“Check.”
Jack bounced lightly and the mattress rustled like a wind on the move. “Corn-husk mattress. Noisy if ya a light sleepah. Mice like it. So ya might want to check it.” He completed his small trampoline act and landed, feet thumping, onto the floor, like a circus performer. “Well, holds Goliath. Should have no trouble with David.”
“That an old bed?”
“’Bout as old as the house.”
“Wow.”
“Probably slept a whole family. ’Course, people were smaller then.” He was examining some of Maynard’s books. “Lots of readin’ mattah. Old days, folks’d have but two books. the Bible and Pilgrim’s Progress. ’Course, we’ve branched out since then. Now we have Farmer’s Almanac and Everythin’ Ya Ever Wanted to Know about Sex… Helps a man know the best time for plantin’.”
Austin found himself laughing aloud and he wondered, quickly, if Bob Hope hadn’t blown it by not having Jack Meeker on the bill for all those Vietnam holiday shows.
Jack moved along, his eyes searching the floor, until he gently kicked aside a small scatter rug that had masked a black iron ring set flush in the floorboards. “This’ll be ya root cellah, Austin.”
He bent, reached down, and pulled at the ring. A two-foot-by-two-foot trap door yawned up and open. He found a kerosene lamp, but the wick was dry as bone. He found a can of kerosene and refilled the lamp, explaining to Austin, “No electricity, Austin. You have stepped back into the last century.”
Austin knelt and peered down into the blackness of the cellar. “Looks that way.”
Jack lit the wick, and the lamp sprang to life. Holding it, he all the same dropped down into the hole with an ease and grace that belied his bulk. Busy shadows soon played up on Austin’s face, Jack’s voice accompanying them. “This’ll interest ya, Austin.”
“You want me to come down?”
“Up to you.”
Austin lowered himself through the opening and trustingly dropped down alongside Jack in the cellar. It was creepy-damp yet smelled earth-washed, a little bit of good to go with the bad. It also afforded very little headroom, perhaps six feet at the most.
“Not much room for tall haircuts, Austin. Studs and nails’ll bite ya if ya let ’em.”
“I’ll be careful. Smells…cold.”
Jack was kneeling, listening. “Hear that? That’s runnin’ watah.”
“I hear it.” It was water, all right trickling steadily and benignly, bringing images of paper boats to Austin’s mind.
“Familya with a cistern?”
“No, sir.” Austin was beginning to think that he knew nothing about anything and that Jack Meeker was some kind of woodland guru who knew all about everything.
“It’s simple enough.” Jack was standing again, but not all the way, beams that were really tree trunks offering him an unfriendly lack of clearance. “This here is a barrel. These tin pipes, see ’em? They’re the downspouts from ya roof. Rain comes down and into the barrel. Pump in ya dry sink draws it up and ya have it—watah.”
“I see.”
“In the summah.”
“Oh?”
“In the wintah ya draw ya watah from this underground stream. Never freezes, ’cause it never stops runnin’. Runs right through ya barrel and goes on its merry way. But it always leaves ya with a barrel full of pure spring watah.”
“Great.”
“All ya need is a trout in the barrel.”
“A trout?”
“A-yuh. Eats insects. Keeps ya watah pure. ’Course, that’s in the summah.”
“It’s winter.”
“Hard to find a trout in the wintah, Austin.”
“I’m sure.
“Have to saw in the pond.”
Austin found himself becoming newly impatient with the big man’s meandering explanations. “Yeah. Okay.”
“Have to do it sooner or latah. Come summah ya’ll be wantin’ ice. Only time to get ice is in the wintah.”
“Yeah, well, that makes sense.”
“Bound to be some spoilage to ya food down heah. Maynard left close to two years ago. Means a summah got sandwiched between two wintahs with no one around to look after things.”
“I guess so.”
“Then there’s the animals. Moles. Rabbits. Mice. They’ll have helped themselves to some of ya stock. Squirrels, raccoons, they always find a way in.”
“All right. Okay.”
“And whatevah ice Maynard stored in the icehouse, that’s got to have all gone last summah. Melted, I imagine.”
