But not the private ones. They could still tell stories about their childhoods. For Miz Evelyn it was Wilkes County, not quite the heart of Appalachia after all, but still true hill country. “I learnt to smoke before I turned five, and nobody whupped me for it either, they just slapped me when they caught me filling my pipe from some grownup’s stash.”
“My mama caught me smoking when I was ten and I thought I’d never walk again,” said Miz Judea.
“And don’t it beat all—her folks was tobacco farmers, and mine raised chickens and pigs and bad corn.” Miz Evelyn shook her head over that one.
“Well, it wasn’t cause my mama wanted me healthy, I’ll tell you that, cause her whuppings took a lot more out of me than the tobacco ever did.”
“I notice you don’t smoke now, either of you,” said Don. If either of them did smoke, the smell would linger on everything in the house, and there wasn’t a trace of it.
“Well, that’s Gladys,” said Miz Judea.
“Can’t abide smoke,” said Miz Evelyn. “Can’t say as how I blame her, either, all shut up indoors like she is. Not a breath of fresh air. Can’t go filling it up with smoke now, can we?”
“Gladys?”
“I should say Miz Gladys but she’s younger than us so, you know,” said Miz Evelyn.
“My cousin,” said Miz Judea. “Six years younger.”
“She lives here?”
“Upstairs,” said Miz Evelyn. “Bedridden, poor thing.”
“But let’s not talk about Gladys,” said Miz Judea. “She doesn’t like being the subject of talk.”
“Says it makes her ears burn,” said Miz Evelyn.
After dinner, they tried to make Don sit at the table or in the parlor while they straightened up and got Gladys’s dinner tray ready, but Don insisted. “All the good company is out in the kitchen. You wouldn’t make me stay alone in the parlor, now, would you?” So he ended up with a dishtowel drying while Judea washed.
“It’s not right for us to make you help,” she said.
“It’s my pleasure,” said Don again. “Beautiful china.”
“Used to be in the Bellamy house,” she said. “Used to be a set of twenty-four places, nine dishes per place. We’ve only got three complete settings left. The cereal bowls are always the first to go.”
“I wasn’t expecting to eat so well tonight, I’ll tell you, or off of porcelain as fine as this, either.”
“The laborer is worthy of his hire, that’s what the Bible says. Though what that has to do with this I’m not sure, it just seemed the right passage to quote.”
“If I’m the laborer, then what have you given me wages for?”
“If that was your wages, then we cheated you. You hardly made a dent in that stew.”
“You made enough for a whole work crew! You’ll be eating that stew for a week.”
Miz Evelyn came back downstairs with Gladys’s dinner tray. Don realized that she had carried up, not a bowl of stew, but the whole tureen, and now it was empty. So was the pitcher of lemonade, and there was nothing but crumbs on a plate where there’d been half a loaf at the end of dinner. Gladys couldn’t have eaten it all, could she? How much appetite could a bedridden woman work up?
“Gladys is so crabby tonight,” said Miz Evelyn.
Judea plunged the pitcher into the dishwater, and then the tureen, not even seeming to notice the fact that Gladys had already almost polished them both, they were so completely empty.
“I’m not surprised,” said Miz Judea. “Wouldn’t you be?”
Miz Evelyn spoke confidentially to Don. “She’s on a diet.”
At once Miz Judea rounded on her. “He doesn’t need to know personal things like that about her, Miss Evvie. You are talky tonight, aren’t you?”
That seemed unfair to Don—it was Miz Judea, after all, who had told him that Gladys was bedridden. Don didn’t like it when the two of them crabbed at each other. Especially the names they called each other—names his mother had taught him never to use even with his friends, let alone with women. So Don changed the subject to the one that he knew they couldn’t resist.
“You ladies have been talking around something all night and never quite hitting it on the nose. Now we’re about done with the dishes and I’m heading back over to the Bellamy house. My house.”
His plan to stop their argument worked, except that it focused Miz Judea’s scorn on him. She rolled her eyes. “My house, did you hear him?”
