Castle: A Novel

by J. Robert Lennon

  I assumed that she had never left the area, and asked if this were so. Her response was a rough cackle.

  “Oh, Jesus no, little brother,” she said. “I was out west for years. That’s where I was when Mom and Dad bought it. I used to send you postcards, remember?”

  I didn’t remember any such thing. But I lied that I did, to encourage her to continue, which she seemed eager to do. People, in my long experience, want to talk. They may believe they wish to keep secrets, and they may believe that they are capable of doing so. But the truth is that secrets exist to be revealed; and it is usually very easy to find the combination of words that will cause them to emerge.

  My sister continued. “I was out in San Francisco then. But one of my boyfriends moved north—he got a job at a little school up on a mountain. I lived there awhile. Then I drifted. I lived in Oregon and Montana. I ended up meeting a fella at a music festival. He said he was from around here. Eventually we got married and his mom broke her hip and we came back here to take care of her. But she died.”

  “You’re married?” I asked. There was no ring on her finger.

  “Dammit, Eric, let me finish. We tried having a baby and it didn’t work out, I had a miscarriage. And after that we figured out we didn’t really want to be together anymore anyway. So we divorced, and I took up with Hank.”

  “Hank,” I repeated.

  “Yeah, my boyfriend. Man friend.” She snorted. “He’s got a spread out on Julep Hill. He’s a big hunter. So I live with him. I’ve been there like ten years. So in answer to your question, little bro, no, I left the area plenty. And I happen to be back. Just like you.”

  “I see,” I said to her, although I did not regard our respective returns to be comparable. “How did you know I was here?”

  “Somebody saw you in town.”

  “Who?”

  “A friend. And then I asked around.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Which leads me to the big question,” she said.

  I waited for her to ask it, whatever she thought it was.

  “Eric.”

  “Yes?”

  “What in the hell are you doing here?”

  It was very like my sister to overdramatize such a question. But the fact was, my decision to move back to the Gerrysburg-Milan area was of no concern to her, and I did not intend to discuss it. Saying so, however, would merely intensify her questioning. I wanted her to leave. So, instead, I gave a curt reply.

  “I needed a change,” I said.

  This explanation managed to elicit laughter. “So you come here?” she said. “Beautiful.”

  “The land is affordable, and I know the area well.”

  “Yeah, you can say that again!”

  “I don’t understand.”

  She frowned, tilting her head. “Never mind,” she said. And then she averted her eyes for a moment, shifted in her seat, and looked up at me again. I was taken by surprise: her face was sober now, pained, and for the first time she appeared to me as a genuine adult. When her eyes again met mine, it was by the force of great effort and determination.

  “Eric, look,” she said. “I want you to know that… I understand. About what happened. And, you know. I’m here for you.”

  Anger was beginning to well up in me, and I struggled to tamp it down. The tone Jill had assumed was intensely familiar: that of the wise older sister, the protector, the paragon of selflessness and care. Did she have even the slightest idea how pathetic, how manipulative, she appeared to me now? The illusion of maturity that had tricked me just moments ago was torn away, and she was revealed for what she was: needy, self-absorbed, and small.

  “I’m sorry, Jill,” I said, my jaw tight. “But I’m afraid you don’t understand at all.”

  She opened her mouth to speak, closed it, exhaled slowly through her long nose. She turned to gaze out the kitchen window and appeared to gather herself.

  “All right,” she said at last. “Maybe I don’t understand. But I know.”

  “You may think you know something. But you know nothing.”

  Now her lips tightened, and she shook her head, as if to say, “Why do I bother?”

  I knew the gesture well, and it shames me to say that I lost my temper. The kitchen chair I stood beside found its way into my hands, and I lifted it three inches and banged it, with violent force, into my new linoleum floor.

  “Enough!” I said to my sister, between clenched teeth. “Get out of my house.”

