Chapter 56

Yes, I felt the same way about Trevor coming into the branch after us that Sandy did, but in a different way.

As soon as I saw him prancing down the sidewalk with his sleeveless shirt, showing arms that were bigger than my legs, I felt anger rise up in me like I had seldom felt before.

I jumped up out of the chair and started walking to meet him.

“Mikey!” Sandy said. “What are you doing?”

“Heck if I know,” I answered.

While leaving Swifty’s office, I saw there were some yardsticks the bank was giving away on the table in the lobby. I grabbed one and headed out the door. There was a little vestibule in the branch. There were two doors with a small area in between.

Trevor had his hand on the outside door as I burst through the first set of doors. His face changed expressions. Previously, he was furious. Now, Trevor almost had a scared look on his face. I barged through the outside door and he started backing up.

The yardstick was pulled back like I was going yard in baseball.

“Hey, dude, what’s your problem?” he asked, while backing down the sidewalk, his hands thrown out in front of his face.

The people in the branch were running outside to watch.

“You’re one of my many problems,” I said and swung the yardstick. It swished while soaring through the air but caught nothing but air. Trevor had to jump to the right to avoid the blow.

“I’m fixing to get mad!”

“Good, I’m already there!”

I swung again. This one was low, almost like I was swinging a bat. It caught him in his left elbow.

“Ouch!” he yelped. “Quit it!”

“I’m not going to quit. You shoved Sandy and threw her into the wall!”

I continued to walk toward him as Trevor backed up, looking for some help. No help was coming. I knew he could practically tear me apart with his bare hands, but didn’t care. I juked with one move then came back with an overhand slice that caught him on his right shoulder.

“Ow!” he hollered. “I didn’t come here to fight!”

I nailed him square on his right knee.

“Why’d you come here, then?”

“I went by your office. The lady with the big hair told me that you and Sandy were together. I wanted to thank you for what you wrote in the paper and to tell her that I was sorry.”

I stopped. He was thanking me? And apologizing to Sandy? Trevor looked like he wanted to fight the world.

“Why’d you look so mad then?” I asked.

“That’s just my look.”

I nodded. Now, I was almost sorry that I left several whelps on him. “There she is, tell her you’re sorry.”

He nodded. “Sandy, I’m sorry about what happened.”

She added a nod. There were a lot of nods going around. “Don’t call or come by to see me.”

“I won’t,” Trevor said. “I think I’m going to ask out the girl with the big hair.”

“It won’t do you any good,” said a voice behind him. I looked around Trevor and saw Nancy standing in the parking lot with Squiggy and Mule. They were next to Squiggy’s truck. He had tried out another paint scheme on the truck with spray paint. This time, it was a bad shade of red. At least it fit in good with the rust.

“It won’t?”

“No, I’m going out with Mule.”

Everybody raised their eyebrows at this shocking development, even Mule. We all knew Nancy would never be the same.

“You are?” Mule asked.

“Yes, I am. Tonight!”

Mule nodded. “You’ll have to drive.”

“That’s okay. Just take a bath first, okay?”

“It ain’t Sunday!”

“Just take the dang bath,” Squiggy joined in. He was smiling, even though the anticipated violence had broken up. “And use soap this time.”

Mule nodded and smiled at Nancy. “I’ll wear my camo shirt!”

She nodded. I didn’t think Nancy was too concerned with what Mule chose to wear.

Everybody started breaking apart. Sandy took my hand and we walked back toward the building. Swifty was holding the door for everybody, probably calculating how much he could get if everybody here bought credit life insurance from him.

“Nice swing,” he said. Swifty should know, at one time he was quite the baseball player for Langford High School. One of his first coaches as a child in t-ball was Slick, the branch manager.

We walked back into the office. Sandy dug out the two envelopes and placed them in front of Swifty. They were two certificates of deposit in the amount of $175,000. She was pledging them as collateral to get a loan to cover the check at the other bank, to pay off the loan on Mom’s house and the loan I had borrowed earlier in the week. This would free up my mother’s house and the paper, along with getting me an interest rate that was lower than any business loan.

