Читать книгу Blind Shady Bend - Adina Sara - Страница 14

SECOND FRIDAY OF THE MONTH again. That meant Wilbur would be coming, late as usual, only three hours of good light left. Wilbur, master rose pruner, according to him anyway.

“Did they teach you this at your master rose pruning class?” I’d ask him, pointing to those molehills of cigarette butts he tucked around the bedding plants.

“They’re loaded with nitrogen. The plants love them” he’d shoot back. Wilbur liked to play with me and I had to admit I liked playing right back.

Wilbur had kept my hedges razor straight and my twelve prim and proper roses fed for more years than I could remember. “Needs more iron,” he would drone in his flat voice, peppered by a thin hint of disdain, “needs more iron,” as though that was my fault. I’ve never cared much for roses, too much trouble, and I would remind him that the roses were his idea. Not to mention the wisteria he had trained and trellised into almost gothic proportion. “Quality, not quantity,” he squawked, always having the last word.

Wilbur and I had developed a well-worn flirtation, grounded more by our common love of absurdity than anything resembling attraction. He’d set his pruners down but kept the burning cigarette dangling from his mouth. “Coming, Madame Blackwell” whenever I called out for help lifting something or other. “Whatever your little heart desires,” he’d tease me but I ignored him.

Goodness, I had ten years on the man, but smoke and drink and a lifetime of working in dirt had deepened his pores and made him look older than me. If you didn’t know better, you’d think we were a married couple, me barking orders “When’s the last time you fed the azaleas?” and him sniggering through the smoke of another unfiltered tip, “Last time you reminded me is when.”

I looked forward to Wilbur’s visits. I’d offer him a glass of lemonade or tea which he always rejected, “thanks, got my own,” he’d tell me, unscrewing a thermos of rum and whatever he decided to mix in with it. Together we’d sit on the top step of my porch, after the sun finished the best of it’s beating, him chugging from his thermos, me sipping tepid lemonade, and we would discuss next month’s agenda.

“I’m sick of the buddleia,” I’d belt out of nowhere. “I’m sick of it scratching the car when I drive up the driveway. What can you do with it?” He’d take a long swig, shake his head, “Whatever you want me to do with it” and I loved the sound of it, loved the way I could almost guess what wisecrack he’d come back with. After Ned, I never had much interest in men, and no regrets there. But sitting with Wilbur on the stoop of my house grousing about what was wrong with everything, felt like a kind of love to me.

That letter from the lawyer came the day after Wilbur’s last visit, a month gone already, I remember because he’d left his trowel on the door step which he never does, and I noticed it when I opened the door for the FedEx man. Four long weeks and I found myself waiting on the doorstep when he arrived, like an anxious teenager, and without a word I led him to the back of the garage, where the remains of whatever Ray had left behind were stored.

I’d forgotten about those boxes over the years but ever since I got the letter, I started thinking maybe there was a clue there, maybe Pa put some of Ray’s things away that he didn’t want me to see.

“Is there something wrong, Madame B?” Wilbur could read my face, and I wondered just how well he did know me. Maybe better than I knew myself.

“Wilbur, can you help me with these?” He reached for the boxes. They were too far back so he went for the tall ladder, barely snagging them with his fingertips and the bottom one slid out, light and fast, slipping past his certain grasp. Bits of balsa wood, some carved, shapes of wings, broken bird beak shapes, all mixed up with sea shells, hundreds of them, broken into sand, spilled all over the garage floor.

“Where do you want these?” he quipped but I stood as if frozen in the doorway, my hands over my mouth, a look of terror in my eyes.

“Stay there Madame B. I’ll get every last one up for you.” And he did, one carved sliver at a time, returned them to the old box, along with a yellowed paper with drawings of birds, carefully measured and detailed, feathers, claws, beaks, labeled and dated in Ray’s immaculate script.

I knelt on the floor to scoop up the broken bits of our childhood, not a single shard worth keeping. “Better toss them out” I said but my voice must have been cracking because Wilbur, tough old Wilbur, put aside his glasses and came over to me and in a way I can only describe as kind, held me in his sweaty arms as I cried and cried like a baby until I ran out of tears.

And that’s what finally got me to make the call. I had picked up the Realtor’s business card several times over the past few weeks but that bright smiling picture of him, with a name Lucky Lundale no less, was just too cheery for my taste. I wasn’t ready to get sucked into anything. It can wait, I told myself, but the holidays were coming, busy season at the church, and acquiring this five acre piece of land seemed like a present of sorts. At least I needed to open it and see what was inside.

The ride up to Nevada County took some wind out of me. This old Corolla isn’t used to gravel roads. Makes me miss driving Ned’s Dodge Dart with that classic Slant Six engine. They only made it for a few years and according to Ned, there was never a better engine made. We named it Dotty back when it was brand new and every now and then I think about how he used to gloat over how quiet her engine ran, even when he pushed her second gear up hills.

Ned loved to baby that car. On the weekends he’d come over, he and Pa would take turns shimmying under the chassis while I talked to the ends of their legs. Guys from Pa’s work, from around the corner, would drop over, stick their heads under the hood, cursing praises, softly touching and admiring every gorgeous inch of her turquoise body.

