The Thaw

VJ I was wearing my gray wool suit, maroon silk dress shirt, Countess Mara tie, and dress shoes—no boots, no jeans, no flannel, and no gimme hat. Even during the best of times, sitting in a lawyer’s office becomes more and more uncomfortable the longer it lasts without the lawyer present. Dressed in my best suit and trying to look stoic, I double checked that my phone was on mute. I could tell by how he was fidgeting as he sat next to me, former cowboy rodeo star Tommy Sullivan felt the same. Even a nice old guy like Mr. Evers Marshall was intimidating, and his somber law office in McCook, Nebraska, did nothing to put us at ease. Marshall’s secretary had parked us here across from the man’s antique mahogany desk and told us the lawyer would be in presently. Only the ticking of the grandfather clock overcame the silence that sat like a fog around us. Tommy and I had greeted each other neutrally, with a nearly imperceptible head nod and a millisecond meeting of the eyes. This is the way we’d met for the last ten years ever since I’d kissed him one disastrous night in college when my libido overcame my good sense. In that instant, I’d tasted heaven, and the Grand Canyon had sliced open between us. He’d pulled away, and after a few seconds of stunned silence, muttered, “Whoa. What’d you do that for?” In the next second, the rift opened, I fell down into it, and I’d been climbing out of the hole ever since. I’d also held a tight rein on my libido from that moment on, at least around him. Tommy and I had met a half dozen times a year at various ag group get-togethers. Nebraska’s not so big a state that we could avoid running into each other. Not with as much land as we both owned. He’s a rancher. I’m a farmer. We both live in the middle of the state. Agriculturally, we meet on occasion at the corner of beef feed and corn production. Today we sat in Marshall’s office because the lawyer had told us we’d been named in the last will of Doc Wilby, one of the legends around these parts. The lawyer walked in, his three-piece suit ruffling around his skeletal body. I was surprised to see how much weight he’d lost since my folks’ deaths five years earlier. “Vladimir. Thomas.” He greeted us with a nod before sitting down. I winced at hearing my full name since I’d been known for years as “VJ.” I remember being a boy and being teased by other kids as “Vlad the Impaler.” When my grandmother heard they were doing this, she asked my grandfather, “Why they do this laughing? Vladimir, it is a pretty name.” Neither of them ever understood the joke. Blond, blue-eyed Tommy Sullivan, on the other hand, never had this problem when we were in school. I was always grateful that Tommy had never called me Dracula, at least I never heard him if he did. Maybe that, besides his looks, was why I was initially drawn to him. Even if he was one of those kids with glints of mischief in their eyes, he never verbally attacked me. Instead, we were neighbors and friends. “I wanna thank you boys for coming in today.” Lawyer Marshall ran his hand over the meager salt and pepper strands of hair on his head. His wrinkled hand shook, dark veins popping in sharp contrast to his paper-white skin. “I don’t git out into your part of the state too often these days. So thanks for coming all this way.” Mr. Marshall also seemed to be wheezing a little more than I remembered. Five years earlier, I’d been sitting right here when a more vigorous, lively Marshall had told me about my inheritance after my folks’ accident as if I didn’t already know what they left me. I didn’t see the old man unless there was bad news. Hearing the man cough and taking in the look of him, I wondered if he’d be around much longer. As far as I could tell, he was a dying breed, the stoic Nebraskan who weathered the cold and wind in fall, winter, and spring and the searing heat of summer. He was the type who’d graduated from the University of Nebraska and remembered the Cornhuskers football team as bowl winners. I wasn’t surprised Marshall didn’t get into our little town or the bigger nearby town of Kearney often. Not many people from where he lived in McCook did, even less from Lincoln or Omaha. Our tiny community sat in the middle of the state north of Interstate 80. Doc’s land, if I remembered correctly, was located to the north and a little west of town. Marshall shuffled papers. “You remember old Doc Wilby?” Tommy nodded at the same time I did and then he quickly glanced at me from the side of his eyes. The Doc had delivered both of us, fixed our broken bones, tended to our fevers and other illnesses. He’d been a kind, bespectacled man in the Norman Rockwell tradition. Those of us who rely on long distance