The Twelfth Child Read online

  “With my Lannigan heritage and given the fact that Margaret Louise, my Grandmother was the first child of William Lannigan, I always considered the possibility that Will would call upon me to take over the farm. When I heard the place had been sold, I knew I should get in touch.”

  Will nodded. “He’s right about his grandma. Margaret Louise was Papa’s first born. Eighteen-seventy-seven. Her name is in the Family Bible.”

  I didn’t much care if the woman’s history was carved into the side of ThunderhillMountain; Elliott Emerson’s pretentious mannerisms had already convinced me that I had no desire to be related. “Margaret Louise Lannigan?” I repeated, “That name still doesn’t ring a bell.” Even then it struck me how Elliott was going to great lengths to establish the fact that he was blood kin to Papa and the Lannigan family.

  “My grandmother, Margaret Louise, married Fred Potter,” Elliott said. “He was the youngest son of the Piney Creek Potters. My mother, Madeline, she was their only daughter, married Walter Emerson. Madeline and Walter Emerson were my parents.”

  “Well you certainly have a sizeable amount of history,” I said. “It must be hard to keep track of all those Lannigans, Potters and Emersons.”

  “Not at all,” he answered. “We Lannigan men take considerable pride in our heritage, don’t we, Will?” He looked over at my brother and winked like there was some secret to which only they were privy.

  At that point I’d had about enough of the pompous Elliott Emerson, so I excused myself and trotted off on the pretext of lending a hand with dinner. Becky was hiding out in the kitchen and from the look on her face I knew she’d already had quite a few tipples of sherry. “Isn’t that man awful?” she said, then poured herself another sherry and set out a glass for me.

  “Arrogant, for certain,” I answered.

  “A month now, he’s been hanging around here; keeps following Will room to room, talking about how he’s always loved farming—claims it broke his heart when we sold the farm.” Becky took another gulp of sherry which, no doubt, was how she’d found courage to speak up as she was. “Just look at that man’s hands, why he’s never done a lick of work in his life. Certainly not farm work.”

  “Could be he’s lonely for some kinfolk,” I said. True, I’d already developed a dislike for Elliott Emerson, but I felt I ought to make an effort for Will’s sake.

  “Lonely?” Becky sneered, “Hah! More likely he’s looking to get something out of that farm. Mark my words, he’s a man who’d chew a person’s skin off then start on the bones—a scavenger, worse than a river rat!” She took a real big swig of the sherry then said, “I worry about your brother, Abigail. He’s too trusting.” She heaved a deep down sigh, like the weight of the world was square on her shoulders, then she switched over to her secret-telling voice. “If something happens to me,” she whispered, “you keep an eye out for him.” Becky wasn’t one for crepe-hanging conversation, so I probably should have realized something was wrong, but I didn’t. Many a time I’ve thought back to that day and wished I’d asked what she meant by such a thing.

  All through dinner Elliott went on about how he was so successful and had all these bigwig contacts. When I’d had my fill of it, I asked, “And, just exactly who do you work for?” You’d guess a chicken bone was stuck in his throat the way his face turned bright red, but I knew the question had flustered him. Maybe I should have left it at that, but I didn’t—I stared him right in the eye, and waited for an answer.

  “Well actually, I’m self-employed. I do consulting,” Elliott finally said.

  That answer didn’t surprise me one bit. Consulting is what most people claim to do when they don’t really have a job. Elliott struck me as the type of person who was looking to avoid work rather than find it. He was a sly one all right. Thing is, you don’t get to be my age without having a few tricks up your own sleeve. While we were having the butterscotch pudding I brought up the subject of Margaret Louise. “I trust your grandma taught you to be a good and faithful Baptist, like Papa taught us.”

  “Yes, indeed.” Elliott answered. “And I am a devout Baptist to this day.”

  Will’s eyes opened real wide and Becky sniggered quietly.