  “Eric—” she began, but I would not hear it. I would not hear another word of hypocrisy from my sister’s mouth. The lies she had tortured me with—about our childhood, about our parents, our sad, doomed parents—would not be compounded. I knocked the chair to the floor with my open palm, and the pain that shot up my arm and into my shoulders registered as a kind of pleasure.

  “Out!” I said. I suppose I was shouting. My sister stood up, trembling, and I must admit that I expected her familiar sneer to have taken its usual place on her face. But all I could find there was unhappiness and fear. Fear of my reaction, perhaps. But when a person has lived a life like hers, a life of promiscuity, rootlessness, and substance abuse, resentment and fear tend to replace all reasonable and proper emotions, and the world becomes your enemy.

  She crept around the edge of the room, never once taking her eyes off me. When she passed through the doorway, I followed, into the hall, into the front room, over the threshold, and onto the stoop. There I remained, making sure she left. I watched her walk to her truck and open the door.

  “I’m sorry, Eric,” she said to me. “I was only trying to help you.”

  “Your kind of help is of no use to me.”

  The fear was gone from her face now, supplanted by mere sadness, no doubt at the miserable life she had resigned herself to, and to which she was about to return.

  For a moment, she appeared ready to say something. But in the end she climbed into the truck and drove away. I stood on the stoop for a long time, watching the truck recede into the distance of Lyssa Road. When finally it disappeared from sight, I waited there in the spring air for the tightness in my throat to subside.

  By the time I turned to go back into the house, darkness had fallen. I had left no lights on, so I groped my way to the banister, slowly climbed the stairs, and stumbled into bed. I had only time to consider how little difference there appeared to be between sleeping and lying awake in darkness, before I fell soundly asleep.

  The next morning, I woke to a new stiffness in my joints and an overall sense of disappointment and embarrassment. My failure in the woods and anger at my sister the day before had thrown my mind into disarray, and I felt the need to change tack. I would work inside the house, I decided—continue my improvements and try to enjoy the simple pleasures of labor.

  I took up my pencil and clipboard, made a list, and drove to Milan, and the hardware store. My hope was not to have to encounter the tall, thin clerk who had affronted me some days before, and at first, when I pushed my cart in through the automatic doors, I thought that my hope would be realized. The only clerks visible were a couple of young women.

  But fifteen minutes later, when I approached the checkout line, there he was. The store was quite crowded, despite the early hour, with middle-aged men wearing tool belts and sports-team-branded sweatshirts. Local contractors and builders, no doubt, preparing for their day’s work. I wheeled to the back of one of the young women’s lines, pretending not to see my nosy acquaintance. But in a frustrating trick of fate, the man in front of me had some intractable problem involving his company charge account, and meanwhile the tall clerk’s line quickly dwindled to nothing. He looked up at me from his register and signaled for me to pull into his lane.

  I would not be so rude as to refuse. With a heavy heart, I did as he suggested, and began to unload my items onto the counter.

  “Morning, Mr. Loesch,” he said.

  “Hello,” I replied, surprised. Had I told this man my name? Perhaps he had remembered it
from my credit card. I noticed that his name tag read RANDALL. But I declined to use this information.

  To my temporary relief, Randall did not speak as he dragged my purchases over the price scanner and packed them into plastic bags. The credit card machine, however, took its time accessing my account, and as we stood waiting, he said to me, without turning, “You met a friend of mine the other day.”

  Determined not to become annoyed, I replied with as much cheer as I could muster. “Is that so?”

  “Mmm-hm,” he said, nodding. “Paul Hephner. The electrician.”

  “Oh yes. Heph. He seems very good at what he does.”

  “He’s the best there is,” Randall agreed. “We go way back. Hunting buddies.”

  “I see.”

  The cash register, at last, kicked back into life, and a receipt slid out silently from between its metal teeth. Randall tore it free and set it on the little transaction platform before me, along with a pen.

  As I signed my name, he said, “You a hunting man, Mr. Loesch?”

  “Not really,” I admitted.

  “Just as well,” he told me, accepting the pen and receipt. He tucked my copy into one of my sacks and faced me, his arms crossed. “Those woods are a bitch to get through. And there isn’t much there.”

