Chapter 8 - The Eviction of Illusions
By three o'clock on Sunday afternoon, the temperature had climbed to thirty-two degrees, turning the country roads into rivers of brown, slushy mud.
A black town car with New Jersey plates pulled into the gravel drive of the farm, its tires spinning briefly before stopping near the barn doors.
Arthur Bennett was the first to step out, wearing his heavy tweed overcoat and a wool flat cap pulled low over his ears. He opened the rear door and extended a hand to Harold Vance.
Harold looked like he had shrunk four inches in seventy-two hours.
His camel-hair coat—usually pristine, smelling of dry cleaning and expensive cigars—was rumpled and missing a button on the cuff. His face was the color of curdled milk, his jowls hanging loose and gray over a collar that was two sizes too large for his neck. He walked with a heavy, dragging shuffle, his right hand clutching a battered leather briefcase like a drowning man clutching a piece of driftwood.
I was standing in the barn breezeway, wearing my insulated coveralls and muck boots, watching Daniel scrape thirty years of dried manure from the oak floorboards of the calf pens with a flat-bladed spade.
Daniel had been working since dawn. His hands were blistered, his knuckles raw and red from the freezing well water, his canvas coat soaked through with sweat around the armpits. He hadn't spoken ten words all morning. Every time his spade hit the wood, it made a sharp, rhythmic *clack-scrape* that echoed through the stone rafters.
Harold stopped five feet from the breezeway, his breath coming in short, wheezing puffs of white steam.
He looked at Daniel. He looked at the spade. He looked at the mountain of wet straw and manure Daniel was shoveling into the wheelbarrow.
“Daniel?” Harold whispered, his voice shaking. “What... what in God’s name are you doing?”
Daniel didn't stop shoveling. He didn't even look up. *Clack-scrape.* The wet manure hit the wheelbarrow with a heavy, wet *shluck*.
“He’s paying his rent, Harold,” I said, stepping out from the shadow of the hayloft. “Something you haven't done since August.”
Harold turned toward me, his hands beginning to tremble so violently that the brass latch on his briefcase clicked against the leather.
“Margaret,” Harold wheezed, taking off his hat with a fumbling, desperate gesture. “Margaret, please. We need to talk. Evelyn is at the motel in Quakertown. The sheriff... the sheriff put yellow tape across the showroom doors. My suppliers won't unload the trucks on Monday morning without a signed release from the landlord.”
“The trucks don't have anywhere to go, Harold,” Arthur Bennett said, stepping up beside him and pulling a fountain pen from his pocket. “The lease is terminated. Section 14. We have three commercial logistics firms in Allentown bidding on the warehouse space as of nine o’clock yesterday morning. At twelve dollars a square foot. You were paying four dollars and fifty cents, and you couldn't even manage that.”
Harold let out a dry, rattling sob. He dropped the briefcase onto the wet gravel of the driveway, fell forward against the fender of the town car, and rested his forehead against the cold metal.
“I’m ruined,” Harold wept, the tears cutting clean tracks through the gray dust on his cheeks. “Forty years, Margaret. My father started that business with two toolboxes and a flatbed Ford. If the inventory goes to auction, I won't have enough to pay the bank. They’ll take our house in Upper Makefield. They’ll take Evelyn’s car. We’ll be on the street at seventy-two.”
I walked over to him. The mud sucked at my boots with every step: *schloop... schloop.*
I stopped two feet away.
“Where is Vanessa, Harold?” I asked.
Harold didn't look up. “She’s at her sister’s. She’s... she’s beside herself, Margaret. She’s screaming at Daniel on the phone, she’s screaming at the lawyers... she says you’re doing this because you’re jealous of her.”
Daniel’s spade stopped.
The silence in the barn was sudden and cold. Daniel stood frozen over the wheelbarrow, his back rigid, his breath puffing hard and fast into the frosty air.
“Jealous of what, Harold?” I asked softly. “Her manners? Her debts? Her capacity for cruelty?”
Harold slowly lifted his head. His eyes were red, wet, and sunken deep into their sockets. “She made a mistake, Margaret. She’s young. She wanted... she wanted things to look nice. You know how girls are today with the internet and the magazines. She wanted the house to look like the ones in the catalogs.”
“My husband Thomas built that business with his bare hands while your father was still running numbers out of the back of a barber shop, Harold,” I said, my voice dropping so low that even the cows in the lower stalls stopped chewing their cud. “I don't care about your catalogs. I don't care about your country club. But when your daughter stood in my family’s house on Christmas Eve and handed me sixty adult diapers so she could steal the ground my husband died on, you stood there and drank your scotch.”