  “That’s nice to know,” I said and took another spoonful of pudding. The rat was in the trap as far as I was concerned. Everybody knew Papa was a staunch Methodist and the only thing he hated more than vagrant Negroes was Baptists. Papa always claimed that the Baptists were a bunch of rabble-rousing hillbillies using the house of God to cover up their sins. Papa had more than a few sins of his own, but in his mind being a God-fearing Methodist equalized any transgressions.

  After dinner, I helped Becky do the dishes then took my leave. On the drive home I turned the car radio to the Revival station and added my voice to those of the Gospel Singers. Each time they’d bellow about the Lord God lifting them across the river of sin, I jumped in with a chorus of Amens. I felt right good about what I’d done.

  Dear sweet Becky died three months later. Looking back, I’m certain she knew about the cancer that day in her kitchen. I suppose it was pretty far gone by then and she probably thought telling me wouldn’t have made any difference. If I’d known, I’m sure I could have done something—but, maybe not.

  Will fell apart after that. He’d sit in the chair and stare at the television, not even taking notice of whether it was turned on or not. When I came over that Saturday, two weeks after the funeral, he was sitting there watching a Bugs Bunny cartoon. I snapped the TV off and said, “When’s the last time you took a bath?” You could actually smell him as soon as you came through the front door.

  “I forget,” Will answered.

  “Did you also forget to change your underwear? Eat dinner?” I knew I was being a bit harsh, but when someone’s grieving the way he was, you have to do something to help them snap out of it. When nothing seemed to work, I told him; “Will, you’re gonna have to come to Middleboro and stay with me.”

  He looked up and his eyes were so sad they about broke my heart. “Okay,” he said. And that was how it happened. We loaded his clothes into my car and drove back to Middleboro. He followed me out the door of that house and never looked back again.

  A girl named Rosalina once told me that her grandmother had the ability to put a hex on people—supposedly the woman caused a wart the size of an egg to swell up on her sister-in-law’s nose and Rosalina could recount plenty of other instances as well. A man who cheated the grandmother got hit by a garbage truck; a neighbor kicked a dog and got his cellar flooded; a heavy-handed butcher had thirty-six pounds of pork sausage spoil overnight—not one of those incidents had a logical explanation, other than the hex. I’ve often thought if I had such an ability Elliott Emerson would have started looking like Pinocchio as he sat there telling all those lies to Detective Nichols.

  After he had blurted out the worst of his accusations, Elliott told the detective, “This girl’s unscrupulous; she has no job. Swindling old people out of their life’s savings, that’s what she does for a living!”

  “Destiny Fairchild?”

  “Yes! Destiny Fairchild!”

  “On what is this allegation based?”

  “She’s stolen my aunt’s money!”

  “Allegedly,” the detective said, “allegedly stolen. Do you know exactly how much money is missing?”

  “It wasn’t just money!”

  “Well what? Stocks? Jewelry? Bank Accounts?”

  “It’s difficult to pinpoint all the things, but this list…”

  Hearing such talk made me wonder what the world had come to. Is money the measure of things? What about a good heart? Destiny Fairchild was the sweetest soul I’d ever known. She didn’t ask for anything and she didn’t need much to be happy. One of those clear blue sky days would come along—the kind with puffy white clouds billowed out like sheets on a clothesline—and that was enough to make Destiny start singing like her heart was full up with gladness. The only thing that girl wanted was for folks t
o love her. But Elliott, now he was a person itching to grab up every dollar he could lay his hands on.

  They say people can die of a broken heart and I for one believe it. Oh, the doctors give you a thousand other reasons, heart failure, kidney failure, liver failure—but the truth of the matter is sometimes people reach a point where they just quit living. That’s what happened to Will. Once Becky was gone, he pretty much lost his heart for living. I’d worry and fuss over him, fold an extra blanket over his feet on cool evenings, check that he was taking his medication, cook up special foods—things he’d craved all his life such as cornbread or stewed butter beans—but nothing seemed to help. When I set that hot cornbread on the table, he’d smile the way he used to, but before I could fetch us a cup of coffee he’d be poking at the edges and pushing a bunch of crumbs off to the side of his plate. “I thought cornbread was something you liked,” I’d comment; but he’d look at me and shrug as if what he liked or disliked was something he was too tired to remember.

