Читать книгу Wildwood - Elinor Florence - Страница 9

August

Standing knee-deep in weeds, Old Joe held up his hands and put his thumbs together to make a three-sided square, squinting at the corners of the house. “She looks pretty straight,” he said. “When the walls start to sag, you can usually spot them in a jiffy.”

“Old” Joe couldn’t have been more than fifty. He had arrived at the hotel in a work truck with his son, predictably called Young Joe. Bridget and I rode out to the farm in the back seat of their king cab. I dreaded Bridget’s reaction to the two burly men, but luckily neither of them paid her the slightest attention. The adults chatted while she huddled in the corner and looked at her books.

“Get the crowbar and uncover the windows,” Old Joe now directed his son. “Let’s have some light on the subject.”

Young Joe opened the big metal tool box sitting in the back of the truck and produced a crowbar. He climbed the steps to the overgrown verandah and started prying boards off the front window. The rusty nails tore through the wood with a tremendous screeching sound.

I watched anxiously as the main-floor windows on each side of the front door were uncovered. These were adorned with smaller panes along the top in a pretty green and gold checkerboard pattern. It seemed as if the house’s eyes were opening after a long sleep, blinking and drowsy, heavy-lidded with coloured glass like green and gold eyeshadow.

Young Joe returned to the truck and pulled a metal extension ladder off the roof rack. He moved around to the side of the house facing east, toward a waist-high tangled mass of weeds and shrubs in the corner of the yard, presumably the former garden. Jutting out from the eastern wall was a three-sided bay window, covered with plywood sheets. Young Joe climbed the ladder and began to tear them off.

While he worked, his father clambered through the undergrowth surrounding the house until only the branches waving overhead revealed his whereabouts. At last he emerged, brushing off his pants, a leafy twig sticking from his flat tweed cap like a jaunty feather.

“The foundation looks solid, what I can see of it,” he said. “Let’s go inside.”

I checked on Bridget to make sure she was still happy sitting in the truck and pretending to read her Dr. Seuss books, which consisted of turning the pages and saying the memorized words aloud. Then I followed Old Joe into the house.

When I stepped through the door, I exclaimed with pleasure. The entrance was now illuminated with sunlight from the main floor windows. The wooden staircase leading up to the right was the colour of cinnamon, rich and glossy, with turned spindles and a round newel post worn smooth by human hands. A crystal and brass chandelier, wreathed in cobwebs, hung from the nine-foot ceiling.

“George Lee had nothing but the best.” Old Joe followed my eyes with an expression of pride, as if he were showing off his own home. “He bought this house from a mail-order catalogue and then hired a pair of carpenters from England, two brothers who knew their craft, to put it all together.”

We turned left into the living room. What I hadn’t seen before in the darkness was a fieldstone fireplace against the far wall, flanked with built-in bookcases. Above them were small rectangular windows bearing leaded glass panes with a stylized tulip pattern.

Old Joe looked around with satisfaction. “You can see the mice haven’t gotten in here, nor the squirrels, otherwise you’d have a real mess. There aren’t no bugs around here either, not the kind that eat wood. It’s too cold for the little buggers up here.”

So there were some advantages to this climate. Coming from a place where every household carried on a constant battle with cockroaches and termites, this was welcome news.

Old Joe opened and shut the living room door, and it swung soundlessly. “Another good sign. If the wood was warped, the door would stick.”

He lowered himself to one knee and turned back the corner of the Oriental carpet, which was obscured by a mask of grey dust. Underneath the carpet, the floor was gleaming. “You can’t buy wood like this no more,” he said. “First-growth Douglas Fir, shipped here from the West Coast. Tongue-and-groove boards. There was no plywood then, or any of that newfangled laminate.”

He thumped his knuckles on the fir boards. “Almost a hundred years old and hard as iron. The dry and the cold have preserved it, petrified it, you might say.” The foot-high baseboards and trim around the windows and doors were made from the same rich russet-coloured wood.

