American Elsewhere - By Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,6

There’s a small sum of cash, which she takes. There are also a few parcels of land he still owns, the officer says. These Mona turns down: she is well aware that her father has sold any land worth selling and has been living off the proceeds; the rest is unsellable scrub. The officer nods and tells her that just leaves the matter of the house.

“No sir, I do not want that flea-infested shack he was living in,” she tells him.

“Well, that’s good, because he didn’t own that,” he says. “That he was renting. This would be a house left to him in”—he checks the paper—“New Mexico.”

“It’s what? In New Mexico? I never heard of him owning a house out there.”

The officer turns the document around to show her. “Looks like he didn’t, originally,” he says. “It was left to him, but went unclaimed. In his case, it was left to him by one… Laura Gutierrez Alvarez?”

At that, Mona is almost struck dumb. Though the clerk is nattering on about New Mexico law and uniform probate law, Mona can hardly hear a word of it.

Momma, she thinks? Momma had a house? Momma had a house in New Mexico?

Then, slowly, her shock turns to rage. She cannot believe that the old bastard never told her that. For years she peppered him with questions about her mother, whom she barely remembers save for a few childhood images of a thin, trembling woman who wept constantly and stared out of windows, yet never went outdoors. Mona never knew that her mother had once had a life beyond their tiny West Texas home; yet here, recorded in the fading ink of an ancient typewriter, a paper tells her of a paper that tells her of a deed in her mother’s name, which in turn tells her of another life far from here, a life before Earl, and Mona’s own birth, and all the bitter years they spent together as her father roughnecked across the country.

“What else can you tell me about it?” she asks.

“Well… not much. There’s nothing else in the original will, which is pretty basic. I suppose your father never acted on it.”

“Never? He just sat on it?”

“Seems that way. The will itself has an expiration date of”—he checks—“thirty years.”

Something about this troubles Mona. “Thirty years from Earl’s death?”

“Erm, no,” says the official. He checks the papers. “This would be thirty years from the date of your mother’s death.”

Mona closes her eyes, and thinks—fuck.

“What?” says the official. “Something wrong?”

“Yeah,” says Mona. “That means it expires in”—she does some math in her head—“eleven days.”

“Oh.” The official whistles lowly. “Well. Better get a wiggle on, I suppose.”

Mona gives him a prime no shit glare, then squints to read the home’s address:

1929 LARCHMONT

WINK, NM 87207

Mona frowns.

Wink? she thinks. Where the fuck is Wink?

The question stays on her mind as she drives into Big Spring to track down her father’s storage unit. It even pushes out all thoughts of the Charger. She has never felt there was much to know about her father—and what else was there besides the bitter silences, the smell of cordite, and the Silver Bullet tallboy clutched in one hairy fist?—yet now she is given to wonder. If all this is true, if her mother really did leave him a house in a distant town, then he must have known at least a little about it—right? You don’t just inherit a house and then stick all knowledge of it away and forget about it, do you?

It strikes her as she pulls into the storage center that if anyone would ever do such a thing, it would be her daddy. He was just the type.

The storage center attendant is initially suspicious of her. Not just because she’s asking to open someone else’s unit, and has to produce a lot of documents and fumble with a lot of keys to prove her case, but also because that particular unit hasn’t been opened in over two years. Finally he gives in—though Mona suspects his objection was mostly fueled by a reluctance to get out of his chair rather than some professional honor—and he leads her through the maze of boxes and metal doors to one of the larger storage units at the far back.

“Is he dead for reals?” asks the attendant.

“He is for reals dead,” says Mona. “I’ve seen him.”

“If that’s the case, you got a week to clear all this out, just so’s you know,” he says, and he unlocks the unit and sends