Castle: A Novel

by J. Robert Lennon

  “Careful on the stairs,” I called after him, peering down into the darkness. The circle cast by his flashlight bobbed, revealing a dirt floor and crumbling walls.

  I stood upon the top step, listening to him move about. There was the scrape of something being dragged, a clank.

  “Have you found the fuse box?” I said.

  “Yalp,” he shouted. “Don’t worry about me, Mr. Loesch. Just you go about your business.”

  “All right, then,” I said.

  My work today would be to sand the upstairs floors, so I took a deep breath, lifted the sander, and hauled it up the steps. Each creaked deeply under the weight, but none threatened to break. As poorly maintained as the house had been, it was sturdy, and I felt a renewed confidence in my decision to buy it.

  There was little to be cleared away in the bedrooms. A moldering ottoman, and a bureau that had warped and split; a small jewelry box, empty, sitting on a windowsill. In the smallest of the four upstairs rooms, I found another drawing, evidently by the same hand that had sketched the castle I’d found the day before. It was affixed to the wall with a carpet nail, and hung right next to a window. The view through the window was of the entirety of the land I had bought, and the drawing was of that same view. But the artist had altered the landscape, adorning it with fanciful details. In place of the rock that served as the centerpiece of the real landscape, there was a castle—clearly the same one as in the first drawing. Flags flew from the towers, and musical notes hung over the scene, as if some kind of celebration were under way. The sky was dotted with what I thought at first were birds, but upon closer inspection turned out to be friendly dragons, and the trees were heavy with fruit. I removed this drawing from the wall and added it to the sheaf of house documents.

  After several tries, I found a working outlet in the hallway, and with my extension cord was able to use the sander in every room. In spite of the sawdust, the house seemed brighter and cleaner with the floors sanded; the boards lightened and showed their grain as I ground them down. I got through one small bedroom and part of another before I was interrupted by the electrician, whose presence in the cellar I had forgotten. I turned off the sander and asked him how things were going.

  “Welp, Mr. Loesch,” he said, “you got some surprisingly okay wiring down there. The cloth insulation got worn off here and there so I want to replace some of that. And I put in fuses and tested your outlets for you and they’re all working now, but if you want to be safe I think you ought to let me put in grounded ones for you. And if you want to put the money in, I’d recommend we do a circuit breaker box. Your fuse box there is working okay, but it’s rusted half through. And in my professional opinion you could stand to get a dehumidifier going down there.”

  I thanked Heph and told him that I would go ahead with his recommendations.

  “Can’t get to it all till next week, Mr. Loesch, but I can do it all in one day for you, maybe Wednesday, let’s say?”

  “Wednesday will be fine, Heph.”

  “Glad to hear it, Mr. Loesch. You’ll be safe using the electricity until then. One other thing, though.”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s a while until warm weather, and it’s awful cold outside today. Looks like there’s still propane in your tank, too. You want me to try turning on the furnace?”

  “Sure, Heph,” I said, “that would be helpful.”

  I followed him down the stairs and into the kitchen, where he took off his paper boot covers and plunged down into the darkness. He seemed to expect me to follow, but I hesitated, as before, on the top step. When he reached the bottom, he turned to me. There was light down there now, apparently from a bare ceiling bulb, and so his flashlight was holstered on his belt.

  “Ya comin’, Mr. Loesch?”

  “No thanks, Heph,” I said. “I’ll wait here.”

  He frowned. “Welp,” he said, “if you poke your head down, anyway, I can show you how to get ’er going if she goes out. The pilot light, I mean.”

  I realized that there could be no reasonable explanation for my reluctance to follow, so I braced myself with a hand on the wall, and slowly moved down the stairs. After half a dozen steps, I lowered myself to a sitting position. Heph looked at me, puzzled, and not without some amusement. But I took a deep breath and looked around the cellar.

  It was not any different from any other cellar of its era. The floor was hard-packed dirt, the walls stone, their whitewashed facing dry and crumbling. A single bare bulb hung from the ceiling next to a large, filthy furnace. A heavy door, like that of a safe, was open in the side of the furnace, and wide black ducts snaked out in every direction, to disappear into the floor joists above.

