by Keith Weaver
Once Sanford began working, he made regular weekend trips to Stanley Falls to visit his mother and Joe, but at work he also activated his long-range plan. He worked like a demon, took all the courses that were available through the company, and within a year he had begun work that would lead a few years later to him being awarded a degree in engineering.
Sanford must have spent at least half an hour lost in reverie seated at the great stone table, but then stirred when he realized it was early evening, and that he would need to eat and get a good night’s rest, because he had to tackle a full agenda of small tasks in the morning. Rising from the bench stone, Sanford returned to Joe’s house, checked that there was more than enough in the fridge to put together a good meal for himself, then glanced through the twelve typed pages that accompanied Joe’s letter. There was a list of documents identified, grouped by subject, and opposite each item there was a location specified in one of the cabinets in Joe’s den. Sanford looked into the cabinets for the items that Joe’s notes indicated were the first he should tackle. Everything was clearly labelled and in perfect order. He pulled out a few of the documents and looked through their initial pages. Joe’s voice leapt off the paper and directly into his head. The material had all the arresting interest that every discussion with Joe transmitted, and while he looked forward to reading all the material closely, there was also an ambivalence, a resistance. Because these things were just a shadow of the Joe who was no longer there.
This brought back thoughts of his mother as well. Hers and Joe’s deaths were oddly similar, she suffering a stroke, he a heart attack, both fatal within minutes, separated by just two weeks. Just as he had done now, he had returned to Stanley Falls then in response to a call saying that his mother had died. One of the managers in the local supermarket had heard a clatter of tins falling from shelves, went to investigate, and found her lying on the floor. She never regained consciousness and was dead within fifteen minutes. That had been June 17, a date he wouldn’t forget.
Her affairs had been far simpler, but they showed signs that Joe had had a hand in helping her with the paperwork. Her death struck Sanford hard, perhaps not surprisingly, because of their closeness, and because the death of a mother not yet sixty is difficult to come to terms with. She also had left Sanford a letter. It was simplicity itself, but just as dignified as Joe’s in its own way, and Sanford could remember it word for word. Sensitized as he was by the gentle and noble statements in Joe’s letter, tears came to his eyes as he recalled his mother’s parting message.
My dear and wonderful son James,
You have been the ongoing miracle in my life. My love for you, James, was sometimes so strong that it felt unbearable. Although each phase in your growing up was memorable, the day you became an engineering graduate was the high point of my life. There you were, a tall, handsome, vigorous man, and that was my happiest day. Because of you, James, I am the luckiest woman in the world.
I hope for you all the world’s joys, and all the pleasures, rewards, and fulfillment that can come to an intelligent and sensitive human being.
Your loving mother,
Aileen
Sanford closed Joe’s filing cabinets, then sat there for a moment, in Joe’s chair. The light of a withdrawing day mirrored his thoughts. He looked around Joe’s study, at the few books on Joe’s desk and in the small bookcase beside it, books that Joe kept close to hand, and that he had thumbed through in fondness.
Then Sanford rose, walked into Joe’s kitchen, and began preparing himself dinner.
Five
The grey precursor of dawn was feeling its way past the curtains, pooling on the floor, climbing the angular shapes of door and window frames, and reminding Sanford that a day full of work was beginning. It was just after four thirty.
He rose, spent minimal time in the bathroom, fired up his laptop and rattled off the notes for his projects. After emailing these to the office, he had a quick breakfast and made an early start.
Sanford drafted obituary notices that would be emailed to the local paper, the Peterborough paper, and two major Toronto papers later that day. Sending emails that would initiate the legal arrangements to carry out the requests in Joe’s will took a half day.
Making the arrangements for Joe’s funeral was simple but took some time. Joe had wanted his friends to have an opportunity for a farewell. But he also had wanted the ceremony to be simple, followed by an immediate cremation, to have half his ashes interred in the village cemetery, and the other half scattered on the flower gardens in front of his house. That was a job that Sanford reserved for himself as a final personal favour for his friend.
Having finished these nominally undemanding tasks, Sanford felt drained. Not tired. Not sleepy. Not exhausted. Not weak. Just in need of something different, something involving a road ahead rather than the end of the road. Something linked to life.
The first thing he did was have a bit of a roughhouse with Reggie. Reggie was an oddly self-contained dog, always in the mood for the most vigorous activity, or the most sedate repose. The second thing Sanford did was to weed Joe’s garden. A full weed of the entire garden would have taken the best part of the day, and Joe always said to him that that’s not the way to deal with a garden. The comparable activity, and one that had as little chance of long-term success, was binge dieting. So Sanford spent about two hours in the garden, and the task of taking the care needed to distinguish weeds from vegetables, to remove the weeds without disturbing the crops, and indeed just being in proximity to the silent, undemonstrative, but enormous power of new life, was exactly the tonic he needed. Sanford collected the pile of extracted weeds, dumped them onto the compost heap, stretched in acknowledgement of muscles that had stiffened in complaint at unaccustomed exercise, and headed for Joe’s house, now Sanford’s house, to clean up. As he entered the back door to the scullery, Sanford caught himself whistling softly.
