Mama sighed. “But your father always imagined he was protecting us all from those crazy ravings he read about in those awful hate rags he subscribed to. Lord knows how much money he gave those people.”
Miss Mamie shook her head. “All those Breedlove boys were paranoid about anybody but conservative WASPs, just like their daddy before them.”
Which was a mystery, because the Breedlove men had opened the town and the mill to the blacks who were run out of Forsyth County so many decades ago. Despite their prejudices, they hadn’t oppressed anyone. Quite the contrary. They’d given the refugees jobs. But like most Southerners of their generations, our forefathers were definitely men of stark contradictions.
She pulled out one of Daddy’s nicest dark suits and flicked off some lint as she went on, holding it up to the light at the window. “What do you think about this one, for when he’s called home?”
(Translate: dead.)
My stomach clenched, but I didn’t overreact. “He always looked really nice in that one,” I managed to get out in an even tone. “With his white pinpoint oxford shirt and that narrow red damask tie.”
Help. I was using the past tense, already.
Mama closed her eyes as she sniffed the Old Spice embedded in the suit’s collar. “It’s selfish of me to want to keep your father alive. When God finally calls him home to heaven, he’ll be healed of that hate and find peace at last.”
We both believed that the cross was potent enough to atone for even bigots. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.
Sadly, America didn’t have a monopoly on hate. Look at the Balkans, the Middle East, and Africa.
Nobody was immune.
Look at Congress. I mean, really.
Tommy surveyed the General’s arsenal, nothing but the finest. “What do you want us to do with all the firepower?” he asked the Mame.
She opened the drawer of her bedside table, then shut it briskly. “Just leave me a few boxes of ammo and magazines for my Glock.”
Her Glock?
Whoa. Should we leave a ninety-year-old woman the means to blow somebody away? Maybe us?
Daddy’s paranoia had obviously been contagious, so I knew she’d balk, bigtime, if we tried to take her gun.
Standing behind Miss Mamie, Tommy shot me a knowing glance and shook his head in denial.
He was right. We’d deal with the bedside-table drawer another day, after the purging was done.
Miss Mamie looked to me and asked, as if she were asking if I wanted one of her blouses or slips, “Anything there you’d like, Lin? These days, it’s not a bad idea for a girl to have a gun or two.”
I was too appalled by her casual attitude to respond.
She turned to Tommy. “Y’all help yourselves, then sell the rest. The sales slips are in there somewhere.”
For everything but the machine gun!
Tommy nodded in agreement. “Thanks, Mama.” An avid hunter, he laid aside two fine rifles and two shotguns with laser sights, then added a long-barreled Colt .45 for old time’s sake. “I’ll take care of the rest and make sure they don’t get into the wrong hands.”
He turned to me with a Glock across his palm. “Might not be a bad idea for you to have one of these for self-defense.”
For an instant, I actually considered taking it, but common sense quickly intervened. “Nah. With my luck, I’d end up shooting myself or somebody else by accident.” Which would really ruin my chances with Connor’s congregation. I finished with, “I’m good with the golf club and baseball bat in my closet.”
“Disarmed or not, God help anybody who tries to break in on you,” Tommy said with a grin.
“Amen!” I seconded. Careful to avoid the firearms, I went back into the closet for another load of Daddy’s clothes.
Twenty-five
Three hours later, the deed was done, and Miss Mamie had retreated to the kitchen to soothe her soul with baking.
The guns, Tommy would take care of. We’d itemized and photographed Daddy’s castoffs, then loaded my minivan to the brim. I shut the back hatch. “The thrift shop’s not open till tomorrow afternoon. I’ll take these then. I want the Mame to have a little time to consider, in case she wants to take anything back.”
Tommy rolled his eyes and grasped my upper arms. “Whatever you do, please do not offer her that option. It was hard enough on her, getting through this. Now it’s done. Let her move on.” He let me go.
He had a point. When he was sober, Tommy was always a lot better at thinking about how things affected others than I was.
“Okay, then,” I conceded. “What next?”
