More likely it was a bit of both. “Yes,” I said, “I am having second thoughts, but I’m still going to Port Sanford.”
But as I reached down to tie the strings of the duffel bag, I realized that there was a third reason — the most important reason of all at the moment — why I’d made up my mind to go. Like Gramps, I was lonely.
There are lots of things that can happen to a kid my age: sickness, handicaps, homelessness, hunger, but feeling lonely is the worst, take my word for it. And it has nothing to do with the number of people around you. I haven’t figured out why, exactly. All I know is, what goes on outside a person is one thing; what goes on inside is another. Sometimes one has very little to do with the other.
I checked the time on my wristwatch. “We better get going, Mom,” I said. “The bus leaves for Port Sanford in half an hour.”
It was early July 1962, and that morning, at the newsstand in the bus terminal downtown, President John Kennedy’s promise was splashed in giant headlines across the front pages of the morning papers: American astronauts would be the first humans to land on the moon.
Back in January of last year, I’d watched on television as Kennedy was sworn in as president of the United States. One line in his speech came back to me now: “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.” I figured nobody could do more for his country than climb inside a rocket and fly to the moon. Dad, when I told him this, looked at me as if I was out of my mind. And Mom said, “Ben, never, never take anything a politician says too seriously.”
I took my seat on the bus with only moments to spare, sat back and watched Toronto begin to disappear, saw the long open highway come into view ahead of us. And all the way, I felt as though I was the one making the first trip to the moon. Not the bright side, the side you see. I was going to the far side, the dark part, the part I hardly knew anything about.
I made my first big mistake during a conversation that took place over dinner the day I arrived at Port Sanford.
Grandfather Lamport, despite the fact that he was going on seventy-five years of age, was a very busy man. He was the oldest lawyer in the Port Sanford area, having opened his law practice in the town soon after receiving his call to the bar almost a half-century earlier. Many of his clients were about the same age. They were very loyal to him, and he was very loyal to them. “I’m like an old pair of shoes,” he said to me, “and they feel comfortable with me and trust my advice. Maybe some day, Ben, you’ll become a lawyer, set up your law office right here in Port Sanford. It’s a good life, you know. Come to think of it, how’d you like to take over my practice when you’re old enough?”
“I wouldn’t,” I said.
Gramps frowned. “Wouldn’t?”
“No,” I said. “I’d rather be an airline pilot and fly all over the world instead of being stuck — ” The look on my grandfather’s face told me I’d better not finish what I was going to say.
“An airline pilot, eh?” Gramps said, punctuating the remark with a snort. “Not much of a life, far as I can tell. Pilots have to retire when they reach their fifties. Lawyers, on the other hand, never have to retire because of their age. We can live a purposeful life right up to the day we’re too old to get out of bed, thank God. Look at me, for instance.” There was an unmistakable note of pride in his voice.
I studied my grandfather for a moment. He was tall but beginning to stoop a bit around the shoulders now. He still possessed a full head of hair, but it was snow-white. The wrinkles in his forehead, around his eyes and down the sides of his cheeks reminded me of furrows you see in fields that have just been plowed. I noticed, too, that he seldom smiled and whenever he did he seemed to be holding back, as though he was afraid to overdo it. His clothes, unlike my father’s, looked like pictures I’d seen in old department store catalogues. Every day he wore the same polka-dot bow tie, which he tied himself. His suits were made of some kind of tweedy material, the jackets baggy at the elbows, the trousers baggy at the knees. For as long as I could recall, Gramps always had a wintry look, even when the temperature outdoors sent birds scurrying into the trees seeking shade.
At this point I made my second big mistake. I said, looking Gramps straight in the eye, “I don’t think I’d care to be working when I’m as old as you are. What I mean is — ”
“I know what you mean,” Grandfather cut in, looking displeased. “No explanation’s required. Well, young fella, I’ll say this much for you: at least you say what’s on your mind. Not that saying what’s on your mind is always a virtue.” And with that, my grandfather hid himself behind that week’s edition of the Port Sanford Echo.
