do with it?” Mrs. Abernathy opened the leather folder and slid one cream colored page across the table to me. “Mr. Odom, I will read only the title and let you take it from there. The Bernice Odom Fund for the Children of Lauderdale County. Signed by the board this morning, and funded in full.” The dining room went so quiet I could hear the clock in the hallway. I stood up slowly, because my knees are eighty one years old, and I said, “Ricky, sit down, son. I have something to tell all of you, and I wanted to do it right.”
“Six months ago I took most of what I got for the trucks and put it into a foundation,” I said. “Twelve point six million dollars, less what I kept for my house and my supper at the Waffle House. It pays for shoes, bus tickets, books and college tuition for any child in this county whose family cannot manage it. Your grandmother told me we would be somebody Mrs. Patton, and she made me promise. I am sorry it took me this long.” Crystal put her hand over her mouth. the girlfriend of Tyler lowered her phone and, I noticed, stopped filming.
Ricky did not sit. “Dad, you sold the company for that kind of money? You let me think you were scraping by.” I told him the truth. “I let you think it, and that part was my mistake, not yours. I was afraid the money would change what you saw when you looked at me.” His ears turned red the way they did when he was a boy. Then he pulled out his chair and sat down heavily, like a man whose pockets had suddenly been turned out in front of everybody he loved.
A lonely old man kept a promise to his wife, and a family that mocked him learned what he was really worth.
Tyler spoke first, and his voice cracked. “Pawpaw, I gave you a two dollar ticket in front of everybody. I told you that you needed it more than any of us.” I smiled at him. “You did, and I thanked you, and I meant it. It is the only gift this year I scratched with my own hands.” Mrs. Abernathy cleared her throat. “There is one more page, Mr. Odom.” She turned it around. The fund had bought the old Haldane Ford schoolhouse, the one where Bernice learned to read, and it would reopen in the spring with her name over the door.
“The first scholarship carries a second name,” Mrs. Abernathy added. “Mrs. Patton had a granddaughter, a retired teacher in Huntsville, and she is on the board. She asked me to tell you that her grandmother kept a shoebox of letters from a girl named Bernice for forty years.” I had to sit down then. Nobody at that table said a word. Ricky reached across the green bean casserole and put his big salesman hand over my old wrinkled one, and he did not let go until the pie had gone completely cold.
After a while Ricky asked in a small voice about the money he had borrowed. “Nine times,” I said. “I kept a list, son. Not to collect. Only so I would remember to love you through it.” I took the folded paper from my wallet, and in front of the whole family I tore it in half, then in quarters. “It is paid in full. But I will not leave you a fortune to waste. There is a modest trust for each of you, and a share for the children of Crystal too. Spend it kindly, and spend it slowly.”
Then Mrs. Abernathy turned to Tyler. “The fund needs a driver, Mr. Odom the younger. Someone to carry the children to their school in Haldane Ford when the buses cannot run.” Tyler blinked. “Pawpaw, I have never kept a job longer than four months.” I looked him square in the eye. “Then keep this one for four months, and we will talk about the fifth.” The boy laughed, wiped his face on his sleeve, and said he would sell that fifty thousand dollar truck and buy something that fit a car seat.
The week after Christmas, the four of us drove out to Haldane Ford in my old pickup. Ricky said nothing for twenty miles. Then he said, “Dad, I am ashamed of how I laughed.” I told him Bernice would have said a laugh is not a sin, but a closed heart is. We stood in the cold in front of that little brick schoolhouse with its new tin roof, and Ricky took off his cap, the way he did at the service for his mother, and stayed that way a long time. Crystal stood beside him, and for the first time in years she called me Dad.
In March, the first scholar came to see me, a skinny girl named Marisol who had walked four miles to school in sneakers with the soles flapping. Tyler had already driven to the shoe store with her. She stood in my carport in a new pair of white leather shoes, turning her feet this way and that, trying not to cry. I told her somebody once did the same for my wife, and that all I asked in return was that she be somebody Mrs. Patton herself one day. Marisol hugged me anyway, quick and hard, the way my wife used to.
I still keep that scratch off ticket in my shirt pocket next to my reading glasses. It is only worth two dollars, but I would not trade it for the whole twelve point six million. Ricky comes by every Sunday now, with no brochure and no questions about a will. We sit on the carport, watch Tyler pull in from his route, and talk about Bernice. Some evenings I swear I can hear her laughing, and saying, Clarence, now you are somebody. Last week Tyler asked if he could name the first school bus Bernice. I told him she would have been mortified, and then I told him yes.