“Well, it ain’t ourn.”
“Ours.”
“Oh, you’re the one to correct my grammar.”
“I’m the only hope you got of not sounding like a hillbilly whore.”
“What about the house?” Don said, again trying to stifle the argument.
Suddenly the two of them grew quiet. Miz Judea put the dripping tureen in the dish drain. “You just let that dry by itself,” said Miz Judea.
“I can dry it,” said Don.
“You’re tired and I don’t want that tureen in your hands when you hear what Gladys said.”
Apparently they had no idea Don wouldn’t be hanging on every word that came from the mysterious Gladys.
“It’s those locks you put on the doors,” said Miz Evelyn. “They’re strengthening the house.” She said it as if this were an appalling idea.
“That’s the idea,” said Don. “I’ve got all my stuff in there.”
“But you just can’t,” said Miz Evelyn. “The house was finally beginning to fade, don’t you see? Any time now, the termites was going to get in and . . . oh, Miss Judy, he’s just not listening.”
“Yes I am.”
Miz Judea laid a hand on his arm. “What Miss Evvie is trying to tell you is that it’s out of the question for you to renovate that house.”
“I’m sorry, ladies, but it’s too late. That house isn’t a historic site and I’ve got all my money tied up in it.”
“You said during dinner you haven’t closed yet,” said Miz Judea. “You can still get out of it.”
“But I don’t want to get out of it. It’s a beautiful old house, strong and in better condition than it looks.”
“That’s what we’re telling you,” said Miz Judea.
“Just let the house die a natural death,” said Miz Evelyn.
They were definitely crazy.
“He thinks we’re crazy,” said Miz Judea.
“No I don’t,” said Don.
“And now you’re lying.” She was smiling when she said it. “But we’re not crazy, and you’ve got to stop repairing that house. It’s very dangerous for you to go on.”
Don had no idea how to take this. If they weren’t two little old ladies in a decaying neighborhood of Greensboro, North Carolina, this could very well be a shakedown. “Are you threatening me?”
“No! Not us!” cried Miz Evelyn.
“You’ll just take our word for it,” said Miz Judea with the finality of a gradeschool teacher.
“Ladies, I’m grateful for the meal you fed me, and I hope we’ll get along as neighbors while I renovate the house, but I got to tell you, every penny I have in the world is sunk into that place. I’m going to fix it up and sell it.”
Their eyes grew wide and they looked at each other in horror.
“Sell it!”
“Oh, Miss Judy, he’s not even going to live in it himself, he’s going to find some unsuspecting family and . . .”
“It’s wrong of you to do that, Mr. Lark!” said Miz Judea.
This was too much craziness for him. And what made him most uncomfortable was that he felt downright ashamed of being so rude as to disbelieve their heartfelt warning. They had been generous to him, and he wasn’t complying with the simple favor they asked in return. And what was his real reason? He hadn’t signed anything yet. He could walk away. And the only reason he wouldn’t was because it would make Cindy Claybourne think he was a flake.
Wait a minute! The only reason? It was none of their business, that was the biggest reas
on, and it was the perfect house for him because all it needed was him and his skill and vision and labor to make it a beautiful place to live, to give it some meaning again. Just because a trio of nutcases lived next door was no reason to feel bad about getting such a good deal and maybe even starting a relationship with a nice woman after all these years. A good dinner didn’t entitle them to that.
Don folded the damp dish towel. “Ladies, I’m sorry, but I got a lot of work to do tomorrow and I better get to bed.”
He took a couple of steps toward the door, but at once Miz Evelyn laid a hand on his arm and slipped in between him and the door. And when she spoke, her voice was strange. “You don’t have to leave so soon, do you, Mr. Lark?” She played with the fabric of his sleeve.
She was flirting with him! She was somewhere between eighty and eight hundred years old, and she was playing the coquette. He didn’t know whether to laugh or flee.