If two mistakes are bad, is a third mistake necessarily worse?
I’m afraid so.
I had brought along one of my most prized possessions, a portable combination radio and record player, and a dozen or so of my favourite records. Now, there’s only one thing more boring than packing before you go on a trip, and that’s unpacking after you get to wherever you’re going. So to relieve the boredom of extracting all the personal belongings I’d stuffed into my duffel bag (which, I imagined, was something like what a dentist experiences when he’s pulling teeth) I first plugged my radio/record player into an extension cord connected to the only wall socket I could find, one near the bed I was to occupy. The socket was already putting out more than its fair share of electricity, with two extension cords leading from it, one servicing two bedside reading lamps, the other servicing an old-fashioned fan that seemed to do nothing but rearrange the warm air in the room. Still, I figured one more appliance added to the load wouldn’t matter. After all, from what I’d seen of Grandfather’s house since my arrival before dinner, it looked like one of those fortresses built to last a thousand years, with electrical wiring to match.
I flipped through my records. Yes, I’d remembered to pick the ones I liked best: “Rock Around the Clock” featuring Bill Haley and the Comets; a couple of hits by Elvis Presley, a couple more by Little Richard; “Let’s Twist Again” by Chubby Checker.
Then I came to the newest item in my collection, songs by a guy who sounded at times as though he was singing through his nose and other times as if he was growling from somewhere down a deep mineshaft. In between, he was strumming his guitar while at the same time making foghorn noises with his harmonica.
But it was his words that I couldn’t seem to get enough of, and I had been playing this record over and over at home until I’d managed to memorize them. I could even belt out the lyrics at the top of my lungs, syllable by syllable, with the same twanging and rasping sounds as the singer himself made.
The guy’s name was Bob Dylan. He was only a little over twenty years old — not that much older than me, come to think of it — and I had the feeling that when he wrote his songs he was reading my mind. In his eyes, the world was beginning to look upside down. There was this craziness going on that people called “The Cold War” between the Russians and the Americans. Everywhere there was talk that Russia and the United States were locked in a fight to the death over whether Communism would be allowed to spread all over the world. Atomic bombs were being tested. There was a good chance that the human race was going to blow itself to bits and life on earth would cease to exist except for a few freaks who might survive. Meanwhile at school we were into a new and very different kind of “fire” drill. Instead of dashing for the nearest exit, the trick when the alarm sounded was to dive under your desk, cover your face and hope to God you were still alive and in one piece when it was all over. The problem was, our teachers weren’t talking about an ordinary fire; they were talking about an atomic blast, like the one that turned Hiroshima into four square miles of rubble near the end of the Second World War. Talk about nightmares! Every time we saw pictures of Hiroshima or had one of these drills, I didn’t have a good night’s sleep for a week after.
As far as Bob Dylan was concerned, the older generations — our fathers and mothers and grandfathers and grandmothers — were making a terrible mess of things. Spending fortunes on guns instead of feeding the poor. Worrying about death instead of looking for better ways to live. Hating instead of loving. Making rules and regulations instead of enjoying freedom.
As far as I was concerned, you didn’t have to look far to see how right Bob Dylan was. All you had to do was look at my own parents. Spending money — tons of it — on lawyers to get their divorce. Arguing for hours over whether this silver platter or that crystal vase belonged to him or to her. Hating instead of loving. And having the nerve to make rules and regulations about my life when, all the time, it seemed to me that they had no idea how to rule and regulate their own lives.
So I put on my Dylan record. Full volume. And I began to sing, also at full volume. The sound boomed and crackled out of my record player like thunder and lightning.
Soon the bed lamps began to flicker. So did the ceiling light fixture. The fan, droning on, slowed suddenly, then picked up, then slowed again. Plaster walls that had never before heard such noises might crack under the pressure, for all I knew. But who cared?
This was the music, these were the words and the thoughts of my new hero, Bob Dylan.
