My Uncle Raised A Will Above The Nursery Packing Table

My uncle waved the will over the table where Grandfather used to sort chestnuts. A brown leaf fell out of the fold.

"Land, buildings, and nursery business," he read. "To my son, Daeho Han."

He looked at me over the page.

"That means everything, Eunseo."

I was twenty-four, a Korean American woman with straight black hair cut at my jaw, brown eyes, and a small white scar through my left eyebrow.

That scar came from a frozen hose fitting. I worked as a snowmaking technician outside Boone, North Carolina. On cold nights, I checked pumps, cleared nozzles, and watched the wet-bulb reading that told us whether water would turn to snow.

My uncle looked at the muddy cuffs of my work pants.

"You were an unpaid seasonal helper. Don't make this hard."

Unpaid was true. Helper was a small word for twelve years of work.

I kept a miniature sketchbook in my chest pocket. Each page held a date, a weather reading, and three short pencil strokes showing the wind. Grandfather had liked those strokes. He said they looked like a little rake.

That morning, I had drawn them beside a note: Forty-one degrees. Rain by noon. Two bare spaces in Row B.

Two more trees had been there on Sunday.

Daeho was fifty-eight, a Korean American man with silver hair brushed straight back, heavy square glasses, and broad hands he kept free of soil.

He laid one of those hands on the will.

"Your grandfather trusted his oldest son."

"He trusted labels, too. Where are B-four and B-five?"

"Sold."

"Those were mother trees."

"Everything here is for sale. That's what a business means."

Beyond the packing shed, cold mist sat on the slope. Grandfather's nursery lay down a narrow road east of Boone, where trucks had to slow for a sharp bend above a creek. He had spent twenty years breeding chestnuts that stood up better to blight.

He never called them blight-proof. He crossed that phrase out whenever someone put it in an ad.

Twelve mother trees held his best work. They grew in huge fabric root bags set in shallow trenches. He could lift them with a fork truck without breaking apart their roots. Each wore a loose numbered collar near the soil.

Or each had, before my uncle took charge.

"Who bought them?" I asked.

"A customer."

"Did the sale include permission to breed from them?"

He laughed once.

"You make snow. Don't come in here talking about propagation rights."

I touched the little book in my pocket.

Grandfather had made me photograph each graft in summer. Not just the labels. The join where one piece of wood had grown onto another. Knots. Forks. Old cuts. I had thought he was making me practice being patient.

Then, six weeks before he died, he had said, "June has the other envelope. Don't let anybody rush your hands."

June Bell was his lawyer.

"Has June seen that will?" I asked.

"I found it in his desk yesterday. It has witnesses. I don't need your approval."

"I asked about June."

He folded it hard.

"She's getting a copy."

My phone buzzed. My shift lead wanted to know if I could cover that night. A cold front was coming across the mountains. We needed to lay a base before warmer weather returned.

I said yes. I needed my paycheck.

Daeho pointed toward the shed door.

"Leave your key. Paid staff will finish the inventory."

There were no paid staff. There was my uncle, a rented fork truck, and a man who came when something needed hauling.

"I'll leave it with June," I said.

He stepped close enough that I could smell his peppermint gum.

"At my age, I shouldn't have to explain honesty to a girl in snow boots."

I didn't answer. At work, when a pressure gauge jumped, I checked the line before I touched a valve. Noise didn't tell me what was wrong. A reading did.

I walked down Row B.

Five trenches stood empty.

Seven mother trees remained. Their bare branches held rain like clear beads. I bent beside M-08, then remembered that M-08 was gone. This was M-09. Its collar had twisted backward.

I turned it gently and took a picture.

From the shed, my uncle shouted, "Don't take anything!"

"I'm taking a picture."

"Same thing, lately."

I called June from my truck. She answered before I could get my wet gloves off.

"Eunseo. I was about to call you. Did Daeho show you a will?"

"He said it gave him everything."

Paper moved near her phone.

"Come to my office. Your grandfather left a signed codicil in escrow. It names you."

At the shed, a hauler lifted a sack of fresh collars from his truck. They were plain black plastic, without numbers.

Then June said, "And bring every photograph you have."