“Right. Right.”
“And ya’ll be needin’ ice next summah.”
“Ice. Right.”
“Only it don’t grow on trees.”
“Right.”
“Have to use a groovah and a saw.”
“Groover and a saw, right.”
“Probably find them in the icehouse.”
“Of course. The icehouse. Right. Correct.”
“Gettin’ a little testy there, Austin. That’ll be the wrong attitude for a man left out heah to his own devices. Be needin’ patience.”
“I’m sorry.” And he was.
Jack was playing the lantern light on a dozen or so bushel baskets. “Maynard left ya lots of edibles. Apples might be sorry, though. Beets, parsnips, potatoes—they look okay to middlin’.”
“Ah, potatoes. I knew I’d see potatoes one day.”
Jack was nudging little pellets with his boot tip. “Ye never free of company, Austin. Have to ride herd or ya food’ll be gone before ya inventory it. And ya’ll end up eatin’ animal droppin’s.”
Jack and his lantern were soon up and in the house again, Austin clambering after, pulling himself up without the practiced ease of a big man.
“Firewood’ll last ya three, four days. Probably more out at the woodshed. But ya got no telephone and no neighbahs if ya took sick or have an accident—”
“I’ll be okay.”
“—or die.”
Austin forced a grin. “Why should I die?”
“People die.”
“I never did.”
“Maynard died.”
“People were shootin’ at him.”
Jack sat down, rather deliberatedly and cryptically. He was going to make a point. He crossed one leg over the other and pretzeled his arms. “Very old house, Austin. Old houses have stories.”
“Oh Christ, you’re goin’ to tell me the place is haunted.”
“Back a ways we passed a witch’s tree. Ya may have taken notice.” He paused, puffing his pipe, allowing it all to register on Austin. “A witch’s tree is where a witch was hanged. That bothah ya, Austin?”
“When did it happen?”
“Long time ago.”
“Then it don’t bother me.”
“Top part of this house is about a hundred years old. But the foundation’s oldah. Much oldah. Maybe by two hundred fifty years. Original top burnt down, somewhere along the way. Rest of it, the foundation? That didn’t burn completely. Timbers in the cellah, I checked ’em. Ain’t even charred.”
Whatever Jack was getting at, Austin was going to ride it out. “Good.”
“Used to be, they’d burn down a witch’s house all the way—to purify the area.”
“Seems reasonable.”
“If the house didn’t burn completely, it was allowed as to how the witch might still have possession—from the othah side.”
“I don’t believe in witches.”
Jack slapped his big hands against his thighs and pushed himself to a standing position. “Well, that’s good, Austin. That’s good.”
“Do you?”
“What?”
“Believe in witches.”
“Would it mattah?”
“It might.”
“Well, people up here are inclined to be kind of religious. Believe there’s good, believe there’s evil. Believe in God…” He allowed the sentence to hang there, suspended in pipe smoke. “Believe in witches.”
“I don’t live here, Austin. So it don’t mattah how I answer that question. What mattahs is how you answer it.”
Austin smiled triumphantly. “I think you’re avoiding the question.”
Jack lowered his voice and became very softly direct. “I believe in witches—to some degree. Only I don’t think they can occupy people as much as they can manipulate ’em.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Well, I think a witch has to have a home base it don’t move too far out of.”
“Like a house.”
“A-yuh. House would be fine.”
“Like this house.”
Jack took his sweet time, trying to appear casual but, more importantly, wanting Austin to hear and absorb and understand every word. “A witch can occupy a house and do things to ya if ya cross its threshold. It can be layin’ in wait for ya, baitin’ a trap. Because it has a sense of orderliness—things happenin’ on specific dates, by the numbahs, accordin’ to schedule—a witch can confuse ya by rearrangin’ time and space so’s ya almost don’t notice. A witch can make ya wish ya nevah come near it.”
“Okay.”
“If it has a place and a purpose, a witch can be a very terrible thing.”
“You actually want me to believe that stuff, don’t you?”
“Nope. But it might not be a bad idea if you was to respect it.”