And then came the unexpected pounding on the door of my room. And before I could reply the door was flung open and Grandfather was standing there. For a moment he was speechless. Just stood there like some tall granite statue, filling the dark oak frame of the doorway. But it quickly turned out that the “statue” had a voice and lungs every bit as powerful as Bob Dylan’s.
“Turn that damn racket off!” Grandfather shouted.
I couldn’t believe that anybody would regard the singing of my hero as a “damn racket.” “But that’s Bob Dylan, Gramps,” I pleaded.
“I don’t give a damn if it’s God and Satan rolled into one. Turn it off this instant!”
My mother had warned me about using foul language in the old man’s presence, but I figured if he was allowed to use “damn” freely … well, what was good for the goose was good for the gander, as the old saying goes. “Dylan writes the best damn songs in the world,” I said, making no move to shut off the record player.
“‘Damn’ is not a word that’s permitted in this house, young man,” Grandfather said, still shouting.
I began to protest. “Then how come — ”
But my grandfather was not listening. “You kids listen to this kind of trash and your minds turn to trash.”
“Maybe it would do people like you a lot of good to listen once in a while.”
“Listen to what? Some cranky little rock-and-roller who thinks he’s got the answers to the world’s problems?”
Without another word, Grandfather moved toward the record player, intending to shut it off, but I stood rooted in front of the machine, blocking his way.
Seeing this, my grandfather, with surprising swiftness, changed direction and managed to get hold of the extension cord, which he yanked out of the wall socket with a single powerful sweep of his right arm. The cord flew out of the socket, bringing with it a shower of sparks. A split second later, Grandfather and I stood in total darkness. Through the open doorway of my room, I could see that every light in the house had gone out. In fact, everything else in the house that owed its life to electricity had suddenly stopped breathing — the refrigerator, the lamps, the television, the radio — everything except the telephone, which Grandfather used to summon an electrician.
It was almost midnight when Charley Henry, the electrician, wiped his hands on his overalls, pulled the pencil from behind his ear and did some quick arithmetic on a slip of paper.
“That’ll be two hundred and eighty-seven, seventy-two, Ira,” said Charley Henry, “including parts and labour.”
I watched my grandfather write the cheque. Each letter, each number, seemed to take him forever. It seemed to take forever, too, to screw the top back on his old-fashioned fountain pen afterward. I had the feeling that Grandfather had just parted with his last cent.
“Sorry about this, Ira,” Charley Henry said, taking the cheque, “I guess it’s an expensive lesson, eh?” The electrician was kneeling, placing his tools in a weather-beaten wooden toolbox. He looked up at my grandfather and chuckled. “Strikes me that an old timer like you woulda known better than to yank an electric cord out of a socket like that, Ira. Oh, well, nobody’s perfect.”
When he said “Nobody’s perfect,” Charley Henry gave me a wink and a wry grin. I shot a quick glance at my grandfather. The old man, as the look on his face made very clear, was not amused.
We went to bed that night, Gramps and I, without exchanging another word.
And that was how it passed … Day One in the house of
Ira Lamport up in Port Sanford.
Gramps lived alone in a large three-storey brick house in the centre of Port Sanford (my grandmother had died when I was a baby). His law office took up the large front room on the ground floor of the house, the one that served as the parlour where he and my grandmother used to entertain company when they were younger. Every morning Miss Trimble, Gramps’ secretary, would arrive and the two of them would close the heavy sliding oak doors that separated the office from the other rooms. For hours afterward all I could hear was my grandfather’s muffled voice as he gave dictation, or Miss Trimble rattling away at the antiquated typewriter on her desk, which was across the room from his. There were stacks of files and loose papers all over the place, and several tall bookcases with thick volumes that contained all the laws in the world, or so I imagined.
Unlike Grandfather’s office, which was cluttered from floor to ceiling and wall to wall, the other rooms in the old house were barren. There were no nooks and crannies, no windowless holes-in-the-wall where a child’s imagination could conjure up secrets and mysteries. Apart from a handful of faded family photographs on the fireplace mantel in the dining room, and the odd wishy-washy painting of a country landscape here and there, the house was as grim as a late November day. The only truly bright and colourful feature was a pastel portrait of my grandmother that hung in Grandfather’s bedroom, set so as to catch the sunlight that streamed in through a bay window. I had the feeling that when she died, much of that house died with her.
