A few miles of that and the route came close to being totally unnavigable, the big man raising his plow, stopping, and easing the jeep into neutral. And he sat there, bulked behind the wheel, his narrowed eyes solemnly appraising the bleak landscape before him. The snow blanket had turned more foreboding, less of a fluffy white, more of a hoar-frost gray. And Austin began to wonder anew just what in God’s name he was doing in the middle of that snowy nowhere with a man who could easily be the biggest put-on artist in all of New England.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Ya just did.”
“Do you know where we are?”
Jack closed one eye, cocked the other, and continued to survey the horizon. “Think so.”
“I mean—have you ever seen Maynard’s house?”
“A-yuh. Couple times.”
Looking where Jack was looking, Austin could see nothing unusual, other than that the area was suddenly without such sky-blemishing contrivances as telephone poles and electric wires. “We’ve run out of telephone poles.”
“A-yuh.”
“So where’s the house?”
“It’ll be ahead.”
“I swear I don’t see anything.”
“It’ll be snow-covered.” Jack cut the engine, and the jeep shifted into quiet.
“Do you see it?”
“Nope, but if I were a house, that’s where I’d be.” He reached behind their seats and produced two pairs of snow-shoes. “Familiar with these, Austin?”
“They’re snowshoes.”
“Good. Thought ya might say they were tennis racquets.”
“No. They’re snowshoes.”
“Fine. I like the way ya stick to ya guns. Now, ya slip ’em on, Austin, and when ya walk ya bend ya knees up like ya climbin’ stairs. Elsewise ya ain’t likely to get very far exceptin’ down.”
Austin slung his legs over the side and slipped into the snowshoes.
“Pull ’em on tight, Austin, or they escape. They’ll do that if ya give ’em a chance. Knew of one pair walked all the way down to Miami. Settled down and raised a whole family of surfboards.”
Austin allowed the story to go by unchallenged, and soon both men were in the snow, trudging along in a direction that Jack had chosen seemingly at whim. “How far is it?”
“Oh—mile or so.”
It was the “or so” that bothered Austin. Jack was so diligently approximate about time and distance that the “or so” could well turn out to be five hundred miles and three years. Nevertheless they walked on; Jack first and then Austin, imitating the big man’s style. And he sensed that he’d be walking in that manner for quite some time, knees pumping like a slow-motion fullback. He sensed, too, that if and when he ever got back to Cincinnati, he’d continue to walk in that fashion—which would be all right going up a flight of stairs, but going down could kill him.
There were no other snowshoe prints, only a few bird scratches and some sleepy pine cones. The snow lay deep, muffling whatever sounds the wide forest had to offer, and all Austin could hear was his own breathing, the mist of his breath shooting out a foot ahead of him before fishhooking up and disappearing in the sky. Then the snow, which had until then spread itself generously over placid rolling hills, suddenly flattened.
“Walkin’ on a pond, Austin. ’Bout two foot of ice under ya. Wouldn’t try it in the summah.”
They crossed the pond, and the hills reasserted themselves, spruces and firs more evident because they were taller and fuller than other trees in the immediate area. They soon walked through a brooding section that housed no trees but one—Austin worrying about that one because it was so unlike the others he had seen thus far.
It was gnarled and twisted and barren. It sported no foliage, not a sprig of green or a somnolent bud waiting for April. Nor was there snow on any of its branches. It was just stuck there, apparently lifeless. And even in that sunlit afternoon where the evergreens shot mammoth black shadows across the snow, this tree cast no shadow at all.
Austin thought to ask about it, but since it was the first time during the frigid trek that Jack was not spouting some precious, folksy observation, he decided against risking the questions and receiving in return a four-hour-twenty-three-minute dissertation on nothing in particular.