  I transferred my bags to the cart and prepared to leave. “So you’ve hunted on my land,” I said.

  “Tried to.” His eyes narrowed slightly.

  I was free to leave, if I so desired. Nevertheless, and despite my reluctance to encourage this man in any way, I couldn’t resist making a small inquiry.

  “Let me ask you something,” I said. “When you explored those woods, did you ever reach the rock outcropping?”

  He seemed to relish the question. A small smile stole over his gaunt face, and he crossed one leg over the other and leaned back against his cash register. “Oh, I remember the rock you mean. Practically a little mountain, isn’t it? Just sticking up over the trees?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “If I recall, there was some talk of making our way to it, that day.”

  “Yes?”

  His smile spread into his eyes, and it was clear that he was enjoying playing with my expectations. He stroked his chin, gazing into space, pretending to think.

  “But in the end,” he said finally, “we didn’t bother. Too much trouble.”

  “I see.” I heard, in my own voice, more disappointment than I would have liked to betray.

  “Don’t know that there’s anything to see, though. It’s just a rock, I’d imagine.”

  “Of course.”

  “You enjoy your renovations, Mr. Loesch.” I detected a bit of irony in his mode of address, and it was true, he was some years my senior, and by rights ought to be calling me Eric. I briefly considered telling him to do so in the future. But I had wasted enough time already, and I did not wish to further erode the wall of privacy I had erected between us. I thanked him curtly, and wheeled away, my muscles aching.

  It was a bright, breezy day, and a wind carried with it a balm, a round moistness with a hint of warmth. It was perhaps this warmth that had caused an odor to begin drifting through the rooms of the house. I suppose I had noticed the odor before—a flat, dank mustiness—but it was only now that it had grown intense enough to demand my immediate attention. To this end, I had included among my purchases from the hardware store a bag of quicklime, a bottle of antifungal spray, a respirator with several sets of filters, and a package of extra-heavy-duty plastic garbage bags. I would find whatever it was that had grown moldy, and I would throw it away.

  In the back of my mind, however, and creeping ever closer to the fore, was the understanding that I would have to work in the cellar, under the disheartening glare of a single ancient bare incandescent bulb. This inevitability was causing me distress, and the distress grew more powerful with every passing moment. I unloaded my car, removed the respirator from its package, screwed in the filters, and adjusted the straps, taking as long as I possibly could, and all the while feeling my heart beat faster and harder, and my head fill up with toxic fog.

  Allow me to state that I am not a coward. Indeed, I am a man of some considerable courage. This is not a boast, merely a statement of fact. I have faced great dangers in my life, have stared death in the face and not backed down. But those dangers were clear and well defined, and my superior skill in the areas of planning and prevention were able to protect me against harm. My impending journey into the cellar, meanwhile, was something different. There was no reason for me to fear it—indeed, I had been living and working above it for some time now, and had neither heard nor seen anything that would indicate danger. But reason did not come into it. My fear of the cellar was irrational, and there was nothing I could do that would erase it. I would have to carry it with me, bear it upon my shoulders as I worked, endure it until my work was through.

  The time had come to act. But I dawdled for at least an hour more, making a pot of coffee, drinking a cup of it, checking the glazing on the windows, examining the winter-bare landscaping plants around the house, for buds. Eventually, though, I grew annoyed with myself. Where was my discipline, my self-control? A strong man, I told myself, did not hesitate in the face of his fears; rather, he took note of them, dismissed them, and got on with the task at hand. Disgusted by my weakness, I went back inside, put on my respirator, took up my supplies, and trudged down the rickety steps.

  The steps were painted red, which paint had worn away in the middle of each from decades of tread. They creaked and bowed under my weight. My hands were full, and anyway there was no handrail, and I took each step with great care, making sure each foot was firmly planted before transferring my weight to it. In this way I descended gradually, until at last I stood on the bare packed-dirt floor.

