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 blu
e 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.”
5
August
Bridget sat beside me in the cab of the truck, her new kit-ten on her lap. It was an adorable grey tabby with four white paws, a “giveaway” kitten, as Old Joe explained when he dropped it off at the motel along with a plastic litter box and a bag of kitty litter. I wasn’t very pleased about acquiring a cat even before moving into the house, but Bridget’s cries of joy had won me over.
“Have you thought of a name for your kitty?”
“Fizzy!” Bridget announced.
I smiled. “He is fuzzy, isn’t he?”
“No, Mama, his name is Fizzy. When he saw a dog in the parking lot, he made a noise like this: Fizzzz.”
“Fizzy it is, then.”
“He’s so clean!” Bridget said with motherly pride. “He washes his face with his paws. And he even buries his own poo. I wish we could do that, don’t you?”
I was seated behind the wheel of our new vehicle — at least, new to us. It was a ten-year-old four-by-four half-ton Chevy Silverado that Edna’s teenaged son had sold to us. The truck was silver in colour, and I was already mentally calling it Silver, after the Lone Ranger’s horse: “Hi-Yo, Silver! Away!”
The boy had assured me it would last for another year, and it came with a set of winter tires. He showed me how to determine if they were too worn, by pressing a quarter into their broad zigzag treads. If the treads were deep enough to bury the caribou’s nose, the tires passed muster. These were stacked in the back, along with a huge load of supplies.
It seemed to be taking forever to get to the turnoff. I checked the mileage gauge again and mentally slapped myself on the forehead. I had forgotten that it was marked in kilometres! Instead of fifty miles an hour, I was driving fifty kilometres an hour — I did the mental math — thirty-one miles per hour. Canada used the metric system, and I would just have to get used to it.
I carefully changed gears, thankful that my first car had a standard transmission so I knew how to drive this truck. I stepped on the gas pedal, and Silver surged forward as if breaking into a gallop.
“I like sitting up here, don’t you, Mama?” We were elevated so high off the ground that I had to lift Bridget onto the bench seat. Fortunately she was just over the forty-pound limit for needing a safety seat. We could see for miles. Topping one of the gently rolling hills, we looked down on the surface of the forest, a green carpet sprinkled with little dark triangular points, the tips of the tallest spruce trees.
After I turned onto the gravel road, Silver navigated the ruts easily, although the ride got a bit rougher. According to Old Joe, the county didn’t bother maintaining the gravel road since it led to the Indian reservation, or reserve, as they called it here. Not only was that word different, I thought, I had to remember not to call them Indians. Apparently they didn’t like being called Indians, and who could blame them, really. Here they were called Indigenous peoples.
Fizzy objected to the bumpy ride with a faint meow. “Don’t be afraid, sweetie, we’re almost home.” Bridget spoke in a tone exactly like mine. I looked over my shoulder into the back of the truck, hoping nothing had fallen out.
That morning we were waiting outside when the big double doors opened into the town’s main grocery store, Juniper Foods. Bulk dry goods were first on the list, so while Bridget stood on the front of the shopping cart, I piled in ten-kilogram bags of flour and sugar, plus oatmeal, cornmeal, rice, macaroni, and spaghetti noodles.
Since we didn’t have any way to refrigerate our food, I stocked up on canned meat, fish, vegetables, and soup.
“Excuse me, but do you know how long evaporated milk lasts after it’s opened?” I asked the young girl stocking the shelves, with a nametag reading “Tina.”
“Probably about two weeks,” she said. “But in another month it won’t matter. You can leave your frozen food outside and it won’t thaw until spring. It’s a long way to come into town if you don’t have to.”
Apparently she knew where we lived.
Tina proved to be very helpful, following me up and down the aisles and pointing out things I had missed. I was accustomed to dropping into the grocery store every couple of days. It was hard to comprehend what we might need for an entire month.
In the next aisle, we picked up cooking oil, peanut butter, honey, corn syrup, bottled fruit juice, coffee and tea, salt and pepper, ketchup, pickles, mustard, and spices. I had never baked anything in my life, but perhaps it was time to learn. I threw in baking powder, baking soda, yeast, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and vanilla.
