Close to the Broken Hearted

by Michael Hiebert

  All three buildings had a sign saying OFFICE SPACE FOR LEASE out front. Ever since those structures went up over six years ago, they’d all had those signs in front of them. I doubted they’d ever find enough business folks in Alvin to lease three entire three-story buildings.

  “Oh, and guess what else,” I said to Dewey.

  Dewey started to speak but I cut him off. “Again, I wasn’t really askin’ you to guess. Anyway, my mom told me she’s gonna take me and Carry to Georgia to meet my new grandma and granddaddy that my aunt Addison told us ’bout.”

  I could see cogs spinning in Dewey’s brain; he was thinking about something. “What?” I asked.

  He brought his bike to a complete stop.

  I stopped too, but had to walk it back to get alongside him. “What?” I asked again.

  “It’s just . . . I thought your ma was worried that Addison might not really be your aunt?”

  “Oh, she doesn’t think that no more. We got a background check on my pa and it showed he has a sister.”

  “Yeah, but you said she was still thinkin’ this might not be the sister but someone else pretendin’ to be her.”

  “That was ’fore she talked to her on the phone. Now she believes her.”

  “But . . . what if she isn’t your aunt. And what if these other folks ain’t really your grandparents? What if they ain’t related at all?”

  “Now why would anyone go and pretend they’re my relations?”

  “I dunno. What if they’re after some sorta inheritance?”

  I laughed. “Dewey, we ain’t got nothin’ to inherit.”

  “You got some things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Access to information pertainin’ to all the inventions I told you ’bout.”

  Laughing, I just shook my head. “You’re ’bout as smart as a can of dew worms on a spring mornin’ sometimes, you know that?”

  Dewey got all indignant. “I’m only lookin’ out for your best interests.”

  “Don’t worry, my interests are all fine.” I started pedaling again.

  We were halfway up Main Street, just a little ways past the police department where my mother worked, when Dewey came up beside me again. “You know what? I got an idea.”

  “Yeah? What’s that?”

  “Why don’t you and me go to the records office and check what kind of information they have about your grandparents? I bet they at least have their names. Maybe even their pictures.”

  I thought this over. It wasn’t a bad idea. Not because I thought the people my mother wanted to take me to see weren’t my grandparents, but because I would love to know as much about my family history as possible. It was the one thing I never really had in my life. Dewey now had me wondering exactly what kind of information they did keep at that records office about family stuff.

  “Okay,” I said. “That sounds like as good a way as any of spendin’ the afternoon.”

  The same clerk was sitting behind the desk when we arrived at the records office. Neither her nor the desk looked so small today, as the piles of books and papers that had covered the top were gone. She had her hair the same and wore the same big glasses. Today she had on a blue shirt with frills around the collar. She recognized me right away. “You’re that policewoman’s son. Where’s your momma?”

  “At home.” Once again I was overwhelmed by the odor of musty books. They actually tasted like old dust on your tongue, although the room was clean enough. It looked like it had just been washed up. The windows sparkled with the afternoon sun pouring in.

  The woman looked a bit confused. “Oh, is there somethin’ I can help you with, then?”

  “I, um, want to find out ’bout my family. You know, my past family and all.”

  A wide smile spread across her face. “You mean your genealogy. Isn’t that great! Is this something you’re doin’ for school?”

  “No, ma’am,” Dewey said. “School’s out for the year. It’s the summer.”

  Concern fell over her face. “Oh, that’s right. So, this is just somethin’ you’re doin’ on your own, then?”

  I nodded. “Yep. Is that okay?”

  “Absolutely. Although the only information you can get here is public information. Anything private, of course, isn’t available from any of our records offices.”

  I didn’t rightly know what she was talking about, but I just nodded anyway. “That’s fine. I just wanna know about my . . . I can’t think of the word.”

  “Ancestors?” she asked.

  “That’s right,” I said, smiling. “About my ancestors. Find out who they were!”