“Let him go, Miss Evvie, you’re making a fool of yourself.”
She let go of his sleeve at once. But she didn’t stop trying to keep him. Her face brightened and she turned to Miz Judea.
“I know! Why couldn’t we let him have this house to sell?”
“Will you just think for a minute, Miss Evvie? He doesn’t sell houses, he fixes them up, which this house doesn’t need. And even if it did, what about Gladys?”
“Ladies, I don’t want your house. I’ve got my house over there.”
“You think it’s your house,” said Miz Evelyn. She was still arguing, but she was also moving out of his way so he could leave.
“I’m going to make it my house by my own sweat,” said Don. “And when I fix up that eyesore it’s going to increase the value of the whole neighborhood. I have no idea why that bothers you, and I’m sorry it does, but . . . .”
The sink was drained and Miz Judea’s hands were dry. She came over to him, shaking her head, and began to push him gently out the door. It took some quick action on Don’s part to get it open before she pushed him through it.
“No need to apologize,” she said. “You do what you got to do. Just remember—that house gives you any trouble, you come ask us.”
Don found himself on the back porch of the carriagehouse, the screen door shutting in his face. The two old ladies crowded each other in the doorway, each trying to speak one last word to him, make one last plea.
“We used to live there, you know,” said Miz Evelyn. “Back in 1928 till Gladys fetched us out in ’35. We’re very, very old. We know what we’re talking about.”
“Just ask us whatever you want, whenever you want,” said Miz Judea. “Now go on over there and sleep as well as you can!”
That was the last word. Miz Judea closed the door and left him on the porch with the moths and mosquitoes. Only then did he realize that he was still holding the dishtowel. He thought of knocking on the door but couldn’t stand the idea of having them think he had had second thoughts. So he draped the dishtowel over the porch railing and walked around the house. He didn’t swing himself over the picket fence—he knew better than to try even minor athletic feats in the dark, not when he was this tired. Instead he walked out to the curb and studied the dark Bellamy house. The nearest streetlight was partly blocked by leaves that shifted in the breeze and the moon was flitting in and out behind the clouds, so the house kept changing as he watched. Changing, but it remained unchanged. The lines were clean, the structure sound. If the work he did today somehow made the house stronger, he was glad of it. That was as mystical as he was going to get.
He took out his key, unlocked the front door, and walked carefully into a room only somewhat lit by the streetlamp. He found the hanging worklight by feel more than sight, then followed the cord with his hands to the switch about four feet down. The light was blinding at first, and even when his eyes got used to it, everything in the room still looked oddly shadowed because the worklamp hung so low and kept swinging and twisting a little. The pile of furniture against the far walls looked especially forbidding in the strange light.
Don walked back to the front door and locked the deadbolt, then pocketed the key.
His cot was leaning against the south wall, the bearing wall that divided this room from the stairs. He took it down and unfolded it in just a couple of moments, then unrolled his sleeping bag and flung it out over the cot. It was warm enough tonight that he’d sleep on top of it, but cool enough that he’d stay in his clothes. He sat down on the cot, pried his shoes off his feet, emptied his pockets onto the workbench, then switched off the light and lay down on the bed.
But now he couldn’t sleep, tired as he was, full of food as he was. He could only lie there and listen to the breeze moving the leaves outside and the cricking of the crickets and the small sharp sounds of the house contracting as the night cooled it from the outside in. What did these women think this house was? They said they’d lived here back in the late 1920s—but how could that be true? Segregation was strict then, and the chance of a neighborhood putting up with a black woman and a white woman keeping house together . . . unless they weren’t keeping house, except in the sense of being housekeepers. Had they been servants here? Had something nasty happened? The owner murdered his wife or something? And now they had convinced themselves it was the house that was evil, and not the people they worked for.
What am I doing? Making up lives for these people. How can I possibly do that when I can’t even make up a decent life for myself?
“Crazy women,” he murmured.