We left the overloaded cart near the checkout counter and started on the next one. In the produce section, I piled in potatoes, onions, and carrots. I hoped that root vegetables would keep in the earthen basement, as long as I could protect them from the mice by storing them in a plastic cooler.
Walking along the aisle with frozen desserts, I noticed there was little choice. The supermarkets in Phoenix had aisles the length of football fields devoted to all manner of frozen pies and cakes. Here the choice was limited to ice cream and Popsicles.
I didn’t want to waste money on desserts anyway. The cost of groceries here was exorbitant. Bridget helped me select popcorn kernels and raisins. Nuts were expensive, but I bought one small container of almonds and another of walnuts.
Finally, I picked up a couple of bags of ice for our primitive wooden icebox — although, if Tina was correct, I wouldn’t need it much longer.
“There! That should do us for a year, let alone a month!” I announced to Bridget.
I paid for my purchases with bills in all the colours of the rainbow. At least it wouldn’t be hard to keep the different denominations straight here, I thought, since the bills looked like Monopoly money. For change, I received silver coins with gold centres, called toonies, each worth two dollars; and golden coins worth one dollar each that looked like they came from a pirate ship. These were called loonies because they bore an engraving of a loon.
After paying for all of my groceries, I pushed a cart to my truck. Tina helpfully pushed the other cart and slung the bags into the back while I settled Bridget in the cab with Fizzy.
“Can you tell me where to buy my daughter some jeans?” I asked, assuming that a teenager would know.
“You betcha. The best place in town for clothes is the Salvation Army Thrift Shop, two blocks that way.” She pointed down the street.
At last, a familiar name. When I parked in front of the shop, I was glad that the wide street allowed nose-in parking. I would hate to try to manoeuvre this oversized vehicle into a regular parking spot.
Bridget trailed behind me into the shop, which was surprisingly well stocked, its racks bursting with clothes. I picked through the children’s section, reminding myself to wash everything before we wore it. I selected two pairs of jeans and some red corduroy overalls that looked like new.
Since I didn’t have anything resembling work clothes, I bought myself a pair of Carhartt overalls, the knees only slightly stained with grease, a pair of men’s workboots that fit my large feet nicely, and three pairs of woollen socks.
A tiny elderly volunteer with permed red hair whose name wa
s Gladys told me where to find the pharmacy and the hardware store. “You’ll need plenty of supplies if you’re going to live in that old place!” she said. Another person who knew what we were doing.
“Canadian Tire” sounded to me like an automotive shop, but to my surprise I found it was an all-purpose general store. I loaded up with lamp oil, candles, matches, a heavy-duty flashlight and two dozen extra batteries, a portable fire extinguisher to keep beside the wood stove, and a five-gallon red plastic container filled with extra gasoline.
Visions of dirt and disease danced in my head as I piled in a broom and mop, dish detergent, laundry soap, and window cleaner. I finished off with a box of zip-lock bags, a dozen plastic food containers, and one large cooler.
I had been unable to purchase only one item. After searching the aisles at Canadian Tire, I stopped a young man in a scarlet vest and asked where the guns were kept.
“You mean hunting rifles?” he asked. “We don’t carry them here.”
“No, I mean a handgun.”
He looked puzzled. “Ma’am, where are you from?”
“Arizona.”
“I guess you don’t know that people aren’t allowed to own handguns in this country.”
“You mean, never?” I was surprised. “Aren’t there any exceptions?”
“Nope. Not unless you want to join the local Rod and Gun Club and use it for target practice. Why do you want one, anyways?”
“For self-defence.” He stared at me blankly. “You know, in case somebody tries to rob me.”
“We haven’t had an armed robbery around here since before I was born.”
“But how do people protect themselves?”
“Don’t worry, you got nothing to be scared about. Up here animals are the biggest problem, not people.”
He walked away, shaking his head. As we left the store, I saw him talking to one of the cashiers and pointing at me. Both of them were laughing.
Finally we hit the local pharmacy, where we bought personal supplies. I smiled to myself, remembering Bridget’s delight when she discovered the “free gifts” at the hotel. “Mama, look! They gave us free shampoo, free hand lotion, and free soap!” I tossed in an economy-sized pack of toilet paper, tampons, hand soap, and hand sanitizer. I deliberated over body lotion then decided it was too expensive.
Wildwood Page 5
