This is how it’s going to be for a while. It’s a nice break– for me– from the route I’d been taking. I’ve learned putting stuff up here always results in a push to follow up, and it’s proving to be an excellent tool in getting my butt in front of a keyboard. Feel free to douse me with criticism.
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A mile beyond the bridge, was the first town across the county line: Hasselt. Calling it a town was a stretch, even when Will was a child. There was not a business or industry within the limits of the community, just a cluster of farm houses surrounded by a couple sections of tilled acreage. His grandfather had once explained to him that it was the first real settlement built by the newly arriving Dutch immigrants. His grandfather explained those first Limburgers had built that way as a means of protection. He’d related each house represented over one hundred acres of working farmland, but they built close together out of fear the Dakota might recover enough to mount another uprising. They felt they stood a better chance if they lived close to each other. A few years later, the bureaucratic process of becoming a county disrupted and divided the community more than the Indians ever stood a chance of doing. Connecting the county seat of Maastricht to the rest of the state by the most direct and efficient route split the settlement right down the middle. Will’s mother offered her distinct perspective on the role Hasselt played in the history of the area. She told him it was there to serve as a warning against going any farther up the road.
His mother’s sardonic take flashed through Will’s mind as he rolled through. Judging by the number of lighted windows he passed, Hasselt’s potential as either quaint first impression or viable deterrent had greatly diminished over the last two decades.
Will continued on Limburg County Road One, its gentle northward curve lined by windbreaks of naked trees intermittently broken by intersecting, unmarked gravel roads. He’d traveled two miles beyond Hasselt when he approached the first paved intersection, Limburg County Road Two. Will had the right of way, there was no approaching cross traffic, but he pulled to a full stop. He let go of the steering wheel and rested back fully against the seat.
Five miles straight ahead lay Maastricht; the epicenter of all things Limburg County. There were bars. There were restaurants. There had to be at least one modern, chain motel. Will took a deep breath. The mindset he’d somehow constructed in his head, allowing him to treat this that as a mad-crazy road trip, a silly, impulsive adventure done for laughs had collapsed. The purpose he’d placed on this excursion that had lain like a coiled snake in the back of his mind suddenly rose up and struck. He hadn’t come here on impulse. He hadn’t come to serve nostalgia. He’d come to bury, then resurrect . . . or so he’d made himself believe. Seven miles to the left was his reason for coming this far. Seven miles west was what he’d determined would be the end of one life, and the beginning of another. He could go to Maastricht. He could drive straight ahead, eat a good meal, have a couple beers, sleep in a well-made bed… and then what? Find a more reckless way to spend Daddy’s money, he told himself. No reason to stop disappointing him just because he’s dead…
He took another long breath, held it a moment, blew it out hard and grabbed the steering wheel. Hitting the gas hard enough to elicit a screech from the tires, he fishtailed his way onto Limburg County Road Two, moving west.
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Will would have missed the driveway if it weren’t for the new gravel. He saw the apron of fresh roadway spilling fanning to the edge of the pavement, the material so new it was almost luminescent against the dark shoulder. It took him a moment to understand what he was seeing and almost drove past it. He turned into the drive wondering if ending up in South Dakota would be such a bad thing. He stopped. The lilac and bridal wreath bushes that lined the drive were overgrown into gnarled, skeletal hedgerows, the naked branches hanging to the edges of the bright, new road. The bare shrubbery shrunk funnel-like down the gravel strip beyond the range of his headlamps, ending in a dark abyss. Down the rabbit hole, he thought, and removed his foot from the brake pedal.
A hundred yards down the driveway, the overhanging brush of the hedges faded way to a dense snarl of waist high overgrowth. Twice that distance farther the driveway opened to lopsided oval of fresh gravel of approximately forty feet in diameter. Plenty of room for guest parking! He pulled to the center of it and killed his headlights. The house would be about thirty feet away to the right, but he didn’t want to illuminate it with the halogens. Will harbored no illusions about how it would look. It had been built like a fortress and he knew nothing short of an earthquake or explosion could ever render it structurally unsound. In the moonlight he had no trouble appraising the unruly jungle of growth fencing him in on his little island of glorified dirt. Translating it to how two decades of neglect would affect any parts of the house vulnerable to the elements wasn’t difficult. There were at least a score of wood framed windows, the roof and a large wooden front porch. Rain, wind, snow and sun would have their inexorable effects, and for all he knew a tornado or two may have paid a visit. Mother Nature aside, there was no limit to the havoc that could be wrought by a generation of bored farm kids.
Will sighed, still not looking toward the house. He arranged for some preliminary work inside as well as the driveway. There should be lights in the kitchen at the very least, and maybe even a working tap, so no matter how it looked on the outside, he could expect some rudimentary habitability. He grabbed a flashlight from the glove box and stepped outside. With the angle of the moon above, the house was little more than a hulking silhouette. He circled around the truck to the edge of the gravel, giving his eyes a little more time to adjust. A vague landscape of ridges and recesses began to rise from the pitch-black rectangle in front of him, but no details emerged. He could tell the base of the structure was ringed by an inverted skirt of saplings and young trees, but he also knew from spine tingling trips to the cellar as a kid that the foundation consisted of limestone slabs two feet square and a foot thick. Roots be damned, this place wasn’t going to budge for a few hundred years. Yet, when he switched on the flashlight, he knew something was wrong.
