I dug my grandsons boom box out of the garage that night, put in the cassette from Toms 1988 crate, and pressed play, and the first voice I heard was Rays, thirty-six years younger, saying, I take the money, Tom, fair and square, the grove is all yours now, and I wont ever come back on this.
Ray had stood in Toms packing shed and told me he never signed anything, that it was a handshake, that with Tom dead it was his word against mine, that his lawyer said a handshake does not hold up, that half the grove was his.
He did not know Tom recorded the whole thing in 1988.
My husband, buying his brother out in 1988 when Ray needed money for his divorce, did not trust a handshake any more than Ray does now, so he had Ray sign a proper buyout witnessed by the old county judge, and he recorded Ray on tape accepting the money and renouncing any claim, and he sealed both in a crate for the day Ray inevitably came back.
Tom knew his brother. Ray never did anything with his life but complain, and Tom figured that someday, when Tom was gone, Ray would show up claiming the handshake never happened. So Tom made it airtight, the signed document, the judges witness signature, and Rays own voice on tape, and nailed it into a crate marked 1988.
A signed, witnessed buyout beats a made-up handshake every day, and Rays own voice on that tape, accepting the money and promising never to come back on it, ended the argument before a lawyer could bill an hour.
My lawyer listened to the tape and read the document and said, Joanie, theres no case, Tom closed this thirty-six years ago and left you the proof.
When Ray came back with his empty crates, I did not argue. I handed him a copy of the 1988 buyout with his own signature and the judges, and I set the boom box on the packing shed table and played his voice back to him, thirty-six years younger, taking the money. Then I said, you got your half in 1988, Ray. Its on paper and its on tape. The grove is mine. But youre still Toms brother, so if you ever want oranges, you come pick them as family, not with a lawyer and empty crates.
He did not have a word. He got in his truck and drove off, and the crates rattled, empty as his claim.
Half this grove is mine one way or another, he had said. It was not, and never had been. Tom bought it fair in 1988 and proved it forever, and the same pickers who have worked it for thirty years brought in the crop that fall, on sixty acres that were all Toms, and now all mine.