I didn’t want her to endanger her savings, but Sandy said it was no big deal. She had a lot more where this came from. This is just what she had in CD’s. Sandy said there was twice this amount invested in stocks and bonds.

I never knew she had this kind of money, but it made sense. Sandy had lived with her parents all her life. She was a successful real estate agent with no bills. There were months where she made more than I did in half a year.

She was all for doing this and it was her idea. I resisted at first, the old male pride getting in the way. Sandy knew that she could lose this, but didn’t seem too concerned.

Swifty did the paper work. I was the borrower. Sandy would pledge the collateral and sign as a guarantor. The CD’s matured in a little over three months. There was no way to pay the note off with the income from the newspaper, but if we did sell the newspaper, the income would pay this off. If the newspaper wasn’t sold, we would go to plan B, which currently did not exist.

“Would you like some credit life on this?” he asked. From what I heard, Swifty was the champion credit life salesman for his bank.

“No thanks,” Sandy said.

We signed the papers. Sandy got off easy. She only had to sign the financial statement, the guarantee and a form where she agreed to pledge the CDs as collateral. I did the application and several others. We killed several trees in the process of doing this loan.

Swifty left to get the check. “Thank you,” I told Sandy.

“You don’t have to thank me,” Sandy said. She was smiling and seemed happier than I had seen her since we were kids.

Swifty returned with the check. He handed it to me. We took it to the teller station and handed it over to one of the tellers. Her eyes got a little big over the size of the check, but she didn’t say anything.

The little man and the big woman were arguing over something else as we left.

“We won’t be like that after we’ve been married twenty years, will we?” I asked.

Sandy stopped and looked at me. “Better be careful what you say, some people might take that as a proposal.”

I stopped at the outside door and held it open. My feelings about marriage were not good, but mainly because Sandy had never been involved.

“Well?” she added. I was a little tongue tied.

“I guess you can take that any way you want,” I was such a romantic.

She walked outside and I fell in line next to her. “You’ll have to say the words, though.”

“The words.”

“Don’t get cute, Mikey. You know what I mean.”

We were next to the passenger side of the Ranger. In my life, I had proposed three times and was batting a hundred percent. All the other times were easy. This time, it wasn’t. For a person who makes a living putting words on paper, I found it very difficult to figure out what to have come out of my mouth.

“Uh, you and me, we, uh, should, you know, uh…”

“Do you want to marry me, Michael Hunt?” she asked.

I nodded. That really sounded like a good idea to me. So that is how we got engaged, in the romantic setting of the parking lot of the branch bank. We kissed and held each other for several seconds. Somebody in a truck drove by and shouted, “Get a room!”

Sandy broke away for a second. “Get a job!”

“Good one,” I said.

She had her arms wrapped around my neck. Her fingers were playing with my hair. I could stay here forever, other than the lack of food and the need to occasionally remove the body’s toxics.

“We need to get going,” she said. “I have an appointment in fifteen minutes.”

I nodded and kissed her again. We drove down to the Review and talked about some serious stuff. She gave her opinion, one that I agreed upon. I hated to see her go, but she headed off to her appointment.

I decided to go for a little walk down the block. My route just happened to take me in front of the Bank of Langford. Since I was in the neighborhood, I decided to drop by.

Allen was in his office, reading a magazine and eating a pastry, like he needed it. That would just make his outty bellybutton stick out farther. I breezed past his secretary, who never saw me until it was too late.

“Mister Hunt!” she said. “You can’t go in there!”

“Wanna bet?” I asked, and never slowed down.

I walked into Allen Woodard’s office and sat down in a chair. He looked up and was not all that pleased. His secretary followed me in and was standing in the doorway. Woodard flashed her a dirty look.

“It’s not her fault,” I said. “She tried to stop me.”

He waved her away and lowered the magazine. “What can I do for you, Mister Hunt?”

“You could find out how much to the penny is owed on my father’s loan,” I said. I actually knew this information, but it was better this way.

He typed in something on his keyboard and wrote down the figure on a sticky tab. Woodard handed it to me.

“Okay, if I make a deposit, can you cover the check to the funeral home?”

“I’m sure we can.”

