My Aunt Brought A Will To The Sugarhouse Door

I was fixing a leak above the lower tank when my aunt told me to get off the land.

The little connector had split in the cold. I held it between two fingers, shaved the bad end of the tubing, and pressed in a new fitting. I worked slowly. A loose fit could let air into half a hillside.

I was forty-five, a mixed-race Black and white man with brown skin, close-cut curls going gray, and a thin scar through my left eyebrow.

My work coat had sap on both cuffs. I installed maple sap lines for a living, and I repaired tubing with the same care my grandfather used on his pocket watch.

"Donovan. Put that down."

Denise Mercer stood beside the sugarhouse with a white envelope held above the mud.

My aunt was a white woman of sixty-seven, with a smooth silver bob, pale pink nails, and a cream coat that never seemed to touch dirt.

Behind her stood a thick man carrying orange paint.

Grandpa had been buried five days earlier. There was still a folded funeral program above the workbench.

"The tank will freeze if I leave this open," I said.

"You always make a job sound like a crisis."

That was rich coming from Denise. She had once called a family meeting because nobody had promised to park outside her house during a church tour. She wanted it to look full.

Now she pulled three sheets from her envelope.

"Dad changed his will. Everything comes to me. The house, the woods, all of it. You can arrange to collect your personal tools."

"Where did you find that?"

"In a place you apparently never thought to look."

She held up the signature page, too far away for me to read the date.

My grandfather, Ellis Hartwell, had lived outside Chardon his whole life. He knew which stretches of road iced first and which trees ran early on a sunny March afternoon. He also kept receipts for screws.

I had driven him to an office eight years earlier. Afterward, he had given me an envelope with a stamped copy inside.

"Keep that where nobody cleans it away," he had said.

Mine was still in my kitchen drawer, under my spare checks.

Denise turned toward the stranger.

"This is Wes Bell. He's handling the trees."

He lifted his paint can.

"Need access Monday. Ground's firm enough now."

It was late February. Snow lay in dirty strips along the lane, and the maples were close to their first run.

"Handling them how?" I asked.

"Harvest," Wes said.

I looked past him at the grove. Small aluminum tags hung on the trees, each with a number pressed into it. Grandpa had ordered those tags the same year we went to that office.

In a breeze, they made a soft clicking sound against the bark.

"These are working sugar maples," I said.

"They're assets," Denise said. "And I have expenses. The funeral alone was nearly twelve thousand dollars."

"The funeral bill was $8,460. Grandpa paid it ahead."

Her pink nails tightened on the paper.

"There are other costs."

Wes walked toward tree 023, a wide maple by the washout. He raised his paint.

"Don't mark that," I said.

He kept his hand up.

"She hired me."

"I'm asking you to leave until the papers are checked."

Denise gave a small laugh.

"You were hired help, Donovan. Dad let you hang around because you were useful. Don't turn that into an inheritance."

My mother had been her younger sister. Mom was gone, too. For a second, I wanted to list every winter I had carried groceries to Grandpa's porch while Denise sent a card with her own picture on it.

Instead, I closed the line valve.

"Give me a copy."

"My lawyer will deal with you."

"Then give me your lawyer's name."

"You don't need to make this ugly."

Wes lowered the can, but he stayed beside the tree.

I took out my phone and photographed the plate on his truck. Then I photographed the grove, the shut valve, and the unpainted bark beneath tag 023.

Denise watched me like I had started counting her silver.

"You can contest the will," she said. "I hope you saved enough wages."

I gathered my tools. I wasn't moving out. I needed the envelope in my drawer, a clean scan, and somebody who could follow a parcel through the county records.

Before I left, I slipped a loose aluminum tag back onto its nail. Grandpa hated losing numbers.

Wes called after me from the lane.

"Monday at six. Once the cutting starts, don't get in the way."