As far as I could tell, there were no kids my age, or even close to my age, in that neighbourhood. I’d brought my bicycle with me, and in my explorations around the town it seemed to me that most of the local citizens my parents’ age lived on the outskirts or in the surrounding countryside. The folks in the vicinity of Gramps’ house for the most part were well on in years and regarded me as a nuisance whenever I whizzed up and down the street on my bike, releasing my stored-up energy.
I was beginning to think that this summer in Port Sanford would never end. I resented my mother for being away, somewhere off in Europe. She might as well have been on another planet, maybe Mars or the moon, as far as I was concerned. As for my father, it was plain to me that his favourite spot on earth was an operating room, and that his medical instruments were closer to him than I was.
And as for my grandfather, well, we simply didn’t seem to have a whole lot to say to one another.
One day, toward the end of the first week, Gramps and I were having lunch, thick roast beef sandwiches that his housekeeper Mrs. Bjorklund had made (I’ll say one thing about living with grandfather: his housekeeper was a far better cook than my mother’s). We were interrupted by Miss Trimble, who looked anxious. “Mr. Lamport,” she said in that timid voice of hers, “I hate to spoil your lunch but Mrs. O’Hearn is on the phone. It’s the same as always, I’m afraid — ”
“And I suppose the sky’s falling as usual?” Gramps said, putting down his sandwich.
Miss Trimble lowered her voice to a whisper. “She wants to change her will.”
Gramps exploded. “Good heavens, not again! Doesn’t that woman have anything better to do?”
Now Miss Trimble’s voice became a squeak. “She says she’s dying.”
My grandfather groaned. I could tell that he was having difficulty remaining patient. “She says the same thing every time she calls.”
“I think it’s different this time,” said the secretary. “The doctor’s at her house, and I understand some of her relatives have gathered at her bedside.”
“Very well,” Grandfather said, finishing his iced tea in a single gulp. He turned to me. “Ben, I know it’s been boring for you, being ‘stuck’ as you put it, here in this house. I want you to come with me to Mrs. O’Hearn’s place. It’s about thirty miles out of town, a big estate, maybe fifty, sixty acres or thereabouts. Farm animals, prize livestock, barns and stables so immaculate you can eat off the floors. It’ll be a learning experience for you, young man. Might even change your mind about spending the better part of your life up in the air, show you the wisdom of staying down on the ground where the good Lord intended mankind to be.”
I have to admit I went along not because I gave a hoot about estates and farm animals and eating off barn floors, but because I wanted a change of scenery, any change.
Climbing into the front passenger seat of my grandfather’s ten-year-old Buick, I asked, “This Mrs. O’Hearn, does she have any kids out there on her estate … I mean, any kids my age?”
Gramps looked at me as if I’d just said something stupid. “Good God, no,” he replied, “the woman’s ninety years old. Never had any children, as a matter of fact. She’s what you call a dowager.”
I looked puzzled. “What’s a dowager?”
Gramps looked straight ahead as he stepped on the gas. All he said was, “You’ll soon find out.”
The farm known as “O’Hearn Estate ” was a good half-hour drive from Port Sanford. We drove in silence, Gramps keeping a sharp lookout along the stretch of two-lane high- way, muttering constantly about the damn gravel trucks and eighteen-wheel transports that hogged the road and rumbled past us at speeds much above the limits posted on the road signs. The countryside was an uninterrupted series of rolling silvery-green hills, guarded here and there by regiments of trees recently planted that stood in perfect rows like soldiers. On either side of the highway, set well back, stood splendid country houses, their brick or stone walls old but dignified, their wooden porches and windowsills and doorways glistening as though painted that very day. I figured the people who lived in these houses weren’t the kind of farmers you saw in movies, bending over to pick potatoes or cotton from dawn to dusk, heading into town in beat-up jalopies to buy supplies at the general store with empty pockets and empty promises to pay once they’d managed to sell their crops. No, the folks inhabiting these farm properties had to be prosperous, the sort of folks who never worried about where their next meal was coming from, and who displayed their family names on fancy signs fixed to their gateposts.
