“Hildegarde was sadly ill,” said Attorney Hamilton Bostwick.
“How sadly?” said Jack.
“Terminal.”
“News to me,” said Jack.
“News to her.”
“When did she know?” Jack felt the hair on the back of his neck rise. Most hominids do not keep in day-to-day touch with their erectile napes.
“The day she saw Doc Forbush,” said Attorney Hamilton Bostwick.
“And that was?”
“The same day last week she visited me in this office,” Attorney Hamilton Bostwick waved a fond proprietary hand at the corpus juris lining his walls, “and dictated this will.”
Jack smoothed the back of his neck with his left hand.
“ ‘I, Hildegarde Beauregarde, being of sound and disposing mind and memory, and considering the uncertainty of this life...’ ”
Attorney Hamilton Bostwick garrumphed at “uncertainty.”
Jack liked the sound of “disposing.”
“ ‘... do make, publish, and declare this to be my last will and testament as follows, hereby revoking all other former wills by me at any time made.’ ”
Jack went into free fall at “revoking.” This was no codicil. This was a whole new ball game!
“Long story short...” wheezed Attorney Hamilton Bostwick.
That’s a first, thought Jack.
“... Hildegarde left almost everything to a charity...”
Jack closed his eyes just in time to catch the world premiere of coming attractions on the wide screen of his retinas. A life flashed before him — not his own, but that of Hildegarde’s favorite, St. Francis of Assisi. But surely Jack would star! “Roll the credits.” No joy. A sympathetic cameo role of an impoverished brother monk. “Coming soon to a theater near you.”
“... a group doing business as The Irving Foundation...”
A.k.a. Judas Iscariot, thought Jack. There goes the Côte d’Azur and ski lodge.
“... still trying to reach them in North Carolina...”
Even the roof over my head, much less the Dakota pad, thought Jack. There has to be something...
Attorney Hamilton Bostwick garrumphed and fiddled and jabbed one last item with his glasses.
“I will paraphrase Hildegarde’s final instructions to me. They concern her step-grand-son whom she was always at great pains to refer to as ‘Dear Jack.’ ”
Aha! Jack’s heart leaped. Paydirt! The grandmother lode.
“Hildegarde instructed me to provide sufficient funds...” Attorney Hamilton Bostwick paused, and with his breast pocket kerchief patted the corners of his eyes. He seemed about to blot further but must have dammed the freshet upstream, for he stuffed his kerchief back into his pocket.
“She felt very strongly about this bequest, quoting from the Bible, ‘The fox has his hole, and the birds of the air their nest, but the son of man hath not where to lay his head.’ ”
Jack lowered his eyes modestly to his cordovan loafers.
“Therefore she instructed me to provide ‘Dear Jack’ sufficient funds to construct a cosy dwelling...”
Attorney Hamilton Bostwick could contain himself no longer. He blew his nose.
“... for the shih tzu puppy she hereby bequeaths to him.”
Jack saw right then that his shoes could do with a shine.
“And she gave me to understand that her taste ran to a simple post-and-lintel construction with perhaps a mansard roof, all not to exceed a ballpark figure of one hundred dollars.”
“Game,” said Jack, “set and match,” noting that he would still play tennis on public courts, not his own private Grasstex. “Thank God I saved my center strap.”
Tzu is back in business. Thanks to Hildegarde’s cash transfusion, he’s almost legit. His ashram nestles on a little hill — Low Tor — where the Piedmont Plateau gives on to the Carolina Coastal Plain.
Flowing water is one Eastern model for being. So it is that Tzu’s faithful puree their fungible hopes and fears, even as the nearby New Hope Reservoir spills into the Cape Fear River; thence to wind, as hopes and fears have ever wound, to a salty, teary sea. Even Tzu’s real estate has metaphor.
“From here you walk, Jack,” said the taxi driver, depositing him at the mouth of the gravel driveway to Low Tor. Jack tipped him extra for name recognition before remembering that some taxi drivers call everybody Jack. And an extra dollar for putting up with the shih tzu puppy.
“Heel,” said Jack.
Dotting the ashram’s lush but neat lawn — sheep may safely graze, but they crop close — Jack saw huge painted plaster statues of Siva, Moses, Jesus, Martin Luther King, Jr., and others.
“Hedge your bets,” muttered Jack as he broke the electronic beam and strode through the opening gate.
“Welcome to Low Tor,” said the color-coded receptionist in golden robes and matching hair. From behind her desk smiled a hundred square feet of Kodachrome swami Tzu.
“Grainy but deductible,” said Jack.
There was no missing Tzu, known to retreating penitents as “Gurutzu,” for his image kaleidoscoped from wall to wall to computer to cash register at the reception desk.
Jack shuffled along into a glass-walled, marble-floored pavilion where hundreds of softly-chanting, shining-faced celebrants queued for an audience with Gurutzu. He sat crosslegged on a silk pillow on a Lucite throne. He wore a scarlet robe. A favored few devotees he struck with a long peacock feather as they crawled past.
Tzu said, “You bring the little shih tzu.”
“A small thing, but mine own,” said Jack, drawing himself up to full legatee stature.
The little dog wagged its tail in warm greeting of Tzu, then leaped upon the Lucite throne and established its even warmer territoriality upon the holy man’s left ankle.
“Sweets to the sweet,” said Jack.
“Blessings on you, too,” said Tzu, touching Jack’s shoulder with his peacock feather.
None could tell from Tzu’s face what he thought. In the first place, none could see through that beard, and the glasses Tzu wore were the kind that vary with light. Actually, he was mentally inventorying his Rolls-Royces, so perhaps the electrochromatic granny glasses darkened as his eyes lit up.
A swarthy figure swathed in saffron edged from behind the Lucite throne to stand at Tzu’s right hand.
“This is Salazar,” said Tzu.
“I remember Salazar,” said Jack. “He’s the Bok Tower guy.”
“Was.”
“And now?”
“Now he’s legal, with his green card and all. He does odd jobs for me.”
“I know one,” said Jack to Tzu.
But to his entire estate, which at this moment lay on his right foot in hot pursuit of a flea — an unearned increment of his legacy — Jack could say only, “Now he tells me.”
Dead in the Water
by Nancy Bartholomew
One of the things I hate most about Sunday mornings is opening up the Bait and Tackle Shop for Freddy. On those Sundays when he’s out fishing, hoping to finally get good enough to turn pro, I get stuck with the shop. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’d do most anything for Freddy. I saw him through his divorce, didn’t I?
After I unlock the door, cut off the alarm, and turn on the lights, it’s time to clean out the bait tank. I gotta grab the net and scoop out the floaters who didn’t make it through the night.
There they are, bodies distended, eyes glazed over, swirling around the surface. I pick each slimy minnow up and toss it in the trash. The fish stink. Maybe it’s fish fear. All those minnows, swimming in a tank, waiting to be used as bait, they gotta be scared. I know, you’re saying they can’t think like humans. Maybe not, but fish are mighty smart, else they wouldn’t be so dang hard to catch. Just look at all the lures and plastic worms we sell. Even with the best equipment, you gotta have technique. Fishing’s a skill. So tell me them fish ain’t smart.