No point in explaining or excusing anything this time. Just jump right in.
+ + +
Will crept along and finally came to a stop. As he idled on the shoulder, his mind raced. The last six months of his life roared through his head; hearing of his father’s death while carrying a dead infant through the door, the funeral, the lawyer, the accountant, turning in his notice at the morgue, wiping out his retirement account to buy the truck, his lease expiring and the crazy decision to move, the crazier decision to fix up the homestead, the horrible decision to rest and rehab at a casino— for over a month. The numbers on the bill suddenly became real money and a touch of nausea melded with his anxiety. Blom, the goofy contractor… Be anonymous, jump into view, hide in a corner, the money, the money, the mon– Fuuuuuuck…
It felt so good, screaming in his head, that Will gripped the steering wheel, filled his lungs and roared the obscenity until he was hacking and wheezing. Relaxing his hands, inhaling through his nose in controlled beats, some calm returned. Single vehicle fatality. Unbelted. Scene indicates alcohol is a factor.
The terminology was back. Right there. Injuries consistent with a motor vehicle accident. Why now? In his entire time at the Medical Examiner’s he’d never “stumbled upon” a body. In his entire life before the morgue every cadaver he’d laid eyes on was a close relative. Jesus… And now his last dead relative had taken him away from dead strangers only to put one directly in his path. Literally.
Fly under the radar. Have a beer with the local yokels. Why did I act that way? If Blom’s recognizing him was a cat slipping out of a bag, then his behavior in front of that deputy was turning a tiger loose on the whole zoo. That deputy didn’t write the farm address down in front of him, but there was no question it went into his computer when he got back to his squad. “This doesn’t seem to rattle you much.” It was in Poechman’s report. It would be in the State Patrol’s report. No big deal. That thought was immediately countered by, The hell it isn’t. There hadn’t been a single death in his life that occurred outside the bounds of official capacity that hadn’t come back and bitten him in the ass.
For a scant moment, that fear he’d felt as a teen grabbed him. All this shit piling up, his doing or random acts, twisting his thoughts, emotions and gut. Did he have a handle on it? Was it manageable? Was it his doing? Or the manipulations of someone, or something, operating just beyond his perception? This confusion, this creeping paranoia… Was it just circumstance, or the first hints that the same toxic chemistry that fizzed in his mother’s head was starting to simmer in his own?
No. No, no and… “No.” Will took his foot from the brake and eased back onto the pavement. “Just crazy times,” he said aloud, “Not crazy mind.” He couldn’t imagine a better tool to jar things back into perspective than getting a firsthand look at the kind of touch Ken Maartens had put on the house.
+ + +
Will didn’t have to get to the house to realize more than a “touch” had gone on in his absence. He didn’t even have to get to the driveway. It was more unrecognizable than it had been that first night in late March. The weeds and brush had been cut back from the roadside shoulder, all the way into the downslope of the ditch. As he approached, he saw the remnants of the post the mailbox had been seated atop. Over a foot remained, sticking up like a greasy, grey thumb. Beyond the drive, the stubble of trimmed vegetation continued to the west property line. The gravel itself had undergone an unmistakable transformation. There was a distinct change to the driveway itself. Will had driven over it less than a dozen times. When he headed out last, you could almost count the number of trips he’d made in and out by the tire tracks. Now, as he turned in, it looked like a much-traveled country road, hardpacked parallel tracks divided by a slight hump of looser gravel. He was in for an even deeper surprise. The manicure of out-of-control flora was not just bordering the county road, but had continued to either side of the drive and several yards deep. Nearing the house, he could now clearly see state of the machine shed and the outhouse. The machine shed was not as bad as he’d imagined, but the outhouse, once a tangle of warped and rotted boards, had been reduced to single rank square pattern of cinderblocks. He was literally gaping when he parked in the circle.
The sky was clear and the moon over three quarters, so the exterior of the house was plainly visible. The inverted skirt that had ringed the house was gone, saplings, dead thistle and vines, all cut to ground level. The transition from foundation to outer walls was distinct. The removal of all that growth didn’t do much for the appearance of the porch but, from where Will stood at the front of the truck, he could even see the saplings that had forced their way through the flooring had been removed. The windows had all been cleared of their panes and sashes and heavy polyethylene sheets had been put up in place, all of them but one. From the far northeast corner—his mother’s room—hung a canvas chute that dangled into a twenty-five-yard dumpster.
Will caught himself shaking his head. He looked around again, pulling his attention from the building. The overgrowth had been cut from the edge of the driveway to the foundation and, as far as Will could tell, not just as wide as the house and north as far back as the machine shed, but west all the way to the windbreak. The front of the house was cleared as well, right to the brush and trees on the bank of the river. It the moonlight, it could have passed for a suburban lawn. He was tempted to take a walk around to the other side, but decided it was a pleasure he could forestall until the sun was up.
Will’s focus was back on the house, zeroed in on the kitchen door. The stoop the first guy had built had not been replaced, but he could see the freshness of the wood was long gone. His flashlight was still on the front seat. He was so excited that having it back in his hand brought only the slightest recollection of why he’d had it out in the first place. There was no trace of vegetation between the stoop and the gravel. Will traveled a well-worn path to the door. Another pleasant surprise was that the ground was completely dry between the stoop and the gravel. His feet however, were still wet from his unexpected foray into the ditch. When his foot hit the first step, he noticed the changes had not been solely exterior.