  The smell here was stronger, of course; I could detect it in spite of the respirator. My breaths inside the device were hot and damp; I had to draw them more deeply to pull the air through the filters. The cold crept up underneath the cuffs of my pants, and the furnace, a monolithic, mound-like protuberance in the ground, snaked its black tentacles all across the room. It appeared to me like a giant mushroom, some massive death cap, and as I stood regarding its great dark enormity it emitted a thunderous clank, and a hacking whoosh, like a sudden gust of wind. I could see the blue glow of the gas flame etched around the edges of the door, and I felt something turn over in my chest. Perspiration began to leak out of my pores, under my arms and in my crotch, and inside my boots my feet began to itch. I realized, belatedly, that I ought to have urinated before I came down here. But that would have to wait. I gritted my teeth and, supplies in hand, moved forward into the darkness.

  The basement was laid out in a large square the size of the house, and had not been subdivided in any way. Enormously thick wooden beams supported the floor joists above, with the furnace in the center. The stairs had led me down to the south wall, and the light bulb was southwest of the furnace, illuminating the new circuit breaker box that Heph had installed. Foolishly, I had neglected to bring down a flashlight—but with my eyes adjusted, I could make out the north and east walls behind the furnace, and knew I would be able to see well enough to clear out the moldy trash.

  My heart thudding, I took a few tentative steps north. I felt my entire body tighten, the skin squeezing the bones, as if it were trying to shrink me to nothing. My jaw, tightly clenched all this time, began to spasm, and I struggled to keep my teeth from knocking together. But I continued, taking one step and then another, my hands cold and trembling, my head pounding, my face swollen and irritated from the nylon straps of the respirator.

  And then a familiar emotion took hold of me and my trembling subsided. Heat coursed through me. I gripped the lime bag and spray bottle tighter, crushing them in my grip, and vulgarities began to pour from my mouth.

  It is a well-known truth that fear gives way to anger—we have seen it, for instance, in those diagnosed with a dangerous illness, or among
citizens of an occupied state during a time of war. But in my case, the transformation was immediate. My irrational fear melted in the face of an equally irrational rage. I cursed the slovenly, careless people who had left things in my basement capable of growing mold; I cursed poor Heph for forcing me halfway down the stairs. I denounced the forest and its cruel rejection of me, its master, and I spat and seethed at the thought of my sister, the devious whore, for interfering in my life after ignoring me for so long. In short, the world was my enemy: it had driven me here, to this sanctuary, and, not having had enough, it had forced me into its bowels to clear away the miserable reek of its past. And so, fueled by hate, I made my way across the near-lightless space to the far northeast corner, where a jagged lump reshaped itself into a pile of cardboard boxes, each slumped, eaten away by fungus, and spilling books through its ruptured sides.

  I gathered up as many of the books as I could carry, and then, my teeth tearing the insides of my cheeks, the taste of blood on my tongue, I roared up the stairs and out the back door, to fling their infernal rot into the brutal spring sun. I made many trips—a dozen, I’d say—growing angrier with each return, until at last I howled at the limp stinking cardboard that remained, bellowed as I scooped it up and hugged it to my chest and hauled it out into the light.

  By the time I had opened the box of lime and begun dumping it on the floor, my anger had weakened, and with that task completed, my fear returned. I had time for a few spritzes of the antifungal spray before, wracked by terror, exhaustion, and spent emotion, I dragged myself at last up the creaking stairs to the bathroom. There, I tore off my mask and my clothes, spreading dust and scraps of clotted, putrid paper all over the floor, and stepped into a scalding hot bath, where I cleaned my wounds. I had gouged the back of one hand and an ankle during one of my desperate tears up and down the stairs; my face and scalp burned with scratches from who knew where, and my muscles ached from the tension at last released. From the bath I tumbled into bed, shivering beneath the blankets, and I slept until late afternoon. Then, at last, I dressed in clean clothes, tidied up the bathroom, and went out into the yard to transfer the ruined books to the trash pile.