Old Joe reached into the tool belt slung around his waist and pulled out his level, a piece of wood with a tiny floating bubble suspended in the centre. He set it on the floor. The bubble didn’t move. “Yep, that’s what I thought. Straight as a die.”

He hoisted himself to his feet and ran his hands over the walls, papered with delicate sprays of green leaves and white flowers on a cream background. “The plaster is in good shape, too, nice and smooth. You know, this whole house was built with hand tools: hammer and handsaw, plane and level and square. There weren’t no power tools back then. A carpenter sawed hundreds of laths — those are strips of wood — and his helper nailed them, side by side, across the supporting beams. Then the third guy dipped his trowel in a big tub of plaster and coated the whole thing by hand. When the plaster was smooth and dry, you could either paint it or paper it.”

“I think the wallpaper is lovely.”

“Your great-aunt was partial to wallpaper. If you cut into this wall, you’d find umpteen layers, each one with a different pattern.”

As he walked around the room, Old Joe explained that the house design was called a foursquare, for the simple reason that it had four outside walls of equal length, with four rooms on each floor. Even the roof had four equal panels, covering an attic with four dormer windows facing in all four directions.

He stopped at the front windows, shaking his head. “Here’s the weak point in these old houses. They were good windows in their day, but they didn’t do much to keep out the cold. Now we have double-paned windows and insulated glass, but all they had back then were storm windows.”

He took a jackknife out of his pocket and tested the putty around the panes. “Good, just like concrete.” He snapped the blade shut. “You’ve got one thing going for you, this house has been sealed up tight as a drum. One of the neighbours, Roy Henderson, he comes over every month to make sure the house is airtight. He promised Mrs. Lee when she left for the last time, and he’s kept his word all these years.”

Old Joe walked past the shrouded furniture to the end of the room and put his big fingers into two brass pulls attached to a pair of solid doors. They slid apart smoothly, opening the wall in half, and we went into the dining room.

Now I could see the bay window, composed of four long rectangles of equal size — two in the centre and an angled window on each side. The room was spacious enough for a dining table covered with a sheet, a large sideboard, and a treadle sewing machine draped with a fringed shawl. In one corner, surprisingly, stood a double bed.

“Your great-aunt slept down here after the stairs got too much for her,” Old Joe explained.

“I don’t understand why everything is still sitting here. It looks like she just left the house yesterday.”

“She didn’t need anything where she was going, except her clothes and a few personal things. Maybe she was hoping to come back someday. Or maybe she left everything here on purpose so somebody else could use it.”

A set of double-sided cabinets with red- and green-glass panes was built into the interior wall. I could see straight through them into the kitchen. We entered the kitchen through the adjoining door. Sadly, it looked even worse in daylight. The varnished fir cabinets, with brass hinges and hardware, were dulled with age and smoke. A green-painted door with an iron latch stood ajar beside the cook stove, revealing a large pantry filled with a jumble of cooking utensils, bottles, and tins.

I looked doubtfully at the hand pump, set into a wooden countertop covered with green-speckled vinyl. “Where does the water come from?”

Old Joe snorted. “Well, you don’t got to worry about the plumbing, because there isn’t any except this pump here. Let’s see if it still works.”

He went over to the sink and grasped the pump handle. He gave it a few sharp strokes but nothing happened except a wheezing sound.

Glancing at my face, he said: “Don’t give up hope yet. This is how they got their drinking and washing water into the house. There’s a pipe connecting this pump to the well down below. It probably needs to be primed.”

“How do you prime it?”

“Pour water down it. I’ll get some from the truck.”

After he went outside, I remained motionless while my eyes roved around the room. It was so dingy I didn’t want to move, in case I accidentally touched something. Even the windowpanes were clouded with grime.

In a few minutes Joe came back carrying a five-gallon plastic jug. He unscrewed the cap and poured water into the top of the pump assembly, then raised and lowered the handle vigorously. A few more wheezing strokes, and the gasping changed to a deeper sound and suddenly water gushed out of the spout.

