Silent Partner

“Which one?”

She patted her hair. “Some aviation concern- the one run by that mad billionaire, Belding.” She smiled. “And that, Dr. Delaware, is your California history lesson for the day.”

We entered the playground, strolled past swings and slides, headed toward the forest that carpeted the foot of the mountains.

“Does Magna still own land here?” I asked.

“Plenty of it. But they won’t sell. People have tried. For all intents and purposes that keeps Willow Glen a backwater speck. Most of the old families have given up, sold out to rich doctors and lawyers who use the orchards for tax write-offs and run them down- capped irrigation lines, no pruning or fertilizing. Most of them don’t even bother to come up and harvest. In some places the earth’s turned hard and dry as cement. The few growers who’ve stayed have become suspicious and mistrustful- they’re convinced it’s all part of a conspiracy to run things down so the city folk can buy what’s left on the cheap and put up condominiums or something.”

“That’s what Wendy thought.”

“Her folks are newcomers, really pretty naïve. But you have to admire them for trying.”

“Who owns the land Jasper and Shirlee live on?”

“That’s Magna land.”

“Is that common knowledge?”

“Mr. Leidecker told me, and he was hardly a gossip.”

“How’d they end up there?”

“No one knows. According to Mr. Leidecker- I wasn’t living here then- they showed up at the general store to buy groceries back in 1956- back when there was a general store. When people tried to talk to them, Jasper waved his hands and grunted and she giggled. It was obvious they were retarded- children who’ll never grow up. The prevailing theory is that they escaped from some institution, maybe wandered away from a bus and ended up here by accident. People help them when it’s needed, but in general no one pays them much mind. They’re harmless.”

“Someone pays them mind,” I said. “Five hundred dollars a month.”

She gave a hand-in-the-cookie-jar look. “I beg your pardon.”

“I saw their bankbook. Sitting on top of the dresser.”

“On the dresser? What am I going to do with those two? I’ve told them so many times to keep that book hidden, tried to get them to let me keep it at my place. But they think it’s some kind of symbol of freedom, won’t part with it. They can get really stubborn when they want to. Jasper, especially. Did you see those wax-paper windows on their shacks? After all these years, he still refuses to have glass installed. Poor Shirlee freezes in the winter. Gabe and I have to bring down piles of blankets, and by the end of the season they’re mildewed beyond repair. The cold doesn’t seem to bother Jasper. Poor thing needs to be told to come in from the rain.”

She shook her head. “On top of the dresser. Not that anyone from around here would hurt them, but that’s a lot of money to advertise. Especially for two defenseless i

“Who sends it?” I asked.

“I’ve never been able to find out. It arrives, like clock-work, on the first of every month, posted from the central depot in Los Angeles. Plain white envelope, a typed address, no return. Shirlee has no clear concept of time, so she can’t say how long she’s been receiving it, only that it’s been a long time. There was a man- Ernest Halverson- used to deliver the mail until he retired in ’64. He thought he remembered envelopes arriving as early as 1956 or ’7, but he’d had a couple of strokes by the time I talked to him and his memory wasn’t perfect. All the other old-timers are long gone.”

“Was it always five hundred?”

“No. Used to be three, then four. It went up to five after Sharon left for college.”

“Thoughtful benefactor,” I said. “But how could they be expected to handle that kind of money?”

“They couldn’t. They were living like animals until we began taking care of them. Wandering into town every couple of weeks with two or three twenty-dollar bills, trying to buy groceries- they had no idea how to make change or how much things were worth. People are honest here; they never took advantage.”

“Wasn’t there curiosity about where they were getting the money?”

“I’m sure there was, but Willow Glen folk don’t pry. And no one realized how much money they were hoarding. Not until Sharon discovered it- thousands of dollars wadded up under the mattress, or just loose in a drawer. Jasper had used several of the bills for art projects- drawing mustaches on the faces, folding them into paper airplanes.”

“How old was Sharon when she made the discovery?”

“Almost seven. It was 1960. I remember the year because we had unusually hard winter rains. Those shacks were originally built for storage, with only a thin cement pad underneath, and I knew they’d be hit hard, so we went over- Mr. Leidecker and myself. Sure enough, it was dreadful. Their plot was half-flooded, boggy, the dirt ru

“When we got outside, Mr. Leidecker was pointing, all wide-eyed, at bits of green paper stuck in the mud and washing away in the flood. Money, lots of it. At first I thought it was play money- I’d given Sharon some board games- but it wasn’t. It was real. Between Mr. Leidecker and myself, we managed to salvage most of it- we hung the wet bills over our hearth to dry them, put them in a cigar box and kept them safe. First thing after the rains stopped, I drove Shirlee and Jasper down to Yucaipa and set up the bank account. I sign for everything, take a little out for expenses, make sure they save the rest. I’ve managed to teach them a little elementary math, how to budget, how to make change. Once they finally learn something, they can usually retain it. But they’ll never really understand what they’ve got- quite a tidy little nest egg. Along with Medi-Cal and Social Security, the two of them should be comfortable for the rest of their days.”

“How old are they?”

“I have no idea, because they don’t. They have no papers, didn’t even know their birthdays. The government had never heard of them, either. When we applied for Social Security and Medi-Cal, we estimated their ages, gave them birthdates.”

Miss New Year’s and Mr. Christmas.

“You applied when Sharon left for college.”

“Yes. I wanted to cover all bases.”

“How did you come up with Sharon’s birthdate?”

“She and I decided on one, when she was ten.” She smiled. “July Fourth. Her declaration of independence. I put 1953. I got a really good fix on her age from the doctor I took her to- bone-age X-rays, teeth, height and weight. She was somewhere between four and five.”

She and I had celebrated a different birthday. May 15. May 15, 1975. A rare splurge for di

“Any possibility,” I asked, “that she was their biological child?”

“Unlikely. The doctor examined all of them and said Shirlee was almost certainly sterile. So where did she come from, right? For a while I lived with the nightmare that she was someone’s kidnapped baby. I went down to San Bernardino and checked six years’ worth of papers from all around the country, found a couple of cases that sounded possible, but when I followed them up, I learned that both of those children had been murdered. So her origins remain clouded. When you ask Shirlee about it, she just giggles and says Sharon was given to them.”

“She told me it was a secret.”

“That’s just a game with her- playing secret. They’re really just like children.”