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.
9.
A FAINT BEEP WENT OFF somewhere in the kitchen, the microwave timer stuck with fifteen seconds left, an irritation like a fly buzzing in the next room. Daphne was finally asleep in the stroller but she needed to be changed. Later, Callie decided. Ralph would be starved when he got home and she just remembered to add the turnips to the stew, they were still rock hard and he liked them mushy. She turned the heat up and hoped he wouldn’t get home just yet, hungry as she was. Daphne finally asleep after all those fitful minutes of steady rocking, and Callie’s arms were still tingling from the task of keeping the child moving and still, moving and still, moving and still.
She wheeled the stroller into the bedroom, very carefully closed the door just enough so that noises would not enter but cries could still be heard. She beeped off the microwave and took a deep breath, soaking in the silence. It hadn’t exactly been her idea to have a baby but it did seem like the next thing to do.
Ralph’s business was doing well, better than expected. Automatic sprinkler systems guaranteeing evergreen lawns, how could it not succeed? New subdivisions were getting approved every week in the valley and the people looking to live in them were the kinds who were attracted to bright green lawns. Ralph had insisted on expensive high-gloss pamphlets, he was that kind of visionary. “Put the money in,” he liked to say, “and it will come back doubled.”
Ralph was gone a lot, of course. He had to be. There was no one in the company that believed in the product as much as he did. Sure he loved the money. But he seemed to love the thrill even more. It was the beginning of a new time along San Juan Ridge. Funky old properties dotted with doublewide trailers and crumbling geezer shacks were on their way out. People were plopping pre-fabricated houses onto cheap land, rolling out perfect lawns and a couple of azaleas or whatever the ladies liked, rocking on their decks to the sound of their money growing.
And those houses required sprinkler systems. Simple as that. A young generation was buying up country acreage and they wanted lawns so their kids wouldn’t track mud across the wall-to-wall carpets. The gold had been mined out of these parts long ago, but there was a new kind of gold popping up above ground, and Ralph Daschle had pick in hand.
This week he was talking to some builders over on the east side of Lookout Mountain, closer to Riverdale. “I’ll probably be a couple of hours late tonight, maybe more” he called to her that morning, “It’s all flat land out there, honey. What I call lawn country!” but she was bending over to pick up Daphne’s bottle, now covered with crumbs, and only heard “maybe more.”
“We’re gonna be rich, baby” he yelled too loudly, honking all the way down the driveway, and sometimes she just wanted to kill him.
She remembered now that he said he’d be late, and relaxed into the late afternoon. The baby down, turnips and pot roast cooking, Callie sat on the window seat, let her shoulders sag into their sockets, and listened for the rumble of gravel. The road was quiet. Dead quiet, but for the soft snap of lacewings and finches, darting through the wind. Whatever few minutes Callie had until Ralph got home, or Daphne woke up, she reveled in this precious fleeting quiet. She walked barefoot to her room and faced the mirror like it was a confessor. Looked deep but could only see the surface tracings of her tired old lines.
Callie