Putting and end to said “hingepin” chapter. What comes next is going to shift things in a HUGE way.
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Will walked back along the county road. His trip down the driveway was through a cloud of dust, raised by a vehicle that had pulled in ahead of him. The highlight of his morning was supposed to be meeting with Ken Maartens, who he assumed had been in the truck that had pulled in ahead of him, but his this latest discovery had put a damper on it. He was so preoccupied he wasn’t aware of another truck coming down his driveway. When he heard the tap of a horn behind him, the battered truck was almost on his heels. Will stepped aside with a start. The beat-up Chevy rattled by, towing a trailer loaded with a brush cutter, rakes, pitchforks and a commercial lawn mower. The box was occupied by a foursome of Native American kids. They waved at him as the vehicle and trailer rocked and swayed down the drive, and kept waving until it turned to the left, heading in the direction of the orchard.
Will stopped walking. He stood at the edge of his drive, in his nicely clipped weeds, and gaped at the spot where the truck had turned off the driveway. What is fucking next? When he picked up his feet again, he walked with the conviction that, should a condor swoop down, grab him and then drop him in the Wahpekute, he’d have no cause for surprise.
When Will reached the end of the driveway, there was a newer model truck parked beside his own. The trailer with “Maartens” on the sides stood open, and the ramp had been dropped. There were noises coming from inside. He approached it, and met a man coming down the ramp with a roll of paper like that that covered the entrance of the kitchen over his shoulder. For a moment, it appeared to Will his approach had been unnoticed, but when the man came within two feet of him, he abruptly put the roll down and looked him in the eye. “You’re Will Holliday?”
Will’s answer was a mute nod.
The man thrust a hand toward him. “Ken Maartens. Delighted to meet you.”
The guy standing in front of him bore no resemblance to the Ken Maartens Will had come to envision through their phone conversations. He’d imagined a stern, graying hulk of a man. Instead of a six foot five inch slab of taut muscle and callouses testing the limits of a triple XL T-shirt, he was face-to-face with a button down grey shirt and corduroy pants. Ken Maartens eyes may have been steely blue, but there were hidden behind round, wire rimmed spectacles. He wore penny loafers.
“Will,” he answered, taking the hand. He’d gotten one thing right. Maartens palm felt like alligator hide.
“I’m compelled to tell you, Mister Holliday, that this project is exciting.” He broke off the handshake and gestured toward the house. “This is a masterpiece, and a freak.” Maartens faced him, or at least turned to. Will was a full head taller than the contractor. “Had I known about this place, I’d have been tempted to buy it myself.”
“Well,” Will replied, looking at the hulking pile of bricks, “don’t count yourself out, yet.”
“Could you explain why the walls are so thick?”
It was a story he’d heard more than once. Will looked down. The man’s eyes were wide and almost dancing. “My greatgrandmother,” Will told him. “She was terrified of tornadoes, I heard, and claustrophobic. She didn’t want to go in the cellar every time the weather looked bad.”
“But, the expense…”
Will shrugged. “She had a bricklayer for a brother-in-law. The story was he always over-ordered for a job and diverted the surplus here. I heard it took them over a year to build it.”
Maartens shook his tiny head. “No way that’s coming down in a tornado. That’s five ranks think. It must have been one hell of a puzzle putting together.”
Will shrugged. “My great-granduncle built most of Venlo and more than half of Maastricht. I s’pose he had plenty of practice.”
Maartens was nodding. “It’s a good thing, Mister Holliday, putting this house right. It deserves it.”
Will would have been more agreeable the night before; before leaving the casino, before he’d come across that guy in the ditch, and now, more than he’d realized, before he discovered several thousand corn sprouts. A full belly might have even allowed him to share Maartens’ enthusiasm. “It’s the least I could do before deciding what to do with it, ultimately.” Open a door, close a door… “I ought to be the one thanking you, anyway. Bertie certainly picked the right man for the job.”
“Bertie knows everyone and everything,” Maartens said. He already had the roll of paper on his shoulders and was moving towared the kitchen door. “It’s no secret if you’re looking for restoration rather than just fix-up, I’m the guy to call.”
