Like everything else in the house, the bathroom at the Pepper ranch needed some serious cleaning. But, after picking up, putting away, and throwing away some things, it wasn’t so bad that Gerald couldn’t use it to take a shower before he and Leah had to drive down to Carondelet on Monday morning. There were several things there that needed to be done as soon as possible, and this would be the first chance he’d had to start in on them.

It had been nice for Art and Shirley Gamble to have Leah and him over for dinner the day before. Not only were they friendly and seemed willing to help under the circumstances, they were a fountain of knowledge about the ranch and the things that would have to be done there. What’s more, they told him a lot about his grandfather, things he had never known. Gerald had really never known the man and had only met him once when he hadn’t been at his best. But it appeared that at least at one time he had been a good neighbor and well liked – but that he had grown to be a loner and set in his ways after Gladys had died. They hadn’t talked much about his illness and death, but at least part of that was clearly because Leah had been present.

Once he was done in the bathroom, he got Leah up and running, and then started on something to eat for breakfast. There weren’t a lot of possibilities, but there were enough to make do, and he decided that he would have to make do with what was here for as long as he could.

Finally they got on the road. The minivan was still pretty full of things, though they’d taken some of their possessions inside and stacked most of them in what looked like it was going to become Leah’s room.

From their trip out to the ranch on Saturday, Gerald knew that it was twenty-four miles into Tyler, and then forty miles south to Carondelet. It was a long enough drive, even into Tyler, that he thought he didn’t want to have to make the trip any more often than he had to since it would burn a lot of expensive gas to do it regularly. It proved to be a dull drive, with mile after mile of prairie that was much the same from one mile to the next. Occasionally there would be a farm or ranch house near the road, but not many of them.

Carondelet proved to be a much bigger town than Tyler – there might have been as many as two or three thousand people there, or at least that was his impression, and there were a number of businesses on the main street. He checked the note that the sheriff had given him and looked for the first of the two lawyers that had been recommended.

Even though it was now after nine on Monday morning, that lawyer’s office was closed and dark, locked up tight. However, a block up the street the other one was open in a storefront office. A woman who was apparently in her forties was sitting at a desk doing something on a computer, and she looked up when he came in. “Can I help you?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “I need to see a lawyer about handling my grandfather’s estate.”

“I doubt if Mr. McGill is doing anything serious this morning,” she replied, “so he ought to be able to get you right in.” She raised her voice and almost yelled, “Charlie, there’s someone here to see you.”

“Send ’em back, honey,” they heard come from behind a partition.

Charles McGill proved to be a fiftyish man, heavy-set, and going bald. “Pleased to meet you,” he said, rising from his chair behind his desk. “Someday I ought to get the intercom fixed, but it’s easy enough for my wife and I to just talk loud at each other. Now, what can I do for you today?”

“Well, I need to see about getting my grandfather’s estate dealt with,” Gerald explained after introducing Leah, who had a doll with her to keep her interest. “He died a week ago outside of Lexington, and apparently he left everything to me, or at least that’s what Sheriff Shoemaker there tells me. I know absolutely nothing about what he might have or how to deal with it.”

“That’s what we’re here for,” the attorney said. “Why don’t we go over the details, and maybe I can answer a few of your questions.”

In the next few minutes Gerald went over everything he knew, which admittedly wasn’t much, and some of it he’d learned from Sheriff Shoemaker or Art Gamble.

“All right,” McGill said finally. “To begin with, I don’t doubt that the note Mr. Pepper left qualifies as an informal will, at least if there’s no one to contest it. However, the sheriff is right in that it will have to go through probate, which could take up to six months, even if there aren’t any snags. You can’t sell the property until the will is probated. There are several reasons for the probate process, and one of them is to settle any outstanding debts that may exist. You don’t know anything about that, by any chance?”

“Not a thing. I know nothing about the ranching business or his personal business.”

“It’s something that needs to be looked into. The normal way it’s done is to name an executor for the will, which in some places is called a ‘named personal representative.’ Under the circumstances, that’s going to be you. What you will have to do is to administer the estate until it’s passed on. What usually happens is that the executor puts an advertisement in the newspaper giving notice to contact him with any outstanding debts, which will have to be paid out of the proceeds of the estate. Now, as the executor you can get any expenses you incur in administering the estate back after the estate is probated.”