“The people who live out here, are they your clients?” I asked Grandfather at last.
“Most of ’em,” Gramps said. “We’ve grown up together and grown old together.”
I thought about my grandfather and his clients for a moment, then said, “There’s something I don’t understand about why you’re going to visit this Mrs. O’Hearn — ”
“What don’t you understand?”
“Well, if the old lady’s dying, like Miss Trimble said, how come she wants to see her lawyer? You’d think she’d really want to see her doctor.”
“Answer’s simple,” Grandfather said, glancing at me, then returning his eyes to the road ahead. “Doctor can’t do beans for her now. She’s ninety years of age, like an old battery that can’t take a charge. Me? I can give ’er something a doctor can’t — peace of mind.”
“Is that what a will is all about, peace of mind?” I asked.
“Yes, you might put it that way. A will’s a very important document that a person signs that says what’s to happen to that person’s worldly possessions. After all, Ben, most people work hard to accumulate things … property, furniture, equipment, a business, money. A person has the right to say who should manage these things when he or she passes on, who should be the beneficiaries, the people entitled to the benefits of whatever’s left behind. Sometimes, like the case of Mrs. O’Hearn, what’s left behind is extremely valuable, and she wants to make sure things are done exactly the way she wants them to be done, after she’s gone.”
I hesitated to ask more questions, partly because Gramps was becoming increasingly irritated about the traffic on the highway, but more, I guess, because up to this point he and I hadn’t made a habit of engaging in lengthy conversations, especially about his professional activities. Still my curiosity about Mrs. O’Hearn would not rest. “Gramps,” I said, watching the expression on his face for any sign that I was disturbing his concentration, “there’s something else I don’t understand. Back at the house, when Miss Trimble told you there was a call from Mrs. O’Hearn, why did you look so … so fed up?”
For the first time since we’d gotten into the Buick, a slight smile crept across Gramps’ face. “You don’t miss a trick, do you, young fella? All right, then, I’ll tell you why. Mrs. O’Hearn, like I said before, is a dowager. A dowager is a widow whose husband has died and left her so rich she couldn’t get around to spending all that money if she lived to be a hundred and eighty!”
“Well, what’s so bad about that?”
“Nothing’s bad about being rich, sometimes. But in Mrs. O’Hearn’s case, she and her husband never had any children. So she’s devoted a lot of her time to some local charities. Plus she’s got these three close relatives, two nephews and a niece. Three good-for-nothings, if you ask me. All they do, the nephews and niece, is hang around like buzzards … waiting for the old lady to die, waiting to get their greedy mitts on as much of her fortune as they can. Dollars to donuts the three of ’em will be glued to her bedside when we get there, hovering over her, pretending their own lives are coming to an end, weeping false tears into their handkerchiefs.”
“You really don’t think much of them, do you, Gramps?”
This brought the first hearty laugh from my grandfather that I’d heard since the day I arrived at Port Sanford. “That’s the understatement of the century,” Gramps said. “Truth is, I loathe the sight of that trio of sloths. Never done a decent day’s work in their miserable little lives, not a single one of ’em.”
“So that’s the reason you’re fed up?” I asked.
“Not really, Ben. After all, they’re her relatives, not mine, thank God. I’m just fed up because every time I think we’re done with her will, she ups and changes her mind about something or other, and we almost have to start from scratch. No sooner does the old lady sign one will than she’s on the phone telling me she wants to change this or change that. One day she decides to leave her string of cultured pearls to Priscilla Cranbrooke … that’s her niece … next day she’s decided instead that she wants the pearls sold and the money given to the local branch of the Sally Ann — ”
“The Sally Ann? — ”
“Salvation Army to you. It’s enough to drive any lawyer crazy. Crazy while she’s alive. Maybe crazier after she’s died.”
