The clerk ran Huberts deed through her computer, then went and got her supervisor, and the supervisor looked at it and said, Mrs. Tolbert, this is recorded and its clear, your husband owned this entire block, which means the studio bought a good deal of property from people who never owned it.
The location manager in his indoor sunglasses called the Cotton Hill General Store super authentic and told me the studio needed to own it, that if I would not sell, the city would rezone and my taxes would rise until I could not keep the lights on.
He did not know what Huberts key opened.
Under the cash drawer, taped since 1978, was a key to a box in the crawl space, and inside that box was a deed, not to the store but to the whole block, in Huberts name, notarized in 1978, which means the block the studio thought it had bought up was largely my husbands all along.
Hubert built the long pine counter and the woodstove where the old men play checkers, and he told me the key opened the box thats ours if anybody ever comes for the store. Anybody came, in indoor sunglasses, and the box held a deed to the entire block.
A recorded deed beats a handshake purchase from the wrong seller. The studios plan to rezone and tax me out did not matter, because they could not build a backlot on a block that belonged to me, and their other purchases were suddenly in question.
When the location manager came back, I did not argue. I handed him a certified copy of the 1978 deed and I said, the offer of a Coca-Cola still stands, Hubert always gave the first one free. But you dont own this block. My husband did, and now I do. Youll be talking to me and my lawyer about the whole street, not just the store.
The studio is renting from me now, on my terms, and the store stays exactly as Hubert built it. The old men still play checkers by the woodstove, and I still open at seven.
Either way well get the store, he told me. Either way it was already mine, and the block around it too, because Hubert put a deed in a box and a key under the cash drawer in 1978 and told me where to look when the day came.