HMOs or mobile clinics these days would think the Doc was a myth if we hadn’t grown up at the tail end of his practice. “Well, he died last week. Sudden seizure. Seems to be happening all the time these days.” The old lawyer’s gaze settled over my shoulder, and he stared as if seeing a path he was reluctant to take. Neither Tommy nor I commented, but waited, the patience we’d been taught as kids coming in handy. Fortunately, Mr. Marshall snapped out of his reverie before his staring into space got too worrisome. “When I was looking around for his will, Stanley at the bank had a boy bring me his safe deposit box with a note saying Doc’s will was in there. He left some property, including his cabin off County Road 414, to both of you.” My stomach fell just a little, and Tommy sucked in a breath. Since Tommy and I weren’t together in any sense of the word, much less had any real, meaningful contact in the ten years since our freshman year of college, why had the Doc paired us up for this surprise? “Now before you go asking questions, I gotta tell you I don’t have many answers. The will is dated about the time you two were in high school or maybe the first year of college. This part of the will’s never been changed nor updated.” Again, Mr. Marshall stared off, this time looking as if he were hearing a faraway ethereal voice. Then he nodded and sighed, shuffled the papers on his desk, and eyed the two of us. I didn’t know about Tommy, but I was shell-shocked. Prime farmland that bordered my acres was a God-send. I’d be willing to bet Tommy felt the same. What was the catch? There had to be one. “I just love that Internet. Don’t you, boys? I looked up the land’s coordinates on Google Earth, and it shows most of it is creek lowland with a willow copse and not much else. It’d have to be cleared for irrigation purposes or planting, and it’d probably be pretty good for grazing. You’d have to decide. I don’t have the deed yet, so I’m just going by the notations the Doc left, not on the legally documented property lines. But there’s enough information here for you to figure out the general lay of the land.” Mr. Marshall looked down and examined his wrinkled hands. “Here’s the problem. The Doc gave the land to both of you as joint owners.” Tommy and I exchanged a stunned look. “That means you can divide it any way you want or jointly work it. Like I said, it includes the Doc’s vacation cabin and all that’s in it. He was getting a little crusty of late, so the cabin and barn might not be in good shape. You’ll have to find out.” Marshall sighed and reshuffled the papers on the desk, bringing two manila envelopes to the top of the pile on his blotter. “You can just keep the property as joint tenants. But everything might be cleaner from a legal standpoint since one of you is a farmer and the other’s a rancher, for one of you to buy out the other. I’m not saying you have to do that. It’s your call. But if something happened to one of you, well, it’d become a problem for whoever probates your will. “My advice is you go on out there and visit the land. Decide which one of you wants to sell and which one wants to buy. Or how you want to split it up.” The old man ran a hand over his head again. “Then I could help you clean up ownership and your descendants will thank us for our foresight.” Marshall got shakily to his feet. “Now I’m going to leave you boys here to talk about what you want to do while I go visit the gents, maybe take one of those pills the new doc gave me. When I get back, all I need from you two is for you to tell me how you want to proceed. We should be able to clear this up without too much fuss.” Mr. Marshall hobbled to the doorway and left. The door gave a decisive click and rattle as it closed. Silence hung for a moment before I turned to Tommy. “I think we should look at the land.” I stared at my hands a second, then glanced at him. “Hell, yes. I agree.” Tommy didn’t look at me but nodded. “Now’s a good time before late spring gets here,” I added. “Shouldn’t take more than a few days at most.” Tommy nodded again. “Wanna eat lunch after this? We can make plans then.” I watched him for a moment before saying, “Sure.” Silence returned to the room only because our swirling thoughts made no noise. When Marshall returned, we told him we agreed we needed to look over the property. The lawyer picked up the two manila envelopes from his desktop, studied the type-written labels on them, and handed an envelope to each of us. “I’d really appreciate it if you could get back to me in the next couple of weeks. I surely would.” The old man stood and shook our hands. I understood his hurry. He didn’t look like he was going to last much longer among us.