“Why after she’s died?” I wanted to know. “Once she’s dead she can’t make any more changes, can she?”
This brought a second laugh from Gramps. “Don’t be too sure, Ben,” he said. “Rebecca O’Hearn’s the kind of person who could still be telling me what to do, giving me orders in that regal manner of hers, long after she’s dead.” Then Grandfather added with a chuckle, “Long after I’m dead too, for that matter.”
There were so many things I didn’t understand. One question seemed to lead to another and another. “I don’t get it, Gramps. Once Mrs. O’Hearn has passed away, isn’t that the end as far as you’re concerned?”
“Good grief, no!” Gramps said. “Every will has to have at least one person who’s appointed to manage the deceased’s affairs. That person’s called an executor and trustee. In the case of Mrs. O’Hearn’s estate, she’s appointed me her sole executor and trustee.”
“You mean, you’re responsible alone to see to it that all the things she’s said in her will — ”
“All her instructions, yes — ”
“ — all those things get done?”
“Correct. That’s my job, to carry out her instructions to the letter exactly as she directed. No ifs, ands or buts.”
“Is that why you’re called ‘trustee,’ because people trust you?”
“I like to think so, Ben. Besides, a lawyer in a town like Port Sanford can make a pretty comfortable living because folks in these parts trust his knowledge, his integrity, his experience.”
I thought for a moment about this, then said, “Same as airline pilots. Passengers trust them too, for the same reasons, I guess.”
Gramps chose to ignore this comparison. He pointed to a long stretch of freshly painted white fences lining one side of the roadway now. “O’Hearn Estate,” he announced. “We’re here. Brace yourself, young fella. You ever meet a dying person before?”
“No.”
“Well, here’s your first opportunity,” Gramps said, swinging the Buick hard right between the fieldstone gates with the polished brass signs that read “O’Hearn.” “Death and dying are as much part of life as eating and sleeping and getting up and going to work, Ben. You might as well find that out now as later. Let’s call it part of your education.”
I wasn’t sure I agreed with Grandfather. The prospect of catching even a quick glimpse of this old lady, this Rebecca O’Hearn, didn’t appeal to me one bit. I’d seen people dying in movies and on television. That was educational enough for me.
As Gramps pulled the car into the circular part of the driveway in front of the main house, we noticed that there were four or five cars parked ahead of us. “Looks like they’re here already, the buzzards,” Gramps said, looking as though he’d just tasted something sour. “And that black two-door, that’s undoubtedly Father Hussey, the old lady’s priest. Well, maybe she’s not fooling this time. Maybe she’s really on her way. Come along, Ben. I guess there’s not a moment to waste, after all.”
I hung back in the passenger seat as Gramps got out of the car. “Come along, young fella,” Gramps called, coming around the front of the car and over to my side.
“Do I have to?”
My grandfather didn’t bother to reply. He simply opened the front door on my side of the Buick and stood there, in the driveway, with a stern expression on his face that told me I had no choice.
We had barely mounted the broad flagstone front steps of the O’Hearn house (mansion was more like it) when the door opened and a large woman called out, “Thank heaven you’re here at last, Mr. Lamport. She’s been driving us all right up the wall today.”
“She’s up to her old tricks again, eh?” my grandfather said as we were let into the large high-ceilinged foyer. He turned to me. “Ben, I want you to meet Mrs. Tidy, Hilda Tidy. Hilda here’s in charge of the house and her husband Bill’s in charge of the other buildings on the property. Folks around here refer to them, to him and her that is, as Neat ’n Tidy. Look around, Ben, you’ll understand why.”
Hilda Tidy beamed. “Oh, go on with you, you old flatterer,” she said to my grandfather. To me she said, “And you must be Mr. Lamport’s grandson, the one who’s spending the summer here in Port Sanford. Now don’t bother asking how I know that. In these parts everybody knows everything that’s going on. I just baked some shortbread cookies. Mrs. O’Hearn’s favourite, don’t you know. Would you like some?”