* * * * *
“I sure hope your road doesn't bust my trailer.”
Jay peered out the passenger window, determined to pay his driver as little attention as possible until Gus's mood improved. The van bounced and jostled over the road's potholes. Glimpsing into the rear view mirror, Jay held his breath to see how close Gus came to driving the trailer into the ditch. Leave it to Gus, Jay thought, to feel such indignation upon having his choice of pathways to the Turner home overruled by the direction Jay planned to take to save mileage and time. Only Gus would feel so slighted at such a silly thing to drive so aggressively over a rough and narrow country road to express his hatred to accept any suggestion that failed to originate in his mind. Gus could take no advice. Thus Gus pushed that narrow gas pedal a bit closer to the floor while Jay bounced and held his breath as the van rumbled towards the estate.
“I thought I helped you pay to get the trailer checked out before we started, Gus.”
Gus grunted. “You did. But maybe next time you'll listen to me when I say I want to go the other way. Easier on the trailer and van that way. I might be old, but I'm no fool.”
Jay wondered why he kept partnering with Gus in their country excursions to pick antiques from leaning barns and bug-infested homes. it was difficult to find a man with Gus's knowledge of antique furniture, trench art, and oil advertising. But that partnership had cost Jay plenty, who had loaned Gus several thousands of dollars so that they could afford another couple tanks of gas to make it home, so that Gus's home could enjoy electricity another month longer, so that Gus could purchase another piece of vintage furniture, so that Gus could take another step closer to realizing the payday the one-eyed driver always swore waited for him only a couple more days down the road. Though Gus claimed he never failed to pay his debts, Jay was yet to see a single dollar loaned to Gus returned to him during their three years sifting through antiques.
“The estate will be just on the other side of this hill.”
“I know,” Gus mumbled. “I've been down this road plenty times myself.”
Jay took a breath. He desired a better start to his day than arguing with a growling dog of a driver. He imagined what might be waiting for them beyond the steep hill the van and trailer labored to climb. He dreamed of hidden tractors and gas engines, of rare, metal advertising signs and gas pumps, of pedal cars and collectible lunch boxes. Jay had mowed grass along that country road for twenty-seven years, and he had dreamed of what the Turners hid in their brick home and behind the walls of all their barns and outbuildings each time his tractor had passed that family's acres.
“Sure hope my trailer doesn't get stuck trying to turn into that drive.” Gus grumbled as his van rumbled and crested the hill.
The Turner estate stretched out along the left side of the road. Post-frame sheds, corrugated Quonset huts, crooked barns and piece-meal sheds circled a three-story home of umber brick. Chicken coops and dog houses sprouted randomly throughout the acreage. Rust orange field implements and machinery parts, mattress coils, piled rubber tires and discarded cans crowded each space between the Turner buildings. Jay would not have faulted an eye less familiar with country collectibles for thinking the Turner estate some kind of shanty town, filled with temporary structures hastily erected by the destitute and forlorn for shelter against the elements. But Jay suspected much more. To him, each building implied an inner space brimming with old valuables. To him, each pile held an antique waiting to be uncovered at the core.
“The home's roof doesn't look in very good shape,” Gus squinted through the windshield. “Looks like we might be dealing with water damage. Nothing destroys antiques like water.”
Gus wrenched the van and trailer onto a worn lane defined by crushed grass and mud, and the three-story Turner farmhouse centered into their view. Jay counted windows out of his antique picker's habit, salivating at the thought of what so many rooms with so many windows held. He noticed the ornamental weathercock standing upon the tiled roof alongside collectible lightning rods. Jay saw the decorative wrought-iron railing that hemmed the front porch. The latticework hidden behind the overgrown shrubbery could not hide from Jay's sight. Those were touches that implied that the Turners once appreciated a little style, and a picker regarded such flare as a promising omen.
“That must be the attorney,” Gus glared at a man dressed in khaki trousers and a dark sports coat who waved at the van from the front porch. “Best watch what you say, Jay. You can bet he's got some kind of agenda if he's a lawyer.”
“Smile, Gus. That man still holds the keys to the estate.”
Jay escaped the van before Gus offered further cynicism, grateful for another soul, whose spirits had to be an improvement from those of his one-eyed companion.
“Mr. Logan,” the man grinned, “I'm Anse Monke, executor for Jackie Turner's estate. I sure thank you for your bid.”
“I'm not so sure it isn't me who should be thanking you,” Jay returned. “Feels like I got a lot of property for ninety-grand.”
Anse nodded. “Indeed you did. The house could be a mansion with a little resource and renovation, and you're going to be very pleased with all you find inside. I sure thank you all the same. Jackie would be happy to hand the keys over to you herself if she was still with us.”
Gus mounted the porch steps. “Wouldn't think the last of the Turners would be so willing to hand over the old homestead.”
“She was,” Anse replied. “I was fortunate to have the opportunity to know her through the working of her will. Sweet woman. Nothing like the rumors you hear about her family. Like all the Turners, she kept to her own business. Jackie told me she felt walled-up within her own home, surrounded by so much junk that she couldn't tend to her property. It was her father and uncles who gathered most all of what you'll find scattered about. They were obsessed with collecting, and they just kept piling it up as if they couldn't run out of room. Jackie told me once that she thought they were trying to bury themselves beneath all that stuff. She told me she had sworn to her father that she wouldn't sell or discard any of it for as long as she lived. She made it real clear that she wanted it all sold off and dragged away after her passing. She didn't want to think about any of it remaining. That was the second of her two wishes for her estate.”
“And what was her first wish?” Gus asked.
“Her first wish was to be cremated,” Anse answered, “like her father and her uncles before her. Told me she didn't want any of her remains lingering in the ground. She trembled at the thought. Living alone for so long can do lots of things to a person's psyche, and I think Jackie's nearly shattered to think about being buried in the ground.”
Jay nodded. “A fear I share.”
“Thank goodness you don't share in the fears of the rest of the county,” Anse answered. “I knew the Turner estate was going to be a hard sale, so I was very happy when you offered that bid.”
Anse retrieved a heavy, jangling ring of keys from his pocket and turned his attention to the brick home's front door. Jay imagined heavy tumblers falling to release the latch as Anse Monke twisted the key in the door, and though Jay expected to hear a hiss of air, or see a swirl of dust, when the doorway opened, only shadow and silence responded as the attorney twisted and pushed the doorknob.
“I'll hand these over to you, Mr. Logan,” Anse nodded as he set the key ring in Jay's hand and stood back from the doorway. “Duties wait for me in town, so I leave you to your property.”
Gus didn't hesitate to step through the dark threshold. Jay felt himself pause. He smelled something carrion, something musky, something sour, in the draft that floated from the home. The air around him thickened. His feet turned heavy.
“Stay positive,” Jay whispered. “Don't let your imagination run into the shadows.”
Jay reminded himself that families daily disappeared from the earth. The world continued to fill with ghosts, and Jay could do nothing to stop the inevitability of ruin and of decay.
But h
e could insure that the past did not become forgotten. He could sift through the piles of detritus time left behind to find those relics to hold up and proclaim were still filled with meaning, antiques that still deserved a place on the mantle. Jay Logan could do nothing to soften whatever sorrow and loneliness Jackie Turner may have known when uncounted among the living, but he could search through her ancestors' rooms and bring that which still had value back into the light.