The door had changed. It was the same door, but the flaking, blistered and pebbled paint had been scraped away, leaving a rough, piebald finish of stubborn paint and bare wood. The door had also been squared up. He switched on the torch. The jambs had been replaced and painted a glossy black. This is just a tease… He paused a moment, then turned the flashlight back off. He was allowing a little self-torment, relishing it.
Will turned the knob, fearing for an instant it would be locked. He hadn’t called Maartens. His departure from the hotel had been on impulse. Though the hasp and padlock were gone, he wouldn’t be surprised if the man had found a way to lock the door. When it turned and he eased it open an inch, he felt like a kid at Christmas.
When it was fully open, he faced an interior of weak ambient light, any details were lost to shadow. The first thing that hit him was the smell. The musty taint of old dirt and decay was gone. It was all fresh wood, paint and polyurethane. The last scent forced a pause. He could only assume the polyurethane smell was from the floor. One of Maartens’s phone calls had been for the singular purpose of what to do with the kitchen floor. What Will was familiar with was a wall-to-wall linoleum sheet. It was a gold and brown pattern intended to look like tiny mosaic squares. Though the pattern was lost and the color worn to a sickly yellow in front of the sink and the oven, his grandmother behaved as if it had been laid the day before. His mother had told him the only thing good about it was it trained her to maintain a lady-like posture throughout every meal. “It taught me to sit like a finishing school sorority sister,” she told him, explaining why she hated it so. “Every time you looked down at it, all you could think of was baby shit.”
Will thought his suggestion of a simple, black and white vinyl tile checkerboard would appease Maartens’ sense of “period appropriate.”
“Yeah, sure,” the contractor said, “if this place was in the city. It’s a farmhouse, Will. No matter how well-off the farmer might be, he wasn’t going to throw money away to make it look like a banker lived there. That would be ‘putting on airs.’ You need to go with the original floor, the one under that godawful spread.”
Will was doubtful. “I can’t imagine what kind of shape it’s in.”
“No worries there,” Maartens told Will, “I’m way ahead of you. We had most of the linoleum up in less than four hours.” There was a pause, which Will had learned from previous calls he was in for an unexpected delight. “Do you want to have a guess at what was hidden by that prehistoric plastic crap?”
Will declined the chance at delivering wonderful news to himself.
“You’re not going to believe it,” Ken Maartens teased. “It took hell of a lot of scraping to give us a good look, but it was worth it, I tell you.” Another pause.
Will broke it. “Don’t make me hold my breath, Ken.”
“Red Oak plank,” Maartens said, in a tone that Will thought bordered on gushing. “Pegged, Red Oak planks. Walnut pegs. Can you believe that?”
Will had no idea whether he could or not. “Like what’s in the living room and the parlor, the rest of the first floor?”
“Geez, no.” Maartens had gone from exuberant to annoyed. “That’s White Oak strips, tongue and groove, nailed to the subfloor. Standard for over a hundred years. Nothing special in that. The kitchen is planked, seven inches and nine to thirteen feet long. And it’s pegged. What in hell? I was expecting planks, Fir or Maple even, for a kitchen floor. The pegs were a complete surprise, let me tell you. Now, granted, it’s way off historically, and that it’s pegged is a real puzzle, but there’s no question it’s original. Why they did that is a mystery, no question. Maybe it was what was available at the time, or a salvage job of some sort…”
Maartens had prattled on, Will had listened and, as had happened with every subsequent call since, Will succumbed to his suggestion. The man’s passion was overwhelming.
In an act of nothing more than optimism, Will fumbled along the wall for the light switch. What he found was box and a twist of insulated wiring. Too much to hope for. He turned the flashlight on.
What Will saw made him gasp. The smell had indeed been the floor, but smell was diminished to nothing by the sight. The flashlight seemed to illuminate the entire room. The finish on the floor was like a mirror, disturbing the light, spreading it to the walls. The room was empty. The counters and cupboards were gone. The oven, which Will thought was old when he was a child and later learned it had replaced a woodburner in the late fifties and was put in at the same time as the linoleum, was gone. So was the refrigerator. The sink, a massive, single bowl trench of porcelain coated iron was gone. The walls themselves were essentially gone, as was the ceiling. The outside two walls, to his right and at the back, were stripped to the bricks. A pantry had been at the rear, behind a wall flush with the downstairs bathroom, had been completely removed, shelves, wall hooks and a hand-built freezer of bricks and steel sheets had been dismantled and done away with. The bathroom, which had been nothing more than a toilet and a tiny sink, was also gone. The ceiling was even gone, in a way. What had once been plaster and lathe like the walls, was now a large expanse of sheetrock. From a hole near the center, dangled curls of new, capped wiring. A similar knot hung above where the sink used to be.
The room was immense. Made more so by the state of the floor. The sight of it caused Will to promise to himself that he never question Maartens again. When Will heard “Red Oak”, he’d imagined wide planks colored like redwood. What he saw were broad boards of pale white, contrasted by dark, tight grains. The ends of the planks were butted at irregular intervals, highlighted by a pair of dark circles half and inch in diameter. It was stunning. Will felt as if he was looking at the floor of a gymnasium. Where the sink had been, four capped copper tubes protruded from the floor. He shined the light toward where the bathroom had been. A hole was visible where the toilet had stood. At the sink, more capped tubes. So much for taking a shit indoors tomorrow, but he didn’t care. What he saw was promise, and some assurance that this was not as insane an idea as he’d feared.
Things sure are changing, are they not? Don’t feel shy in adding a comment, positive or negative, as to how things have gone so far. Even better if you comment directly through this site. More coming soon…