  “Or are,” Dewey corrected. “That is, for the ones that are still livin’.”

  “Okay, let’s see what we can pull out for you.” She stood from the desk and it turned out she was wearing a black skirt as she came around. Once again she saw my and Dewey’s swords.

  “So are you both Peter Pan today? Or are you a Lost Boy?” she asked, turning her attention to Dewey.

  Dewey looked at me. “What’s she talkin’ ’bout?”

  I shook my head. “Forget it,” I mouthed.

  She led us to a different section of the room than she’d taken me and my mother to yesterday. “This is our genealogy section,” she said. “Now, there’s not a lot of information here. And it’s pretty much confined to Alvin and the immediate outlying areas. We really don’t go much farther out than Satsuma just because we don’t have the room to store all the information. So, anybody in your family history who was born anywhere else might not show up. What’s your last name?”

  “Teal,” I said. “T-E-A-L”

  She wrote that down on a piece of paper.

  “And what’s your momma’s maiden name?”

  “You mean her name ’fore she married my pa?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  I had to think hard to remember. Finally, it came to me when I thought of Uncle Henry. His name was actually Henry Fowler, which was the name of my mother’s dad. “Fowler.”

  “Okay. So far, so good. And your name is?”

  “Abe,” I said.

  “And your ma’s name?”

  “Leah. L. E. A. H.”

  “And your pa’s name?”

  “Billy.” I stumbled a bit. “He . . . died when I was two.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said. Then with her pen over her paper, she thought for a second. “I’ll use William. He’s probably in the archives as William. If nothin’ comes up, we’ll search for Bill or Billy. Okay, do you know your grandpa’s name?”

  Her questions kept going like this until I couldn’t answer them anymore, which didn’t take long. I knew my mom’s dad was called Joe, but I couldn’t remember the name of her ma. And I didn’t know the name of my other grandparents on my pa’s side of the family. Heck, I hadn’t even met them yet. I told her about Uncle Henry, who was actually my mother’s uncle, and Aunt Addison, but she didn’t seem too concerned with uncles and aunts.

  “Okay, that probably gives me enough to go on,” she said. Pulling a large book from one of the shelves, she started turning pages. I watched from the side. Dewey tried to edge his way in and watch too, but I figured since we were looking up my family stuff, I should be the one who got to see what was going on. She kept flipping pages until she came to the F section and then found Fowler. Running her finger down the page, she came to the list of Joes. There were a lot of Joe Fowlers listed in that book.

  “Do you know if your momma’s pa was born in Alvin?” she asked me.

  I shrugged. “I dunno.”

  She sighed. “Let’s try Teal. We’ll probably have better luck there. You were born here, right?”

  “I was born in Satsuma.”

  “Okay, close enough. You should be in here.” She pushed the volume she had out back onto the shelf and pulled out another one, this time opening it to the T section. “Oh, this is good,” she said. “Teal is a much less common name than Fowler. Let’s see. Oh, this is probably you right
here, three from the top. There’s only one Abraham on the list.” Beside my name (if it really was me) were some reference numbers.

  “What do those mean?” I asked.

  “They tell us what book to go to next to get the real information from. These books are just sort of gigantic indexes.”

  “Wow,” Dewey said.

  She turned to the wall of shelves behind her and started studying the spines of those books. “Nope, not on this one.” Then she walked around to the other side. Me and Dewey just stayed where we were beside the small table where the index book still lay opened to the T section.

  “Found it!” she called out through the wall of books. She came around carrying a large binder with a blue cover. “Okay, according to this,” she said, once more referring to the index, “your information is on page 125-A3.”

  She plopped the binder open on the table and began tossing pages, slowing as she got close to the right one. She ended up going a couple too far and had to turn back two. “Here we are: Abraham Teal. Let’s see if this is you. Is your birthday March twenty-sixth, 1976?”

  Suddenly, I got excited. “Yes! That is me! What else does it say?”