It wasn’t the obviously battered side door. That was expected, and though clearly pried and pounded, it was closed. The stoop leading up to the door was bright and fresh eight-by eights, it’s rotted predecessor lying in a heap beside it. The overgrowth was afforded new density in the beam of the light, and a flash over the windows beside the door was grim but by no means a shock. It wasn’t anything to do with the building itself, but the narrow, scarcely discernible path leading from the gravel island to the door itself was what triggered his apprehension.
It should be bigger, he thought, wider, more beaten down. He left the truck and walked toward the house. Away from the gravel, the ground was saturated. Will’s feet sank a good half- inch when he stepped from the driveway. He didn’t let the cold moisture seeping into his socks bother him. He squelched his way to the stoop. The door was secured by a new metal hasp, with a large bolt holding the eye in the slot. Will figured he should be grateful it wasn’t a padlock. He slid the bolt out, flipped the hasp, and pushed.
Will had been exposed to any number of odors the average human being would not—and should not—be familiar with. The odor that hit his nostrils when the door scraped open—he’d expected a creeeak—wasn’t foul or overpowering, but it wasn’t good. There was an underlying sourness, like a tamarack or cedar swamp. Mixed in was the hint of mold, wet concrete, decaying wood, damp plaster and the expected dust and mildew, and the hint, merest hint, of an unspecific tang of organic, animal decay, like a long dead rodent or bird. After a moment, his brain was able to find a relative stink filed away in his subconscious. What passed over his olfactories was similar the smell that hovered around an exhumed casket before it was opened. It was a portent that wan by no means lost on him. He pushed the comparison out of his head, if not out of his nostrils
Will played the flashlight around until he found the light switch. Certain of what would happen before he even tried it, he flipped it up. Nothing. At first glance he knew it hadn’t been touched in the last few days, and probably not for two decades. He knew better than to even try the faucet. So much for rudimentary existence.
Will swept the light over the entire kitchen. He slapped away or beat down any flares of recognition and any memories they might kindle. Keep it objective, he forced himself to think. What the light revealed looked to be a compromise between investigation and vandalism. Holes were knocked into walls in places where plumbing or wiring may lurk. The cabinet doors below the sink stood open. There where footprints in the grime, wipe marks on the counters. The light switch at the end of the kitchen beside the bathroom door had indeed been pried loose, and he saw the fixture in the ceiling at the center of the room had been partially disassembled. Somebody had been in here intending to do some work, but aside from the temporary stoop, no actual work had been done. Will had set this up weeks ago. He didn’t act on any desire for further exploration, because at this moment, he felt none. That would be better left for the light of day. He went back outside, leaving the door open. Maybe some of the smell would dissipate. He squelched back to his truck.
Back in the cab, he pondered what to do next. One of his first steps would be firing the contractor he’d hired to do the kitchen. That would take all of five minutes, but would also have to wait until morning. Though wanting nothing to do with the inside until the sun was up, he was tempted to walk around the outside of the house, if for no other reason than there was nothing else to do. Then he remembered there was a cistern out there somewhere—or had been. It would be a lousy time to find out the hard way. He couldn’t help but think it amusing that he’d flounder around until he died, drowned and freezing in the dark, found god-knows when, decomposed, adipocere… and a whopper of a bank draft in his pocket. The idea put a grin on his face. He’d taken a dozen cases that were screwier than this would be, but none of them had ever involved a piece of paper worth a quarter million dollars turning up in a decomp’s pocket.
Dying in an old water tank wasn’t funny for long. He sighed and took another look at the house. Morning, he decided. Don’t do another thing until the sun was up. His mind kept turning to what he’d need to do, but he pushed it out of his head. The temptation to run into Maastricht rose again; eat a real dinner, have a couple beers, find a decent place to pass the night. The temptation was just a disguise, a ruse. He knew if he headed east he wouldn’t stop until he was back in The Cities. He’d have had himself talked out of this mad scheme before he had ten miles behind him. No, he reminded himself, not this time. No more impulsive changes of plans, no more sideways retreats. Start what you finish for once, Willem. For once.
He kicked his shoes off, put his pillow against the door and stretched across the seat. He folded the sleeping bag over his legs. The light of day. This would all look better when the sun was up. Yet he was unable to finish that thought without adding: And maybe it wouldn’t. He lay in silence, save the ticking and pinging of the truck’s cooling engine. The night settled in around him. After a few minutes the noise from under his hood was gone. Through the passenger window Will saw a slice of the sky over and through the bare branches of the windbreak. There were more stars visible in a square foot of window than he’d ever seen in the entire sky on any night back in St. Paul. That was something, he told himself. That was something right there. He reached for a coke and a bag of chips, and after a few moments consideration, the joint laying in the ashtray. How many years..? He couldn’t quite stretch out, and at some time in the night, if he did manage to fall asleep, he was going to wake up freezing his ass off and needing to pee, but for now he was comfortable enough. He lit crumpled cigarette held the smoke, and on the exhale choked out, “Holy shit.” The finish of his next toke was punctuated with “Holy fucking shit.”
# # #
So concludes the End of the Beginning, but by no means the beginning of the end. Chapter One of a yet-to-be-named Magnum Opus… or so I tell myself. What has preceded and what is to come is a rough draft, mind you and some of it will be written mere moment before being dispatch to the internet. It could be sketchy, bloated and at times incomprehensible (Hey, reading this means bearing witness to the creative process! You can brag: I was there when…..) Comments? Questions? CRITICISM! All welcome.
For those missing madness and mayhem, the book is still available: