The Outhouse Gang

by Neil Plakcy

  “Maybe you can kill two birds with one stone,” Sandy said. “Builders are buying up a lot of the old farms these days for housing developments. You could probably get a farmhouse and a barn pretty cheap from one of them.”

  “I can help you set up the books and file the paperwork,” Helene said. “We won’t be leaving for a few weeks. What does Connie think about this?”

  Charley blushed again. With his sandy hair and pale coloring, it was easy to bring a reddish rise to his skin. “I haven’t told her yet,” he said. “I didn’t want to worry her, now that she’s thinking about a new baby.”

  “Charley,” Helene said. “Hasn’t that gotten you in trouble before, not talking to Connie?”

  “That was different,” Charley said. “After my Pop died, I was upset, and I thought Connie had her hands full with Raymond.”

  “And it wasn’t until you talked to her that you found out she wanted another baby, too, wasn’t it?”

  “That’s true,” Charley said. “But we been real good about this one. We planned to have another two years after Jeffrey. I hope for Connie’s sake this one’s a girl. Three boys is a lot to take care of.”

  “But you talked to her about it, and you worked together,” Helene said. “You need her help on this plan, too. Before you go ahead and set up a business, you need to be sure what Connie wants. Maybe she doesn’t want to stay in Stewart’s Crossing.”

  “Oh, she’ll want to stay,” Charley said. “We’ve got roots here.”

  “Well, let’s assume you’re going to talk to Connie tonight,” Sandy said. “Let’s put together a plan you can show her.”

  With Helene’s help they laid out a financial plan. A quick call to Elaine Warner got them a list of suitable properties on the outside of town. Nick Miller filled them in on the insurance and liability costs for a new business. And Chuck Ritter offered to finance the new equipment for Charley at a low interest rate. “All you need to do now is get a bank loan,” Sandy said. “You can probably go through the Small Business Administration. I hear they’re guaranteeing loans for little guys like yourself.”

  “You guys have been real helpful,” Charley said, standing up.

  “And you’re going to go home and discuss it with Connie, aren’t you?” Helene asked.

  Charley smiled. “Right after supper,” he said. “When the boys are down and we’ve got a few quiet minutes.”

  After Charley left, Sandy and Helene turned the lights off and locked the door. Walking down the stairs to the first floor, Helene said, “You think we’re a team, don’t you, Sandy?”

  “Of course I do,” Sandy said. “I wouldn’t make a move without you. Didn’t I tell you about Artie’s offer as soon as I heard about it?”

  “I just want to make sure we always communicate.”

  “OK, then here’s a communication for you. What’s for supper?”

  “I don’t know,” Helene said, laughing. “Depends on the restaurant you pick.”

  They reached the bottom of the stairs and Sandy opened the door for her. “Anywhere you want, angel,” he said. “Anywhere you want.”

  * * *

  By Mischief Night all the wheels had been set in motion. They’d put the house on the market, and Helene had flown to Pittsburgh for a few days, but hadn’t found anything she liked within their budget. He was wrapping up the current business at the office, and he’d given Lois her notice. She had cried and said he was a good boss and that she’d miss him.

  Like a background melody, the knowledge that he was leaving Stewart’s Crossing floated behind Sandy’s thoughts. He scrutinized every place he passed, even the tacky commercial strip out on the highway, and the auto junkyard behind the garage. He drove slowly down Main Street, looking at each of the Victorian clapboard houses, trying to memorize the details of their gingerbreading, the trees in their yards.

  By the time he pulled into the parking lot behind the hardware store that night, ready to join the Outhouse Gang for the last time, he was late, and already missing Stewart’s Crossing.

  In the brief flare of his headlights as he turned into a space, Sandy saw the men grouped around the pickup truck. Chuck had taken the bulb out of the street light at the back of the lot, so the night seemed dark and heavy. The gibbous moon was especially bright, hung as it was at the top of the sky, surrounded by a field of stars.