  “Your momma’s name is Leah Marie Fowler. Your pa’s name is William Robert Teal. Your grandma on your ma’s side is Josephine Adeline Fowler.” She looked at me. “There, see? Now you know.”

  “I guess my sister was named after her. My sister is called Caroline Josephine.”

  “You’re probably right! Your grandpa on your ma’s side as you know is Joseph Fowler, no middle name. Your grandma on your pa’s side is Sara Lynn Teal, and your grandpa on your pa’s side is Jeremiah Teal, no middle name.”

  Wow, did I ever feel important. I knew information about my family that my mother didn’t even know yet. For once, it was me knowing stuff instead of everyone else.

  “Does it say anythin’ else? Does it talk ’bout what they did or anythin’?” Dewey asked.

  “No, I’m afraid there isn’t a lot of genealogy information kept.”

  “Can I write to Mobile for more, like my mom did?”

  She frowned. “They don’t keep much either. You’ll probably get even less than we have. In fact, we’ve got more than most towns simply on account of Alvin bein’ so small.”

  I frowned. This wasn’t what I wanted to hear.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “That’s okay.” I examined my shoes.

  Then she snapped her fingers. I looked up and she was beaming. “You know what you need?” And before I could answer she told me. “You need a historian. And I think I know just the person.”

  She walked quickly back to her desk and I followed behind her with Dewey on my tail, feeling the excitement rise like a trumpet blast in my chest. I wasn’t certain what a historian was, but it sure sounded important. I supposed a historian was an expert on history. That made sense.

  “I have a friend down in Chickasaw,” she said, “who has been researching the genealogy of Alabama for years, but she especially knows this area. Let me give her a call for you.”

  I smiled. “Thanks!”

  She dialed a number and waited for her friend to answer. Finally, she did.

  “Hi, Dixie,” the clerk said. “It’s Mary Sue here. Yes, I know. Too long. Oh, you know. Yeah, still in Alvin. Still at the records office. Yeah . . .” I thought they were going to keep on chitchatting for days until finally Mary Sue, the apparent name of the clerk, interrupted. “Listen, Dixie, this is actually a business call of sorts. I have a young boy in my office. His mother is the detective of Alvin. Mmm-hmm. Anyway, he’s trying to research his family history, and I showed him what we had, which was barely nothin’, an’ then I thought of you.”

  There was a long pause before Mary Sue spoke again. “Yes, he was born in Satsuma. I have some information about his daddy. He’s passed away.” She sort of whispered the words passed away as though saying them the same volume as the rest might have offended me. “Yes, I can give you the date of his birth and of his death.”

  She relayed all the pertinent information, including my grandparents and everything else, getting all of it from the book she’d pulled out. Then she asked me for my address, so I told it to her. “All right, I’ll tell him to look forward to it. Thank you very much, Dixie. And I hope to see you soon.”

  She hung up the phone. “My, my, that woman can talk your ear off.”

  “Is she gettin’ me information ’bout my family?” I asked with a big grin I couldn’t hold back.

  “She certainly is. She said to give her a couple days to compile it and then she’d put it in the mail for you. Her name is Dixie Spinner. You can watch for her package in your mailbox.” Then she leaned over and whispered, “And you may want to write her a quick thank-you card after you get everything. She’d like that.”

  I thought that was a good idea, too.

  I looked at Dewey. “This is great. I’m gonna finally learn ’bout my family.”

  “If there’s anything to find out, she’ll be the one to know ’bout it,” Miss Mary Sue said. “And I can’t guarantee she’ll find any more information than we have here, but sometimes you get real lucky and she’ll dig you up things like family crests and stuff like that.”

  “What’s a family crest?” I asked.

  “It’s an insignia your family used way back to designate them from other families. It would appear on shields and flags and things.”

  That sounded pretty neat. I hoped I would get a copy of my family crest.