“That could be a problem,” Gerald told him. “Look, to get right down to it, I’m not broke, but I’m the next thing to it. I have about a hundred dollars in cash left, and if it’s going to take six months to get the will probated, I’m going to have to make it last that long, along with whatever I can get from odd jobs and such. I’m not from around here and know virtually nobody. For instance I know I’ve got to work with the funeral home here in town about the burial expenses, and I don’t have any money to do that.”

“That’s probably easily solved. Since there is an estate involved, they probably will be willing to carry the expenses until they can be settled from the estate. As executor, you’d have to sign for that, of course. If they have any questions, they can contact me about it.”

“Well, that’s one big relief,” Gerald replied, at least one financial concern shoved off into the future.

“One thing you might want to think about,” McGill went on, “Is that if you’re from out of town, you could move into his place. That would save you some money and would be an expense you could charge against the estate. It’s usually not a good idea to leave a house like that sitting empty. There have been cases of squatters moving into places in such instances, and usually it’s tough getting them out even if they’re trespassing in the first place.”

“That’s where we’re living now,” Gerald said. “The sheriff said he thought it would be all right. The place is a mess, I think mostly because he didn’t have the energy to do what he needed to take care of it, but given time I think we can get it back into shape.”

“Good, you’re one step ahead of me on that. Now beyond that, when you’re named the executor, which is simple paperwork we can take care of today, you can spend any money available in bank accounts or the like for the maintenance of the property. That includes the security of the property by having someone living there. You probably shouldn’t spend any more than you absolutely have to right now just in case there is some huge debt against the estate that we aren’t aware of, but honestly I would be surprised if there were. We just don’t know and that is something that we’re going to have to look into, both you and I.”

“Another question. I was talking with a neighbor yesterday, and he suggested there might be the possibility of leasing the land on a short-term basis for grazing.”

“Yes, that is a possibility and would fall in the category of maintenance of the estate. I wouldn’t talk in terms of a long-term lease at this point for a number of reasons. If you decide to sell the property, for example, the existence of a long-term lease might cut the property value. But then again, it might not. There’s no way of telling at this point. Once the property is through probate, a long-term lease might be a better deal than selling the property, but that isn’t something that has to be decided today.”

“All right,” Gerald smiled. “I don’t want to say that it makes things any simpler because I’m sure it doesn’t, but at least it gives me hints of some of what I have to do. So what do we do now?”

“If my wife is as efficient as she usually is, she’s been following this discussion and is preparing some paperwork for you to sign, including naming me as your attorney and petitioning for you to be named the executor, and preparing the initial petition to put the matter into probate. There’s quite a bit more, too.”

There was; it took most of an hour to get through everything, and McGill was dropping ideas and things to be looked into much of the time. Gerald could make things quite a bit simpler by doing some of the running himself; one of those things was to ask around obvious places like the Tyler bank about any debts that Elmer’s estate might owe – or any accounts he might have had.

As they were finishing up signing a stack of paperwork, the attorney leaned forward for a moment, and Gerald had the idea he was looking for the right words to say. “Look, your grandfather was in his eighties, right?”

“Something like that. I don’t know for sure.”

“OK, I don’t know how to say this or even if I should say this, but when you go through his things to dispose of them, be sure you go through everything carefully.”

“I can do that, but why?”

“I’m just guessing, but I’ve seen it happen with others. Your grandfather was old enough that he could remember the Depression and the Dust Bowl days around here. They were before I came here, of course, and before my time anyway. The point I’m making is that a lot of banks failed around here in those days, and a lot of people lost their savings and their farms or ranches as a result. Let’s just say that there are still people of that age who don’t have a lot of faith in banks, so they operate pretty much on cash they keep hidden somewhere, like around their houses or buildings. Your grandfather could have been one of them.”

“You think there might be some cash like that?”

“I’d be surprised if there isn’t at least some,” McGill smiled. “How much, well, there’s no saying, and he might not have done it at all. It might be hidden someplace simple, or it might not be – again, there’s no saying. I mean, you might find that a roll of socks contains a wad of bills or something. Now, if you find something like that, technically it’s supposed to be turned over to the estate for distribution.”

“But if it isn’t, no one is the wiser, right?”