He followed the waffled prints of Jack’s snowshoes, the air clean and beautiful and worth the breathing—the kind of air that city people heard about only in commercials for Idaho and Montana. Eight years of cigarette smoking had left a residue of carbon on his lungs that he could suddenly feel falling away, all those blackened stalactites dropping off like rotten plaster. He drank so hugely of the air, such long and penetrating drafts of it, that he could feel himself filling like a balloon. And had his clothing not been so heavy, and his feet not so mired in the snow, he’d have surely caught the north wind like a Canada goose homeward bound.
The mythical trail soon lost itself in a clutch of thick trees—first-growth trees, tall and ramrod straight, clustered so side-by-side that they almost completely blotted out all traces of what Austin knew to be a most vivid day.
“Stay behind me, Austin. Don’t want to step in a bear trap ya first day out.”
Austin complied, following Jack between the big trees, the sun unable to send down more than a dribble of itself to usher the way. And to Austin it was as if he were walking through a tunnel, under a canopy, while carrying an umbrella.
The trees thinned out, stepping aside as they might for royalty, the land beginning to flow gently upward. And there, perhaps a hundred yards ahead, built against and tucked within the snow drape of a slowly rising hill—a house.
“Welcome home, Austin.”
The house crouched low and gray and brown like a cat, its tail pressed against the cushiony hill, its mind semi-shut in a winter nap. And it was as covered with snow as was everything else on that pristine day, a three-foot layer of it lolling on its roof. And because its windows were shuttered its eyes were unnoticing of visitors, though it surely must have sensed their presence, cats and houses having that power.
“Welcome home, Austin,” were the words—but was it Jack Meeker who had said them, or the house itself, appearing so suddenly out of the tree-caused twilight, so evocative of Maynard in that sweet and gentle breeze?
No matter. Whatever the explanation, weariness or wistfulness, all that lay before Austin’s gaze was so invitingly familiar, so dizzily déjà vu that, though logic could dispute it, he immediately knew two warming and irrefutable truths: He was home. And he had been there before.
5
Jack Meeker paused to light his pipe, and pretty puffs of mapled smoke picked their way up through the resisting trees. For a moment Austin saw the big man as a combination Marco Polo and Father Christmas, for he had found the house. Across that endless white desert he had found a route. The voyage from Vietnam to Lake Nahmiakanta was over and Maynard’s gift was complete.
No crowds, no ticker tape. No Indians with maize and pumpkin and good wishes for the first winter, none of that. But then, none of that was ever required. All that was required was standing before him, singular and stalwart, framed by evergreens and set in crystal—a place out of the way, to be alone in. In all his twenty-three years he had never known such a haven, let alone suspected that it might indeed exist, for someone like himself, a loner and a nonplanner, a man with no concept of tomorrow and no predilection for backward glances. Bless you, Maynard. You will always be my friend. And bless this house, long may it thumb its nose at blizzards.
He studied the house more closely. Whatever he had expected it to be, what appeared before him appeared to be better. It was a low-slung thing, cedar-shingled and loosely built, seemingly haphazard yet somehow indestructible. A long, tapering roof, sweeping down almost to the snow—facing north, the better to deflect the wind, causing that invisible beast to spend its strength riding the roof, arriving in the trees beyond with nothing to show for all its muscle but an echoing whistle.
The house had two stories, though the second story could hardly be considered much more than a squinched attic, two grimy windows peering out of it like the milk-glass lenses of a blind man’s spectacles. A low fence of wired-together light boards stood some two feet apart from the house’s foundation. It reached sill high, the berm between fence and house being filled with natural insulation, hay and grass and dry leaves, things that nature grew in summer and cast aside in autumn—dead things, or dying, that, properly used, might benefit those who chose to stay on in the house to the displeasure of winter.
“Buttoned up for the wintah,” said Jack, admiration in every word.
“I don’t have a key.” It had never occurred to Austin until then that he might need a key.
“No mattah. As I recall, it was never locked.”
“How old is it?”
“What ya lookin’ at—oh, a hundred years.” Jack nodded his head at other structures in the area, small ramshackle buildings that Austin had failed to notice right off. “That’ll be ya woodshed, Austin. And that’ll be ya icehouse over there. And over there, ya backhouse.”
“Backhouse?”