  “Oh,” she said, “and she won’t find any real facts other than names, birthdays, cause of death, and that type of stuff ’bout anyone unless that person did something extraordinary or unusual. For instance, she told me she once dug up family history for this one feller who found out one of his grandfathers from way back was once wanted for seven train robberies. He turned out to be mighty proud of that.”

  I thought that sounded like a strange thing to be proud of. I wondered if maybe the “feller” she was talking about was Preacher Eli.

  I thanked her again, a little concerned about my mother’s reaction to the mail coming from this Miss Dixie in Chickasaw being delivered straight to my house. I wondered if this was something my mother would mind me doing. Oh, well, I’d have to make sure I was the one who checked the mail throughout the coming weeks.

  “I think she was overanxious to help us on account of she knew your mother worked for the police,” Dewey said on our way out.

  “You know, it is possible she’s just nice,” I said.

  “It’s possible, I guess. But I think my theory’s more likely.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Over the following days, thoughts about the Brown and Carson land dispute circled inside Leah’s head like hungry vultures over a cattle carcass. Likely, Leah thought, it was all spawned by what Abe had said at the records office. “Wouldn’t Miss Sylvie own it? I thought kids got whatever their folks had when their folks died.” At the time, Leah had told Abe that Sylvie couldn’t have afforded the ranch, but was that so true? The ranch could’ve stayed in her name and been run without her. Besides, even if the ranch had been sold as part of Tom Carson’s estate, the difference in value between what he originally paid for it in 1963 and what it was worth at the time of his death was well over a hundred thousand dollars. Even if it went for a rock-bottom price at auction, there would still be a substantial amount of equity left for Sylvie, one would think.

  Leah received the financial statements and tax information she’d requested for Tom Carson. They arrived together at the station just as Leah was leaving for the day and she brought them home with her. Sitting on the sofa in the living room, she eagerly went through them, trying to discover the reason why Sylvie hadn’t appeared to have gotten anything from the deal.

  She examined Tom Carson’s bank information first. There was a lot to it. It covered nine years of his life, and told an interesting story. That nine-thousand-dollar initial investment he had made slowly
went wrong for some reason, and it was all laid out before Leah in black and white. Tom had taken out a line of credit with the Alvin First National Bank against the ranch almost immediately following the death of his son. At first, the line of credit only used a third of the equity he held in his ranch, but as time went by, he increased the amount of the LOC at higher and higher rates. The only thing that kept him afloat was the fact that the market grew as fast, if not faster, than the rate of his expanding line of credit.

  One thing was for certain, though. Tom Carson got in way over his head financially due to something very early on. And even when the value of his ranch started to reach upward of a hundred thousand dollars, so did what he owed on it. Not only that, but according to the tax sheets Leah had requested, many years the ranch ran at a loss. That didn’t help his situation one bit. But the losses in no way compensated for the amount of money actually being spent. Wherever that money went, there was no record of it.

  It made no sense. From what she knew about the Carsons, they didn’t go on lavish vacations or anything like that.

  “What were you doin’ with all your money, Tom?” Leah asked, continuing from page to page.

  Because of the booming market, Tom was able to get away with defaulting payments on his LOC. Compound interest simply kept piling up higher and higher. It never got to the point where the bank threatened to foreclose, but if things hadn’t turned around soon, Leah could tell that point was coming fast.

  By the time of his death in 1980, Tom Carson owed the bank just under eighty-eight thousand dollars, an amount he could never pay back. Tom Carson must’ve known this—a fact that struck a nerve with Leah. Could this have contributed to his suicide?

  There was indication that the bank called in the line of credit upon Tom Carson’s death, which probably preceded the auctioning off of the property. Leah remembered quite distinctly that no will had turned up after his death, so an auction of the property was the most likely outcome. Still, even if the ranch were sold at auction, there was a good chance it would’ve gone for enough money to pay the bank debt and still have some left over as a nest egg for Sylvie. But Leah had no records of the land being sold. All she really had was the property survey map with the words Owner: Unlisted, and the original deed with Tom Carson’s name on it in her daddy’s police folder.