End of the Tiger (22 page)

He had a long talk with the doctor the next day. Due to the nature of the fracture, they had had to set it immediately. Splintered bones had had to be pinned. Her heart had stood up well under the general anesthetic, but they had had to give her plasma for shock. The
doctor would not commit himself on whether she would be able to walk again, but he was ready to admit that she would be bedridden for quite a long time. Ben signed a hospital form accepting financial responsibility. He stayed that day and the next, spending as much time with her as he could, but he was never alone with her. Geraldine Davis was there the entire time. The women were obviously close.

He flew back the morning of the third day, told Ginny the details he had not told her over the phone, and that evening they phoned Martha at the hospital. Ben had arranged for a phone to be put by her bed. Ginny and the three children talked to her. Ben dived back into a brute load of work, work so heavy and demanding that he had no time to think of the extra financial burden her fall had entailed.

Six days later, at midnight, the doctor in Columbus phoned and woke him from a sound sleep to tell him that his mother had contracted pneumonia and she was not responding to medication. She was in an oxygen tent, and it was perhaps best that he come as soon as possible. Ginny packed his things and drove him to the airport.

Air connections were bad. He did not arrive at the small hospital until quarter after ten the next morning. She had been dead for not quite an hour. He made arrangements for the funeral service and the burial with the same firm that had buried his father so long ago. He phoned Ginny, and she said she would make arrangements about the children and arrive the next day. He said he saw no reason for it. It was just an added expense, and it could not possibly do any good. She seemed hurt at his attitude.

But he was delighted to see her when she arrived. He had seldom felt as lonely, and the town where he had been brought up had never looked so strange to him.

And he was glad to hold his wife in his arms for a long reassuring moment because he was ashamed of himself. It had happened the night of the day she had died. He had awakened in the night and he had been unable to go back to sleep. Suddenly, in the darkness, there had come to him a sudden tingle of excitement and pleasure and relief as he realized he could now sell the house, and
even in a hasty sale it would bring far more than the hospital and the burial expenses. It was a sound house, and the location was convenient to the downtown area. He would come out of it with a profit, and it would no longer be necessary for him to send the $2400 a year to her. It was a despicable and degraded rejoicing that made him feel soiled, but he could not help himself. He mourned her. But mourning was stained by his awareness of being freed by her death from the nagging trap he was in.

Ginny had met Geraldine Davis on previous visits, and it seemed to Ben that Geraldine seemed more friendly toward Ginny than toward him. But when Ben and Ginny were alone later, Ginny said, “I don’t think we’re the most popular people who ever stayed here, darling.”

“I was born in this house and I swear she makes me feel like an interloper.”

“The poor thing is probably worried sick about what she’ll do now. You can’t blame her, you know.”

“That must be it,” he said.

The service at the church was well attended. The Weldons were an old family. The great majority of the people at the church were elderly. There was the traditional ceremony at the grave, and then Ben and Ginny rode back into town in the limousine provided by the funeral director. There were no words with which Ben could tell Ginny how necessary it was to have her beside him.

They were back in town at two o’clock, and Ben had the driver let them out in front of the old office building that housed the offices of Gebbert and Malone. Old Willis Gebbert had been a friend of his father, and had handled what small legal business the family had had for sixty years. He had made the appointment earlier. Judge Gebbert had been at the church, and Ben had pointed him out to Ginny. “Must be ninety and still practicing,” he whispered.

The old-fashioned office was full of dark, heavy furniture and it smelled like dust and medicine.

Ben introduced Ginny to the judge, and he was courtly with her. His hair was wispy white, his blue eyes watery, his head in a constant visible tremor, brown spots on the
backs of his large white hands. But his voice had not lost its deepness and resonance.

“A sad thing,” Judge Gebbert said. “She was a wonderful woman. She made Sam Weldon a wonderful wife, Benjamin.”

“I appreciate your saying that, sir. We’re going to have to leave today and get back to the children and the job. I was wondering if you’d take on a last chore for the Weldon clan. I’d like to give you a power of attorney to sell that house for me and pay off the medical and funeral expenses—I can have the bills sent directly here—and remit the balance to me.”