  “This used to be a coal furnace, see,” Heph said. “There’s still coal dust all over the place here. Somebody converted it to gas.” From his pocket he produced a packet of matches. “You want to come see how to do this, Mr. Loesch?”

  “No thanks, Heph,” I replied. “You just show me from there.”

  Heph leaned in the little door, and I heard a metallic scrape. There was the snick of a match against sandpaper, and the quiet gust of a gas flame igniting. Heph pulled his head from the door and shut it tightly. Beyond him, behind the furnace, the cellar seemed to disappear in its own shadows; no wall was visible.

  “So alls you have to do now is go on upstairs and turn up the thermostat,” he said.

  “Heph, may I ask you something?”

  “What’s that?”

  I pointed over his shoulder. “Can you see what’s back there?”

  He frowned and turned around. “Mr. Loesch, I don’t believe I see anything at all back there.”

  “There’s no wall?”

  Heph laughed. “I’m sure there’s a wall there, Mr. Loesch.” He came to the stairs and climbed up, stepping neatly around me. At the top, he put his boot covers back on and beckoned for me to follow. I did so. We went into the large front room, where an old thermostat was affixed to the wall beside the door. It had the coppery look of an art deco building facade, with an old mercury thermometer running up the center, like a vein of blood.

  “You want I should go ahead and give you some heat, then?”

  “Yes, please do, Heph.”

  He reached out and turned the little thumbwheel at the bottom of the thermostat, and immediately we heard a clank, a pop, and a rumble as the gas caught fire. A few seconds later, musty air rose from the heat registers and filled the room. I felt, for a moment, as though some animal had awakened underneath us, that we were enveloped by its hot breath, and I suppressed a shudder.

  Or perhaps I didn’t quite suppress it, because a wry smile played at the corner of Heph’s mouth. “You planning to live alone here, Mr. Loesch?” he asked.

  “That’s right,” I said, sounding, I’m afraid, rather uncertain.

  “Lots of character in an old place like this.”

  “I suppose you could say that.”

  He stared at me for a moment, and I stared out the window. HEPHNER ELECTRIC, read the sign on the door of his van. In spite of his friendly manner, the electrician was making me somewhat uncomfortable. His backwoods charm and colloquial speech did little to dispel my sense that he was observing and testing me, gauging my reactions to his supposedly innocent comments and questions. Though his motives did not seem hostile, he put me on my guard. I wanted him to leave, and when I cleared my throat, he took the hint. “Welp, see you Wednesday, then, Mr. Loesch,” he said, and, having brought my dormant house back to life, walked out the door.

  THREE

  It took me most of the next week to finish the floors and walls. To seal the floorboards, I buffed in a carnauba wax blend, and the result was a pleasingly light-colored finish with a dull, almost pink, glow. After long consideration I painted the interior walls pale yellow, to match the exterior, and refinished the kitchen floor with black and white linoleum tiles.

  It may seem improbable that I should be able to accomplish so much in so little time, an
d I will confess here that it is not without pride that I so present myself. As I believe I have said, one area of my expertise is infrastructure—its creation, maintenance, and repair—and the tasks required for the renovation of a house happened to fit neatly into my particular skill set. The fact is, I would have been perfectly able to replace the old wiring myself. But Heph had made electricity his career, and so had all the necessary tools at his immediate disposal. It was only for the sake of convenience and safety that I brought him into my temporary employ.

  Over the days leading up to his return, I strove to complete my basic renovations and began to think about the weeks ahead. There were things I wished to accomplish. One was to move myself out of the motel and into the house. I was growing weary of the motel’s sterility, its numbing sameness, and I had come to resent the dull and frustrating drives to and from the city of Milan. The time had come to equip my house with the basic furnishings necessary for living, and occupy it in earnest. In addition, I had spent many stray moments during my labor gazing out the windows at the woods, and had become eager to explore them. I wanted especially to trek to the large rock, and find out if it could be climbed. Perhaps, as well, the creek that formed the northeast border of my property harbored trout—and doubtless the woods were home to any number of deer, which I could hunt, and which could serve as food. I hoped to minimize my trips to town for provisions, and so I was determined to dig and sow a garden, and perhaps to find and pasture some small animals, goats I supposed, for their milk. It was with considerable excitement that I contemplated buying myself some hiking equipment, guns, and fishing gear, and placing an order for good, dark soil and compost from the garden center in Milan.

