Nobody

Crooked Mary-Beth

I shrugged. "It's your land, Miss Mary-Beth," I told her.

"You've put more into this house and the land than the land was worth when you pulled up in your truck at Gary's gas station, by God."

"Please, call me Sam. What's the problem? Just cut me half off my rent for a while."

"For the next five years? Ten?" She scoffed. "Lord Jesus help me, I do that, everyone will talk behind their hands about me in church."

"I needed to work for a while, Miss Mary-Beth," I told her. "You didn't come here and stand over me with a shotgun while I worked."

She barked a laugh at that. "That's true, Sam, that's true, by Jesus."

"I got no quarrel with you over this, Miss Mary-Beth," I told her.

"Then I heard from that old quack Solomon Rutheford that you'd gone and worked yourself sick, old Army wounds flaring up, and Lord did the looks start," She told me. "I prayed over it last night, and when I woke up, the Good Lord had shown me the way."

I waited quietly. Maybe it wasn't a verbal tic.

Funny thing is, in my experience, a woman that praises God that much late in life was trying to atone for being a very bad girl when she was younger.

"I'll sell you the property for what the county said it was worth last year, Mister Eng - Sam," she said, smiling.

"How much was that?" I asked her, giving her my best Texas squint.

She waved her hat at me. "Don't be giving me that look, Mister English. The Lord showed me the way, I'm not out to cheat you," she paused a moment. "Say, twenty-eight thousand?"

I nodded, waving toward the kitchen counter. "My checkbooks right over there, Mary-Beth. How about you grab it for me, I'll cut you a check if my account can handle it."

She flushed. "I, uh, took the liberty of bringing you today's account balance," she stammered. "I swear in Jesus's name I wasn't being nosy."

I chuckled. "It ain't no sin for a woman to be prudent, Mary-Beth," I reassured her.

She grabbed my checkbook from where it was sitting on a stack of receipts on the counter that separated the dining room from the kitchen and came back, handing it to me.

She wore floral perfume.

She dug in her purse and handed me my bank balance. I'd had my old bank wire the entire contents of my disability pay account to my new account at the Blue Creek Credit Union. I just stared at the balance. Over half a million dollars, between monthly deposits of my 140% VA disability rating landing me 100% disability pay, my initial deposit of the money that was left in my account after Desert Storm and that terrible last winter in Alfenwehr, and a good interest rate that I'd bargained hard for at the time.

I just stared at the balance.

"You didn't know, Sam?" She said. "I checked with your old bank, you've been getting payments for the Department of Veteran's Affairs that increased yearly."

"I... no... I didn't know," I stammered. I blinked a few times and stared at it. Three thousand dollars monthly was a hell of a chunk, but I'd been depositing it since 1991.

I wrote the check for twenty-eight grand and signed it, handing it to her.

"It's a quick-claim form," she told me. I signed the bottom where it was marked by an X. One copy for me, one copy for her.

I pretended I didn't see she was claiming I only paid a dollar for it. I'd seen that kind of thing before.

Crooked Mary-Beth indeed