  “I suppose I’m not all that hungry,” he’d finally say, and then an hour or so later he’d start telling me about how Becky always made her cornbread with molasses. “Yes indeed,” he’d lick his lips, “cornbread with molasses, that’s really good.”

  I’d make up another batch and add molasses even though it wasn’t part of the recipe. Soon as the cornbread was out of the oven he’d break off a piece but before he’d swallowed that first bite, I’d see him shaking his head like a man who’d run out of hope. “I reckon that wasn’t it,” he’d say and turn back inside himself.

  The problem was that he’d been married to Becky for over fifty years and couldn’t remember how to live without her. It might have been different if they’d had children – but then everything would have been different if they’d had children.

  Elliott Emerson came to visit Will every few weeks. “How are you feeling?” Elliott would ask. “Anything you want me to take care of for you? Insurance, maybe? Banking? Investment business?” Will would just shake his head from side to side and stick to watching some old TV rerun.

  It was enough to make you cry because my brother had always been a smart man. The year we turned seventeen he went off to William and Mary College. I wish you could be here, Abigail, he’d written in his first letter. This school has a million books and a library bigger than the LynchburgCity Hall; he enclosed a picture of himself standing in front of the big stone building. For two years he studied at William and Mary but the third year Papa had his stroke and Will had to go back home to take over the farm, which wasn’t easy because by then Papa was more cantankerous than ever. Even though he was flat on his back, things still had to be done Papa’s way. After Papa died, Will ran the farm the way it should have been run in the first place; he put in fields of winter wheat and rotated the crops ‘till he got four, maybe five harvest seasons. Believe me; my brother deserved every nickel that came his way when that farm was finally sold. I still remember the day Will signed those papers; it was five o’clock in the afternoon when he telephoned and he sounded like he’d been nipping at the whiskey.

  “Abigail Anne, you’re not gonna believe what I got for the farm,” he said.

  I told him that if it was me, I wouldn’t give fifty cents for the entire place.

  “Times have changed,” he said. “These folks are investing in the land and it’s not because of farming. They’re gonna build houses— hundreds of nice little three-bedroom houses right here on the Lannigan farm.”

  “Hundreds?” The way I remembered it, there wasn’t more than one-hundred and twenty houses in the entire valley.

  “Yes, indeed; two hundred and forty to be exact. They’ll divide the bottomland into individual lots and put in cement streets that run clear out to Ridge Road.” Will hesitated for a second, then said, “Becky and I have already discussed this and, Abigail Anne, we both feel you’re entitled to half of that money; you’re as much a Lannigan as I am and that land was Lannigan land.”

  “Hogwash!” was what I answered. “You worked that farm, Will. Papa left it to you and justifiably so. A person doesn’t get born into owning something. You work for it, long hard hours of work, that’s how you get to own it.”

  Well, our conversation went back and forth for heaven-knows-how-long, but in the end I flat out told Will that I didn’t need the money and I wasn’t taking any. At any rate, it was the end of the discussion. I never did ask how much Will got for the farm or what he did with the money.

  Will died fourteen months after he came to live with me. As much as I tried, I just couldn’t help him get past loosing Becky. The doctors claimed it was the emphysema; but, I still believe it was a broken heart.

  Elliott was, of course, first in line at the funeral parlor. He had a black band around his arm and a hang-dog look on his face. Maybe nobody else knew the truth, but I sure did; that big phony didn’t care about Will anymore than I did Adolph Hitler. But, there he was, trying his best to look grief-stricken. The preacher had barely finished the ‘from ashes we came and to ashes we shall return’ part of his sermon when Elliott whispered to me, “Do you have a date set for the reading of the will?”

  If I was a few years younger I might have lambasted him square in the nose, but in deference to my brother, I held my temper and in a very ladylike manner whispered back, “Go to Hell!”

