BIG SOUTHERN CHAPTER 86

SEPTEMBER 2012

DAVID

The County's check has arrived, the farm sale's paperwork is done.

"Shouldn't there be one more check?"
 "No. Long story."

Her eyebrows raise ever so slightly, her training not so thoroughly imbedded that it can override her curiosity. I slide a piece of paper with my siblings' names and addresses, all typewritten without mistakes, fully legal to prevent me having to do this again, over to her side of the desk and she gets to work.

There's a plaque on the wall to her right identifying the building as the first bank in Blackfoot, the Chapman Bank, but I don't see one that tells of its crash or the one of the bank that subsequently bought the building, the Standrod, which also went defunct thirty years later. The original woodwork still remains around the doors and as trim, the ornateness a reminder of a different sensibility than today's.

I have envelopes addressed out in the truck and I'll pop the checks into them, seal them up, send them certified to their recipients. That, I believe, will be the end of my duties to family. Only my agreement with Doyle, the stint at the museum, remains for me to fulfill before I make an exit from this area and my past. There is, of course, also the treasure site to investigate.

She taps away at the keyboard, glances at the screen, he assumes moving from one window to another through the bank's organized files and protocol. "Hold on for a second," I say. I have a sudden idea. Call it inspiration, perhaps divine. She stops.

"I forgot to take my sum for administration," I explain. "Subtract ten thousand from the total, then distribute the remainder to the others."

"Do you want yours in a cashier's check, too?" she asks.

"No," I tell her. "This will be a little different." I want my ten to go to me but then get transferred to pay on Gilbert's food truck. I co-signed on it, so have the necessary account numbers. "One last thing," I add.

"Yes?"

"Can you make the deposit to him anonymous?"

Her face pinches. "We can't really do that. You would have to do that through one of the cash transfer services. Homeland Security, you know. Money laundering concerns." She tut-tuts, revealing some kind of political leaning but toward what sort I can't determine.

I am on the account, but Gilbert could trace it. "Just put it in this account then." I pull out my checkbook—from another bank—and she smirks slightly. The notion of checks, I know, has for the most part died. She doesn't say anything, just takes down the account number.

I can fabricate an account in Paypal and send money from there. One more obstacle, but it will work. She heads to the printer on the other side of the bank.

© 2025 Ralph Thurston