But it was still a shame. The desk was made of good wood, which could be worked to a glossy depth with a little polish. He tested its weight and was surprised by its heft. He checked the drawers to see if anything heavy had been stashed there, but they were wedged full with nothing more than old paper that disintegrated in his hands. Peering through a large keyhole, he saw that there was a compartment under the writing surface, but it was locked. He tried to force it, but it wouldn’t budge. The lock had been built to last.
Bending from his knees, he hoisted the desk to his chest, wincing at the strain. As he lifted it, he felt something shift inside. Something heavy enough that he had to adjust his balance to compensate. Threading his way between mounds of junk, he crossed the room and started up the stairs.
His sweaty hands grappled the desk’s worn contours, but just as he found a better grip, his trailing leg went through the planks of a stair. Ben fell backward, shoving the desk to the side as he lost his balance. Ribbons of pain bolted up from his shin as his center of gravity shifted with the fall. He caught the banister. One of the spokes broke, but the next one held. The desk picked up momentum as it descended. Ben didn’t watch, but he heard the old thing scream as it splintered against the wall at the foot of the stairs.
“Dad?”
He heard Charlie padding back down the hallway. The boy poked his head through the doorway.
Ben swiveled so he could see the foot of the stairs.
The weight of the desk had worked against it at impact. Its final gasp was a haze of ancient paper remnants, exhaled like the release of an earthbound spirit.
“Help me out here, buddy?”
Charlie walked down to Ben. He peered into the hole Ben’s leg was wedged in. When he looked up, a rare smile filled his little face.
“I think you liked Mom’s pancakes too much,” he said.
Ben braced himself against Charlie’s shoulder and the banister to lift his calf out of the hole. He sat down heavily on the stairs. Charlie sat next to him as Ben hoisted the leg of his jeans.
“Does it hurt?” Charlie asked.
Skin along his calf had bunched up, and the flesh below was already turning purple.
“Not really. Going to be sore tomorrow, though.”
“Do you still need help carrying stuff?”
“I think we earned ourselves a break, don’t you?”
Charlie scampered back up the stairs, but Ben walked down them. He pulled the desk away from the wall to examine the damage. The lock on the lid of the desk had loosened but not enough for him to pry it open. But the side panel had splintered, and he forced his weight against it until it broke away with a satisfying crunch.
He pulled the flashlight out of his pocket and positioned the desk so that he could shine the light into the hole in its side. Upstairs, Charlie was calling Caroline to come look at Ben’s leg.
The hollow space was filled with scrolls of thick paper. Ben slid one through the hole and unraveled it to find a schematic of the Crofts and a small map of the grounds. He removed another to find a similar document dated a few years after the first. While interesting, these architectural plans didn’t explain the shifting weight within the desk. Once Ben had removed all of the blueprints from the compartment, he finally saw what looked like a thick black box. He used the back end of the flashlight to break away more of the cracked wood to make space for the object. When he pulled it out, he saw that it wasn’t a box; it was a book. A black book with a metal cross embedded in its front cover. A Bible. Ben again tested its heft, but it didn’t seem large enough to justify its weight. The cover was thorny and ridged, as if it had been bound with dragon skin.
“Are you okay?” Caroline called from the top of the stairs.
On impulse, Ben slid the Bible into a pile of yellowed linens, out of sight.
“Foot went right through the stair. Didn’t draw blood, but it’ll leave a nasty bruise.” He walked back up the steps, pausing at the one with the hole in it. “Rotted through.”
“Makes you wonder about the rest of the place,” she sighed.
Before signing on the dotted line, Ben had warned Caroline about the thousand things that could go wrong in an old house like this. Rotting wood, vermin infestations, toxic mold, leaky roofs, rusty water, noisy pipes, warped floors, lousy insulation. But none of that had mattered to her at the time. She’d wanted her clean slate.