Making me crazy. That’s what he couldn’t say out loud. I’ve slept alone in so many derelict houses now, and here I’ve let a couple of old ladies give me the willies. Well, it wasn’t going to go on. The worst thing in the world had already happened to him. He had lost his daughter, lost his wife, and then buried them both. He wasn’t going to get scared of house sounds. If any of them got too obnoxious, he’d find the source of the creaking and with a few long woodscrews he’d quiet it down again. This was his house, or would be by this time tomorrow. It was also a good house and he was going to make it better. If there was something wrong with the house, he’d heal it. When it came to houses, he was the physician. By the time he was done, the old ladies would come over for a tour of the place just like everybody else and they’d ooh and aah about how gorgeous he’d made it.
Or else they’d sit there in their house and stick pins in a doll with “Don Lark” scrawled on it in crayon. He didn’t really care which.
He rolled over on his side and did what he always did to go to sleep. He imagined rooms and estimated the dimensions and calculated the floor area and the wall area in order to figure out the cost of carpet and wallpaper and how much wainscoting he’d need and . . .
It never took long. He slept.
7
Squatter
Don didn’t like dreams because they were even worse than his real life. Either they were meaningless, uncontrollable fantasies, or they were memories, which in his case were just as uncontrollable and fraught with unbearable meaning. And they came night after night. He woke up with them, sometimes as often as an old man with prostate trouble, and it had gotten to the point where during some dreams he knew the whole time that he was dreaming, that he’d soon wake up, that it was either unreal or too far in the past to change. Even knowing that, he couldn’t stop the dream, couldn’t even stop it from frightening him or enraging him or grieving him all over again.
Maybe it was anticipation of the closing next morning that made lawyers come to mind as he lay asleep. In his dream he sat across the desk from Dick Friend, who had a reputation in Greensboro as the lawyer nobody wanted to mess with. The lawyer you wanted on your side, if only out of fear that if you didn’t hire him your opponent would. Don came to him as a man with some money and respect in the community. He heard himself explaining his whole story, ending as it always did: I want my daughter back. She’s not safe with my ex-wife.
And then Friend, beetle-browed and dominating, explained to him that as
long as the mother hadn’t been charged with any crime, the courts would have little sympathy with him. “Hire a private investigator, get evidence on her.” As if he hadn’t tried it. The pictures he got didn’t prove anything, the police said, and unless he could let them know when she was going to do a buy and they could get the seller, they weren’t interested. He spent almost ten thousand dollars finding that out. “Just to mount a serious case will mean bringing in experts. And when you lose, the appeals cost more and more. This can break you, Don.”
“It’s worth it.”
“Not if the expenses of the suit cost you so much that you can no longer prove that you can provide for the child, or even keep up your child support payments.”
“Which she uses to buy drugs.”
“Which you can’t prove. The weight of presumption in favor of the mother is enormous.”
“But there’s a chance.”
“There’s a chance the moon will fall into the sea with a gentle splash,” said Friend. “But is it worth betting on?”
“My daughter is worth betting on,” said Don. “Get her away from that woman, Dick.”
Suddenly a loud creaking sound made Don and the lawyer both turn around and look toward the door. It swung open, but there was nobody there. A thrill of fear ran through Don. From being a memory, this was turning into a weird fear dream. Come on, Don, why do you put up with these dreams? Wake up now, before you end up imagining the car smashing into the concrete and the babyseat rocketing forward through the windshield and headfirst into the cement.
Don opened his eyes. He lay on his cot in the parlor of the Bellamy house. The wind had died down outside. The house was still.
And then he heard it again, the creaking step. It wasn’t a normal house noise. It was someone walking on stairs.
Don sat up and reached for his shoes in the dark. If he had to run—toward someone or away from them—it’d be easier with his shoes on. Another stealthy step, another, and then another. In the dim slanted light he found his flashlight and his favorite hammer, the one his ex-wife called “The Singing Sword” back when they still liked each other. Massive, long, it would make a formidable weapon. Against anything but a gun.