Judge Gebbert coughed in a slightly artificial way and stared out the window for a few moments, then sighed and said, “Nobody can say Martha wasn’t in her right mind, and nobody can say her mind wasn’t made up. She came in here almost two years ago, son, and I made up a will for her. Geraldine Davis gets the house and furniture and the money in her savings account, and you get the right to go over the house and take any personal stuff you might want to keep. Want to look at my copy of it, Benjamin? I can get it in no time at all.”

“No. Don’t bother. I’m sure it’s just as you describe it, judge.” His mouth felt dry and he felt far away, as though he were dreaming all this.

“She said to me you were doing so good you wouldn’t need it, and if anything happened to her, Geraldine’d have no place to lay her head, no kin and no money, and by making out the will that way, she could stop fretting about it. It was going to be a secret, but she told Geraldine about it all later on so Geraldine wouldn’t worry either—you know the way your mother was, son.”

“Judge, how about the … bills?”

Judge Gebbert looked at him with a slight frown. “I guess you can do that much, can’t you? I don’t know who else would be responsible.”

“Thank you for your time, judge,” he said, getting up.

“Geraldine talked to me on the phone just before you came here. Seemed to know you were coming. Asked me about occupancy. I told her she’s in her legal rights to stay right here, and it’ll go through Probate Court with no trouble at all.” He gave an astonishingly vital baritone
laugh. “If after all these years I can’t draw a will, I better get out of the law business.”

They walked the six blocks to the house. There was a faint rumor of spring in the air. Ginny held his arm.

“Darling,” she said gently, “we’re jinxed. If molten gold was coming down, we’d be out there with sieves, wouldn’t we?”

“Don’t make with the gallant little jokes. Not now, please.”

And at the tone of his voice she took her hand away and walked beside him, half looking away, tears standing bright on her lower lids.

They were on the porch of the house before Ben noticed the new sign in the window. Room for Rent. The door was locked. As he got out the spare key the door swung open and Geraldine stuck her hand out, palm up, and said, “I’ll take that key!”

He put it on the narrow wrinkled palm and stared at her. She stared back with a satisfied malevolence. “You don’t have to come in further than this front hall either. This place is mine, all legal, and you aren’t welcome here, you nor your blond wife either, Ben Weldon.”

“What’s the matter with you, Mrs. Davis?” Ginny demanded.

“Right here is your suitcases, all packed neat. And here’s this big wood crate with everything personal packed right in it, so you don’t have to go through my house poking around. I saved you the trouble, I did.”

“Why are you acting like this?” Ben demanded.

“Martha—God rest her soul—loved you, but I certainly got no call to. You’d go flying all over the country like a king, and you wouldn’t come near her. She wouldn’t see her grandchildren from one year to the next. Oh, I know how lonely she was. But you didn’t care, neither one of you. Send a little money, that’s all you had to do. So little you didn’t miss it at all, and you thought you were doing something big. I’ve been waiting years to tell you off, Ben Weldon. And right now you can get out of this hall and off my land. What do you want done with the box of stuff?”

“You don’t understand——” Ginny said.

But Ben said, “Never mind, honey. Send the box railway express.”

“Collect,” Geraldine said firmly.

“Collect,” Ben said and picked up the suitcases. They walked out onto the porch, and she slammed the door.

As they walked down the street Ginny looked back and saw her peering at them from the living-room window. She seemed to be grinning, but she was behind the curtains, and Ginny could not be certain.

When all the bills were in, Ben totaled them. They came to $3212.50. There was no hospitalization. The expenses of death are not deductible items for tax purposes. He would be able to claim her as a dependent for the year, and that was all.

This was the final rock that stove the hull of the small boat. He phoned the Lawton National Bank from his office and got Mr. Lathrop Hyde on the line. After he had identified himself, he said he could arrange to come in Monday morning at ten when the bank opened and discuss his note. Hyde had him hold the line while the folder was brought to him.

“Right now, Mr. Weldon, it’s sixteen hundred balance due on a hundred-and-eighty-day note, and the due date is—h’m-m-m-m—next Wednesday. Now I wouldn’t want to have to tell my loan committee I’d put through another extension on this note, Mr. Weldon.”