  Sandy’s eyes acclimated to the darkness as he walked slowly toward the men, guided by the sound of their voices. Terry Mosca, who was fifteen, stood next to his father, Harry, and seemed to be trying to hide in his shadow, something that was impossible because he was nearly a head taller. “Are we bringing our kids now?” Sandy asked.

  “He wouldn’t let me alone,” Harry said. “Chuck said Bruce wanted to come too, so we agreed. If my wife finds out, though, I’m going to catch it.”

  Scanning the crowd, Sandy saw thirteen-year-old Bruce Ritter beside his father. He nodded his head. It seemed right to him that the boys were joining them. For a moment he thought with pleasure of bringing his own sons along. Maybe next year he’d bring Tommy, when he was twelve. Then he remembered the move. “Sorry I’m late,” he said. “You all ready?”

  “Charley knows a place,” Chuck said.

  “Just down the road from my Pop’s farm,” Charley said. “The people sold out and moved to Florida. There’s an old outhouse out back.”

  “The man knows his town,” Paul said. “Let’s get moving.”

  As they climbed in the truck, Charley said, “Hey, you live in the same town all your life, you get to know your way around.”

  That’s what he’d hoped to give his kids, Sandy thought, as they drove uphill, away from the river valley. A childhood spent in the same small town, knowing the same kids from kindergarten to high school graduation. It was something he’d missed, moving from town to town as his father found and then lost jobs. His father had always called it a fresh start in a fresh place, but Sandy knew it was just another town where he’d be the new kid, the outsider, where they’d leave as soon as he had made friends and started to belong.

  This wasn’t the same, he thought. After all, he’d be a partner in the firm in Pittsburgh. He’d probably stay there the rest of his career. They’d find a new house, a new small town.

  Chuck pulled up at the deserted farm and everyone jumped out. Terry Mosca and Bruce Ritter danced around eagerly, asking where was the outhouse and how were they going to get it to the truck.

  While everyone walked to the rear of the property, Sandy held back, looking at the farmhouse. At his house, they had already started to mark off the kids’ heights on the kitchen wall, planted trees and rose bushes, made it their home. He wouldn’t have time to do much to a new house. Helene would have to unpack, decorate, settle the kids in, set up their lives. Lives he would only be a distant part of, the kind of father like Paul Warner who left before the kids were awake and came home when they were tired and sleepy. A father who was lucky to spend Sunday afternoons with his kids.

  He joined the others out back, where they pried the outhouse from its foundation with chisels. It came off easily. “All right, let’s be careful,” Chuck said. “This wood may be rotten.”

  Gingerly, they lifted the outhouse up and began to carry it to the truck. Halfway there, Sandy stumbled on a rock and let his end down for a minute. There was a cracking noise, and a big piece of rotten wood split away in his hand. “Shit,” he said.

  “Keep going,” Chuck said. “Don’t stop. We’ll work it out back at the truck.”

  Out of the shelter of the trees, they examined the broken boards in the light of the moon. “I’m sorry,” Sandy said. “I couldn’t see the rock.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Chuck said. “Sometimes things fall apart, and you fix them. That’s life.”

  “I can put this back together,” Charley said. The men gathered around to look. “See, it was a rough break, but all the wood’s still there. That’s the rotten part. If I can nail a two by four to the inside
, that’ll keep both parts together.”

  “Good idea,” Paul said.

  “It’s not the right way, but it’ll do,” Charley said. “You got some equipment, Chuck?”

  Chuck jumped up into the truck bed. “Think so,” he said. He started handing things down to the two boys, who were eager to help. “Hammer. Nails. Aha! I knew I had some pieces of wood down here.” He held up two short pieces, each about a foot long. “Will these do?”

  “They’re a little short, but I’ll nail them together.”

  “Can I help?” Sandy asked.

  “Sure,” Charley said. “You brace the left side. Chuck, you and Harry do the same. Paul, you and Nick and Tom brace the right. You boys can be my helpers. Once I crawl in there, you hand me the tools.”

  “Yes sir,” Terry said.

  It was so quiet out there on the farm road, with only the chirps of crickets around them, that each bang of the hammer resounded like thunder. Sandy was so caught up in the moment, concentrating only on holding his piece of the outhouse steady, that he forgot about moving.