“You didn’t hear me say that,” the attorney smiled. “But you get the picture. Let’s not get into that now. I think you have enough work ahead of you to hold you for a while.”

Gerald was glad to get back out on the street. There was a lot more involved than he had ever dreamed. He’d actually been through the problems of having to pick up after a death before, when his mother died. That had been a lot different, since his mother didn’t have much to leave behind except for the junk value of a car and a few clothes, so that had been considerably simpler and there had never been any suggestion of any need for going through probate.

This was different. He still didn’t have any idea of what the ranch and the house might be worth, but it was obviously more than nothing. He now knew that there was eight hundred acres of land there, all of one section and a quarter of another. He had no idea of what the value of the land might be, but he could find out. If it were as little as a hundred dollars an acre – and he had the impression from McGill that it could be worth a lot more than that – it still would be more money than he had ever seen in one place in his life.

Even if he didn’t want to stay here – and right now, he was pretty sure he didn’t – that much money could go a long way toward giving him a new life in some place that was a little more populated and civilized. It might include a small business, or might not; at least there would be room to look around and make up his mind. If nothing else, that made it worth going to the trouble of sticking around until all the probate business was settled.

Gerald’s next stop was the Mound-Burton Funeral Home on the far side of town. He was glad he’d stopped at McGill’s before he found the place since he had a much better idea of what he had to do. In only a minute he was talking to a well-dressed man his age or a little older named Ed Burton, who he soon learned was the third generation of the family to own the business. “It’s good you could make it,” Ed told him as he showed Gerald and Leah into a small office in the funeral home. “We’ve been wondering when someone was going to show up.”

“I didn’t get into town until Saturday, and didn’t know if you’d be open until today.”

“One thing about the funeral business is that we’re always open,” Burton smiled. “Well, sometimes maybe not as open as others, but at least you can say we’re always available. Have you made any plans about services?”

“Not really,” Gerald admitted. “I talked to a couple of neighbors who appear to have been about as good a friends as my grandfather had the last few years, and their impression was that a simple graveside service at the West Walke Cemetery was about all that would be needed. Apparently, there aren’t very many people expected to show up.”

“Well, I’m sure we can arrange for that, but you ought to remember that a funeral isn’t for the dead but for the living, a chance for friends and relatives to show respect for the departed.”

“You’re probably right on that,” Gerald agreed. “But I don’t think we need to make a huge deal out of it, and I can’t afford a big funeral anyway. In fact, I won’t be able to afford a small one until my grandfather’s will gets probated. I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to carry me on that, but I’m willing to sign a note on it if I have to. Mr. McGill, you know, the attorney, said that if you had any questions about that you could call him.”

“Normally we’re reluctant to do that, but if Charlie thinks it’s all right I think we can make it work. Do you know if anyone is planning a funeral dinner or anything?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“Then how about if we look at doing the service Thursday, along about two in the afternoon?”

“That sounds good to me.”

“All right, fine. Who do you want to handle the service?”

“What do you mean?”

“Which minister? I mean, not that there’s a lot of selection, but if all else fails we have a retired minister down here in Carondelet we can call in for such things.”

“I don’t know,” Gerald shrugged. “A neighbor was telling me yesterday that my grandfather used to go to the church in Lexington, but that was a long time ago.”

“I know who you’re talking about, and I’ll give him a call. We can also make arrangements for opening the grave, and a vault. Do you have any thoughts about a casket?”

“Not really, other than something simple. Look, Mr. Burton, I don’t know how to say this, but I didn’t know my grandfather very well. I do know he was a simple and honest man, and I don’t think he would be pleased with anything elaborate.”

“Well, all right,” Burton replied, not seeming to mind that he wasn’t selling an ornate and expensive funeral. For a few minutes they discussed options, and finally worked out something that Gerald seemed to think was appropriate.

With that done, the subject turned to how Elmer would be dressed – the clothes that he had been wearing wouldn’t do, of course. “I’m sure there’s something in his closet that would work, but I’ll have to go see.”

“At this point I’d normally ask if you want to view the body,” Burton said. “But I’ll tell you that you don’t want to. I mean, you really don’t want to. You know how he died, don’t you?”

“Yes, and I think you’re right. I heard what happened, and I really don’t want to either.”