“I seem to remember an ex–real estate agent telling me it’s always best to do the hardest things first,” he said, scowling at the right side of the house. “We’ve done the closets in Daddy and Mama’s room. I’ve done mine. That leaves one more dragon to slay.”
Uh-oh. I knew he wasn’t talking about the attic. “The den of iniquity?”
Tommy nodded.
“I guess you’re right,” I begrudged. “Time to beard the dragon.” The trouble was, my inner child felt wretched about invading our father’s privacy, even though he wouldn’t know.
But I wasn’t a child anymore, and we needed to do this. I finally mustered up the courage to ask my brother, “Did you get the permanent incompetency statement from Daddy’s gerontologist and file the guardianship agreement?” Mama had insisted that both Tommy and I serve as guardians. She didn’t have it in her anymore to do it herself.
Tommy’s expression flattened as he nodded yes. “The doctor asked me what took us so long.” The pros at the Senior Mental Health Center down in Snellville had advised it months ago, when we first had Daddy committed. But Miss Mamie staunchly refused to sign Daddy over for life, saying she felt like Judas already for putting him away in the first place. To her, publicly filing those documents was the ultimate betrayal, equivalent to putting “our troubles” on the front of the Gainesville Times.
She didn’t relent till Tommy explained that we needed to have access to all Daddy’s records so we could straighten them out. Then he’d added that the IRS could put a lien on the house if Daddy hadn’t paid his taxes. (Which was absolutely true.)
“What did Sumter say when you brought him the papers to put with the will?” I asked as we climbed the stairs to the kitchen. Daddy’s lawyer was three years older than the General, but only half as crazy.
“He said he’d take care of things for no fee,” Tommy said, “but I have no idea if he’s still hittin’ on all cylinders. Just to be safe, I recorded the certificate of incompetency, the legal guardianship, and the medical power of attorney at the courthouse, then got all three of us official copies.”
A wise move. Sumter had been retired for ten years, and this was no time to have anything fall between the cracks.
Tommy went on. “I took the official copies to show the bank when I checked out the deposit box.”
When he’d what?
I nudged him, annoyed that he’d done all that on his own without telling me. “Thanks for letting me know. I wanted to go, too.” Not that I didn’t trust him. I just didn’t want to be left out.
“Most of what I found in the box was pretty routine,” Tommy said. “No deeds or treasure maps. Just Granddaddy’s gold watch, a list of names I hadn’t ever heard of, ten gold Krugerrands, and a stack of hundred-dollar bills from before we went off the gold standard.”
“How much?” I asked, realizing the minute the question was out of my mouth that it sounded sordid and greedy.
“Ten grand in bills,” Tommy said. “More than enough for a respectable funeral.”
My heart contracted, but I sloughed off the grim reminder with, “Every little bit helps.”
“I have no idea what the Krugerrands are worth,” he went on, “and I don’t plan to find out till we’ve searched for the rest of them. Too depressing to know, if we can’t find any.”
Amen to that. Pleeeeease, Lord, let us fin
d enough to fix up the house and pay Daddy’s bills.
The one-hundred-and-thirty-four-year-old house needed a new slate roof, which was going to cost a fortune. The current “new” one was in its eighties and beginning to leak.
“I did find something interesting, though, in a small box.” Tommy paused for dramatic effect, then revealed, “Fourteen deposit box keys from various local banks all over north Georgia.”
Perfect. Not.
Ah-ah! No negatives. Just gratitude.
Well, at least we knew where to start looking for Daddy’s missing gold. “Maybe we’ll find some deeds or leases in those,” I said. “If not, we could check the property records in those counties while we’re there,” I told him.
Fourteen, which left another hundred and fifty-five counties in the state, only some of which had computerized their records.
We looked at each other, flat-mouthed, then said in unison, “Road trip.”
“But first,” Tommy said, “the den of iniquity.”
“Not today,” I qualified. “Tomorrow.”
Tommy frowned, clearly not as sore and tired as I was.
“To quote Lao Tsu,” I said, “‘every journey begins with a single step.’”
“Just can’t resist showin’ off, can you,” my brother said affably.
Instead of bristling in self-justification, I laughed. “Apparently not.”