  Detective Nichols opened his desk drawer and removed a yellow pad. “Okay,” he said, “I’ll need your name, address and phone number.”

  “Elliott Emerson. Fourteen-twelve Pine Street. Hazleton, Virginia.”

  “Hazleton? Way down in Hazleton? What are you doing in Middleboro?”

  Elliott fidgeted a bit, like people are prone to do when they’re telling a big fat whopper, “Well,” he said, “this is where the crime was committed.”

  “Hmm…” Detective Nichols looked eyeball to eyeball at Elliott and leaned forward; I could tell he’d started to catch the stink of a skunk. “Interesting,” he said. “Most folks would just go to their local police station—how’d you know a complaint had to be filed in the township where the crime occurred?”

  Elliott coughed several times and cleared his throat as if a pork chop was stuck in his windpipe. “I suppose,” he finally mumbled, “I read up on this sort of stuff.”

  “Hmm…” The detective made a check mark in the margin of his notepad. “Now, let’s go through this again. Is it your allegation that this neighbor, Destiny Fairchild, has stolen your aunt’s money along with other personal property—right?”

  “It’s not an allegation, it’s a fact!”

  “That’s yet to be determined. I’ll need more information. What’s her address?”

  “My aunt?”

  “The neighbor, Destiny Fairchild.”

  “I’m pretty sure she’s moved herself into my aunt’s house, even though she has her own place right across the street. My aunt’s house is number fourteen, hers is seventeen. Seventeen Oakwood Drive, that’s it.”

  “Do you know her social security number?”

  “Of course not,” Elliott replied. “I hardly know the woman. She’s certainly not the type person I would associate with!”

  “Why?” the detective asked, “Has she been in trouble before?”

  Elliott shrugged. “That’s something I can’t say with absolute certainty, but given her larcenous nature, I wouldn’t be one bit surprised.”

  “I take it she’s still at this address. Do you know how long she’s resided there?”

  “Not long.”

  “Less than a year?”

  “Longer.”

  “Two years? Three?”

  “Four or five, maybe six. But, as soon as she moved in, she started grubbing money from dear sweet Aunt Abigail.”

  “How exactly did she do that?”

  Elliott started telling how Destiny would pop in most every day, but he made it sound as if she was up to no good; not once did he mention how she came there to help with my housework or take me to the grocery
store or the doctor. “She started helping herself to my aunt’s assets little by little,” he said, “then, before anybody realizes what’s happened, she’s got her name on the checking account and she’s driving around town in Aunt Abigail’s car. Now, virtually all the valuables are missing from the house!”

  Detective Nichols listened to the story Elliott was concocting. Every so often he’d jot another note on that yellow pad, as if he had heard some significant fact, but I could tell by the way his eyes were narrowed, the detective had his doubts about the truth of it all. I suppose that’s when I took such a liking to Tom Nichols. He had a way about him that made me think; now, here’s a man who can sort out truth from falsehood.

  “Do you know where Destiny Fairchild came from? The state? City?”

  “I couldn’t even venture a guess,” Elliott answered. “For all anybody knows, she’s an escaped convict on the run!”

  I noticed how Detective Nichols had started penciling in a bunch of interlocked boxes along the margin of the yellow pad. It seemed the more Elliott talked, the less the detective was inclined to write down.

  “Can you give me a physical description of the woman? Height? Weight? The color of her hair? Eyes?”

  One week after Will’s funeral, Elliott telephoned me. “Being the only other Lannigan heir,” he said, “I was wondering when there is going to be a reading of my great uncle’s will.”

  Of course, I was missing Will something fierce and feeling pretty blue to begin with, but the sound of that man’s voice edged me into a downright foul mood. “Stop pestering me,” I told him.

  “Well, Aunt Abigail, there’s a sizeable estate involved here, and my grandmother told me that Lannigan property is always passed along to the eldest male. As you know, I’m the one and only remaining male in the Lannigan family.”

  “You’re no Lannigan! Shit, you’re a Baptist! Papa would roll over in his grave if Will ever left one nickel of his money to a Baptist!”