“That’ll do her,” he said. “You won’t need to prime it if you’re using it every day, because there’ll be standing water in the pipe.”

A pail sat on the kitchen counter, with a tin cup hanging from the rim. He held the cup under the stream then took a few large gulps before handing it to me.

Overcoming my revulsion at drinking from someone else’s cup, let alone one that probably hadn’t been washed for decades, I rotated the rim slightly and took a tiny sip. It was delicious. I drank another mouthful. It was ice cold and almost sweet compared to the metallic, chemically treated water we drank in Arizona, pumped through a pipeline for hundreds of miles.

“That water didn’t have to come far,” Old Joe said, as if reading my mind. “The well is right under our feet. Pierre Chatelaine witched all the wells in the territory. He’s long dead now. But he was a master witcher — took a green willow branch and stripped the twigs off and walked around until the branch pulled right out of his hands. The well here is only about twenty-five feet deep, fed by an underground spring. It’s probably good for another hundred years.”

I took another drink of water — my own water.

“It’s soft, too. When you put soap in there, it will lather up like nobody’s business. I know you’ve got your problems down in the States, but up here we’ve got lots of water, nothing but water. It’ll probably be the salvation of us if we have another world war. Or else our downfall if the Yanks decide to take it away from us by force.”

“You said the house doesn’t have any plumbing,” I said, returning to the main point. I didn’t want to come right out and ask him about the toilet.

“That’s right. This pump is all you’ve got in the way of running water.”

He opened the cabinet door under the sink. “This here is your slop pail. See how the water drains down the hole into this pail? When it’s full, throw it out the back door. Don’t forget to keep an eye on it, or it will overflow.”

“And the bathroom facilities?” I forced myself to ask.

“There’s a toilet beside the barn. If you’re too fussy to go outside in the winter, you get yourself a honey pot. Buy a big galvanized bucket, put a seat on it, pour in chemicals to mask the smell, and empty the darned thing every morning.”

I stepped backwards, almost falling over the rocking chair, speechless. This was too primitive for words.

“You know, it wouldn’t take much to plumb this place.” He looked around speculatively, as if he were talking to himself.

“Pardon me?”

“I was thinking out loud. If somebody wanted to modernize this house, it would be pretty simple. Just build a ground-floor extension off the kitchen for your electric furnace and your hot water tank, maybe even a second bathroom. Run the pipes up the side of the house and straight into the upstairs bathroom. It would be a piece of cake.”

“Well, I haven’t got that kind of money. And I won’t be here that long, anyway.”

Old Joe ignored me. “You can wire up these old houses pretty good, too. It’s a lot easier to plumb and wire a house that never had anything in it to start with. You should see some of the remuddling jobs I’ve had to fix.”

I tried to turn his attention back to the present. “Mr. Daley, what did my great-aunt use for lighting?”

“That’s one more thing you don’t have to worry about,” he said cheerfully, as if giving me good news. “There isn’t any power out here. Even the town of Juniper didn’t get electricity until the 1960s. This house was too far off the main line. Mrs. Lee was a good sport. She always said she liked using candles and lamps just fine.”

I turned with trepidation to the stove in the corner. “And what about cooking?”

“This old stove will work all right.” Old Joe walked over to the range and used the lifter, a piece of twisted metal obvi-ously designed for that purpose, to lift all six stove lids on the surface and check inside. “A stove like this throws off a real good heat.”

“But surely it won’t heat the whole house.”

“Nope, there’s a furnace in the basement for that. Let’s go downstairs and take a look-see.”

He opened the door next to the pantry. Inside was a wooden staircase leading into the earthen cellar. We descended while Old Joe shone his powerful flashlight on our feet.

This was a depressing place, hung with cobwebs as thick as fishing nets. On one side a set of shelves held glass canning jars and cans of paint, covered with a layer of grey velvet dust. In the corner was a gigantic contraption with pipes leading out of it like a metal octopus. I assumed this was the furnace. Beside it stood a large wooden box as tall as my shoulders, half-filled with dead branches and chunks of firewood.