“Okay. I’ll respect it. But I don’t want to hear any more of it. Bad enough I’m going to be out here all alone, I don’t need all that cutesy folklore to worry about.”
Jack broke into a grin, and for a flashing moment Austin wondered if the big man hadn’t been pulling his leg all along, as he had done to Guerney on the phone. “Well, then, Austin, seein’ as how secure ya are in body and mind, I guess I’ll be leavin’.” He walked to the door, shaking the house and talking to Austin while facing away. “Tell ya what we can do. Once a week, if ya can find ya way back to the road—there’s a postbox. Ya may have noticed.”
“I didn’t.”
“Don’t mean it’s not there. Right on the road. So, anythin’ ya may need or want, or want to tell me, ya just leave a note. I’m up and back that road pretty often, since I’m also the postman around here. Actually, I’m postmastah. Town of Belden voted me that title because it was both an honor and vacant. Anyway—if ya finished laughin’, or chucklin’, or whatever it is ya doin’ there, in ya sleeve—”
“I’m not chucklin’.”
“—I’m sure there’s some pencil and paper somewhere in here, because Maynard’s got the place stocked like a general store. So, once again, anythin’ ya care to relate to me, ya just let me know via that postbox. That is, if ya not chucklin’.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No mattah. If I don’t hear from ya from time to time, some little note or scratchin’, I’ll figure there’s a chance somethin’ might be wrong and I’ll come lookin’ for ya.”
Austin could only shake his head in bemusement. “I come ten thousand miles, and I get ghost stories for my trouble.”
“I didn’t say anythin’ about ghosts.”
“Boy, you’re beautiful. You really are.”
Jack was moving toward the door again, looking out the window, trying hard to be nonchalant. “I’ll look forward to hearin’ from ya, from time to time.”
He galomped out of the house, pulling the door closed in his wake, sunlight dancing in and out with the opening and closing of the door. Austin heard him on the porch donning his snowshoes, then crunching over the snow that distance back to the jeep—after which he heard nothing. Nothing at all.
And he stood there in the smack-middle frozen silence and chuckled anew, cranking out all the chuckles he could, and even more after that, because it was all the sound there was in his new house, and, were it to cease or leave, there’d be nothing for his ears to perk up to beyond the wind picking its way down the chimney—and the mice picking their way up.
His laughter grew small and unconvincing, so he dispensed with it, realizing all too soon that he was very much on his own in that wind-hewn wilderness, and that there was no ski patrol to defrost him if an avalanche fell on his house, and no Red Cross to serve him doughnuts if animals ate his food.
In Vietnam he had managed nicely. With the exception of Maynard he had played it pretty much high lonesome—no one to lean on and no one to lean on him. Still, there had always been interested bystanders in the wings, to assist if there was trouble, professionals at the stick and at the ready. There had always been a place to sack out where “friendlies” made the meals, and stood the watch, and told the jokes. And, if there were any ghosts or witches, they never badgered Austin Fletcher, because he was only a transient, someone passing through, a wandering minstrel singing “God Bless America.” Whatever he was doing, for Country and for self, he would do and move on. And every village, every hillock, every bamboo hut and every rice paddie was but a temporary address, a way station with a number classification and a funny name, populated by thin people with spent faces and vacant eyes. And he, Austin Fletcher, was simply putting one foot in front of the other, making his way from one such place to the next and as quickly as he could, for to remain in any one given spot for too long a time was to draw killing fire from the invisibles.
He had been a floater and a waster, a time-marker and a corner-cutter. He had lived his entire life as if poised on a diving board, yet all he’d ever done was tense his toes and arch his insteps—he had never really jumped in, not into anything. Ever. Not of his own free will. Not even in Nam.
But this time he had jumped in, and off the deep end. And this Maine, this house by this unpronounceable lake, this dead-cold stop, this was it, for today and tomorrow. And it might well be it for a helluva lot longer.