“Outhouse, backhouse—don’t mattah what ya call it long as ya keep it out and back.”
Austin looked at the compact little hut, no bigger than a phone booth—and damned if it didn’t have a crescent moon carved into its door. It appeared to be some thirty to forty yards from the main house. “Pretty far away,” he volunteered.
“In January it’s far away. In August it’s never far enough. Aristocracy up here used to have two backhouses. One for summah and one for wintah. Finicky about where ya set, Austin?”
“Not if I can get there in time. I take it there’s no toilet in the house.”
“Maybe for decoration. Make a nice planter. Best to stomp out a path to ya backhouse before nature calls.”
“It’ll be the first thing I do.”
“Ready to go in?”
“Why shouldn’t I be?”
“Well, ya look kind of…uncertain.”
“I’m not uncertain.”
“Then let’s go.”
They walked the remaining distance to the house, Austin’s heart kettledrumming so hard that he could feel it in his temples. It was one step up to the shallow porch, after which both men kicked off their snowshoes.
The roughhewn door hung a little crooked but with manifest character. There was no lock or latch for a lock—just a leather handle worn and frayed to an almost unnatural degree, as if a lion had used it for a teething ring. The door was set flatly in ice, only the leather handle protruding into the third dimension.
Jack grasped the handle and pushed gently at the door. It did not give. “Can’t push too hard. Wouldn’t be respectful.” And he stepped away from it, examining it as if he were a safecracker sizing up the situation.
Austin didn’t understand what Jack was waiting for. “Well, how do we get in?”
“Oh, we’ll get in. Trick is to be invited.”
“I don’t have any invitation.”
“Patience, boy.” Jack thumped his gloved fist, rather delicately for him, all about the door’s frame—gentle raps, like Michelangelo working in ice. And again he stepped away, waiting.
“Is someone supposed to answer? I don’t think they heard you.” Austin moved for the door, about to pound at it harder than Jack had thumped.
But Jack restrained him. “I said patience, Austin.” A few seconds later, on its own, the door sighed and small bits of ice let go and crackled out. Jack tapped at the doorframe again, but still it did not give. “She’s thinkin’ it ovah.”
He stepped back again, relighting his pipe and looking away, apparently not caring whether or not they gained access to the house.
“Hey—I’m freezing, okay?”
There then came a loud crack, and larger sections of ice dropped away from the door to crash onto the porch, freeing the door from its frozen state—and it swung open on its old hinges, as if the house were inhaling it, creaking and bitching like phony sound effects.
“She’s willin’,” Jack said, stepping aside for Austin. “After you, son. Your house.”
Austin nodded, pausing for a moment to firm himself up for the task. Then he strode into the house, a wind coming immediately with him, almost pushing him, causing things inside to rattle—metal things, wooden things—conjuring up an image in Austin’s head of a skeleton jigging on an elastic string. He couldn’t see, his eyes yet to accommodate to the darkness, but he could hear a loud clumping behind him, almost ferocious, and he wheeled around.
“Good floor. Strong. Oak. Original floor, Austin.” It was Jack, testing the floor, flexing his knees and stamping his feet on it, scaring the hell out of Austin.
“Jesus Christ! Did you have to do that?”
“Do what?”
“Nothing.” Austin’s vision was slowly returning. If his heart would come down to where it belonged, he would be all right.
“Been in here before but never took notice.” Jack tested the floor again, more earnestly, his full weight. And there was a scurrying of small noises underneath them, a scratching and a scraping that Austin was not prepared for, the vibration tickling right up through his boot soles.
“What the hell is that?” He asked Jack.
“Oh—rabbits. Weren’t expectin’ visitahs. They’ll be in ya cellah.”
Austin began to see things. Still, the only light in the room was coming from behind Jack. It was a pale light, rebounding dully off the snow, making the far wall appear as though a sickly spotlight were playing on it. The rest of the room devoted itself to shadows.
“I’ll go out and open the shuttahs, Austin. Spread some light on the situation.”
