My Nephew Read The Will Beside A Bucket Of Orange Flags

Spencer set my father's will on the potting bench, right where I had laid six pieces of pear wood for grafting.

"The nursery comes to me," he said. "Land, stock, buildings. All of it."

I moved the wood before his coffee reached it.

At sixty-six, I was a broad Jewish American woman with silver curls, brown eyes, and a pale scar across my left thumb.

That scar came from a grafting knife. I had worked as an orchard grafting specialist outside Reading for forty-three years. People paid me to join a good fruit variety to roots strong enough to carry it.

Spencer tapped the will.

My nephew was a tall white man of thirty-three, with sandy hair clipped close at the sides and a smile that showed more teeth when he was annoyed.

"Did you hear me, Aunt Miriam?"

"I heard you. Take your cup off the scion wood."

He lifted it with two fingers.

My father, Eli Finkel, had been buried three weeks earlier. There was still a low chair in my living room from the days when friends came to sit shiva. I had not found a place for it yet.

Spencer had found places for everything.

The packing shed would become storage units. The sales yard would become a drive. The oldest pear trees would become brush.

"The buyer offered six hundred eighty-four thousand dollars," he said. "That's what being practical gets you."

"Which buyer?"

"Ridge Spur Storage. They'll clear the upper rows Tuesday. Eight thirty."

I looked through the open shed door. Blue cotton loops hung from several tree labels. My father had used that cotton for sixty years. It was soft enough to tie near a graft, provided you left room for growth.

He also used it around bundles of papers.

"You mean the propagation orchard," I said.

"I mean those crooked old trees."

They were mother trees. I took buds and shoots from them to make new trees. A trunk could be ugly and still carry something worth keeping.

Spencer slid the will closer.

"Grandpa made me executor. The lawyer filed it. You can read the seal."

I did. The will looked like the copy Father's lawyer had shown us in March. I had never claimed it was false.

"He left you what he could leave," I said.

Spencer laughed.

"There it is. The family riddle."

"Did you read the deed?"

"This is newer."

He said it with the sharp pleasure of a boy finishing a math problem before anyone else.

"A will doesn't erase a deed," I said.

"Please. You're a sentimental woman who only knows how to prune. Let somebody who understands money handle this."

I could have told him pruning and grafting were different jobs. His mother had liked Seckel pears, small and sweet enough to eat in two bites. Spencer liked Bartletts while they were still hard. He never waited for anything to ripen.

I remembered people by the fruit they liked. It was often more useful than remembering their promises.

"Where will your trucks enter?" I asked.

"East gate. We moved the fence."

I put down my knife.

"You moved Father's east fence?"

"Straightened it. Paid sixty-two hundred dollars. You should thank me."

He picked up an orange flag from a bucket and pressed its wire stem between his fingers.

"You have until Monday night to take cuttings. I'll let you keep a few pots at your house."

"I live here."

"For now. We can discuss that after closing."

He left the will but took the bucket. Outside, he planted a flag beside the Winter Nelis tree my father had grafted the year I was born.

I waited until his car passed the lower gate.

Then I went upstairs to the room where Father had kept shipping tags, old tax bills, and the little brass scale he never trusted anyone else to clean.

His file drawer smelled of paper and dried pears.

I found the bundle under PROPAGATION. Blue cotton held it shut. My name appeared on the first page, spelled out in Father's careful hand: Miriam Finkel.

Beneath it lay a recorded deed and a folded survey with twelve rows drawn in thin black lines.

I had signed the deed too. Father had made me read it aloud before we went to the recorder's office in 2008.

"Trees need roots," he had said. "So do arrangements."

I laid the papers flat and called the number printed on Ridge Spur's purchase notice.

"I need the person examining your title," I said.

The woman on the telephone asked for my parcel number. She did not ask whether I was upset.

Her name was Helena Ortiz.

Before I could finish explaining, headlights swept across the shed. A truck carrying saw cases stopped beside the orange flags.

My telephone buzzed with a message from Spencer.

Change of plan. Crew starts at dawn.