  Finally Charley crawled out. “She’s braced, for now,” he said. “Let’s take it easy getting her in the truck.”

  Once the outhouse was loaded, Chuck said, “So where do we take it?”

  “How come we never think about where the thing goes until we’ve got it loaded?” Paul asked.

  “Can we leave it at the school?” Terry asked. “The elementary school on Hill Street?”

  “Yeah,” Bruce said. “Let’s leave it at the school.”

  “Sounds like a good idea,” Chuck said. “In honor of our newest members.”

  Stewart’s Crossing Elementary stood at the very top of Hill Street, looking down on the town and the Delaware. They could see down into the sleeping valley, lit by street lamps, passing headlights, and the occasional bedroom lamp of a night owl or someone preparing for the late shift. In the distance Sandy heard the rumble and whistle of the last train from Philadelphia.

  There was one high street lamp illuminating the school’s parking lot, and Chuck pulled up on the far side of the lot, away from it, hiding in the shadow of the brick building. The light bounced off the many-paned windows of the classrooms, bathing them in a soft glow as the men carefully lifted the outhouse out of the truck and placed it in the front doorway of the school. “Neato,” Bruce said. “Wait till the kids see this.”

  “You can’t say a word about it,” Chuck said. “It’s a secret.”

  “I know, Dad. I can keep a secret.”

  Chuck turned to his son. “What kind of secrets are you keeping now?”

  “They wouldn’t be secrets if I told,” Bruce said, and all the men laughed.

  “Don’t laugh,” Chuck said to the crowd. “Your kids are growing up too.” He stripped off his heavy gloves. “All right, we’d better move out. Everybody back in the truck.”

  “I’m staying for a minute,” Sandy said. “I can walk down the hill myself.” He walked around the back of the school to the sixth grade classroom, facing the playground. He’d been there just the other night, for a meeting with Tommy’s teacher. He had been looking forward to the sixth grade graduation, all the little kids in caps and gowns marching past the swing sets.

  Up on the second floor was Ellen’s third-grade room. He liked the way Tommy looked after her, the way Ellen had begun to talk about walking Danny to kindergarten in the fall.

  It was nice that all the kids could go to a school where they were known, part of a family tradition. Sandy remembered one school in Ohio where a bully had beaten him up on the first day. He had come home crying, his books dirty and his eye blackened, wanting his father to make him feel better. But his father had been on the road then, and hadn’t come home for nearly a week. By then his eye had healed and he’d made a friend, so his father’s interest hadn’t mattered.

  He walked slowly down the cracked sidewalk along Hill Street, under hundred-year-old oak trees, past a row of sleeping bungalows, down into the center of town. His car was the only one left in the hardware store lot. He got in and drove home.

  Helene was already asleep, but Sandy sat down next to her on the bed and whispered, “Angel?”

  Helene sat up and yawned. “Where did you leave it this year?” she asked.

  “You knew?”

  She looked at him. “Sandy.”

  He laughed. “Listen, would you hate me forever if I said I just didn’t want to move?”

  Helene sat up straight and felt around on her night table for her glasses. She turned on the lamp. “You’re serious?”

  Sandy nodded. “I didn’t realize it until now, but I’m happy writing wills for my neighbors, helping them over the rough spots and suing the people who’ve done them wrong.”

  “What about all the opportunities you’d be giving up?” Helene asked. “The big law library, the clerks doing the dirty work, someone else taking care of the business?”

  Sandy got up off the bed and walked to the window. He tried to look outside but all he saw was his own reflection. “Those are nice perks,” he said. “But they’re just frills, fringe benefits. I don’t want to tear down the life we’ve built here unless it’s the right thing to do.”

  He turned back to face Helene. “I’ve been thinking a lot about what’s important to me. When I was twenty-five, I wanted to change the world. Now, I’ve lowered my sights. I’d rather do a good job on a small scale.”

  “And what about being a judge? You said this firm has a pipeline to the bench out there.”