It cleared the air immediately.
Tricia was always telling me to lighten up. Actually doing it was the problem, but as she’d predicted, it always worked.
The next morning after breakfast, we went to the pantry and rustled up a big roll of giant contractor’s four-mil-thick disposal bags and some allergy masks, then ended up at the door to the General’s study, bags open and in hand. Even through the masks, the smell of decaying paper, Old Spice, and cigar smoke stopped us both at the threshold.
Surveying the chaos of decades, I couldn’t help asking, “Why in the world did he keep all this junk?”
Tommy shrugged. “Because he could. This was his man cave. Not even the Mame was allowed to touch anything.”
Past tense. Now Tommy was using it. But he’d nailed our father.
“Maybe we ought to get a Dumpster,” I suggested, hoping for a delay.
How do you eat Stone Mountain with a teaspoon? my Granny Beth whispered from my childhood. One bite at a time, sweet girl. One bite at a time.
“I think a commercial shredder would work better,” Tommy said. “They’ll come to the house with a giant one that processes whole bagsful, then spits out tiny pieces nobody could read into the back of their truck. Then they recycle it.” He frowned at a heaping stack of The Thunderbolt. “I’d hate for anybody else to see Daddy’s hate rags.”
“I’m glad to hear you say that.” I’d never been sure where Tommy stood on matters of race. He’d always avoided the subject. After he’d started drinking, our relationship had been so sketchy, I’d never dared to ask.
Seeing my expression, Tommy granted me a wry smile. “I learned a long time ago that any kind of hate turns inward and ruins a person. Look what it did to the General and Uncle Bedford. They were so great in so many ways, but that black cloud of prejudice was always hanging over them, feeding their fears.”
I nodded, then changed the subject. “We’ll have to go through every single newspaper, scribble, and book,” I thought aloud. “There might be something about the Krugerrands in there. Or an offshore account somewhere.”
“First things first,” Tommy said, picking his way to the space beneath Daddy’s enormous desk. He shoved the rolling office chair aside, knelt down, then disappeared behind the desk.
The safe. I’d forgotten.
I dodged my way to stand behind him as he rolled up the oriental carpet. “Do you know the combination?” I had once, but couldn’t remember it to save my life.
“Yep.” Tommy pressed a floorboard that dropped a section several boards wide, then slid it over to reveal the door and combination lock to the safe imbedded in the structure of the house. “He wrote it on the top in marker.”
Sure enough, there were the numbers in Daddy’s distinct handwriting.
Some security.
Tommy opened the safe, but to our disappointment, it contained only a few old loan satisfactions, articles of incorporation for his long-defunct business, and personal identification papers, including his birth certificate signed by his father as delivering physician.
I scanned the packed office. “Maybe we’ll find something important buried in the rest of this junk.”
Tommy nodded, but his face said, We should be so lucky.
After restoring the boards to their place, then putting back the rug, he picked up a thick heap of hate rags and plunked them beside a chair stacked with junk mail. Shoving the mail to the floor, he sat. “When we find out where Daddy has property, we can go over all the tracts with a good metal detector. They make them with screens that show what they find, now. Saves a lot of digging.”
“Mama said the tube for the Krugerrands was undetectable,” I reminded him.
Tommy scowled at me. “Let’s just pray it’s not.”
“Assuming the General didn’t use a made-up company to buy the land.” I wouldn’t put it past our father. Even certified insane, he was still shrewd.
My brother shot me a brief glare. “Didn’t I make it clear how much I appreciate positive input?”
“Sorry.” There I went again, projecting the worst without engaging my brain.
I knew better, but under the circumstances, I’d reverted to my old ways.
Got to stop that!
I surveyed the office. “While we were cleaning upstairs, Mama and I checked for false panels and looked for money in all the books, so those rooms are clear.”
At least I thought so. Daddy could be so blasted sly.
Tommy nodded. “After this, that just leaves us the basement, the garages, and the attic. I’ll do the basement and garages if you’ll do the attic.”