I pulled out my checkbook from the other bank. They still were temporary checks, but it didn’t bother me. I wrote out two checks. The first one was to pay off the loan. The second was enough to cover the checks my mother wrote to the funeral home and the hospital.

Woodard looked stunned as he stared at the checks.

“How’d you do this?” he asked.

“I have resources.”

“Mister Hunt, if you have these financial resources, we don’t really want to lose you as a customer.”

“You aren’t losing me,” I said. Woodard smiled, revealing teeth that were badly stained. “You never had me.”

I got up and started walking away. At the doorway, I stopped and turned around.

“Have a good day,” I said.

Woodard looked like he had some serious heartburn going on. I walked out of the Bank of Langford for what I hoped to be the last time. If I ever darkened these doors again, it would be to get money out of them, not to give any to them.

After getting back to the office, I found Nancy at her desk, her cheeks flushed.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

She could only nod and smile. Her eyes had a dreamy look to them.

Theresa walked in through the back door. She was wearing a saggy shirt, but it failed to hide that her chest looked like a unicorn.

Nancy saw her coming. She took off like a streak and met Theresa, just out of my hearing range. Nancy started telling Theresa something that seemed to interest her. Nancy kept gesturing and holding her hands out like she was telling how big the bass was she caught.

Theresa’s eyes almost got as big as saucers. She patted Nancy on the back, in what seemed to be congratulations, and they walked toward me.

“What were you talking about?” I asked.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Theresa said.

“Yeah, that’s why I asked.”

They were not going to divulge their secret. I really didn’t care. There was too much to do and not enough time to get it done.

“What did you find out at the doctor’s?” Nancy asked.

“That the doctor was a quack!” she answered. “I should have known that any good doctor would charge more than a thousand bucks per boob.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I’m gonna go to a real doctor and sue that quack for pain, suffering and mental anguish.”

I had no idea how a jury of our peers could put a price tag on the mental anguish a person suffers when their breast implant goes bad. Then again, I didn’t really care. We got to work and busted our rears, calling people and begging them to advertise with the good old Langford Review. Some did, others didn’t.

I started writing and remembered how much I loved this act of putting words together on paper. There were several stories to write about. The follow up on the Beef Critter slaying, my getting shot at, Orville’s dead body in the parking lot and everything else a small-town newspaper deals with.

Promptly at five, my phone rang. I knew who it was.

“Michael Hunt, how the heck are you doing?” Elliott Lancaster practically shouted. I probably would be shouting also if I expected to get six percent of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

“Okay, how are you?”

“Hey, I’m better than a one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest!”

I didn’t really grasp the meaning behind that. He acted like we were best friends, but I knew it just because Elliott expected to make a lot of money off me.

“So, which offer did you decide to take?” he asked. “Let’s have some fun with this, shall we?”

“Let’s,” I said.

“The first offer is ‘A’, just like they do on that House Hunters show on HGTV, okay?”

“Sure.”

“Then the second offer is ‘B’, cool?”

“Sounds great!”

“If you recall, the first offer was for twenty five thousand less than you were asking for, but you get to keep your job!”

“At what we expect to be a crappy salary,” I added.

Elliott had to absorb that for a second. “Uh, yeah, I guess so. The second offer, ‘B’, is the full price offer with you leaving. So tell me, Michael, which one did you choose?”

I could hear the tick tock, just like it is on one of those silly game shows they used to have on television.

“Well, Elliott, I’ve decided to go with ‘C’,” I said.

There was another pause from the other end. I could just feel that brain of Elliott’s gearing up.

“What’s ‘C’?” he asked.

“Elliott, ‘C’ is the choice where I decide not to sell the newspaper,” I said. “I try to get it back in shape and give Langford another try.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Things change.”

“So you’re not wanting to sell the newspaper?”

“No, I’m going to hang on to it for a while.”

Elliott hung up on me. I didn’t care. On this high note, I decided to call it a day.

When I got home, Mom and M.J. were in the front yard, playing with Psycho.

“What’s she doing here?” I asked.

“Squiggy wanted us to dogsit her,” Mom said. “He was going to work.”