They talked about a few more details, which included preparing an obituary. It would have to be brief, mostly since Gerald didn’t know many of the details that would normally go into an obituary, but then it would probably only be printed in the weekly newspaper down here in Carondelet, so it really didn’t matter all that much. Finally there wasn’t a great deal more to do other than Gerald going to get clothes for his grandfather.

“Oh, one more thing,” Burton said. “I almost forgot. There are a few personal effects he had in his pockets, and I’d better give them to you. Wait here a few minutes, please.”

He got up and left the room, but was soon back, carrying a plastic freezer bag with the words “Elmer Pepper” lettered on it in marker. There were only a few things in it – a wallet, a pen, a little change, a ring of keys, not much else. “All right,” Gerald said. “I can come back with the clothes sometime this afternoon.”

With that, Gerald and Leah went out to the minivan, where he helped her get buckled into the child seat. But as he walked around behind the van, curiosity overwhelmed him. He opened the plastic bag, pulled out his grandfather’s wallet, and feeling like he was snooping somewhere he didn’t belong, took a look to see if there was any money in it. He would not have been surprised if it was empty, but there was a thick wad of bills there!

Just a brief glance through it revealed that there were twenties, fifties, and hundreds in the wallet. He knew this was no place to count it, but it wouldn’t have surprised him if it was a thousand dollars and perhaps more. Suddenly, the problems of making it through the next few weeks seemed a lot simpler.

On the way out of town Gerald decided to stop at a small supermarket along the road. While there was still food in the house, some of it wasn’t terribly appealing to either Leah or him. In any case, they needed some things like fresh milk; the little girl had been missing it. After they finished that, he stopped and filled the tank of the minivan. The distances out in this part of the world were large and gas stations were few, so he realized he was going to have to be more careful about filling up than he had been back in Kansas City.

“Is that all we’re going to do today, Daddy?” Leah asked as he helped her get buckled into the child seat once again.

“I think we have to make a couple of stops when we get back to Tyler,” he said, “and then we have to bring some clothes back down here to the funeral home, then go out and work on the house some more.”

“Am I going to school again?”

That was a good question and one he hadn’t thought about. “I don’t know,” he told her. “I hadn’t thought about it yet, but maybe since we’re so close to the end of the school year we won’t bother. But, no, maybe that’s not the right thing to do. I’m pretty sure you’d have to go to school in Tyler, and that’s an awful long way from the ranch to have to drive it twice a day.” It was, too. If he had to drive her both ways, that would be a hundred miles a day, and he’d have to fill the minivan twice a week just for that alone. At gas prices these days, it would be a lot of money. “Maybe there’s a school bus or something,” he went on. “I don’t know, and we’re going to have to find out.”

“It would be nice to have some other kids to play with,” she said. “There isn’t anybody out at the ranch.”

“Yeah, you’re right, it would,” he replied. “But school will be out soon, and there won’t be many other kids around to play with then anyway. I’ll see if I can come up with something, but no promises.”

That was a problem he hadn’t anticipated – but then, there were a lot of those. Maybe it would be best to stop by the school and investigate things.

He had a lot to think about as they drove back to Tyler. Yes, it was pretty lonely out at the ranch, and he wouldn’t mind being around other people once in a while himself. The Gambles had been very good to him yesterday, but he didn’t want to wear out his welcome with them. But there was no question that they had to continue to stay on the ranch, at least until the estate was probated and he could sell the place, or whatever.

It was not going to be easy. However much money was in his grandfather’s wallet, it was almost certainly not enough to see them through until the ranch was truly his. There might be some other money around the house; he’d have to look for it more carefully. If the amount of cash in the wallet was any indication, McGill might well have been right that there could be more to be found. And there might be a bank account; one of the things he needed to do was to stop at the bank in Tyler and check that out.

At least the attorney told him that it would probably be all right to set up a short-term lease for grazing, and that could provide some income, too. He’d have to talk with Art about that again, and probably soon. On top of that, there was the option of finding a job, day labor or something. He probably ought to do that anyway, though what he would do about having someone watch over Leah was also an open question.

I’ve got to stick this out and make it work, he thought as the miles went by. There’s too much riding on it to not do it. It could be the difference between a good life for Leah and him, as opposed to the hopeless situation they’d had in Kansas City.

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