You Can’t Take It with You! By W.H. Forshee

Patty P., was heading home after shucking corn when she heard hammering coming from the tobacco barn. She peered through the wide slats in time to see her dad grab a handful of cash from an army duffle bag and toss it into a square pine box, over and over. She stepped back confused. They were poor, and had always been poor.

Stoop shouldered and thin her dad sat to rest, pulling his handkerchief out of his overalls to wipe his brow, his back to Patty P. After a few moments, he picked up another piece of square wood, trimmed and shaved it till he could stuff it, tight inside, on top of the money.

When he started putting his tools away, Patty P., trembling, hurried through the cornfield, leaves taunting, brushing her skin, to the cabin.  How was there no mention of money in her 16 years. 

She put the basket on the kitchen floor, added kindling to the wood burning stove, adjusted the damper and sat their super to warm.

Through the window, she watched her dad walk out of the barn, stop, cough and retch. He was dying. He’d given up. He wouldn’t let her help. She didn’t want to. She didn’t care. He taught her, like her mother, he said, the whore who ran off.     

He stumbled through the door, weak, and fell into the chair, chest rising and falling, uneven and loud, shoulders pinched up like clothes hangers rising from his dirty shirt.

She placed a plate of food with a glass of water in front of him. As darkness fell, she lit the oil lamp and watched the shadows grow, his pork chops a gift from Old Mr. Lovett, lay uneaten on his plate.   

“Listen, girl. Sit down.” She obeyed, but looked away, cause looking him in the eyes would have invited a beating. Maybe he would tell her about the money now.

“When I die, I want you to go to Lovett’s Cafe. Tell him I’m gone …” he sucked in air and closed his eyes, “he’ll take care of everything. You know he’s the pastor too. I got a spot behind the house picked out, and he knows what to do. I know I’m adding to your chores, but you gotta expect them. It’s necessary, it’s expected.” Spit flew from his mouth and hit her cheek, his breath rotten and sweat at the same time. She didn’t move.  

“Okay. I will,” her voice was flat. He deserved no more.

He left, holding the walls, and she heard him flop into his recliner.         

“Bring the damn lamp in here.”

She put the lamp on the table next to the recliner, and retreated back to the kitchen, ate her pork chop and his on the back stoop, the crickets, loud and lonesome, retelling their version of what had happened. 

When Patty P. tiptoed downstairs from the loft in the morning, it was still dark but the moon highlighted a body on the floor, prone. A tuft of black hair melted to his forehead, lips parted, eyes half open.

“Dad” he didn’t answer. He was gone.

She dressed, but didn’t hurry, there was no need, and walked past the cornfield, tobacco barn, open fields and lonely shacks up to the main road. Mr. Lovett’s cafe on Main Street wasn’t open. She sat on the sidewalk, leaning against the white brick. Soon Mr. Lovett came round the corner, pulling his keys out, and stopped short of running into her. He was wearing a white straw hat.

“Oh my, I almost stepped on ya, but I know why you’re here. He must have passed. Listen, girl, we’ll take care of it. Come on in.” He began unlocking the door, then, as if realizing his manners, he turned and put his hand on her arm, “Are you okay? It’s a hard thing losing a dad. Your only relative.”

She looked away, her long blonde hair hiding her face. She wanted to say. he’d been a drunken menace all her life and she was glad he was gone, but that wouldn’t sit kindly with a preacher.

“I’m fine.”

“Come on in. You wait here. I’ll get my boys and we’ll drive back.”

The two boys drove a dusty burgundy, battered Dodge truck. Twins, except one, had short red hair, the other longer. They wore overalls, sleeveless t-shirts, baseball caps, and smelled of hog pee. Patty P. rode in the cab with Mr. Lovett. The boys jumped in the cargo bed.

Inside the cabin, Mr. Lovette bent on one knee, checked her dad’s pulse, stood, removed his white hat, and said a prayer. The boys took off their caps and bowed. Patty P. didn’t need to pray.

“Why don’t you try to clean your Daddy.” Mr. Lovett pointed to the specks of wood shavings clinging to the hairs on his arms. Lovett held his hat with one hand and stroked her back with the other, making circles edging toward her buttocks. Patty P. sidestepped and came around with her elbow against Mr. Lovett’s arm. Her eyebrows furrowed as she turned and walked to the kitchen. Mr. Lovett’s boys looked at him, confused.

“It’s okay.”…he patted the air with one hand, “She’s upset.”

She heard the remark as she pushed open the kitchen door. Her face reddened, and her throat churned up something bitter. She spat in the sink and grabbed a stiffened dirty dishrag and wet it, squeezing as hard as both hands would allow, and walked back to the door in time to hear one boy ask.

“Why’d she do that?” Tom took off his baseball cap, wiping the sweat off with his handkerchief.

“None ya business. Just gotta learn some manners, all. She was stuck out in this god forsaken shack too long.”  She heard Lovett smack his hat against the side of his leg.

“Is it true what I heard about her daddy stealing money?” John, the long-haired boy spoke, his voice spiking with curiosity.

“Don’t seem like it. It’s been 20 years. Ain’t spent no kind of money on anything. Living off his disability. Renting this squalor from me, no lights, or heat and an outhouse, but still……. a man from the army came poking around a few months after he got out of the army. Can you imagine, our no nothing back water little town, asking questions like it was real? Said somebody up and took a pile of money from a town called Tulle, Tuwa, something like that meant to go to the French Resistance.”