Although Joe had no longer had his beloved cows, and therefore no longer had made his own butter, he still used homemade butter right to the end, butter he had bought from a farmer who, he insisted on saying, lived about two miles away. (Joe was fully conversant with the metric system, but said that it belonged in the commercial sphere, and shouldn’t be used to smear a tired and monotonous grey over our colourful inheritance of measures. When Sanford, wielding his metaphorical prod, asked Joe puckishly how far distant was his butter farmer in chains, he was chastened when Joe had answered, without hesitation, “about a hundred and sixty”.)
Having cleaned up, Sanford cut a couple of slices from Joe’s last homemade loaf, spread them in homemade butter, and took them into Joe’s den. Diving into Joe’s papers, using the roadmap Joe had provided him, would be a sober business, but not, he hoped, a particularly sad one. Despite his bucolic life, or – to reverse the usual urban condescension for things rural – perhaps as a natural complement to it, Joe was a complex and subtle person, optimistic in a way that was at once both elevated and austere, but also pragmatic, authentic, and earthy. In fact, Joe’s view of life, which Sanford never convinced Joe to discuss at any length, appeared to be one of intense savouring of the present, while preparing as best one could for the vast range of future possibility, all of this informed by a deep awareness of the past. This outlook was summarized in a quote, from a now-forgotten author, that was pinned prominently above Joe’s desk: We never live the present as intensely as we might. We never prepare for the future as thoroughly as we should. We never drink from the past as deeply as we ought.
Turning to the several pages of notes attached to Joe’s will, Sanford read.
Jim,
I have tried here to provide a sensible path through the mass of paper you see around you. I have given some thought to this, and the order in which I have organized things is, I think, the easiest and best, but of course you will do otherwise if that’s what you choose.
There are five areas in terms of priority.
First, there is Reggie. Anne (Ms. Ferguson) has o
ften said she would love to have Reggie. If the reality is different from the oft-expressed desire, please do what you can to find him a good home. He is a wonderful dog and has been a good friend.
Second, there is the practical stuff, all the details of my property here, my investments, and so forth. All my files are arranged alphabetically. Among them you will find a folder labelled “Property” which contains a list of all the individual files you will need to consult in order to deal with this. What you do with these items is your decision, but I have gone through them so that you shouldn’t need to do a lot of digging and searching. This includes all my minor practical commitments, such as the Lions Club dinners, which now will have to be terminated. There are a few small bequests from my estate, but these are all listed in my will, and need no separate attention.
Third, there is my library which I have loved so dearly, and which you dipped into quite a bit as a youth. It’s now yours, Jim. In my filing cabinets, there is a file marked “Library”, which might be of some use.
Fourth, there is all my self-indulgent material. In the cabinets there is a thin folder labelled “Thoughts and Writings”, and in that you will find a list of all the individual files containing things I have worked on and have felt, perhaps out of insufferable egotism, worth keeping.
Finally, there is a large file labelled “Personal”. I ask you please to leave this unread until you have at least looked through everything else and decided in principle how you plan to deal with all that “everything else”. This might sound odd, but there’s a good reason for it.
This note ended abruptly enough that Sanford checked to see if he had overlooked a page.
For two hours, Sanford busied himself at locating the files listed under Joe’s third and fourth priorities. The first priority was obvious, and Reggie would receive all the care he deserved. The second priority was also obvious once Sanford had looked quickly at all the various individual files. Joe’s record-keeping and organization were immaculate, and while it was clear that these second-priority files needed attention, dealing with them would be a matter of mechanics, given Joe’s preparation.
The third item was a bittersweet surprise. The file labelled “Library” was almost six inches thick. It was a catalogue of every one of the approximately three thousand items in Joe’s library. But the vast bulk of the file’s content consisted of summaries, précis, reviews, or just sets of notes, one for each of the items in the library. Sanford took the file into the library proper, sat in the large wing chair that had been Joe’s spot for reading, and began to leaf through the pages. The library was one of the largest rooms in Joe’s house, it had no windows, and the entire available wall space was covered in floor-to-ceiling bookcases, all of them full.
About thirty years earlier, Sanford had sat in this same chair and read Swallows and Amazons, The Wind in the Willows, The Railway Children, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Peter Pan, The Water Babies, The Little Prince, and many similar books that made it easy to drift into other realities. Between thirty and twenty years earlier, while Sanford was in school and well before he had left on his four-year working odyssey across the country, Joe had led him, at increasing levels of rigour and under steadily more demanding expectations, through a comprehensive reading programme. Thanks to that programme, Sanford’s high school literature studies were a breeze. His teachers recognized this, worked out that Joe was behind it, and in their turn placed greater expectations on Sanford than on the other students. Joe was impressed at some of the statements by his teachers that Sanford brought home, but more often these statements left Joe amused, disappointed, sometimes irritated, and not sure that Sanford’s teachers knew quite what they were up to.