“Better that it happened to me than to you or Charlie,” he said, resuming his climb up the stairs. “I’m hungry.”
“Already?” she asked. “It’s barely noon.”
“I want to ice this. May as well eat while I do.”
The hall was wide, white, and cold. More than a dozen other rooms had doors that opened onto this hall. Huge rooms with wooden floors with inlaid ebony borders, and tall windows with once-proud moldings that stretched to the soaring ceilings. Each one, imperious, alien, and staggeringly empty.
“I had something planned for lunch. But it’ll be a little while before it’s ready.”
“Need help?”
“What, you don’t trust me in the kitchen?” she asked.
Ben looked at her and was grateful to see a playful twist to her lips. Caroline was an excellent cook, but during their busy years she’d rarely flexed those talents. The exceptions had been special occasions, when she might spend days on a perfect meal. The first birthday Ben had spent with her, she’d baked him a staggering chocolate cake filled with hazelnut pastry cream, wrapped in seamless fondant, topped with blown-sugar flowers. He still remembered the awe of the moment when that extraordinary cake had been set in front of him, back when it seemed that Caroline could do anything.
“It’s mostly the fact that you’re making food in the first place. No Thai takeout, no hermetically sealed packages from FreshDirect.”
“I was thinking cucumber, yogurt, lemon, and dill sandwiches on whole-wheat bread. And I was going to boil down some of that tomato soup from two nights ago, add some cream, and toast some croutons.” She slid her toned arm inside his as they walked down the hallway to the kitchen. Even with a few bumps along the way, today was going better than Ben could have hoped.
“Very civilized. Maybe too civilized for a humble laborer like me,” Ben said. They didn’t banter like this much anymore, and he had missed it.
Caroline’s pregnancy with Bub, coupled with the stress of her bank going under, had awakened something inside her. Ben thought of it as the Wolf. One night, after a bad day, he’d written on the back of a Con Ed bill, He skirted the forest as close as he dared. Though he could not see it or hear it, he knew the Wolf was there.
Even with medication, Caroline had been lost to him for weeks, broken and raging in a way that Ben hadn’t thought possible. Trying to care for her, Charlie, and a newborn all on his own had almost undone him. After Charlie’s problem at school, Caroline thought that a change in geography would be good for all of them. She thought that the million tasks necessary for turning the Crofts into an inn would keep the Wolf at bay and help bring all of them close again. From the outside, it was a crazy idea—moving hundreds of miles to restore a decaying house with a second-grader and a baby. But their old life no longer fit them. Something had to change.
“You’ll like it.”
He let himself believe her. She knew him as well as anyone. And he knew her. That’s why there was always a flame of fear in the back of his mind. The Crofts was the perfect distraction for Caroline. There were so many things to do. But Ben didn’t know what would happen to them after all the walls were painted and the floors sanded. Caroline wanted to believe that this was a whole new life, but it wasn’t. Not really. Ben knew that no matter how far you run, you’re still yourself when you get there.
4
Ben had a city person’s bias against cars in general and big cars in particular. But he loved his big black Ford Escape: the way its shocks absorbed the irregularities of country roads, the way it hummed when he accelerated on steep inclines. A sedan w
asn’t practical up here—and, besides, the Escape was a hybrid. Caroline had one in silver.
He had the windows open, and his iPod blared the exuberant yet wistful sound of an album his brother had gifted him through iTunes. An A&R man for a record label, Ted was more likely to send Ben the music of the moment than to call. Which was fine with Ben. He liked the songs Ted sent, and the exchange reminded him of when they’d shared a room as teenagers. They’d do their homework on opposite ends of a folding table while listening to the radio, sometimes springing up in unison to press record when the opening chords of an admired song sounded through the speakers of their plastic Casio.
Their grandmother had died almost nine months ago, but Ted still had not seen the ruined farmhouse she’d left them. He’d promised to visit, but Ted’s promises were generously bestowed and unevenly honored. Ben knew his brother would show up eventually, and he’d be glad to see him. But sometimes a little of Ted went a long way.