“It seems to me like he was hiding …. and making his daughter hide, too.” Tom said.

“That’s for sure.” Mr. Lovett inhaled. “Eat up with shame, bitterness. Said he couldn’t get over what he’d seen and done. I was the only person he talked to. Wife left a long time ago. His daughter seems nice, though. Little high strung like any teenager.”

Tom chuckled. “Bet you’ll snap that right outta her…won’t ya, dad?”

“Now mind yourself. Go on and look around and see if there’s any money stashed anywhere.”

Patty P. sighed knowing what she had to do, but she couldn’t let on. 

She pushed the swinging door and knelt over her father’s body, her face blank, arms trembling, avoiding his eyes and half-afraid the wet rag would revive him. She wiped both forearms and some shavings from his coarse beard.    

Bending and stretching, the fabric of her loose fitting dress pulled into folds. Mr. Lovett moved closer and she heard his breathing deepen. Then the kitchen door swung open, and both boys entered.

“Go on boys and get the pine box. He said it’d be in the Tobacco Barn.”

Patty P. stood and knocked into Mr. Lovett.

“Now, now. Calm down. It’s ok.” He tried to take her elbow, but she pulled away and walked to the far side of the room.

Mr. Lovett looped his thumbs in his suspenders and rocked back on his heels, his short fat face frowning, eyes piercing.    

“Now you hear me, girl.” It wasn’t his preacher’s voice. It was her daddy’s voice, deep and threatening. “Your daddy said to give you a home and put you to work and that’s what I’m gonna do out of the goodness of my heart. You hear me? Now get yourself straight.”

She’d gone too far. “Yes sir. I’m grateful.” She clasped her hands together in front, head down, submissive like.

They put old Mr. P. in the box, dug a hole, and laid the box inside. Patty P. watched. No headstone or marker.

Mr. Lovett took off his hat and prayed. “Dear Lord, Grant this poor man his due, give him peace. Amen.” He turned to Patty P.

“Get your stuff. We’ll give ya a few minutes while we put the tools away. Meet ya at the truck.”

“Might I stay one more night?” Her voice cracked, “I got to straighten up and…. I really appreciate all y’all done.” She looked at the grave, then back at Mr. Lovett. “I promise I’ll be along tomorrow. You won’t even have to come back.”

“Well, the place could use some straightening. So you stay. Pack up your daddy’s things. You got boxes?”

“Yes sir, yes sir. In the barn. We use m for vegetables.”

“Good.”

They left.

Patty P. waited till it was black outside, then took a shovel, crowbar, laundry basket, and lantern and walked to the grave through the pine trees, their trunks lightened by a full moon. A gauntlet of eerie beings, unearthly and haunting. She trembled at what she was about to do.

The spongy, black earth was fresh and broke easily. She’d worked a garden for years but never this deep or this long, shoveling till the whole casket appeared. Then took her crowbar and peeled off the lid, avoiding his face. She grabbed stiff legs and pulled, but the dirt was too high. She didn’t have the strength to pull his dead weight out. His legs against the upturned soil, Levi pants sinking exposing white sticks for legs and untied boots.

Squatting, her chest heaving, his body still covered half the box. She opted for a piecemeal approach, working half the box at a time.

Using her crowbar, she pried several boards off the false bottom, wood splintering, cords of blood on her hands but she didn’t slow until all the bundles of cash were in her laundry basket. Having cleared the front, she pulled his body back over the splintered wood and cleared out the back.

Finished, she shoved the laundry basket out and rolled onto the soft earth, cleansing and cool on her cheek. When her strength returned, she threw the lid back on the coffin and shoveled dirt till it was done. She hung the tools in the barn and with her basket full and sunlight splitting the pines, she hurried into the house and washed at the sink, the mint of lye soap refreshing in the rising summer heat.

She dressed in her mother’s short sleeve blue dress and yellow straw hat, treasures she’d saved from the bonfire of her mother’s belongings.

As she shut the cabin door, she looked back and relief swept over her even as the humidity of the day began to close in. Sweat ran down her sides as she passed dull, dust hewn rows of cornfields and headed to the Greyhound bus stop in front of the Lunch Box Convenience Store, a pale orange Samsonite swinging by her side.

She was just in time to see the red and white bulge of a bus roar to a stop, squealing brakes and drooling dust. Patty P. hurried to get her ticket and then gingerly climbed into the beast, the inside dim with air smelling of old pillows. She ignored faces and took the first open double seat, heart roaring, clinging to her suitcase.

The windows were tinted and dusty, but she couldn’t mistake the dodge pickup roaring to a clunky stop at the gas pumps. Mr. Lovett stepped out, pulling his hat off, wiping sweat, yelling at the gas attendant.

He’s looking for me! She dipped her head to the side so her hat blocked the view from the window.

The bus rolled off, and as it did, something lifted off Patty P. She could breathe normally. The barren fields let out trapped heat in visible waves, and a familiar corn field shimmered a stately green, washed clean and healthy by a blue sky.

She smiled. She’d done what she had to. It’d been a chore, a necessity, not unexpected, just like he said.

W.H. Forshee

Image: Interior of a wooden coffin shaped box from Pixabay.com