This post is a short bridge. This, is sort of a “hinge-pin”, transitional chapter– leading into a “lynchpin” chapter. After this point the entire story shifts, breaking into a “meatier” plotline. In the next chapter, our boy finds a different sort of challenge that’s more “esoteric” than fixing up an old house. This conflict is going to bring the causes and complexities of his childhood into the open (to your benefit, dear reader, it all become very clear) and the ways he’s been able to, cope, adjust and plain bury them up to this point in his life aren’t going to serve him any longer. Sooooo… the last post, this one, and the one or two to follow are really just setting things up– and setting Willie-boy up, too– for a much different ride than the one he’s been on already… Actually, it’s going to be crazier, more stressful and– for our hero– a lot more miserable (and maybe even gratifying, as it may turn out) than he would have ever imagined. I’ll babble a bit more on this at the bottom.
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The growing light afforded him the opportunity to inspect the property for anything he’d missed in the dark. Coming around the back of the house, he noticed the greenery had been rutted and torn by heavy machinery. There were two capped pipes sticking out of the ground. The well, he understood, and a great deal different from the old pumphouse, which had gone the way of the outhouse. There was also a hill of bare earth about sixty feet from the back, northwest corner. Septic mound, he thought, wondering how much longer it would be before he could put it to work. Fifty yards away from the kitchen door, well on the other side of the driveway, was a tremendous heap of cut brush and saplings, intermingled with the scrapped lumber from the outhouse and, what had been hidden in the weeds, the old pumphouse. It was over ten feet high, and at least three times that in diameter. There was a fifteen foot, closed trailer parked beside the dumpster. Maartens was painted on the sides There was also a commercial generator, mounted on a towing frame and an axle, positioned between the trailer and the dumpster. Will went inside, led by the single cable running from the generator in through the kitchen door. The cable ended at the stoop at the base of the stairway, hooked into a four-rowed strip plug
There was enough light that he could look around without the limited view of the flashlight beam. The floor in the kitchen looked even better. Though it surely was cured enough by now to walk on, he remained on the heavy sheet of paper that had been put down in the entryway and the stoop. He tried to visualize what it would look like with cabinets, sink and counters in place. All that came to mind was smaller. His inspection the night before had started and stopped with the kitchen. He felt foolish so much had escaped him. Even the dark of night couldn’t have hidden half of what he’d missed. He convinced himself the traffic incident had nothing to do with it, assigning his inattentiveness to the anxiety that triggered his hasty, unplanned departure from the casino. He went up the steps, following two electric cords that ended in a pair of large fans.
The light upstairs was filtered through the thick polyethylene sealing the windows. Without the mounds of scrap, the second floor had become and echo chamber. All around was naked framing and bare brick. The atmosphere was stale, the plastic had eliminated any air exchange, and it felt heavy, almost humid. It took a few moments before Will realized it had been power-washed, the entire second floor. The dust, that had coated and clung to every surface—even the first floor—was gone. The trim he’d removed, labeled and stacked, had been rearranged and re-numbered.
Dense as it was, the air was essentially clear. The view, however, was not. The heavy plastic sheets over the windows was like solid fog. Everything on the other side of it was hazy and blurred. He walked through the “front bedrooms” to the east side of the house. Through the thick poly, it was still possible to discern the windbreak. He could tell the trees were almost fully leafed. The fuzzy green was highlighted by the dark earth of the field beyond. And that mystery is now back in my head. He moved to the rear, not using the hallway but stepping through the studs. The bathroom was between the northwest bedroom— his bedroom– and his mother’s room, where this whole process had begun. The stool and the sink had been removed, and the same shining copper poked through the floors as downstairs. The bathtub remained. It was a clawfoot, over six feet long and half as wide and almost as big as the “pig scalder” that took up one end of the slaughtering shed. That wasn’t going anywhere, Will had promised himself. It showed the wear of almost a century, but that took nothing away from its glory. It’ll be refinished, he told himself. If I let things get that far. It was in use now. From another hole in the floor, yards and yards of new wiring had been pulled from below into the bathroom. It lay in a coil that almost filled it. Will had seen enough. While the transformation, even in this early stage, had been astounding, it was certainly still in infancy. It was going to go well into winter, no matter how many people he put to work on it. The thought of it was suddenly exhausting.
Plodding back down the steps, Will was suddenly aware of another amenity he’d gotten too comfortable with at the Casino, Resort, Spa and Entertainment Experience. He was hungry.
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Short, sweet, bloated and fat… as it stands right now. The rest of the chapter may come out as such, but there’s nothing I can do but throw it down. When the time comes, it’ll be edited, trimmed, economized or… chopped to pieces, torn apart or maybe thrown out altogether.
And now….. ALL ABOUT MEEEEEEEE!
At this point, I’d like to thank those who’ve followed it this far. It’s a bigger help than I can even come close to explaining. I hope there’s some entertainment value in having a peek at a project from its inception to– hopefully– completion to a finished, polished and sleek conclusion. Hope-ful-ly.
Putting this up, bit by bit, had unexpected and positive benefits. It compels one to maintain discipline, produce everyday. If there’s a negative it’s that you pay a little bit too much time editing, even when it’s just spilling out of your brain. Tends to make one lose the thread sometimes.
Soo… those of you who’ve stuck with it through the origins and the blogging: Wow! and thanks. (Audience has shrunk some.) There have been a few folks who picked up on this after “phase one” of this site, and to you I say: Wow! and thanks. (And if you feel you’ve missed out, there’s always this): https://www.amazon.com/Lunacy-Death-perspective-developed-investigation-ebook/dp/B079DWFH9T/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1530897496&sr=8-1&keywords=lunacy+and+death+book
Back in a couple…