After lunch, Ben had confirmed that the vehicle the man was using to pick up the junk was just a bit larger than the one Ben was currently driving and that he’d have to reschedule tomorrow’s pickup, anyway. Caroline wasn’t happy to hear this, but she cleared Ben to drive to the bookstore in Exton, as long as he picked up a few things from the general store in Swannhaven while he was out.
Over the last few weeks he’d learned that the locals kept fluid business hours, so Ben decided to get the groceries first. He turned onto the village’s primary thoroughfare. If it had a name, he didn’t know it. It flanked an overgrown village square that Ben had once walked through. He’d been surprised by the buckling cobblestone plaza, the scattered remnants of broken stone benches, the rusted iron fountain at its center. It had once been a handsome place, but the good years were long gone.
Only a dozen ramshackle structures bordered the square. Harp’s General Store was sandwiched between a building that served as the village’s police station/municipal building/post office and the Lancelight, a little diner where Caroline and Ben had once eaten. Other than a mechanic’s shop and a small church, the rest of the buildings on the street were residences. Their condition made it hard to tell how many were occupied.
There was no sign of life in the village this afternoon. From what Ben had seen, it was like this most of the time. Sunday mornings were the exception. After attending service at the church down the street, many of the villagers gathered at the Lancelight for coffee and breakfast. The Tierneys had discovered this firsthand a few weeks ago when they’d eaten brunch at the diner.
Though they’d first been mistaken for motorists searching for the interstate, they were soon seated, their orders taken. Their waitress had been polite, but Ben noticed the surreptitious glances and whispers of patrons. As the diner grew more crowded, it seemed to Ben that he and his family became more and more the center of its attention. The villagers had reacted to them as if they were not just new to town but new to the planet. In the weeks since, that had yet to change.
Ben parked on a patch of barren ground outside Harp’s. He could have gotten his groceries from one of the supermarkets in Exton or North Hampstead, but he made it a point to buy from the village when he could.
“In and out,” Ben told Hudson as he cracked the windows and put the Escape into park.
Hudson whimpered.
“You go in there and you’ll get sliced up and labeled as beef. I’ll only be a minute.”
A bell tinkled when he walked in. It was the kind of place Ben imagined might have greeted frontiersmen a hundred fifty years ago. The floors were dusty wood planks, and what little fresh produce the store had was displayed in shallow barrels along the front windows. The proprietor also fit the bill. Walter Harp wore a wreck of a face and lips blistered by chewing tobacco. Deputy Simms, who seemed to spend more time here than at the police station next door, was working on the same look, though Harp had a forty-year head start.
“Afternoon, Mr. Tierney.” Walter Harp offered a toothy smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.
“Hello, Mr. Harp, Deputy,” Ben said with as much enthusiasm as he could muster. Addressing everyone with an honorific was something he was still getting used to. He had to work to make it sound right.
“Anything I can help you with?”
“Just have to pick up a couple things.” Ben made for the refrigerated closet, the store’s single concession to the past century.
“We got some rain on the way if you can believe the radio,” the deputy said. Some of his nasal drawl got lost in the mug of coffee that covered his mouth.
“Yeah?” Ben pulled out two dozen eggs and two jugs of milk. They sold a local label of milk, and their eggs were so fresh that their shells were dotted with mud and hay.
“Heard that Henry Bishop is heading out to the Crofts tomorrow to help you with some of the Swanns’ old things.”
“We had to reschedule, but, yeah. Lot of old stuff up there,” Ben said. He piled the eggs and milk on the counter.
“Shame it has to go,” Deputy Simms said.
Harp nodded. “Bound to be some nice things.”
“The Swanns were nice people, a fine family,” the deputy said. “Took in all kinds of kids. Filled that house with them.”