Will followed him. He wondered why Blom hadn’t just come out an named this guy right off the bat. Too many puzzles it this part of the world. “So, Mr. Maartens, what would be next?”
Maartens set the roll down in the doorway and faced him. “Are you telling me to keep going?”
“Infrastructure-wise, yes.”
Maartens offered a slight smirk. “Infrastructure,” he repeated. The smirk dropped and he was all contractor. “That’d be the roof, Mister Holliday. Goin’ about this the right way, that should’ve been the first move.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve got special considerations,” Will said, which brought back the smirk. “I’m going to assume you’ve already taken a look at it, inside and out?”
“I did.” Maartens said, then asked, “Did you ever get up in the attic?”
Will shook his head. “No.”
“Didn’t think so,” the contractor said with a shake of his head. “The guy I sent up there for the first ‘look-see’ wasn’t real happy.”
“There was a problem?”
The contractor nodded. “Yeah, bats.”
“Bats?”
Another nod. “Yep, full of them. Hundreds, maybe a thousand.”
“Wow.”
“Couldn’t shoo ‘em out, and he tried everything, swiping at ‘em with a broom, smoke, even tried blasting the radio. Nothing worked. All they did was flap around and drive him back down the steps. The ones he did get out were back a minute or two later. Stubborn little shits.”
Will looked up. “He got them out, though, right? I’m mean, eventually?”
The contractor’s expression turned unreadable. “Yeah, he sure did. That didn’t make him real goddamn happy, either, but he figured it out. Sucked them out with the biggest shop-vac we had.” He responded to Will’s gasp with a wry smile, “Yeah. Like I said, he wasn’t real happy about the job. First time he dumped the canister, he tried going right out the window with it over the dumpster. Wouldn’t you know? A good number of the little bastards flew right back in– the ones that lived anyway.” Maartens shook his head. “I gave him a couple days off after he was done and the poly went up. He probably spent it in a nuthouse.”
“What did he do with the guano?”
Maartens raised his eyebrows. “Pardon?”
“The guano,” Will repeated. “The bat poop.”
“I know what guano is,” the contractor responded. “He got rid of all that, too.”
“He didn’t throw it out, did he?”
“I imagine so. That’s stuff’s haz-mat. What else was he going to do with it?”
“It’s the best fertilizer in the world,” Will explained. “It’s worth up to twenty dollars a pound.”
Maartens’ expression made it clear as to what, or who, he considered batshit. “Well, you didn’t leave any instructions about salvaging excrement of any kind. And, again, bio-hazard.”
“Still…”
“Maybe I should have offered it to him as a bonus?”
Will dropped it. He turned and jabbed a thumb at the kitchen windo. “So far, it’s fantastic. What needs to be done with the roof?”
“’Bout what you’d expect. Total tear-off and re-deck. All things considered, it held up well. There’s some water damage, of course, most of it around the flashings and windows. The chimneys don’t appear to need a total re-build, but an overall tuckpointing is an absolute necessity. Might have to redo or replace some of the rafter joists, but I wouldn’t be able to tell you the extent of that until we get into it.” Maartens pointed to the roof, the north and south gables and the chimneys. “Those lightning rods,” he said, Will noticing a familiar tone creeping into his speech, “are oxidized all the way to useless. They aren’t doing much good the way they’re laying now, anyway.”
Will backed awad until he could get a good look. The one at the chimney was tipped a full ninety degrees, the one at the north gable was lying on his side on the roof. There wasn’t one visible at the south gable, but Will thought he remembered it dangling at the eaves during his first inspection. “What about them?”
“You need lightning rods, that’s ‘what about them.’ Law of averages has me believing this place should’ve been burned down and beyond rescue years ago. And you should have four or six more than were already there.”
“Okay. . .”
Maartens looked at him, deadly earnest. “They should go up yesterday.”
Will repeated, “Okay.”