Harold flinched as if I had struck him with a horsewhip.
“I didn't know about the forgery, Margaret!” Harold cried. “I swear to Almighty God, I didn't know she forged Daniel’s name!”
“You knew she was trying to have me locked away in an institution,” I said. “You played golf with Arthur Henderson on the sixteenth of December. You told him that if he signed the Form 204, Daniel would approve his partnership investment in your restructuring plan.”
Harold’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. His face went from gray to a terrible, mottled leaden hue.
Arthur Bennett stepped forward, clicking the cap off his fountain pen with a loud, metallic *snap*.
“Here are the terms, Harold,” Arthur said, his voice flat, professional, and merciless. “We have prepared an Assignment of Assets and Confession of Liability. You will sign over seventy percent of the Vance Auto Supply liquidation proceeds to the Miller Family Trust to satisfy the back rent, legal fees, and the outstanding balance on Daniel’s promissory notes.”
“Seventy percent?” Harold choked. “That won't leave enough to pay Henderson! Henderson will sue me for fraud!”
“Then Henderson will sue you,” Arthur said. “And Henderson will lose, because Henderson’s investment agreement was predicated on an illegal conspiracy to subvert a family trust. Henderson knows that; I spoke to his attorney an hour ago. Henderson is dropping his claim and resigning from the country club board on Tuesday morning to avoid a disciplinary hearing before the medical licensing board.”
Harold looked at Arthur. Then he looked at me.
“And my house?” Harold whispered. “Evelyn... where is Evelyn going to live?”
“The trust will purchase the mortgage on your home from Mercer Valley Bank,” I said. “You and Evelyn may remain there for the rest of your natural lives under a life estate. At a rent of one dollar a year. On two conditions.”
Harold’s eyes widened with a desperate, pathetic hope. “Anything, Margaret. Anything. Name it.”
“Condition one: You will never set foot on this farm again,” I said. “Not for Thanksgiving. Not for Christmas. Not for a funeral. If I see your car at the end of my lane, the life estate terminates immediately.”
“Yes,” Harold breathed, nodding furiously. “Yes, of course. And the second?”
“Condition two: Vanessa signs the quitclaim deed to the Hillside house by five o’clock tomorrow afternoon,” I said. “And she surrenders every piece of Thomas’s family silver she took from my sideboard three years ago. If one spoon is missing, Harold, the life estate is void, and the sheriff proceeds with the sale on Friday.”
Harold didn't hesitate. He grabbed the legal pad from Arthur’s hands so fast he nearly tore the paper. He didn't even read the clauses. He laid the document against the hood of the black town car, his trembling fingers gripping the pen, and scrawled his name across the signature line with a frantic, scratching sound.
*Harold J. Vance.*
Arthur took the paper back, inspected the signature with a clinical eye, and blew gently on the wet ink.
“A pleasure doing business with you, Harold,” Arthur said smoothly. “The town car will take you back to the motel. Have your bags packed by Tuesday; the bank’s appraisers will be at your house at nine sharp.”
Harold didn't speak. He climbed back into the rear seat of the town car like an old dog being shoved into a kennel, his head down, his camel-hair coat bunched around his knees.
The driver shut the door. The big car backed out of the muddy drive, its tires churning through the slush, and disappeared down the lane toward the highway.
I turned back toward the barn.
Daniel was still standing by the wheelbarrow. His spade was resting against his boot, his hands hanging limp at his sides.
“Did you hear that, Daniel?” I asked.
“I heard,” he said softly.
“Your father’s silver is coming home tomorrow,” I told him.
He looked down at his raw, blistered hands. A single tear rolled down his dirty cheek, leaving a clean white line through the dust, before dropping into the wet straw at his feet.
“I don't deserve to be here, Mom,” Daniel whispered.
“No, you don't,” I said, picking up a pitchfork from the wall and tossing it to him. “Now finish mucking out stall four. The hay truck arrives at five, and I’m not paying the driver to wait while you feel sorry for yourself.”
Daniel caught the pitchfork. He didn't say another word. He turned, walked into the dark stall, and the sound of iron hitting wood started up again: *scrape... lift... toss.*
I walked out of the barn into the pale afternoon sunlight.
May you like
The air was clean. The smell of woodsmoke was coming from the chimney of the big stone house, drifting up into the cold, clear blue of the winter sky.
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