  And so it was with some determination that I worked on the floors and walls, and, as I have implied, I finished them within one week. I also ordered, and accepted delivery of, a suite of basic furniture from a catalog. My only other contact with the outide world during this time came in the form of phone call.

  So engrossed was I in my work and in the contemplation of the work to come, that when the caller identified herself, I had no idea at first who she was. “Andrea from Barris and Haight” is what she said, and it wasn’t until she added “The law firm? About the abstract?” that I suddenly remembered our conversation of the previous week.

  “Yes, of course, Andrea!” I said. I wiped the sweat and dust from my face and walked out to the stoop to talk.

  “I’m calling you back about the crossed-out name in your abstract,” she said. “I’m afraid we’ve been unable to find the name. All copies of the document that are in our records are crossed out, just like yours.”

  “I see.”

  “I wish I could have been of greater help.”

  I could detect, in Andrea’s voice, a great relief—as if she had expected the call to be contentious, and now believed it wasn’t going to be. I decided to pursue the matter further.

  “You might recall, Andrea, that I merely asked why the name was blacked out, and who is responsible for having done so. I am quite concerned about this meddling in my affairs.”

  She said, perhaps a bit uncertainly, “I have no other information for you, Mr. Loesch.”

  “But didn’t you do any further research? At the Henford town offices, for instance?”

  Now her voice fell into the slightly awkward pattern of rote memory—she had anticipated this question and had prepared an answer. “I’m sorry, the town offices had no other information, either.”

  This sounded to me like a lie. “Is that so?”

  “I’m afraid it is.”

  “What would you say,” I asked, “if I told you that I had been in touch with the town offices, and asked if anyone had been in to research those records, and been told that no one had asked for them in quite some time.”

  She seemed flustered, but her answer was clear. “Whomever it was you spoke to, Mr. Loesch, it could not have been the person my colleague spoke to.”

  “And who was that person, Andrea?”

  “I don’t know, since I wasn’t the one who did the research.”

  “Which of your colleagues did the research?”

  “Mr. Loesch,” she said, her voice hardening, “if you wish to know more, you will have to investigate it yourself. We didn’t find the information you wanted. I’m sorry.”

  “So am I, Andrea, so am I.”

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Loesch.”

  The line cut off before my “goodbye” could leave my lips.

  Heph arrived as promised on Wednesday to replace the fuse box and wiring. He nodded appreciatively at my work. “Didn’t do all this on your own, didya, Mr. Loesch?” he asked.

  “Yes, I did, in fact.”

  “I can hardly believe it,” he said, and I chastised myself for thinking that I detected in his voice a touch of irony. He crouched down on his haunches and rubbed his fingers lightly against the floor. “Waxed this, didya? How many coats?”

  “Five.”

  He nodded. “Real good,” he said. “Real good.” Then he stood up, his joints cracking, his hands on his hips. He was wearing the same getup that he had worn last week, but the jumpsuit was light blue this time, and the earflaps on his cap were tied together over the dome, their ropes intertwined in a neat bow. “Yalp,” he said, “it’s real nice to see a house come back from the dead, as it were.”

  “It does feel good.”

  “Nobody been up here for a long time. I remember hunting down in the bowl there.”

  “You mean on my land?” I asked.

  He narrowed his eyes. “Welp, it wasn’t your land then, now was it. We used to go shooting deer. Gave it up though. Too easy to get lost.”

  “Really?” I asked, gazing out the window. “It’s not so much land.”