Jack went out, leaving Austin alone in the room, quietly overwhelmed. One by one the shutters outside fanned open, noisily but without incident. And as each shutter was pressed back against the outside shingles, each window was emancipated, and shafts of sunlight came crisscrossing in from diverse angles, from the left and from the right, from the fore and the aft, from under the door itself and through cracks in it.
And in that conspiracy of light, Austin found himself standing in the dead middle of it all, caught as in a laser crossfire, and he saw himself on a crucifix, pinioned, pain in his palms and in his insteps. It didn’t last long, neither the image nor the pain, an unclockable moment at best, a blip, and it was over, the room soon as bright inside as was the outside. And what had been at first a brooding and foreboding structure was turned happily around into a cordial house, cheerful and fit, and ready for occupancy.
Austin stood stock still as light and life filled the room. The first thing he took notice of was the big Boston rocker, the kind of chair John F. Kennedy used to like, only older and cruder, with flaking paint and uneven runners, and glued-on-again struts that had been whittled down and wedged into weary seat holes ten times too often.
There were other chairs, clunky and handmade. And a poker-scarred table, and a copper-fitted dry sink. And a long-handled pump; pewter pots and pans; utensils, bowls, pitchers and mugs.
Shelves and cupboards were crammed cranky with powdered milk, canned meats, vegetables, juices, flour, shortening, dry cereals—you name it, Austin had it. Jars, cans, bottles and boxes enough to start a supermarket and two delicatessens.
It was a spacious room, a combination kitchen/living room, dominated by a rough-rock walk-in fireplace with hanging copper kettles blackened by years of open-hearth cooking. And beside it a firescreen, a poker, tongs, bucket, broom, a dutiful load of cordwood and a proper pile of kindling. And a black bearskin rug sprawled in front of it all, snoozing in eternity.
Kerosene lamps, boxes of candles, matches, soap, colorful candies in glass jars. Rifles standing vertically against a barnwood wall—a .30-.06, a .32 Special Winchester, a twelve-gauge shotgun and, on a peg of its own, a .44 Smith & Wesson revolver. And boxes of ammunition of various calibers. Enough ammunition to stand off Cornwallis, Napoleon
, Kaiser Wilhelm, Hirohito, Ho Chi Minh and John Dillinger.
Austin looked into the room beyond, the only other room in the house. It too was a combination room—bedroom/storeroom. The bed looked to be carved from one enormous chunk of anthracite, and to have been assembled either inside the room or before the house was built. It could never have gotten past the door. A colorful quilt of lovingly stitched cotton squares lay sprawled over a lumpy mattress; and odd-shaped pillows, stuffed with pine needles still fragrant, huddled together on top of it all. And, from under the bed, another black bearskin rug peered out for a peek at its new master.
Other chairs, a handcrafted standing closet, a pine bureau with trinkets on a doily, an oblong mirror in an oak frame. And on the walls, things on pegs—parkas, boots, gloves, snowshoes, caps, hats, sneakers, mocassins, fishing rods, tackle and baskets. Knives, saws, chisels, icepicks and hammers and additional items not immediately identifiable by Austin.
And on all the wall that was left: books. Shelves upon shelves of books. Books packed so solid that they could serve as sandbags if the dam broke and the river overflowed.
A barrel-shaped Franklin stove squatted in the middle of the room like an oversized black iron Buddha, its smoke pipe curving acutely so that it ran across the wall just above the bed before turning dead square into the wall, its nether end emerging somewhere outside the house. A dozen dry logs, cut to fit the stove’s mouth, stood ready, a box of twigs and assorted kindling flanking it.
“Looks ready for ya to move in.” Jack was standing beside him. “Tried that bed?”
“No. Not yet.”
Jack eased himself elephantinely onto the bed, taking special care to keep his big boots away from the pretty quilt. The bed creaked and sagged but held, though the sound it made was of a hundred hawsers straining. “She’s a rope-spring, Austin. Might want to put a little oil on it, or wax.”
Maynard’s House Page 5
