The Nine Names on the Hay Wagon

Ardell’s two visits

Ardell came out twice in fourteen weekends. I am not going to pretend he did not come at all, because he did, and I want to be fair to him.

The first time was in April. He came on a Wednesday evening, after work, to get Dad’s guns out of the closet and the mantel clock and the strongbox of papers from the bedroom.

“The lawyer needs the papers,” he said, “and the guns shouldn’t sit in an empty house.” He was right about both. He put them in the trunk of his car and was gone in forty minutes.

The second time was in August. He came on a Saturday afternoon with his phone, to take pictures of the furniture and the dishes for the appraiser. He stayed two hours.

Lois offered him a sandwich. He ate it standing in the yard, looking at the pile in the grove and the trucks lined up along the fence.

“This is a lot of people,” he said to me.

“Every Saturday,” I said.

“That’s nice of them.” He brushed the crumbs off his hands. “You should get them a gift card or something. When it’s done. The estate could do that.”

Then he went back to Peoria. Logan had a ball tournament. There was always a ball tournament.

What Ardell did

I want to tell this part honestly, because I have had a lot of time to think about it on a lot of gravel roads.

Ardell did work. He met with the lawyer, Mr. Haskins, in Eureka, maybe five times. He opened the estate account at the bank. He filed the papers at the courthouse to get the letters of office.

He called the Social Security office and the pension people from Dad’s old job at the plant in Peoria. He canceled the phone and the newspaper and the propane delivery. He sent the notice to the paper for creditors.

He dealt with the bank, and the bank, I know from my own life, can eat a whole afternoon over one signature. He did all of that from his desk in Peoria, on the phone, during his lunch hour.

Those things needed doing. Somebody had to do them. I could not have done them from the front counter of the extension office while a farmer stood there waiting for his soil test results.

But you could have added it all up and it would not have come to fourteen Saturdays. It would not have come to one Saturday in the attic in July.

The phone call

He called me that night, after his son’s game. I was sitting on the farmhouse porch steps in the dark, because I had stayed late to finish the shed and could not make myself drive home yet.

“You didn’t call,” he said. “I figured you’d call.”

“I’m calling now,” I said. “Well, you are.”

“Look, Ang. I know it looks like a lot.”

“It’s twenty-three thousand dollars, Ardell. Half of that comes out of my share.”

“And half comes out of mine.” He said it like that settled something. “It’s an executor’s fee. The law allows it. Haskins said reasonable compensation. That’s reasonable for an estate this size.”

“It says clean-out.”

He was quiet a second. I could hear the television behind him, and one of the boys laughing, and Denise saying something I could not make out.

“Denise says I did the hard part,” he said finally. “The lawyer. The bank. All those calls. Do you know how many calls, Ang? Do you know what it is to sit on hold with the pension people for an hour and ten minutes?”

“I know what it is,” I said. “I sit on hold with the state every week.”

“Then you know.” He sounded relieved, like we agreed. “Denise says the sorting and all that, anybody can do. But the legal side, if you mess that up, it costs everybody. That’s the part that’s worth something.”

I looked out across the yard. In the dark I could see the shapes of Carl’s folding tables, already set up in rows for the auction, and the hay wagon Ernie had pulled over from his place that afternoon.

“Ardell,” I said, “who do you think did the clean-out?”

“Well, you did. And the neighbors helped. That’s what neighbors do out there, Ang. That’s just how it is.”

That is just how it is. He was not lying. He believed it. He had grown up there the same as I had, and he had left at eighteen, and somewhere in thirty years in town he had forgotten that a neighbor’s Saturday costs a neighbor something.

“Okay,” I said. “Goodnight, Ardell.”

“You’re not mad?”

“Goodnight,” I said, and hung up, and sat on those steps until the yard light came on.