Avram Davidson - The Avram Davidson Treasury - a tribute collection

— came a knocking at the door—

“Come in! ”

No one could have looked less like a raven than the decent-looking, tired-looking woman who entered, a woman of about the same age as Theo. Woman who at once saw the photographs, at once recognized them. Was at once impressed. Then, “Am I talking to Mr. De Brooks?”

“You certainly are.” Well…he certainly was. Wasn’t she? The woman (really, he thought of her as “the lady”) looked at him carefully. Her face, somewhat faded, but fairly pleasant, asked a very over-familiar question. “Shirt-tail cousins,” said Theo. Didn’t feel like rest of the routine at all, at all. “What can I do for you, Mrs. — ?” (Had to be Mrs ., she wore a wedding ring and was not of the generation to be a Ms. )

“Thatcher. Ella Thatcher. Widow of Bob — Robert Thatcher — I married my cousin, didn’t even get to change my last name.” (How brief, the dry, wry smile, anticipating the oh God how foreseeable remark which she must have heard a hundred thousand times: and weary of it as he of the one which he—). They shook hands. “Mr. De Brooks, have you ever heard of… Thatcher’s Storage?” Her manner was a bit embarrassed, a bit defiant, a bit irresolute, and…though rather less…a bit hopeful.

TDD was not very used to women (and certainly not respectable women) calling on him late at night; he was just a bit embarrassed, certainly more than a bit puzzled; politeness won, however. “That-cher’s… Storage…? Yes! Browning Street! Isn’t that—”

Ella Thatcher laughed briefly. “You’ve seen that old sign, the one painted on the side of the old Odeon Building by the railroad tracks. Why, that advertisement, it’s been there since the Year of One! My goodness! We moved, the firm moved, as a matter of fact, in 1930. To 635 Oldham.” She seemed rather pleased: however obsolete the sign, it had at least—

“Well, Mrs. Thatcher. I’ll be glad to sell you some insurance, or—” He would be glad. He would be surprised, too.

Ella Thatcher again gave her short laugh. “We’re going out of business. Did you ever hear of Mullet River, Florida? Just a wide place in the road, the town, can’t even call it a town. I own a couple of little bungalows there, and that’s where I’m going, just as soon as I wind things up here. Got my social security, going to catch and sell bait. Bob taught me how to load a hook and hold a net when we were just kids. I have a book about a hundred ways to cook fish…”

“Sounds great.” It did .

“Yes? Do you think so? Well, I think so, too. The place is just too far from the nearest fire hydrant, I couldn’t get insurance…come on down, then, I’ll rent you the bungalow out behind for almost nothing, just for the company. It’s on, oh, a sort of canal. Quiet.”

Quietly, “‘Why are you going out of business, Mrs. Thatcher?”

Mrs. Thatcher sighed. “Well, people just don’t store things the way they used to. And…seems like the government, and the Unions, they are just making it harder and harder for a body to stay in business. Taxes, my God, the taxes! And…then…the place’s got about seventeen mortgages on it, and my brother-in-law, he owns sixteen of them. You know how long we’ve been in business, Mr. De Brooks? No… I suppose not… I sort of thought, you being a real old family, you might have heard something. Well, the fact is, we don’t know how long we’ve been in business! A lot of those old records, they were burned up, about the time of the Civil War. That’s when the last Mr. Simkins, he married…his daughter married…my great-grandfather, he was named Robert Thatcher, too. Before that,” her voice had taken on a slight singsong rhythm, and TDD formed the notion that perhaps Mrs. Thatcher had recited this history many times. “…before thaaat, it was called The Great Repository. How’s that for a name, The Great Repository? Anyway, to come to the point. Cleaning out the place, way down in the sub-basement, I come across this great big box—”

“A box?” TDD’s heart gave a sudden thump.

“Great big box. My hunch, you know if you’ve been in the same business all your life, you sort of get hunches sometimes about things, and my hunch, is that inside the box there’s maybe another box. Or something. And, on the box , it’s painted with the word, the name, I mean…”

“De Brooks.”

The two of them had spoken the word simultaneously. They chuckled. Then stopped. Was there, very suddenly, a slight but definite drop in the temperature?

“See, maybe you do know something about it. And besides the name there’s a number, but the number doesn’t mean anything — Well: maybe it meant something to Simkins, and maybe it meant something to The Great Repository. But it doesn’t mean a thing to Thatcher’s. I mean, it-is- old …the box.”

TDD nodded. “And you want to clear it out…and close up, I see.”

Mrs. Thatcher, speaking with rather more confidence, said that she had written to every De Brooks in the book. Maybe because it was because she had no more letterheads and didn’t see any reason to get anymore and had just written in ink on plain paper and used just plain envelopes… “Or maybe they just thought I was trying to rook them, I don’t know. But, do you know what? Not one of them answered . Not a single one .”

“I believe you,” Theo said, with great sincerity.

“I never wrote you , Mr. De Brooks, because you, you’re in a different phone book, here. Just, tonight, thinking it over, I did remember that I did once see your name when I was driving past. So…well…so… Here I am. ”

Very quietly, Theobald Delafont De Brooks asked, “What’s the bill?”

Ella Thatcher took a piece of paper from her purse, started to look at it, started to speak, then looked at it again, and then read aloud, “Three thousand, five hundred and thirty-five dollars and thirty-five cents.” And she looked at TDD, slightly diffident, slightly embarrassed, slightly defiant, and withal: somewhat hopeful.

It flashed across TDD’s mind that, on something which had been in storage so long that no one knew how long it had been in storage, and the very records of which had been burned over a hundred years ago that the bill as announced could represent nothing but a pious hope; he said, “Will you take a $1,000 Liberty Bond in full settlement?” Surprise and delight moved across Ella Thatcher’s face, and so, in a second, did a slight shadow.

“—that will cover moving it over here…and we won’t need to mention a thing to your brother-in-law—”

In an instant they were shaking hands.

In twenty minutes they were in a bar for which dim, drab, sleazy were inadequate qualifiers. “Red.” (Mrs. Thatcher speaking.) “Red. Want to help us move a box? ”

“Gimme twenny dollars,” said Red, “and I’ll move the Moon.”

The warehouse truck was old, it was, for a truck still in service, very old. But it, with the dolly, Red, Ella Thatcher, and TDD, made no hard task of transportation. By midnight they had moved it into TDD’s office. Red received his $20, was gone , leaving only the thought of a thirst for beer.

“Does that do it?” asked Mrs. Thatcher.

“That does it,” said TDD. He opened his (mostly-empty) old safe, removed the manila envelope, slid the bond out for swift inspection, handed it over.

“Lots of luck,” said Ella.

“Lots of luck,” said TDD.

And yet she did not move to go. He made no move to hasten her, eager though he was to be at work on the crate.

“Well …” she said. Gave her purse a nervous pat, as though perhaps a bit afraid she might lose it. “Well …” she said, again. “Honestly, I should have told you honestly before…although I did come across the thing just a month or so ago, well, I had heard of it before. Bob mentioned it. My father and my uncle and their father mentioned it. And I’ll tell you what they called it.” She stopped suddenly. He had felt his face change. She had seen it change.