Jodi Thomas - Twisted Creek

Maybe-just once-a surprise could turn out to be something grand.

I walked into the bank trying to think positive, but at ten till six, the tired teller didn’t even smile at me. She stared at the check and said she’d have to get it okayed.

I waited, angry at myself. You would have thought all those childhood years of daydreaming of how my mother would come after me in a big car would have taught me something. I had envisioned those dreams down to the gold buttons she’d have on her sleeves and the way the car horn would sound. I even spent days deciding which toy she’d be carrying when she stepped onto Nana’s porch. I guess I thought the details could make the fantasy real, but it only made for cluttered disappointments.

Straightening my smock, I tried to look as if I didn’t feel out of place. Everyone around me had on business dress. A few of the tellers were already closing up. The guard moved to the door and began letting out the last customers. As the bank emptied, his smile widened and his “good evening” grew louder.

I waited. What would I say if the girl came back and told me the check was a fake? Could I be arrested? I should have taken one less art class in college and at least one law class. What I was doing was probably called…passing a hot check. Or maybe aiding the criminal who wrote the thing. I could almost see myself being handcuffed and led away while Nana waited at home with the pork and beans.

I heard the clank on the front lock. They’d locked me in. It was too late to run.

“Miss,” the teller snapped. “Miss?”

“Yes.” I gulped down panic.

“It appears this check is fine. Would you like me to deposit it into your account?”

I nodded.

She handed me a pen. I signed, turned, and prepared to make my break.

The guard unlocked the door and held it for me. “Evening,” he said as I passed.

“No,” I corrected. “ Good evening.” I would have tipped him if I’d had any change. I ran for the van and drove home feeling like I’d just finished a bit part in a movie, and this was all make-believe.

Only I had the receipt in my hand. Someone I didn’t know had just given me money. No, not just money, but five thousand dollars. I almost wished I’d asked for it in ones.

I didn’t turn loose of the bank slip until I was back in the kitchen. I moved the plastic flowers and laid it between us as I sat down.

Winking, I giggled. “I always did love dear Uncle Jefferson.”

“It’s real?” Nana whispered as if saying it too loud would make the possibility disappear.

“It’s real,” I answered. Part of me knew it was too good to be true, but I needed hope desperately.

Nana shook her head. “Money don’t just fall out of the sky. There must be a catch.”

Much as I hated to, I agreed with her. No one had ever given us anything. Somewhere, if we took this money, there would be the payback. I reread the lawyer’s letter while I ate. It looked cut-and-dry. A man named Jefferson Platt, who the lawyer thought was my uncle, had left me his property on Twisted Creek. Nowhere was there a small clause that said “This offer is only good for…”

Nana lifted the deposit slip. “What should we do, Allie?”

I thought of all the options. Ignore the letter. Stay here and look for another job. We could pack and try Kansas City again; I’d found a good job there last winter working in a shoe store. Or…

There was that corner again waiting just beyond my view. I knew what I had here. Minimum wage with winter coming on. A van in need of tires. Nothing left to sell for extra money. “We go to Texas.” I tried to sound positive one more time.

Nana grinned, turning her face into a river of wrinkles. “It’ll be good to be back home. I haven’t seen Texas since the summer I turned sixteen.”

I couldn’t resist smiling back. I’m not sure how she always managed to do it, but my nana could look on the bright side of a tornado. She had that sparkle in her eyes sometimes that seemed to say this life she lived and worked in was simply a stage; her real world, where her heart lay, was somewhere else. Good times or bad, both were simply acts in the same play to her.

I wanted to go to Texas to see if this inheritance was real, but I already knew deep down that it couldn’t be.

So, why go?

I straightened, a weary soldier answering bugle call. Because there are times in your life when any somewhere looks better than where you are, and this somewhere made my grandmother smile.

That night, while Nana watched Survivor , I paid off every bill I owed. Almost half the money was gone by the time I finished, but I would be leaving Memphis with my head up. I wrote the landlord a note and told him to keep the hundred-dollar deposit since I wasn’t able to give him any notice. He’d been kind, letting me pay a few weeks late once when Nana got sick and my entire check went for a doctor’s visit.

An hour later, from my bed on the couch, I listened to Nana’s snoring and tried not to get my hopes up. I knew it made no sense that some stranger would leave me something. There had to be a catch…a trapdoor I’d fall into any minute. I got up and called the bank, punched in my checking account number and password.

The money was there.

I tried to go back to sleep. What if the five thousand was all there was? What if the property was worthless and I made a twelve-hour drive to find out I had nothing waiting?

Moonlight from a rip in the curtain shone across the living area and onto the kitchen counter. A roach crawled along the beam of light, searching for crumbs.

I laughed. What did I have to lose? I was going to Texas. There would be jobs there as well.

By dawn I was packed. We ate breakfast with the deposit slip still between us. I left at eight and drove to the nursery to turn in my uniform. The boss smirked at me, but I only told him to have a nice day and waved. I heard once that you should always be nice to people you dislike; it confuses them.

When I got back to the house, Nana was ready. A box of kitchen staples and her tattered suitcase waited by the door.

My grandmother wasn’t a collector and told me many times that the only thing of value in her life was me. We had no pictures or keepsakes from her past or my childhood. All she ever moved besides essentials were her Bible and her wind chime.

Like hopeful fools we loaded our belongings once more and left the key in the mailbox. The same bored girl at the bank counted out my money. I debated asking for it in ones, but settled on twenties. I left twenty dollars over what I’d used to pay bills so the account could stay open.

The teller blinked a smile as she handed me almost three thousand dollars.

I smiled back and walked out of the bank with more money than I’d ever had in cash.

It felt good.

I felt rich.

And I started to believe that maybe I really did have an Uncle Jefferson.

Twenty-four hours later, after driving all day and spending the night in a Motel 6, I was ready to meet the lawyer and inherit my property. I held my disposable coffee cup in one hand as I drove toward the offices of Garrison D. Walker, Attorney-at-Law.

“Maybe you knew Uncle Jefferson, Nana? Maybe he was a friend of your family from way back?” We’d played this game for a hundred miles with no luck.

Nana shook her head. She’d been a tenant farmer’s wife all her married life, and once my grandfather died she’d lived with me. She could count the number of people she’d called friend on her fingers. And as for Nana having a rich, secret lover hidden away somewhere, that was about as likely as magnolias in Alaska.

“I knew a Jeff once, but he went by the name of Red ’cause he had hair as red as an apple,” she mumbled around a donut. “He took me to a dance that summer I spent time in Texas. My mom sent me to stay with my brother Frank’s wife, who was expecting. She’d taken a summer house for one week when Dallas was burning up ’cause being big pregnant is hot on a body even in the winter. She drove up to Oklahoma and picked me up, then we wandered around the most nothing land until we found the place she’d rented.”