I tried not to disturb anything while Old Joe opened the furnace door and poked around. “This is what they used to heat the house in winter. But you and the little girl can’t keep this thing going around the clock. You’d better shut off the upstairs and live downstairs. The kitchen stove will keep it nice and snug.”

“Where would I get firewood?”

“I know two brothers who cut and sell firewood. You can order a couple of cords from them. Do it quick before the snow flies.”

I gave an embarrassing shriek when a small shadow darted across the beam.

“Oh, that’s just a mouse.” Old Joe chuckled. “You can’t keep them out of a dirt basement. As long as the door is closed, they’ll stay down here. But if you really want them to disappear, get yourself a cat.”

“A cat?” I had never owned a pet and considered animals in the house to be unclean.

“Sure, there’s a lady in town who has a batch of kittens ready to give away. Your little girl might like one.”

As we climbed back into the kitchen, I wondered how Bridget would feel about a kitten.

“Now for the upstairs. I want to see how the roof is holding up,” Old Joe said.

We mounted the carved staircase to the upper floor where Young Joe had uncovered the windows. By this time I had an idea what to look for, so I checked the walls for visible cracks and opened and shut the hall doors, which swung smoothly. My untrained eye couldn’t find anything wrong.

“What are those things?” I pointed to the pale blue tin plates on the walls, decorated with hand-painted flowers.

“Those are flue covers. They cover the stovepipe holes when the furnace isn’t being used.”

We went into the big bedroom facing south. Under the windows ran a full-length seat, a wooden bench covered with a padded cushion, and a gathered floor-length skirt of rose printed fabric.

We walked to the uncovered windows, drawn by the sun-drenched landscape. The view was even more spectacular than I remembered.

“Your great-aunt wanted these windows, even though everyone told her they would leak the heat. And they sure did, but it’s hard to argue with a view like this.”

“Mr. Daley.” I took a deep breath. “Do you honestly think that we could live out here by ourselves?”

He raised his bushy eyebrows, as if perplexed. “Well, why not? You’ve got good water, plenty of firewood, and a roof over your heads. What more could you want?”

It sounded so logical when he put it like that. I opened my mouth, then closed it again.

We went back into the hall and opened the door leading to the narrow attic staircase. I followed Old Joe as we climbed eight stairs, turned on a small landing, and went up another eight. My head and shoulders emerged into a huge room with slanted ceilings on all four sides, each with its own dormer window.

Unlike the rooms below, which were dusty but neatly organized, this was the repository of a lifetime of possessions. Steamer trunks and wooden crates were piled under the eaves. Several rugs, rolled up and tied with twine, were stacked in a heap. I opened the lid of a nearby wicker basket and found it filled with balls of colourful yarn. Pieces of a broken chair were tied together with a rag. Several round wooden hatboxes, picture frames, and lamp chimneys were jumbled together in a heap. The most startling object was a large stuffed moose’s head tucked into the far corner.

I was still staring at the clutter when Old Joe let out an exclamation. “Jesus Murphy, what have we got here!”

He was standing under a small hole the size of a human hand, almost hidden between the trusses in the roof. The blue sky was clearly visible through the opening.

“I’ve got to check the bedroom underneath this hole!” I heard his boots clumping down the stairs, and a few minutes later, clumping back up again.

“You’re damned lucky. This hole must have just happened. If it had opened up this spring, the whole house would have gone. First you get a hole in the roof, then the snow and water come inside, the moisture works through the floor and down into the next room, and finally right into the basement.

“The hole gets bigger, the floor starts to rot, you get squirrels building their nests and birds flying around inside, and it doesn’t take long before the whole house is wrecked.”

He paused and looked at me, grinning widely for the first time, revealing tobacco-stained teeth with a gap on one side.

“I’d say you got here just in the nick of time.”