Dotty is still parked in the garage, I keep her covered with a plastic tarp that time has begun to eat through. No telling what she looks like. I don’t have the heart to investigate. It was Mr. Harrington, Ned’s father, who finally got me to crank her up after Ned died. He and Pa shared a bond as though they’d been in battle together. The loss of sons gave them something to talk about. So they drank, not much, just what the facts called for. Some months went by before they approached the car, like they might offend Ned if they so much as nicked it. She hummed like a kitten when they started her up, next thing I knew they were changing the oil, taking her out on the interstate, a couple of overgrown teenaged boys, and the car was happy to be back in gear.

It took me some months to get in, change the seat so I could reach the pedals, clean out the glove compartment. I threw out every scrap of paper in the garbage and didn’t so much as look. I reached under the seat and found one of Ned’s leather gloves, the left hand, one he’d been looking for. I slipped it back under the seat where it still is and always will be, as long as I’m around.

People whispered when I drove it, I could sense it, like trails of road dust, whooshed up behind me. I could sense their pity, eyes following the young widow, though we never did get around to marrying. After the doctors gave him the death sentence all our wedding plans got steamrolled. It all happened so fast. We talked about taking our vows at his bedside. But he went from bad to worse before there was time to think about anything other than holding hands, praying together (which I only did to please him, believe me, prayer didn’t help the situation one bit), and saying goodbyes to his family and buddies. Sometimes I regret not taking our vows. I loved the sound of Hannah Harrington. Used to practice writing it on napkins, with oversized H’s for flourish. But no sense thinking about that anymore.

Every once in a while when I’m driving a long distance, I find myself thinking about Dotty, picturing Ned behind the steering wheel with that fancy leather cover he paid extra for. Tapping on the shiny turquoise dashboard along with whatever tune was playing on the radio. Thin slips of yellow hair falling into his eyes, I’d whisk his hair away so he could see the road and he’d grab my hand, kiss it, bring it down to his thigh if the light turned red. We had some good times in Dotty. I think that’s why she kept on running for so long, a good ten years past Ned at least. You can’t find parts for the Slant Six engine anymore, something that would have made him furious.

San Juan Ridge is about sixty miles north of Roseville, crossing through a series of winding mountain roads that up until now I’ve made a point of avoiding. But once I got the hang of the highway, once I figured out it was just roads leading to more roads, I kept my speed at a sensible 40 mph. Everyone passed me, which was fine with me. Going slow, I noticed how concrete big box shopping plazas disappeared into scruffy looking strip malls, and occasional gas stations eventually faded into open pasture land. Then the pines and maples and oak trees started, thickening at each turn of the wheel, interrupted by roads, marked, unmarked, then marked again. Highway 49 came up large and clear, like the map said, and just as large, a sign reading Lucky Realty—Own A Piece of Paradise—reared up a few miles past the turn-off to Nevada City. It was located in a claptrap of a building, making me glad I didn’t bother to dress for the occasion. The building also housed a used clothing store, a palm reader (Sister Matilda), and a windowless establishment with neon lights flashing The Nugget, even in the middle of the day. I turned off the ignition, amazed and relieved to have come the distance without incident.

“Seven-acre parcels are going like hotcakes around here,” the Realtor must have said to me at least ten times. I could see right away that this Mr. Lundale had big designs on my business. All I wanted to do was see the place. I may have come off as rude, well so what if I did. This was Ray’s place we were talking about, not some commission for him to write up on his chalkboard.

“Let’s just go up there Mr. Lundale. I don’t have much time to waste here.”

And so we did.

I couldn’t see out the windshield for the dust, could barely hear his ranting on with all those gravel bits pocking the road, fighting with the tires.

“The place needs some work but even as is, you’d be surprised what folks will pay around here to get country property.”

I was holding hard on to the strap of Mr. Lundale’s monstrous truck, felt like I was being bucked by a horse. My stomach was not as it should be, and I was worried about what I might do to his leather dashboard.

“Please slow down,” I tried to say, but he was lost in his own spit-shined reveries.

“Yessirree, we’ll get you a good price for this” was his answer. I rolled the window down, took in a loud rush of air to keep the contents of my stomach at bay.

Just then, the truck hit a pothole, bouncing us both up and out of our seats. He downshifted with a broad sweep of his muscular arm, then resumed his excessive speed. “Almost there” he winked, maneuvering his mountain monster past a sign that read Blind Shady Bend.

At the end of a winding rock-strewn stretch, he stopped the truck, set the brake and reached over to open my door.

“This is it. Let me come around to help you down.”

I had to step high over the logs, careful not to snag my ankles on the underbrush. Here and there I noticed signs that somebody had been digging in the dirt, but for the most part, it was nothing but broken tree limbs and weeds everywhere. People around here certainly didn’t believe in grooming their hedges. I have to say I was pleased Mr. Lundale wasn’t treating me like an old woman, trying to protect me from the roughness of the landscape. He didn’t bother to guide me through the thicket, just let me wander around on my own. I was grateful for that.