“I’ll get something up the end of this week. It won’t be permanent, but it’ll keep God from taking away what you’ve put in already. We can work around them until the roof is as it should be, then we’ll install a permanent solution.”
Will looked back to the roof. He couldn’t wait until it got to the point when Maartens would be making his suggestions regarding what would be “historically appropriate.” His thoughts were interrupted by Maartens.
“Back to the attic,” he said. “There was a lot of stuff up there we weren’t sure what to to do with, but it didn’t look like trash.”
“Like what?”
“Boxes, trunks, some furniture…” He gave what had become a familiar shrug. “The kind o’ stuff I’d guess you’d expect to find in an attic, I s’pose. The boxes were all sealed with tape and the trunks were closed. We didn’t look in any of ‘em, of course—might even be locked. We had to move them around to clean up the place, but then we stacked ‘em up and left ‘em be.”
Will looked up again, this time at the plastic covered gable window. Some of his renewed eagerness ebbed away. Boxes, trunks… He knew what was laying in one of them. He returned his attention to the contractor. “How much do I owe you?”
Maartens said, “It’s all with Blom. I don’t have a final figure for you, not at this point, anyway. He’s got ‘weeklies’ up until this last Monday, mostly for material. I was holding off on labor until I talked to you face-to-face.”
“You bought through him?”
“Whatever I could, and a lot of it. The things he couldn’t supply are listed as well, but separate.”
Will nodded. “I’m just heading up to talk to him. I’ll come back with a check for everything up to Monday, and I’ll cover the labor if you can get if figured out by the time I get back.” Will turned and gestured to the group in the field. They were making quite a racket with their brush cutters and mower. “Are they included in the labor?”
“Them? The ‘clean-up crew?’ Couldn’t tell you about them. The only thing they did for me was get the demolition out of the top floor and sweep out the rest of the house. They kicked butt, though, I tell you. Got all the scrap out and swept it clean in a day and a half. Didn’t have the heart to send them up to the attic but, I confess, the thought crossed my mind. That’s a separate cost entirely.”
“What about the outside stuff?”
Maartens shrugged. “Went right at it as soon as they were done with me. They’ve been out here a couple times a week, since. You might want to have a word before they start planting flowers. Blom offered them, like I said, but I told him the only thing I could use ‘em for was clearing out the house. Whatever they’ve done since, you’ll need to bring it up with him.”
Will looked back and him and said, “No. It’s fine. It’s great, as a matter of fact. I just hadn’t…”
Maartens interrupted. “Blom sent them. But, now that I recall, he made a mention about Ouillette.”
“Ouillette?”
“Loren. The Indian.”
Will nodded. “Yes, you’re right. Loren. I remember,” which he didn’t. “Cool.”
He fully faced the contractor and extended his hand. “You’ve done me a huge service, Ken. I’d like you to keep doing so. I’m back in town, so to speak, so we’ll take out the middle man. We can make it official after I get back from Blom’s.”
Will didn’t fail to notice some trepidation in the man’s handshake. He caught Maartens glancing at the kids hacking away in the brush. “No worries, Ken,” he said. “I’d forgotten all about them clearing the weeds. Got so much going on in my head there isn’t room for half of it.” He released his grip. “Water,” he said. “toilet, sink. That’s all I care about right now. The rest of it’s gravy, as far as I’m concerned.” Maartens nodded. “Start thinkin’ roof,” Will added. “Be back in a couple of hours.”
As he went to his truck, Will caught himself looking up to the attic. Boxes, trunks… Of course, he’d need to look inside them. As if he didn’t have enough shit chewing at him as it is. Breakfast, the bank, then Blom’s. He had a few more questions for the old man than he’d started the day with. That ought to provide enough diversion to keep him out of the attic for at least one day.
After all that, I’d like to add “Lunacy and Death”, the ol’ ebook, has showed twitches on Amazon. Take a look, if you haven’t already: https://www.amazon.com/Lunacy-Death-perspective-developed-investigation-ebook/dp/B079DWFH9T/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1531434825&sr=8-1&keywords=lunacy+and+death+book