“Yeah? Foster kids? That kind of thing?” Ben grabbed a can of the peaches that Charlie liked. He guessed they were no more healthy than a cup of sugar, but they sometimes bought him a smile.
“Real saints they were,” Harp replied, adding up the groceries.
“Oh, and four of those apples, if you don’t mind.”
“How’s that pretty wife of yours?” the deputy asked.
“She’s well, thanks.” Ben made eye contact with the deputy for the first time. He guessed the man was in his late twenties—about thirty years too young to say something like that without it sounding like a threat. “Happy to be out of the city.”
The deputy nodded and smiled, displaying the black coin of dip wedged in his gums.
“You make sure that roof’s fixed up right, Mr. Tierney,” Harp told him. He took the twenty Ben handed him. “Easiest way to take down a house is to pull off a couple a shingles and wait a season. Hard winters here, too. Rain and snow’s a bother, but the wind’s the real curse. Especially up on the Drop.”
“Thanks. I think we’re in good shape,” Ben said. This wasn’t true, but he didn’t see what business it was of theirs.
Harp frowned and handed him his change.
“The heat, too,” the deputy said. “Gonna need that as much as a roof. Even with that good-lookin’ lady to warm you.” He stretched his arms behind his back casually, letting his muscles tense against his uniform.
“Well, so far so good,” Ben said. He gathered the bags up into his arms.
“I can come up and look at it, if you like,” the deputy said. Ben caught the man send a wink and a smirk Harp’s way. “Be my pleasure.”
“I’ll let you know if it gives me any trouble.” Ben backed into the store’s door. “Have a good day, guys.”
“Nope, that fella don’t need help from the likes of us,” he heard the deputy mutter before the door slammed shut behind him.
Ben put the groceries in the cooler he kept in the back of the Escape and closed the trunk. It wasn’t until he was back on the county road, music blaring again, that he let himself feel anger. He indulged himself by revising the scene in the store. He edited his dialogue, adding an edge that his character otherwise lacked. With this tweak, the confrontation escalated. Instead of leaving with a friendly nod, Ben ended the encounter by throwing the deputy out the store’s window. He closed the chapter by leaving the man’s body lying on the pavement, a stripe of blood stretching from his split lip. A satisfying conclusion, one any reader would cheer for.
He was almost out of the valley, a good ten miles from the Crofts, and he had yet to see another car on the county road. There was no reason for anyone but locals to take this route. He’d heard that Swannhaven had only forty households. Most w
ere scattered across the floor of the valley on tired dairy farms, like the one his grandmother was born on.
When Ben reached the highway, the Escape roared its approval.
The battery of signage confirmed that he’d left the remote and insular world that the Crofts and Swannhaven comprised. There was Montreal up ahead and Boston to the east. The signs told him that he could go anywhere on this road. There was strong Canadian beer, or seafood that had been swimming freely an hour before landing on his plate. Turn around and in only three thousand miles he could watch the sun set over the ocean.
The young man on his iPod sang about crashing a party thrown by the friend of a friend in a sweltering studio off the Bowery. He crooned about vodka and getting high and a girl with green eyes and arms covered with tattoos. The singer didn’t pretend to have it all figured out, but he knew enough that life was good and every moment was a gift.
Ben liked songs like this, but today he skipped to the next track.
April 4, 1776
Dearest Kathy,
I am well and back safely at the Crofts. Thank you again, my dearest, for such a lovely visit.
Jack and the twins were there to greet me in Albany. James has grown nearly to my waist now, and Emmett’s health is much improved since I last saw him. They were both so pleased to be out of the valley and on a real adventure with their elder brother and sister. Of course, Jack wanted to hear everything about the war. And I think the lot of them are in awe of me now, as the three days’ ride gave me much time for embellishment. They had already heard that the redcoats had fled Boston, which is a pity, as I wished to tell them myself so that I might watch their faces. It is true that good news has swift wings.
House of Echoes: A Novel Page 3