“I’ve got the name of a good tree man,” he offered, as though I had asked him. “Spend a couple hundred on clearing will make you many thousands more. People like to see what they’re buying. Of course, that’s all up to you.”

“Of course,” I answered, and then moved on. He finally stopped talking and let me be for a few quiet minutes while I stepped deeper into the brush, scratching my pant legs against the undergrowth that released unfamiliar though not unpleasant smells. I leaned over to pick what looked to be mimula, but of a purplish-red tone I’d never before seen.

Broken chicken wire fencing, weeds raging their way across the landscape, so this is where my runaway brother lived. Or didn’t live. It was hard to know, hard to imagine anyone living in a place like this. Everywhere I turned, a spindly rough ground shrub and dwarf wild roses bit my ankles. Gnarled twists of manzanita scattered every which way, like an antelope’s graveyard.

So many years gone, there’s no way to know if Ray came straight here after he ran away. I always figured he’d come home eventually. So often I’d stood at the living room window, pulling back the curtains, stretching the dainty lace circles of fabric until I could fit my fist through them. Ray and Pa screaming insults in the driveway, and Mother crying in the kitchen. I remember how he mounted that Harley of his, remember how the shine of his belt buckle caught the sun like he was sending signals to me. Signals I couldn’t read. He never even looked at the window, never even knew I was there. He just beat at the dust with his heavy foot, like a bronco about to rush the gates. I tried calling to him but my words couldn’t make their way through the roar of Ray’s Harley starting up in the driveway.

“Don’t go,” I pleaded with him the time that turned out to be the last time. But, stubborn selfish brat that he was, he had already pulled up his bootstraps and cranked the gears. He wouldn’t have heard my voice even if I had been screaming, which I was.

“Will you smell that air?” Mr. Lundale bellowed, as we made our way down the driveway. A gully ran down the middle of the property, littered with logs, automobile tires, God knows what else. “This air will keep you alive way past your time,” I heard him call out.

After about fifty feet of rocky driveway, the house finally came into view. It looked like it was being held up by weeds and rocks, like a mild breeze would send the rafters flying. Lundale caught up with me, despite my best efforts to stay out of his way. I hoisted myself onto the grand wrap-around porch that was sprouting a second tier, as fallen logs from years past thickened its surface. Young trees had forced themselves through the floorboards and seemed to be contributing to its structural support.

“Don’t worry about the house. Mostly cosmetic,” Mr. Lundale puffed, out of breath from trying to follow me. “The neighbor’s son across the road is handy with a hammer. Fine young man. His father runs the local hardware store. Just say the word, he can help you fix it up good as new.”

Brittle and broken and covered in what looked to be decades of dust, the porch appeared concave in parts, with monstrous tree roots rendering it convex in others. I had to step carefully to avoid nicking myself on rusted nails. A rotted out wicker chair leaned against the house, looking like it might have been painted white at one time, but that time had long since passed. A pool of pine needles had collected on the threshold and I grabbed a fistful, sniffed in the spicy smell.

“Careful, now” he warned me, but I was already inside. Not hard to do seeing how the front door was missing half its hinges. The floor was strewn with rodent droppings, thorny branches, aluminum cans, unidentifiable refuse burned brittle by the years. Bees hovered dangerously close.

But even in this dilapidated state, there was a kind of charm about the place that I couldn’t refute. A simple living room with two small windows facing up to the road, an essentials-only kitchen, one narrow countertop for the sink and a few cupboards, an alcove for the filth-encrusted refrigerator and stove, and a small pantry filled with rat droppings and who knows, maybe some baby rats in there too. And through the pantry, probably built on as an afterthought, an ample bedroom with a wall of windows that opened to generous views of green and space and sky. I was surprised by the size of the room—bigger by a third than the living room. Bent nails and bits of wood hung loose from the wall, remains of what must have been a built-in platform bed. I tried to picture Ray lying there, feet up on the wall like he did as a kid. Nobody screaming “Get your goddamned feet off the wall” at him.

“Did you happen to know my brother?”

“Can’t say as I did, ma’am. This place has been empty for as long as I can remember. Just needs a little TLC. We can go back to my office and check the comps. Depending on your time frame, I think you’ll be happy with the sum this baby brings. Like I said, plenty of fools out there will pay a pretty penny for a site like this.”

“Don’t be in such a hurry Mr. Lundale. I’m not yet sure what I’m going to do. I just wanted to see it, if you’ll recall.”

He got very quiet after that. I walked around the back, looking for traces of what, I couldn’t say. Found a filthy whiskbroom on the back porch, some petrified match books in the kitchen drawer. A rusted spoon on the sill above the sink.

On the drive back, neither of us spoke a word, just listened to gears shifting, the hiss of cicadas and honeybees splitting the air. I didn’t give him much room for goodbyes, just took the slick packet of brochures and a stack of business cards he insisted on handing me, the Lucky Lundale Realty card right on top with his picture staring at me, in case I might forget that smarmy smile.