Just the thought of how hot it would be up there almost made me fall out. “Let’s just do this first, okay? I’ll start with the desk.” I waded through the piles, but didn’t sit in Daddy’s oak office chair, because it automatically tipped back to feet-on-the-desk position. Standing, I picked up a hefty pile of letters and advertisements from the desk.
Don’t think about the attic and the basement, I scolded myself. Focus on this. Break it down into manageable bites, and eventually we’ll end up somewhere, even if it isn’t where we hope.
I worked my way to the door. At last, the Mame’s fourteen-foot-long oaken Victorian monstrosity of a dining table would be put to good use. “I’m taking these into the dining room so I can start to organize things in piles,” I told Tommy, who was riffling through copies of The Thunderbolt for money before tossing them into his trash bag.
An hour later, the huge dining table was covered in stacks of investment statements, bank records, bills and files from our father’s construction business, old tax returns and receipts, court documents from the time he’d tried to declare everyone on welfare in the state of Georgia as a dependent, more court documents from the time he’d successfully challenged OSHA’s right to enter his construction company without probable cause.
More records about insurance, bookkeeping, and countless other business and personal matters, plus one tall goodness-only-knows stack of things I was afraid to throw away, but had no idea what to do with.
Miss Mamie eventually came around and peeked in, but retreated in silence to the kitchen to cook, probably her personal penance for letting us dispose of Daddy’s sacred stuff, objectionable though it may be.
In the four days it took Tommy and me to finish going through everything, drawer by drawer, page by page, panel by panel, never once did our mother mention what we were doing. She did, though, turn up fairly often with a spoonful of something for us “just to taste.” At nine hundred calories a spoonful, I forced myself to decline, but Tommy al
ways obliged.
Not that it was easy to resist. The air smelled like cakes, pies, and cookies the whole time.
After day two of aroma torture, I finally came up with a plan. “There are so many shut-ins from church,” I reminded my mother after a breakfast of fried eggs and moist devil’s food cupcakes with seven-minute icing, which she knew I couldn’t resist. “Why don’t you take these goodies to them?”
Miss Mamie brightened. “Excellent suggestion.” She carried our plates to the sink with a fresh bounce in her step, then stopped and turned to qualify. “Not the ones who have the sugar.” Southern for diabetes. “I’ll do them some almond-meal cookies with Splenda and eggs and drawn butter. And baking powder, of course.” A woman with a mission, she headed for the pantry humming “I’ll Fly Away.”
We went back to work. When Tommy and I finally finished with the den of iniquity two days after that, we’d found a lot, but not much of what we were looking for. Two deeds for vacant land were hiding under a false drawer bottom, but we didn’t find any more.
What we’d really gotten was a picture of how gullible our father had been with any hyperconservative scammer who’d approached him for “investments” to make him safe from “the coming race war” or depression. He’d trusted these strangers with his hard-earned money, yet never trusted any of us.
How much of that was his illness, and how much was his stubborn, paranoid nature, we’d never know.
I felt as if we’d uncovered him, leaving him stark naked and exposed, and it didn’t feel good.
He’d tried so hard to safeguard his treasure that we couldn’t even find it.
No secret bank account records, on or offshore, materialized. All we found was a stack of receipts from coin dealers that valued Daddy’s Krugerrands at over two hundred thousand when he’d first bought them, based on thirty-two dollars an ounce. Lord only knew what they would bring at current prices, but I didn’t compute that for the same reason as Tommy.
The remainder of the den’s nontoxic contents comprised seventeen Bibles of various translations—prompting Tommy to say that you have to read them and follow their teachings for them to count—two thousand dollars in crisp gold-standard hundred-dollar bills that had been stashed individually in various right-wing extremist books that we’d shredded with a satisfying growl from the giant commercial shredder; three glass jugs of high-quality (according to Tommy’s nose) moonshine, which I poured into the toilet, wondering what effect it would have on the septic tank; four illegal boxes of hermetically sealed Cuban cigars; and five loaded handguns stashed away in hollowed-out pages of Daddy’s radical Second Amendment books. But the kickers were two more assault rifles behind a spring-loaded door in the wainscoting that I just happened to bump up against.
Queen Bee Goes Home Again Page 13