  “Nobody says I can’t run for judge here in Stewart’s Crossing,” he said. “If that’s what I want, someday, when I’m ready for it.” He came back to the bed and sat down. “Look, Helene, I know I’m giving up a chance. And I can’t say I won’t feel bad about it for a while. But I’ve weighed my choices, decided what’s important to me.” He paused. “But what about you? What do you want? There’d be a lot more money in Pittsburgh. You probably wouldn’t have to work, at least not for a while.”

  Helene laughed. “With three kids to put through college and law school, I’m sure I’m going to have to go back to work someday, Sandy. That’s not what bothers me.” She ran her fingers through her hair, in a gesture Sandy had always loved. “Ever since I fell in love with you, you’re what I’ve wanted. And I can certainly get more of you here than I could in Pittsburgh.”

  “Then it’s settled. When we bought this house we thought it would be a good place for the kids to grow up. Let’s let them grow up here. Maybe next year Tommy can spend Mischief Night with me.”

  “I’m not sure about that,” Helene said. “Everything else, but I’m not sure I want my son dragging an outhouse around Stewart’s Crossing in the dark of night.”

  “So we can stay? You don’t mind?”

  “Sweetheart, I never wanted to go. But I said I’d follow you to the ends of the earth. And I still would.”

  “I’ll call Artie in the morning,” Sandy said. Helene took her glasses off, took Sandy’s right hand in hers, and with the other hand reached up and turned the light off.

  She fell asleep again within minutes, but Sandy’s head was too full to allow him to drift off so easily. There are a few times in life, he thought, when you come to a fork in the road, and you have to choose which way to go. Leaving law school with a job offer from a Philadelphia firm and the opportunity for a clerkship, he’d made a choice, taken one road. Who knows how his life would be different if he had taken that job offer? He might have had an entirely different career. And marrying Helene had been the same way. He’d stayed up the entire night before he proposed to her, plumbing the depths of his heart, trying to imagine a future without her.

  It was strange to consider now. He could have had a different job, different wife, different kids. It all came down to the choices he made. Now he was at another fork in the road, and he’d chosen to stick to the path he knew, the one with rewards he had already determined mattered to him. But that didn’t make the choosin
g any easier. He knew he would debate this choice within himself for months, agonizing every detail. It was the kind of lawyer he was; it was the kind of man he was.

  As his father had said to him many times, you’ve made your bed, now lie in it. He looked at his sleeping wife in the moonlight and shadows, listened to the sounds of his house, imagined his children sleeping in their beds. Eventually he drifted off.

  Paul: 1967

  Paul Warner stood at the edge of the lake at the Labor Day picnic, grilling burgers on a big barbecue made from half an oil drum. Tall oaks swayed overhead in a soft breeze. Down the shore, a half-dozen kids splashed around, calling each other names and teasing the little kids about giant fish that lived deep under the surface of the water. In the background, somebody had the Beatles on a transistor radio.

  Sandy Lord came up and leaned next to an oak. “How was the vacation?” he asked. “You went to Canada, didn’t you?”

  Paul nodded. “Montreal,” he said. “We wanted to take Dennis to see Expo 67.”

  Sandy took a swig from his beer. “Worth the trip?”

  Paul shrugged. “You’ve never seen such crowds. Lines everywhere. It took us an hour to get in to see the U.S. pavilion. And Dennis wanted to go through every pavilion, even the ones from those countries you never heard of. Places in Africa that change their names every six months.”

  Paul’s son Dennis appeared at the edge of his father’s field of vision. He had a cowlick and a pair of dark-framed glasses with thick lenses, and he was shy around strangers. “Any burgers done yet, Dad?”

  Paul turned back to the grill. Every time he looked at his son, really looked at him, he wondered how his genes could have translated themselves into such a kid, a person unlike either his mother or his father, and yet like them both. He’d always envisioned having a son just like himself, a boy he could take fishing, teach about hand tools and what it was like to go out in the world every day and make a living. But Dennis was clumsy, nearsighted, and too fidgety to sit for hours by the side of the lake, waiting for the fish to bite and listening to his father’s wisdom.