Chapter 6 - The Long Cold Reach
The silence in the parlor didn't have any clock ticks in it now.
The wind from the gap had risen, hitting the north gable with that long, low moan that means the leaves are off the oaks and the mountain is down to the bone. Outside, the limbs of the silver maple by the well-house scraped against the aluminum gutter—a dry, metallic scritch-scritch that sounded like an old hound scratching at an iron door.
Ashley looked at the blue booklet on the table. She didn't pick it up. She looked at it like it was an old copperhead that had curled up on her three-ring binder.
"That's an unconstitutional restraint on alienation," she said, her voice thin, cold, and whistling through her small, even teeth. "The Supreme Court overturned life-tenancy restrictions based on non-probate trusts forty years ago. We’ll have a federal injunction out of Roanoke by ten tomorrow morning."
"You might," Bobby Miller said. He hadn't put his Zippo away; he was turning it over and over in his broad palm, the chrome clicking against his class ring. "Federal judge usually sits on Thursdays, though. And he’s eighty-four years old and his sister lives over in the hollow behind the lime quarry. He don't like people who change the numbers on an old woman’s gate."
"Ethan," Ashley said, turning her back on the deputy entirely. "Get the bags out of the hall. We’re going to the hotel in Lexington."
"No," Ethan said.
He hadn't moved an inch. His face had gone from that congested red to a pale, lard-colored white, the freckles across his nose standing out like small drops of brown shellac on an unpainted pine board.
"Ethan," she repeated, her voice rising now, the polish peeling off the words like old varnish in the sun. "I am not spending another twenty minutes in this house with these... with these people. The smell of this kitchen is in my hair. We have the filing in Richmond. We have the bank commitment."
"The commitment requires clear title on the residential improvements, Ashley," Ethan said. He wasn't looking at her. He was looking at his mother’s wool sweater—at the place where the third hornbeam button had been torn away, leaving three loops of grey thread hanging loose against the knit. "The loan covenants... they have an indemnity clause. If the title company flags an unmerged life tenancy, the interest rate jumps six points and the principal becomes callable on seventy-two hours' notice."
"How much?" I asked.
Ethan’s head came up.
"How much is the note, Ethan?"
"Six hundred and eighty thousand," he whispered.
"Six hundred and eighty," I said. "And what did you pledge for the balance?"
He didn't answer.
"He pledged his grandfather’s tools," Linda said from the chair. She had her hands folded in her lap now, resting on the brown paper bag from Miller’s store. "He pledged the four-bottom plow that’s sitting in the lower shed, and he pledged the three timber tracts behind the church that Tom’s father planted in sixty-four."
"They were just assets on a balance sheet, Mom!" Ethan screamed suddenly, his hands coming up off his thighs, his fingers hooked like he wanted to tear the lath right out of the plaster. "They were just sitting there! Four hundred acres of scrub oak and white pine that don't produce ten bushels of wheat a year! We were paying nine thousand dollars a year in county taxes for land that nobody walks on except the deer hunters from North Carolina!"
"I walk on it," I told him.
"You're seventy-four years old, Dad! You walk on it with a cane and a knee that needs three thousand dollars of plastic in the joint! You can't farm this place! You haven't had five head of steers in the lower pasture since nineteen-ninety-nine!"
"The steers don't matter, Ethan," I said.
I walked over to the table. I picked up the blue booklet, laid it inside the Shenandoah lard tin, and pressed the tin lid down until the rim clicked into the groove with a small, iron thunk.
"The land doesn't belong to the beef," I said. "And it doesn't belong to the bank in Roanoke. It belongs to the people who are buried under the cedars behind the pulpit."
I took three steps toward him. I was five inches shorter than he was—he had the modern height that comes from forty years of pasteurized milk and orthodontia—but my shoulders were still the width of an axe handle, and my hands were still twice the thickness of his wrists.
"You gave that gate code to the company in Roanoke," I said.
"Dad—"
"You changed the numbers on your mother," I said.
"The security system was part of the insurance rider—"
"You gave her three minutes of talk through a little brass horn on a post," I told him, "and then you pointed your finger down the hill like she was an old sow that had broken through the garden fence."
I reached out my hand.
I didn't ball it into a fist. I laid the flat of my palm against the center of his dark blue knit shirt, right over his breastbone, and I pushed.
He didn't hit the wall. He stumbled backward three paces, his suede shoes squeaking on the linoleum, until the back of his knees hit the edge of the kitchen island. The Stanley tape measure on the counter rattled against the marble sample Ashley had brought from Charlottesville, the little piece of grey stone falling off the edge and shattering into three pieces on the floorboards.
"Tom," Bobby Miller said from the door. His voice was quiet. He hadn't unhooked his holster, but his thumb had come off the Zippo. "Easy now."
"I'm easy, Bobby," I said, not taking my eyes off Ethan’s white face. "I’m as easy as a three-ton roller on fresh asphalt."
I pointed toward the side door—the cedar one with the three-inch bolt.
"Take the German car, Ethan," I said. "Take your three-ring binder. Take the girl with the linen trousers who doesn't like the iron in the well water."
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"You can't evict me without thirty days' notice," Ashley cried, her face red now, her fingernails digging into the leather of her notebook. "The Virginia code—"
"The Virginia code doesn't apply to a guest who’s overstayed his supper, ma'am," Bobby Miller said. He stepped aside, clearing the doorway that led down to the gravel approach. "And the sheriff told me that if that black car is still blocking the turn-around when the school bus comes up the hollow at seven tomorrow morning, he’s going to have Wayne bring his log-skidder down from the mill and drag it into the creek."