“I could pay it off with the proceeds of a new note, couldn’t I?”

“Well now, we’d have to see about that.”

“That’s what I want to discuss with you on Monday, Mr. Hyde.”

“Tell you what. You bring in an up-to-date personal balance sheet, Mr. Weldon. And bring your wife along.”

“It hasn’t been necessary in the past to——”

“Her signature goes on the notes too.”

“But I’ve always taken the notes, and she’s signed them at——”

“You just bring her along, and I’ll be looking for you at ten o’clock sharp, Mr. Weldon.”

When Ben and Ginny entered the bank on Monday morning, Ben had with him a personal balance sheet on
which he had expended great care. It expressed his equity in the house based on current values, and his equity in the car based on purchase price. It included the $9000 in the retirement account. It assigned what he hoped was not too florid an evaluation of household furnishings and equipment. He had managed to squeeze out a net worth of $26,000 before current debts, and it gave him a certain amount of dubious assurance.

Mr. Lathrop Hyde’s desk was planted out in the open, against the back wall of the upholstered bullpen adjoining the customer floor of the building. Mr. Hyde greeted them and seated them courteously enough. He was perhaps sixty, long and solid in the torso, with gray hair worn long on one side so that it could be combed across the bald area and pasted in place. He had a long, square-cornered, fleshy face, with odd spots of high color on the cheekbones, pebbly brown eyes and a very wide mouth with thin colorless lips. His habit of dress was incongruously tweedy and informal. He took an active, leadership interest in community affairs. He and Ben had served on quite a few of the same committees.

As Ben handed the balance sheet over, he noticed a folder with his name on the tab centered in the middle of Lathrop Hyde’s blotter.

“Let’s see what we have here, folks,” Mr. Hyde said.

He studied each item on the brief statement with great care, checked the margin beside each one with a very small check made with a very hard pencil. He put it aside and let the silence grow until Ben had to say something and said, “Is that what you wanted from me?”

“I hoped it would look a little better, Mr. Weldon. You’d have a long wait getting that much for the house. Used furniture and equipment—especially in a house where there’s children—isn’t worth listing. And if you check the blue book, you’ll find you have no equity in that car at all. There isn’t enough equity in the house to allow a sound second mortgage. I guess I didn’t find what I was looking for.”

“What were you looking for, Mr. Hyde?” Ginny asked sweetly.

“Security, Mrs. Weldon. Security.”

“So are we,” she said.

“What? Oh, I mean ample legal security on which we can loan money, Mrs. Weldon. There’s no fat left in those insurance policies. You own no securities. And you certainly have a substantial amount of current bills to pay.”

“Nearly all of that is because of my mother’s recent death,” Ben said.

“I heard about that. May I extend my sympathies.”

“Thanks. If I can’t renew my note when it comes due day after tomorrow, Mr. Hyde, I’d like to borrow five thousand. I’d use sixteen hundred to retire the note, and pay off the balance of those bills.”

“A hundred-and-eighty-day note?” Hyde asked mildly.

“Yes.”

“And how would you expect to pay it back?”

“I’ve been sending my mother two hundred dollars a month, Mr. Hyde. That will no longer be necessary. I can pay the two hundred on the note instead.”

“Which in one hundred eighty days would be twelve hundred dollars. It is against the law, Mr Weldon, for us to loan money on an open note when we see little expectation of its being paid back within the stated time. A fully secured note is a different thing, of course. I’m sorry, Mr. Weldon.”

“Do you think I’m a bad risk?”

Mr. Hyde frowned slightly. “That’s an unfortunate expression, but since you used it, I’ll answer you frankly. Yes.”

“But——”

“Just a moment, Mr. Weldon. We are tightening our policy as far as you people are concerned. You bright young men who work in the city are very persuasive, you know. And we—uh—less sophisticated types are apt to be a little too awed by the salaries you are paid. And so, without realizing it until recently, we’ve let ourselves get into an unhealthy position on open notes to you brisk, successful young gentlemen. You make big incomes, but you live up to them and beyond them. Thrift seems to have become a dirty word nowadays. Personally, I am inclined to think of all this, on old-fashioned grounds, as a lack of character.”