Right on, said Dr. Duk.
(No, dumb Docky Duck. Not right on. Like Kelso says, when you try to sound like something, you don’t sound like nothing.)
Get to the point, Tiger, said her mother dryly. A muted clunk, heavy gold striking gold, and she knew without seeing that her mother pursed one corner of her mouth and stuck her fist into her waist, jangling her bracelets.
Not point, said her father. Points. Okay.
Point one: We have the obligation to act in Allison’s best interests, right? You, Dr. Duk, in her medical interests, we, Katherine and I, in all her other interests, home, family, finances, future, and so forth.
Yes? said Dr. Duk, perking up. He did after all have an ear for such things and knew when something was up. At this moment he was looking at her father and thinking, as Kelso would say: What’s this dude up to, dropping by on his way to a party with all these plans for Allison when he hasn’t showed up twice in the past year? And what are these two all steamed up about with their competing plans, and what’s coming up now, the real plan? What’s this about finances? Have they suddenly gotten rich?
Point number two: As Allison’s parents we are also her guardians, right? I mean especially since Allison is hardly competent to manage her own affairs.
Well—
Would you believe, Doc, that in this state under a new law there is a difference between a person being mentally incompetent and legally incompetent? That even a person committed to a mental institution can inherit property?
Would I believe, you ask. Yes, I think I—
Would you believe this, Doc? — and this is the bottom line, folks — that even in such a case the parents do not automatically qualify as guardians?
Well yes, as a matter of fact—
I mean, what the hell is happening to the American family? Her father’s voice swept around the room like a searchlight. You know what I would do with people like Earl Warren?
You don’t have to. Earl Warren’s dead, said her mother wearily. Why don’t you get to the point, Tiger?
Would you believe, Doc, that in order for us to be Allison’s legal guardians, we have to petition the court and that it is up to the judge, any damn local redneck judge, to decide?
Well—
(What’s up, Doc? Your ears are standing straight up, aren’t they?)
That’s where you come in, Alistair, said her mother crisply, clinking and gathering herself. I’m quite sure you know the new laws better than we do. Namely, that a legal procedure is involved and that your testimony as to Allison’s legal competence will be crucial. I mean, my stars (now her eyes would be going up to the ceiling), you could testify in good conscience to my legal competence.
Of course. Quite. Dr. Duk’s voice was going down. No doubt he was rolling his unlit Marlboro cigarette. The little Dead Sea scroll was still undecipherable, but there was something here!
The only thing I don’t quite see, can’t find the handle of, said Dr. Duk carefully, is why all of a sudden the issue becomes important at this point in time.
(This point in time. Oh, Docky, now we’re Nixon. The question is, who are you, Docky, and what are you doing here at this point in time?)
She stopped listening and let her weight slump her hard against the trunk. She closed her eyes and ears to the words. The voices rose and fell, mounted against each other, glanced off, went away, came back, joined. It was like being a child and listening from the top of the stairs. Voices can be understood without words. Her father’s voice now had the same ragging importunate tone she heard from the landing when he was winning at poker. Dr. Duk’s was tentative, premonitory — like a prospector whose Geiger counter begins to click: hold on, what’s this? what have we here? Her mother’s voice was foot-wagging, eyes going around, exclamatory, impatient: oh, for heaven’s sake, let’s get this over with!
She started listening again when after a silence her father’s voice changed, fell into a quiet storytelling cadence. Such-and-such happened. So-and-so did it. Everyone listens when someone tells the news of a happening. Something had happened, and he was telling it as much to himself as to them, as if only in the telling, the saying out loud, could he believe it.
She pricked up her ears. They were talking about her.
— and would you believe, Doc, that the old lady, Aunt Sally, was not even her aunt? She was her real aunt’s friend, Aunt Grace. The two of them had lived together for thirty years, fought like cats and dogs most of the time. They used to come over every Sunday for dinner, so Allie naturally called Miss Sally Aunt Sally. Sure, we knew Miss Sally was fond of Allie ever since Allie was a little girl — for one thing Allie was the only one who would listen to her because the old lady could talk the ears off a jackass and frankly I couldn’t stand it more than a few minutes—
(That was because I thought I was supposed to and did not know how not to listen or what would happen to a person if one got up and went away.)
— and it was a good two weeks after she died that Ludean, the old nigger maid the two of them had had for twenty years, brought it over to me, this old metal Crailo candy box with a piece of ruled paper inside and about three lines in Miss Sally’s handwriting — the paper wrinkled from having been balled up once just before being thrown away, because Ludean was cleaning up Miss Sally’s room and you know how niggers like those old candy boxes to keep things in—
(Now how in the world would Docky know anything about niggers and Crailo candy boxes?)
— I still don’t know how Ludean had sense enough to save it but there it was, carefully uncrumpled and smoothed out, saying: Being of sound mind I hereby leave all my worldly goods to my dear little friend, Allison Hunnicutt Huger. What had happened of course was that she and Grace had had a fight and she had changed her will, so Grace should have gotten it but we’ll take care of Grace — so there it is, a perfectly good holographic will dated last month and I’m mainly thinking that it’s funny because it will screw up her lawyer who is sitting there with probably six previous wills in his safe — you know what I would do with lawyers, don’t you?
Yes, we know, Tiger, said her mother. We have to leave in ten minutes.
So I’m thinking mainly it’s funny and certainly no big deal since her worldly goods consist of only two items she was always joking about: her grandfather’s poor little old dirt farm on the side of a mountain which she used to say was so steep the mule had to grow longer legs on one side to plow it, and the other, a sandspit of an island off Georgia which had two pine trees and whose only value was the treasure Captain Kidd was supposed to have buried and nobody had ever found.
(Yes, and that’s one reason I’d listen to her — I’d see myself on the island with a map, climbing up one tree and sighting through the other. It wasn’t even the treasure I liked but the island and the idea of something being hidden there and finding it through a geometry of pine trees.)
So all this time she had been paying her taxes and talking about her dirt farm and her island and nobody had been listening but Allie. How about that?
Get to the point, Walter. I’m leaving, said her mother.
Okay. The point is, to make a long story short, that her poor little old dirt farm is eight hundred acres next to the Linwood golf course and her sandpit of an island is over two thousand acres, more of a wilderness than Cumberland which you’ve heard of, and that the Arabs have already offered two mill one for it. That’s getting to the point, isn’t it.
Two mill one? said Dr. Duk.
Two million one hundred thousand dollars, Doctor.
(How about that, Doc?)
Silence. Sounds only of fingers drumming on wood — Dr. Duk’s on his desk? — and bird scratching feed — painted bunting? Docky, you’ve plumb forgot the birds, haven’t you?