Moments after he left the office a call came in from a newspaper reporter from the Arizona Sun in Tucson. When Lisa put the call through to Joanna, the woman explained she was calling for an Election Day comment from the woman who might possibly be Arizona’s first female county sheriff. The reporter’s questions were the sort Joanna had come to dread during the course of the campaign.
As far as the media were concerned, the election of the Cochise County sheriff was newsworthy primarily because Joanna Brady, one of the three candidates, was a woman. And no matter how she answered the questions, the way the articles were written generally made Joanna sound like a wild eyed, gun-toting feminist-an unlikely cross between Dirty Harry and Gloria Steinem.
Finished with the call, Joanna was sorting through a stack of home /office underwriting requirements and correspondence when Harold Lamm Patterson appeared at Lisa’s desk. Standing politely with a damp and battered Stetson in hand, he asked to see Milo right away. Joanna heard Lisa tell Harold that Milo was out for most of the morning, and she saw the look of grave disappointment that washed across the old man’s leathery features. Like everyone else in town, Joanna knew Harold Patterson had his hands full with his ring-tailed bitch of a daughter back home and making trouble. There was no reason to add to the old man’s woes.
Getting up, Joanna wandered to the outer office and stopped beside Lisa’s desk. “If it’s something, urgent, Mr. Patterson,” Joanna suggested, “perhaps I could be of help.”
I would appreciate it, ma’am,” Harold Patterson said sincerely.
“I surely would.”
When ushered into Joanna’s office, Harold took the seat she motioned him into. Like a wary old bird poised for sudden flight, he perched uneasily on the chair with his hat balanced precariously on one knobby knee. He squinted at her through narrow, lidded eyes.
“You’re Hank Lathrop’s little girl, aren’t you? The one who’s running for sheriff?”
Joanna nodded without comment. Little girl?
Hardly, but compared to Harold’s eighty-odd years, she must seem improbably young for that kind of responsibility.
“I reckon your daddy would be real proud of you if he could see you today,” Harold continued.
“I voted for you, by the way. Stopped off on my way into town.”
Joanna felt a flush creep up her neck. “Thank you, Mr. Patterson. I appreciate that. But tell me, what can I do for you today?”
“I’m used to dealing with Milo,” Harold Patterson hedged. “And with Milo’s father before that…”
“It’s all right, Mr. Patterson. If you don’t want me to take care of whatever it is, that’ll be fine.
The problem is, I have no idea how long Milo will be gone. It could be after lunch before he comes back. I do have access to all of the files, and Harold leaned forward in his chair and lowered his voice. “It’s personal, ma’am,” he whispered so Lisa couldn’t hear. “Personal and confidential.”
Joanna took the hint, got up, and firmly closed the connecting door between her office and Lisa’s.
“There,” she said, sitting back down. “Is that better?”
Harold nodded. “What do I have to do to change the beneficiaries on my policies?” he asked. “Do I have to bring the policies into the office, or what? I think they’re over at the bank.”
“Oh, no. If that’s all you want, I can do it in a minute. All you have to do is fill out a change-of beneficiary form.”
“Just one form for all the policies?”
“No. You use a separate form for each one, but I will need the policy numbers.”
“Damn. I don’t have them along.”
Joanna smiled. “No problem, Mr. Patterson.
Give me your date of birth.”
“November the twelfth, 1910.”
Joanna switched on her desktop computer and booted it up. Once she had entered Harold Patterson’s name and birth date into the database, the screen showed her a listing of his set of several policies. Harold Patterson had come into the world when automobiles were still a rarity. He watched the computer operation with some interest.
‘You have five policies in all with us, Mr. Patterson,” Joanna said a moment later. “Would you care to have a printout on each one?”
“You can do that?”
‘Certainly.”
Joanna typed in a series of commands, and moments later the dot-matrix printer behind her whined out a stream of printed paper. Tearing off the tractor-feed holes and separating the printouts into individual sheets, she handed them over to Harold. He sat there for some time, squinting at each one in turn.
‘Is everything in order?” Joanna asked.
He looked up at her as if startled at the sound of her voice. “Oh, yes. They seem to be fine.”
Joanna reached into her bottom drawer, thumbed through a series of files, and came up with a fistful of change-of-beneficiary forms. “You don’t have to complete them here, but they do have to be properly witnessed at the time of signing. Did you want to change the beneficiary designation on all of the policies?”
Harold first nodded, then shook his head. “Yes.
Well, no. I’m not sure.” Finally, he tossed the stack of papers back onto Joanna’s desk.
“How can I tell?” he demanded in disgust.
“Eyes are so damn bad, I can’t hardly read the damn things.”
Joanna picked them up and glanced through them. “Your daughter Ivy is the sole beneficiary on all of them,” she explained. “If she’s not then living, the proceeds are to be divided equally between your nephew, Burton Kimball, and your daughter Holly. If you’d like to make a change in those arrangements, Mr. Patterson, I’d be happy to complete the forms for you.”
To Joanna’s surprise, Harold Patterson’s eyes filled with a sudden pool of tears that threatened to overflow his eyes despite the old man’s valiant attempt to blink them back.
“Always thought of myself as sort of a care taker,” he mumbled hoarsely. “Thought I’d take care of what my pa gave me and pass it along to my children and to their children’s children. As it turns out, my girls are the end of the line. Instead of valuing the Rocking P and what I’ve worked for all my life, they’re fighting over it.”
He shook his head sadly. “Reminds me of a pair of dogs I had once, years ago, an older one and a pup. The old dog had this blanket, an old, wore out horse blanket, that he slept on out in the barn.
The pup took a liking to that blanket and tried to make off with it. There was plenty of blanket to go around. They could have both used it, but they each pulled and tugged on it until there was nothing left but pieces. Turned out neither one of them had the good of it.”
Harold paused and looked at Joanna. “You see what I mean, don’t you?”
Joanna nodded. “I think so, yes. Your daughters?”
He nodded wearily. “And the Rocking P is the blanket. Or maybe I am. You want your children to grow up to like each other or at least get along, but it seems like that’s not how things work out most of the time.”
“Mr. Patterson,” Joanna said kindly, “I can see that you’re under a good deal of stress today. Understandably so.
Why don’t you take the printouts and the change-of-beneficiary forms with you and give yourself some time to think things over and sort them out.”
As she talked, Joanna folded the two separate stacks of paper together into a single letter-sized sheaf and placed them in a blank manila envelope.
“Talk to your daughters and your nephew. If you think it will help. You can wait until tomorrow or the next day and speak to Milo himself about this.
In other words, don’t rush into anything. And if you do change the beneficiary and later on you think better of it, then all you have to do is sign another set of forms.” She smiled. “We’re bureaucrats here, Mr. Patterson. We like doing paper work. It gives our lives meaning.”
For the first time since Harold Patterson entered her office, Joanna noticed the ghost of an answering smile playing at the corners of his mouth.