My Uncle Posted An Eviction Notice On The Icehouse Door

My uncle taped the notice over the pencil marks where Grandpa had measured my height.

"Seven days," Spiro said. "Take your little toys with you."

One of my little toys sat on the windowsill. It was a canal lock gate, four inches high, carved from an old shipping crate. Its two leaves met at an angle, just like the gates below the museum.

I was thirty-nine, a broad Greek American man with olive skin, thick black brows, and a white streak in my short beard.

My job as a canal-museum caretaker paid $19.25 an hour. I cleaned display cases, checked sump pumps, and kept road salt off the old iron tools. After work, I slept in the legal upstairs apartment of my grandfather's former icehouse.

In Lockport, New York, I could tell the season by which parts of the canal needed watching.

Spiro Petrakis was sixty-four, with a heavy square face, silver hair combed straight back, and a gold ring that pinched his thick finger.

He pressed that ring against the tape until the paper stuck.

"You swept here, Sotiris. Don't confuse that with owning it."

Below us, the Erie Canal lay low for winter. Cold air carried the smell of wet stone from the locks. A truck crossed the nearby lift bridge, its tires rattling over the deck.

"What changed?" I asked.

"We found your grandfather's will."

He held up a copy dated 2014. Grandpa Kostas Petrakis had left the waterfront parcel to his son, Spiro. My mother, Anna, who had married an Alexiou, was named for a cash gift. She had died three years before Grandpa.

"Has the court approved it?"

"Don't start using words you heard on television."

I read the notice. It was typed on plain paper. No court name. No case number.

"Grandpa died six weeks ago," I said. "You told me there wasn't a will."

"Then I found one. That's what found means."

Behind him, a man in clean work boots studied the icehouse wall. He tapped a loose brick with his car key.

"Grant Voss," he said. "Bay Reach Development. Your uncle and I have an agreement."

"About what?"

"Clearing this parcel. We lose money every week this drags."

The icehouse had three-foot stone walls and a roof I had patched twice. Grandpa had stored ice here before he sold bait, then donated tools and space for museum programs. Now Voss wanted apartments with balconies facing the water.

"There's no demolition permit posted," I said.

"There will be," Spiro said. "I'll give you $500 if you're out by Friday."

"For a move, or for my signature?"

His eyes went to the papers under his arm.

"Both would be sensible."

I asked for copies. He laughed, then handed me the notice and a form called Occupant Release. It said I claimed no interest in the property.

I folded neither one.

Grandpa had taught me to keep a document flat until I knew which marks mattered. A crease could pass through a date. A staple hole could show that a page had been switched.

Spiro thought those lessons had been about dusting old displays.

For eleven winters, I had sorted Grandpa's correspondence in the room behind the ice bins. I had logged postmarks, numbered envelopes, and slipped brittle sheets into clean folders. Grandpa had paid for the supplies himself.

One folder was different. It held an attorney-certified copy of a 2018 codicil, an added instruction to his will. A receipt said the signed original remained in attorney Ruth Mallon's safe.

The outer inventory named me and a woman called Eleni Petrakis Vale. The copy itself stayed in a sealed inner sleeve. I had been waiting for the estate lawyer Spiro kept saying he would hire.

I knew my own name. I had never heard anyone at our family table say hers.

When Grandpa gave me that folder, he had said, "A gate isn't useful because it's loud. It's useful because it holds."

I had put the receipt in a second sleeve.

Now Spiro knocked my carved gate off the sill with his coat. It landed on the floor without breaking.

"You've had a free room long enough."

"I paid the utilities and did the repairs."

"Consider it settled."

Voss took a photograph of the door. Then they left.

I picked up the gate and set it beside my kettle. Both leaves still closed.

I wanted to call Spiro and shout. Instead, I took photographs of the notice, the door, and the room. Then I opened my catalog.

There were forty-three envelopes from E. Vale. Spiro had once called them old supply letters and told me to throw them away.

I put the codicil copy and receipt in my work bag. From a legal directory, I found the firm that had taken over Mallon's files after her retirement.

At five, a lawyer called me back.

"Mr. Alexiou? I'm Jonas Reed. Please bring that receipt tomorrow."

"Is there a problem?"

He paused.

"Your uncle already called. He asked whether we could destroy the old estate file."