My Cousin Read The Will Beside Our Uncle’s Empty Workbench

My cousin set a white envelope on Uncle Dawit’s workbench, right where we used to mend tow ropes.

“Before anyone starts dividing things,” he said, “there is a new will.”

Outside, rain tapped the tin roof of Silt Bend Chandlery. We had buried my uncle that morning in Greenville, Mississippi. There was still grave mud in the grooves of my shoes.

I was a lean, dark-skinned Ethiopian American man of fifty-two, with a gray beard, a bald crown, and a left shoulder that sat lower than my right.

The shoulder came from years of lifting bicycles onto my repair stand. At my small shop, I charged for tires, chains, and brake work. I fixed customers’ bells for free.

Uncle had called that bad business.

Then he had brought me every broken bell he found.

Tesfaye Bekele took off his coat.

My cousin Tesfaye was a broad-shouldered Ethiopian American man of forty-eight, with close-cut hair, smooth cheeks, and gold-rimmed glasses he kept perfectly clean.

He laid the coat over Uncle’s chair.

“You should sit somewhere else,” I said.

“It’s a chair, Tewodros.”

That was how he handled family history. If it blocked what he wanted, he made it smaller.

Our uncle had sold rope, lamps, gloves, and pump parts to river crews for thirty-six years. Behind the shop stood a long warehouse. Brown flood stains marked its lower doors. The whole parcel sat near an old landing, beyond the protection of the main levee.

Nothing there stayed dry by wishing.

Tesfaye lifted the paper.

“He left me the chandlery, its grounds, its stock, and all interests connected to it.”

Our aunt Selam covered her mouth. Two deckhands who had come after the service looked at me.

“He told you that?” I asked.

“He signed it in January. In Addis Ababa. Proper witnesses. Proper stamps.”

Uncle had spent his last five months in Ethiopia, staying with his sister. He had hoped the warm air would help his lungs. We had brought him home in a sealed box.

Tesfaye tapped a stamp near the bottom.

“You can’t run into court and say you watched him sign something different in Greenville. He was overseas.”

“I didn’t say the signature was false.”

“Good. Because he knew who could manage a real business.”

I looked toward the back wall. A little brass bicycle bell hung from a nail beside the flood marks. Uncle had hung it there after I repaired it. One clear note meant someone needed help at the counter.

“You ran errands,” Tesfaye said. “That mattered to him. But carrying parts and fixing bicycles doesn’t make you an owner.”

I had carried parts. I had also carried bank envelopes across town in August heat, while my own shop had no working air conditioner.

There were eight years of those envelopes in a blue file at home.

“I need a copy,” I said.

“You’ll get one through the estate lawyer.”

“And nobody moves the stock.”

His smile went thin.

“I’ll give you until Monday to collect your tools. Leave the warehouse keys.”

I put my hand in my pocket. The key ring had worn a pale line across my palm. I kept it there.

One of the deckhands moved toward me.

“Want us to wait?” he asked.

“No. Go home before the road gets worse.”

He glanced at Tesfaye’s coat on the chair, then squeezed my good shoulder. I was grateful he had asked before turning my grief into a scene.

Ruthie Gaines stood by the front door, holding a covered dish nobody had opened.

At sixty-six, she still looked at documents the way other people looked at a snake under a porch step. She was a Black woman and a former title clerk. Uncle had trusted her with every paper that mattered.

“Did the lawyer give that instruction?” she asked.

“It follows from the will,” Tesfaye said.

“That wasn’t my question.”

He slipped the will into its envelope.

“We can avoid a family fight if Tewodros accepts what he is.”

Ruthie set the dish down with great care.

“Accepting facts is useful,” she said. “All of them.”

After everyone left, I wiped rainwater from the counter. Uncle’s last order book lay open to a page in October. I could still see where his pen had pressed hard on the totals.

There was a note in the margin.

Ask Teddy about back rent.

Nobody but Uncle called me Teddy.

I touched the words, then went home for my blue file.

The first page was not a will. It had a legal description, a clerk’s recording stamp, and a date eight years old. Beneath it sat a signed bank agreement and a bill of sale.

At nine that night, Ruthie knocked on my door. A wet stray cat stood behind her legs.

“It followed me,” she said, as though the cat had broken a rule.

She held up a fresh certified copy from the county records.

“Bring yours too,” she said. “Tomorrow we show him what your errands paid for.”