Chapter 9: Brain Trust

By Sunday evening, my grandmother's kitchen held nineteen people and one furnace that had decided to die.

"It always does this in October," the bus driver said, patting the radiator like a horse.

"It's a family tradition," I said.

"Gran called it the Orchard Row Awakening."

The widow from 14 set a shoebox on the table with great ceremony.

It was a Florsheim box, soft with age, and she had tied it shut with a pink ribbon.

"Sixty-one years of checks," she announced.

"I keep everything. My first husband said I was a hoarder. My third said I was a genius."

"Which one was right?" Amory asked from the cellar door.

He had a wrench in one hand and a smear of soot on his cheek.

"The third," the widow said.

"He died, but he was right."

Everyone laughed, and Amory ducked back down to the furnace, smiling.

I sat down with the shoebox and a pencil.

"Okay," I said.

"Here's the job. Every house gets a folder."

"In each folder goes every payment the house made to the lender, in date order, with the bank's stamp."

"And then?" the barber asked.

"Then we compare it to the exhibit Corvane stapled to the notices."

"Every date where they say 'returned' and the bank says 'cleared' is a lie."

"Written lies are good," the widow said, with relish.

"They can be read back to a judge."

We worked for two hours.

The bus driver sorted by street number.

The barber copied dates in a fussy barber's hand.

The Army kid's mother sat beside me with a mug and read the numbers aloud without being asked.

Somebody turned on the radio.

Somebody else put out Todhunter's pastries, which I had not thrown away because I am not a fool.

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