Chapter 7 - The Scent of Old Sawdust
My kitchen on Orchard Ridge Road had four chairs, all of them mismatched. Two were pine, salvaged from an old Sunday school room at Apex Baptist; one was a maple captain’s chair with a cracked spindle; and the fourth was the ladder-back where Walt used to sit with his boots unlaced, peeling an apple with his pocketknife while the news played on the six-inch black-and-white television above the breadbox.
At eleven-fifteen on Christmas night, Julian Cross sat in the captain’s chair.
He had taken off his charcoal cashmere overcoat, hanging it neatly over the back of the pantry door beside my yellow rubber apron. In his gray wool vest and crisp white cuffs, he looked like a bank president who had taken a wrong turn and ended up in a railroad shanty. But he didn't look uncomfortable. He rested his forearms on the red-and-white oilcloth table, his signet ring clicking softly against the tin salt shaker.
Ethan sat in the ladder-back. He hadn't taken Walt’s coat off. The flannel lining was warm against his neck, and his face had that slack, glazed look of a soldier who has just walked twenty miles through the mud and finally dropped his pack behind the lines.
I stood at the stove, listening to the blue gas flame hiss against the bottom of the tin percolator.
"Julian," I said, not turning around, "you knew Walt had that trust filed before he ever took sick, didn't you?"
Julian reached into his vest pocket and pulled out an old silver case. He didn't take a cigarette out; he just ran his thumb over the engine-turned engraving on the lid.
"Walter came to my office in Charlotte in ninety-eight, Evelyn," Julian said, his voice quiet against the hum of the kettle. "He took the train down. He wouldn't let me pay for his ticket. He sat in my conference room with three rolls of blue-line drawings under his arm and that little green key to Locker 14."
Ethan looked up, his bloodshot eyes narrowing. "What was in the locker, Julian?"
"The original production journals from the Oak & Iron," Julian said. "Nineteen-seventy-eight to nineteen-eighty-two. Every daily tally of chuck rolls, every gallon of cider vinegar, every pound of dried elderberries Walter bought from the local pickers. And more importantly—the canceled checks Richard Caldwell wrote to the city building inspector to keep the grease trap certified while Walter was in the hospital having his appendix out."
I turned the gas off. The kitchen went dead quiet except for the gurgle of the chicory settling in the basket.
"Walt never told me about the checks," I said.
"Of course he didn't," Julian replied softly. "Walter knew you. If you’d known Richard was bribing the city with money that was supposed to go into the employee health fund, you’d have walked down to Martin Street with a cast-iron skillet and put Richard through the front plate glass."
Ethan let out a short, wet breath that sounded like a half-sob. "She would have, too."
"Walter protected Richard for forty years, Evelyn," Julian continued, looking down at his manicured nails. "Not because he liked him. Because Richard’s wife—Brooke’s grandmother, Clara—was Walter’s first cousin. Walter promised his mother on her deathbed that he wouldn't see Clara’s children end up in the county home. He let Richard have the name. He let Richard have the building. But Walter wasn't a fool. He told me, *Julian, if Richard ever tries to sell the soul of this thing to a corporate holding company out of New York, you bring Evelyn the key. She’s the only one who knows what it costs to feed people who don't have enough sense to say thank you.*"
I poured the dark coffee into three heavy ceramic mugs—the thick ones the cafeteria used before the state went to Styrofoam. I set one in front of Julian, one in front of Ethan, and kept the third between my two hands, letting the heat sink into my knuckles.
"Julian," I said, "what happens to the house?"
Ethan stiffened in the ladder-back chair.
"The Cary house?" Julian took a sip of the black coffee, his eyebrows lifting slightly at the bitterness of the chicory before he nodded with approval. "Richard Caldwell signed a cross-collateralization agreement on that property to secure the preliminary audit loan with our group. Since the merger has failed due to fraud in the intellectual property disclosure, our bank has the right of immediate foreclosure on the Caldwell assets."
Ethan closed his eyes. "Brooke’s name is on the secondary deed."
"Brooke’s name is on three different filings that Richard’s lawyers prepared without due diligence," Julian said, his voice flat as an iron plate. "She’ll have forty-five days to vacate the premises once the lis pendens is filed on Wednesday morning. Unless, of course, the owner of the trust decides to settle the deficiency."
They both looked at me.
The refrigerator clicked on with its familiar, rattling hum. Outside, a dog barked three streets over—old man Gidley’s hound, probably smelling a possum in the trash cans.
I looked down at my mug. "I don't want that house, Julian. It’s got too many windows and no porch worth sitting on. You couldn't grow a decent tomato in that Cary dirt if you hauled in four tons of river silt. The builder scraped all the topsoil off and sold it to a golf course."
"Mom," Ethan said, his voice cracking. "Brooke has nowhere to go. Richard’s house in North Hills is mortgaged to the eaves. If your trust takes the settlement, they lose everything."
I set my mug down on the oilcloth. The sound was small, but it made Ethan look up.
"Ethan," I said, "did your wife ask where you were going to sleep tonight when you walked out that door?"
He stared at me, his mouth opening once, twice, like a carp in a bucket, before he looked away toward the dark window.
"Did she ask if you had a coat?" I pressed. "Did she ask if you had twenty dollars in your pocket for gas, or did she tell you to take your father's coat off because the canvas looked cheap on her white herringbone floor?"
Ethan’s jaw worked, but no sound came out. A single, fat tear ran down the side of his nose and dropped onto the flannel collar of Walt’s coat.
"I’m sixty-one years old, Ethan," I told him, my voice steady as an oak fence post. "I’ve seen a lot of people go hungry in my life. Some go hungry because they don't have bread, and some go hungry because they’re so full of their own importance their bellies don't have room for anything real. Brooke Caldwell hasn't eaten an honest meal since the day she met you. She’s been living on pride and white paint. If she has to spend a winter in a rented duplex down in Garner eating store-bought beans out of a pot, it might be the first thing that ever does that girl any good."
Julian Cross set his coffee mug down, picked up his silver spectacles, and slid them into his vest pocket. A thin, dry smile—the first real smile I’d seen on him all night—touched the corners of his mouth.
"I’ll prepare the trust documents on Monday, Evelyn," he said, rising from the maple chair. "We’ll exclude the Cary residential assets from the settlement. The bank can have the white brick. But the brand—the Oak & Iron, the Ross Family Trust, the elderberry cure—that belongs to you."
He reached out his hand across the table. His palm was dry and hard, the handshake of a man who had worked on the docks before he ever worked in a corner office.
"Merry Christmas, Evelyn."
"Merry Christmas, Julian," I said. "Tell your driver there’s half a loaf of sourdough in the back of my Subaru if he’s hungry before you hit the highway."
May you like
Julian gave a short, crisp nod, pulled his cashmere coat from the peg, and let himself out into the North Carolina night. The latch clicked shut, and then there were only two of us left in the kitchen.
***