Joe’s notes were a gold mine, but they were also overwhelming. Sanford felt overwhelmed by the care, diligence, and sheer effort represented by these notes. He was also overwhelmed by the memories they evoked. He set the thick sheaf of notes on the small reading table next to his chair, rose, and walked slowly in front of the shelves. There was more than a shelf of Greek classics – what looked like the entire extant works of Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides, Aristophanes – and several shelves of commentaries on Greek literature and Greek life. There were complete sets of Shakespeare (of course!), Shaw, Dickens, Molière, Racine. Half a shelf was devoted to works by Goethe and commentaries on both works and author. Large sections were given over to poetry, to philosophy, to literary criticism. One whole wall was occupied by more modern standards, and many old friends smiled down at him: The Riddle of the Sands, Berlin Alexanderplatz, Don Quixote, Doctor Zhivago, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and many others.
Waves of nostalgia, gratitude, loss, and fond remembrance swept over Sanford.
Emerging from his bittersweet fug, Sanford returned to Joe’s office and began making estimates of how much time he would need to work through everything. By late afternoon, Sanford had determined that he would need at least ten days to deal with all the items before him. He sent a message to his office, asking for and expecting to receive unhesitating agreement to have the next two weeks free for this task. By then it was time to think about preparing dinner. Sanford decided that the evening’s meal would be Joe’s long-time favourite dish, and one that he had helped Joe prepare many times. Everything he needed was in either Joe’s freezer or pantry. By six o’clock, Sanford had a large pan of lasagne prepared and in the oven. Joe’s selection of wines was nothing to be sniffed at, and Sanford chose a bottle of Brunello di Montalcino. While the lasagne was cooking, Sanford had another wrestle with Reggie, put down some food for him, watered the flower gardens and the herb garden, and generally lingered outside to watch the pines close in and embrace the sunset. The following morning would be occupied by a few practical matters easy to complete, including closing the books on Joe’s arrangement with the local Lions Club, taking the first steps to having Joe’s household accounts (telephone, power) changed to Sanford’s name, and sending notes to Joe’s correspondents and contacts.
Returning to the kitchen, Sanford poured himself a glass of the Brunello, prepared for his first meal of lasagne ever in this house without Joe, and returned to the great sheaf of notes that was Joe’s summary of the contents of his library.
Six
Not surprisingly, the amount of work needed to deal with Joe’s financial assets was considerable, despite the effort that Joe had put into the files. Apart from three small bequests in his will, Joe left no suggestions for Sanford, but Sanford felt his friend’s shade at his elbow as various thoughts surfaced in his mind. A donation to the local library was a clear contender, as was funding for an annual prize at the local school. A number of other possibilities came to mind without Sanford needing to make any effort. What was something of a surprise to Sanford was the size of Joe’s estate. It wasn’t enormous by current standards, but it sat at about $350,000, not including the value of Joe’s house and land. Hardly trivial for someone having Joe’s pastoral lifestyle. There were no notes or statements left by Joe on where this estate had come from, but the picture came slowly into focus as Sanford worked through Joe’s accounts.
It was evident that a lot of Joe’s net worth had been accumulated early in his life. Sanford knew that Joe had worked for about eight years following his university days, but he hadn’t realized that a lot of this had been in the management consulting and financial areas. Joe’s mental flexibility and potential to bend his mind to almost anything was not news to Sanford, but Joe having worked in these areas was. Joe’s stint in business corresponded to the greedy eighties, and when Joe had cashed in at the end of that period it was clear that he had already amassed about two hundred thousand dollars.
But between the end of Joe’s university days and those eight years of work, it became evident from his notes that there was a gap of two years, and Joe’s records didn’t reveal what had caused that gap.
It also became clear to Sanford, as he read on, that the farm had passed to Joe some time before he had begu
n working in the city, when his dissolute older brother, Archie, had finally drunk himself to death. Looking through the accounts and Joe’s notes for that period, it became evident to Sanford that Joe had spent vast amounts of effort recovering the house and barn, which must have been seriously degraded. It also became clear that Joe must have commuted to the city during that work period, something that was surprising indeed. Joe had evidently worked like a fiend, and insisted on remaining at his farm, for a reason that wasn’t clear.
Once Joe had given up the city and began living full time on the farm, there must have been some sort of activity to generate the small but steady income stream Joe’s notes reported, and Sanford eventually determined that Joe had been busy writing (and selling) articles, reviews, some short stories, and carrying on extensive correspondence. All this came out of Sanford’s first quick flip through Joe’s files, after which he settled down to a more systematic perusal. But he had a specific schedule in mind while he did this, and at that point he was still hoping to wrap up his stay in Stanley Falls within two weeks.
Finding a real estate agent who would be interested in listing the property was not difficult at all. In fact, the very first agent he approached lunged at the opportunity and wanted to get together with Sanford right away. Sanford requested a meeting about a week away, giving him time to work through Joe’s material.
Getting his head around the financial records, accounts related to the farm as a property, and Joe’s personal financial situation was simple due to the superb way Joe had organized his affairs. Identifying the files that contained Joe’s literary efforts, both published and unpublished, and setting them aside for more detailed review, also took relatively little time. By the end of the second full day working in Joe’s den, all this had been accomplished. The third day was the day of Joe’s funeral.