  “Too rough. No paths. And it’s a bowl, see, you get all turned around.” He waved his hand in the air, dismissing the very concept. “Not much to shoot anyhow.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said.

  “Oh, you’ll come across something or other,” he said. But it seemed disingenuous, and I let the matter drop.

  Heph disappeared into the basement, and soon I began to hear the clanking and scraping of his labor, accompanied by a cheerful whistle. I stood rooted to the spot for some minutes, staring out the window, and a great exhaustion and sadness seemed to come over me, like the sliding of a white sheet over a dead man’s body. The landscape appeared to blur, and I felt a tightness in my throat. It was the whistling. Gentle, round, with a deep vibrato, it carried no recognizable tune, yet was deeply evocative. It pulled me out of the here and now, and carried me off to some other, watery place, where I floated, paralyzed, unhappy and slightly afraid.

  After an indeterminate interval, Heph emerged from the cellar, evidently to retrieve some supplies from his van. His boot covers crunched quietly against the floorboards, a sound akin to that of autumn leaves. When he saw me standing at the window, he stopped.

  “Mr. Loesch!” he said, as if shocked and disappointed. “Are you still standing there?”

  “Yes, Heph,” I said without turning. “I seem to be in something of a brown study.”

  The electrician was silent for a moment, and though my back was to him, I imagined that he was nodding sagely. I found myself wanting, very much, to trust him. “You know, Mr. Loesch,” he said, “it seems to me you’ve been working awfully hard. Maybe you ought to reward yourself with a little break. Me, I like to sit back and read a good magazine. Or treat myself to a good lunch.”

  “It’s too early for lunch,” I said.

  “You’ve lost track of time! Why, it’s nearly noon!”

  I looked at my watch, and somehow the motion of my arm broke my reverie at last. “You’re right, Heph. Maybe I will take a break.”

  “Seems to me all you been doing these past couple weeks is getting ready. You got to go live your life some.”

  “Well put,” I said, blinking the haze from my eyes. The woods sprang into focus, each green b
ud visible on the trees.

  Yes—perhaps Heph was right, whatever his motives for his comments. Perhaps the life I had led so far was, in fact, nothing more than a long period of wandering, after having been led astray, years before. Perhaps my judgment had been clouded. The thought, of course, was deeply frustrating, for if it were so, then I had wasted a great deal of time and effort. But I was not yet old, and there was much I could accomplish, if only I could take my first steps onto the correct new path. Maybe that path began here, in these woods.

  Heph lingered behind me a few moments more, as if to make sure he had gotten through to me. Then he continued on his way. I waited until he had collected his supplies and returned to the cellar, and then gathered myself and walked out to my car.

  I hadn’t intended to make much of my trip into town. But, as it happened, the closer I got to Milan, the more excited and enthusiastic I became. Heph’s words rang in my head—it was time to stop preparing and start living. It was cold today, but soon the warm spring weather would arrive, and I would go out into nature, and be a part of it. I found a sporting goods store and picked out a tent and sleeping bag, a modest fishing rig, and a pair of lightweight, waterproof boots—a far cry from the heavy, bulky footwear I was accustomed to. I then treated myself to a lunch at the local Chinese buffet, where I discovered that I was hungry beyond measure. Time and time again, I loaded my plate with steamed white rice, sweet orange-flavored chicken, fried pork dumplings, and spicy beef and vegetables, only stopping when I literally could no longer consume another bite. It occurred to me that I had been neglecting my nutrition, and had probably lost a great deal of weight over the past two weeks. As I sat there digesting, in a slightly dirty booth near the slightly dirty window, beneath a buzzing neon sign, those weeks seemed like a mere hiccup in time, a transitional period that had now come to a close. This greasy, sumptuous meal was the line that divided that period from the rest of my life, which, for the first time in recent memory, I was ravenously eager to begin living. I staggered, packed with food, out to my car, then drove to the grocery store and bought enough provisions for two weeks. I also bought seeds, tools, plastic fencing, and posts at the garden center, and arranged to have the junk in my yard hauled away. I have a very large car, but the rear was full, all the way to the ceiling.