“Squiggy went to work?” I asked and Mom nodded. Would wonders never cease?

M.J. got up and walked toward me. He stopped just a foot away and stared up at me.

“How bout a hug, bit guy?” he asked.

“Knock yourself out,” I said.

“Huh?”

“Go ahead.”

M.J. threw his little arms around my legs and squeezed with all his might.

“Hold on,” I said, and picked him up. I held him in front of me, looking at the little eyes, the small nose and big smile.

He surprised me with a kiss then started squirming. It was time to go back and play with the dog. We had not heard from April. Apparently the boy was now part of our family.

“Manny called,” Mom said. I had a bad feeling about this. “He said they were getting back together.”

“They?”

“Manny and Molly.”

“I thought she was married.”

“She had already filed for divorce.”

“That’s good, I guess.” I had missed him after my father’s funeral since they found the body of the Beef Critter. Hopefully, this would help him stay on the right track.

“They’re coming to visit this weekend.”

“Good,” I said. “Mom, I’ve gotta get some sleep.”

“That’s fine.”

I went inside and back to my old bedroom. I hit the bed, fully dressed, and slept like a baby. The only time I stirred was when Sandy called. We talked for a while and then I went back to sleep. We had our whole life to look forward to living.

The next morning, I woke to my mother shaking me.

“Get up, lazy,” M.J. said. I looked over at the clock and saw it was ten.

“Crap!” I said, this was way too late.

“That’s a dirty word!” M.J. informed me. He was standing next to my mother.

“Yes, it is,” Mom agreed. “Please refrain from saying that.”

I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. I was still tired, but ready to face the day.

“Could you take me to the bank?” she asked.

“I guess,” I said. “What’s going on?”

“The check came in.”

“What check?”

“The life insurance check.”

“Are you talking about the funeral insurance?”

She looked at me like so many others had in my life, like I had pawned out my intelligence.

“No, Michael, the life insurance check for your father.”

“I didn’t think he had life insurance.”

“He didn’t. We got a policy on him some thirty years ago. I guess he just forgot about it.”

“Good.” I figured it was some small amount, but Mom could use whatever money she got.

“I guess we need to pay off that note on the house and the newspaper,” she said. “How much was it?”

“It was around a hundred and ffifty-five thousand.”

I expected her to drop one of her “Oh my!” comments, but it didn’t seem to face her.

“Okay, I’ll use part of this to pay that off. I want you to run the paper, Michael. I’ll have the papers drawn up giving it to you. Just pay me a few hundred dollars each month to help pay for the medicine.”

“What?”

“I want to pay off the newspaper and give it to you,” Mom repeated.

“How big was that check?”

She pulled it out of her purse and showed it to me.

I was astonished. In front of me was a check payable to my mother for five hundred thousand dollars.

“Mom, that’s half a million dollars!” I said.

“It’s just money, Michael. I’ll tithe ten percent of it and pay off the debt. What should I do with the rest?”

“Invest it in a CD.”

“One of those music things?”

“No, Mom,” I said and explained it to her.

“That sounds like a good idea,” she said.

“And I know just where you should put it.”

Mom smiled and I felt the huge weight that I had been carrying on my shoulders sliding away. I got dressed and threw down a quick breakfast. We drove to the branch bank and paid off my notes. Mom opened an account and got a cashier’s check for fifty thousand dollars to give to her church. Dena opened up two CD’s of equal amounts, one payable on death to me. The other was for Manny.

I didn’t care. As Mom said, it was just money. I called Sandy and told her what happened. If she was excited, Sandy held it in well. We made plans for a big deal tonight to celebrate our engagement and the new life we would share together.

I hung up and realized that I had forgotten something. We were in my truck. M.J. was in the middle, Mom was taking care of shotgun.

“We’re getting married,” I said.

“We can’t get married, Michael,” Mom said. “You’re my son!”

“Not us, Mom. Me and Sandy.”

Mom was so excited that she started to grab me. It forced me to veer into the coming traffic and in the way of a truck heading right toward me. It was the truck that had been parked in front of our house all night and followed us to the branch.

The bad guys could follow me all they wanted. Their time was coming. Soon.

THE END

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