The house and all about it smelled of a cunning impermanence. Stocked with all he’d need for a year at the least, it had nothing with which to record time. Not a clock had he seen inside. Not an hourglass or a sundial or a metronome. Nothing to measure the spilling of minutes or the flicking away of life. And he felt as if he’d been sucked in and ambushed. By a piece of paper. By a will, if you will, scrawled out by someone who, a few months back, he didn’t even know to speak to.
The house was frigid and growing more so, the cold laying heavy hands on his shoulders, breathing ice on the back of his neck and frost on the flexes of his face. He would have to build a fire. Thoughtfully he played his fingers over the stubble on his face. He couldn’t feel the whiskers, because his fingers were too numb. But he could hear them, snapping rigidly back to verticalness each time they were whisked. If nothing else, he needed a shave.
But it wouldn’t be easy. The water in his overturned helmet was swimming with mosquitoes, and the blade in his razor, its cutting edge worn down into little more than a rumor, had long ago enjoyed its last hurrah.
Other men were spread out in the heat, reading, smoking, shaving, sweating. And Maynard sat by, cleaning his rifle, sliding the wire brushrod up and back through the barrel’s bore, his pale eyes barely taking notice, his hollow cheeks wreathed with that never-flagging smile. “…nearer to Canada than to anywhere else. Big trees. Spruce. Fir. All sorts of animal life. In my house, I tell ya, I’m never alone. There’s a mink slips in, steals things soon as I go out. And a chipmunk’s been workin’ on my bedpost, carvin’ it into somethin’ I don’t know what. And squirrels all over the place like they’re runnin’ a relay race. Deer are plentiful but awfully skittish. Crow’ll shake some snow off a tree and a deer’ll run for five miles. ’Course, when they’re hungry, they’ll take risks. Starvation’ll make a wild animal tame.”
“And no neighbors?” asked Austin, getting nowhere with his shaving but doing it anyway, inertia and boredom
asserting themselves over logic and awareness.
“Don’t want any neighbors.”
“But isn’t it spooky?”
“Spooky? It’s beautiful. There’s life all around. Oh, sometimes a loon’ll scare ya with its cryin’, and an owl with its questioning but it’s not spooky. There’s legends, of course, but ya ought not place much stock in ’em.”
“Like what?”
“Ya don’t really want to hear, Austin.”
“I do. I swear.”
“Well, for example, right near my place there’s a Devil’s Dancin’ Rock, and, a couple times, when the light’s not too good…” Maynard was enjoying himself, knowing full well that he was titillating Austin.
“What?”
“Well, ya see, Austin, the Devil’s Dancin’ Rock is a kind of a wide, flat stone. Old settlers used to say that in a dim light, like at dusk, or in the full of the moon, if ya looked sharp, ya might just see Old Scratch himself, doin’ a jig on it.”
“Old Scratch?”
“The Devil, Austin.”
“Did you ever see him?”
“I think half of the seein’ is in the believin’.”
“Okay, then, do you believe?”
“Well, there are the Minnawickies.”
“The what?”
“Minnawickies.”
“Come on, Maynard…”
“Where to?”
“What the hell are Minnawickies?”
“No one really knows.”
“Oh, swell.”
“Because ya can’t really catch ’em. What we do know is, they’re small. Stand four, maybe four and a half feet tall. They’ve got kind of big heads and very big eyes. And they’re shy, very shy. And quick. Gone about as soon as ya see ’em. They’ll drop in on a hunter, let’s say unannounced? And if they’re in a good mood, they might just cook him a dinner and leave it over his fire; or hang a couple fresh-caught fish for him, on a stick? Or leave their names spelled out in the dirt or the snow.”
“Nice of ’em,” said Austin, pretending to give no credence to anything that Maynard was saying—but hooked all the same.
“They have this giggle. Ya can hear it, ’specially at night when sound travels best. Like kids laughin’, or a turkey gobblin’.” Looking skyward and cupping his mouth, Maynard demonstrated the sound of a Minnawickie, and it came out as described: a chortle and a gobble, a blending of mischief and mystery, sounding, all at once, present and amusing and far-off and chilling. The other soldiers, too tired to comment on Maynard’s apparent lunacy, paid him no never mind, so he did it again.
Maynard’s House Page 6
