The folding chair in the county assessor office had a split vinyl seat that pinched the back of my thigh every time I shifted my weight, and the radiator underneath it was making this dry, metallic clicking noise that would not quit. I had twelve hundred dollars in the credit union before Arthur stopped breathing.
By the time the ambulance had cleared the driveway and the county coroner finished writing his clipboard notes on our oilcloth kitchen table, I was looking at a six thousand eight hundred dollar bill from Miller and Son Funeral Home. Arthur always said a man should pay his own way out of this world, but he did not leave me much of a way to do it.
On the third morning after we brought him home from the chapel in that plain pine box, I backed his old Ford pickup right up to the loading dock behind Miller’s Pawn on 4th Street.
Arthur’s miter saw, his heavy cast-iron bench vise, and three wooden crates of hand planes that he had oiled every Sunday afternoon since we moved into the valley back in seventy-four went into the back of that truck. Ray Miller was standing by the grease-stained counter inside with a stub of a pencil behind his ear, wearing that same gray work shirt he had worn since we were kids in high school. He didn’t say much at first. He just watched through the dirty front window as I hauled the first heavy crate across his rubber mat.
“You really clearing out his bench, Eleanor?” Ray asked. He didn’t sound mean about it. Just tired.
“The funeral home doesn’t take installment plans, Ray,” I said, wiping my palms down the front of my apron. “They want the six thousand eight hundred today or they start making calls to my brother.”
Ray didn’t touch the crates right away. He walked over to the old metal cash register that still had the bell ring built into the side and pulled out a receipt book with yellowing carbon paper. He looked at me over the top of his wire-rimmed glasses, and I could tell by the way his jaw was working on an old toothpick that he knew something I didn’t.
“Arthur was in here twelve days ago,” Ray said.
“He couldn’t have been. He was in bed,” I told him, my hand freezing on the tailgate latch. “He hasn’t been out of the house since the first frost.”
“Twelve days ago,” Ray repeated, ignoring me. “He didn’t bring tools. He brought forty dollars in twenty-dollar bills, paid the interest on ticket number four-one-two-nine, and told me he’d be back after the first of the month.” Ray turned around, pulled a heavy wooden cigar box out from underneath the counter, and dropped a thick manila folder right on top of my miter saw. “He’s been doing it every December since the winter of ninety-six.”
My breath caught on the smell of old wood and metal and that dry dust that never leaves a pawn shop. I didn’t want to touch the folder. I knew what Arthur’s handwriting looked like. It was blocky, made with a fountain pen he refilled from a glass bottle every Sunday night at the kitchen desk.
“What is that, Ray?” I asked. My voice sounded thin, like paper tearing in the wind.
“Open it,” he said, pushing it an inch closer. “You’ve got a right to know what you’re paying off.”
I lifted the cardboard tab. Inside was a stack of small yellow receipt slips, each one clipped to a white paper envelope with a rubber band that had long since rotted into a sticky yellow crumb. The top receipt was dated December 14th of the previous year. The amount was two hundred seventy dollars. Underneath the customer’s name, written in Arthur’s careful, square print, was a name I hadn’t heard spoken out loud in twenty years. Clara Vance.
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