JUNE
The gravel road leading to Warren’s farmhouse washed out in the recent rains, leaving a bare-bone rut that shakes the car. The creek’s still swollen and sprinting toward the river. I think of Chris Jenkins. If this water was ever in his lungs.
Every jolt to the Civic produces memories.
Uncle Warren, ten years ago, shirtless in stars-and-stripes swim trunks, filling a plastic pool with a heavy black garden hose. The old waterlogged tire swinging from a skyscraper oak tree in his front yard. Black tire smudges on my pink shorts, which Warren meticulously scrubbed with spot cleaner. Adults do a million things to show you love that you don’t register as love when you’re young.
Warren does them all. And other things too.
The other things are why I’m here. A train. The arc of his ts. The way he deterred me from his house. Even the padlocked door in his kitchen, where once upon a time Aulus told me he was working to finish out Warren’s basement.
Just being out here, my brain is a lemon shoved onto a juicer; memories eke like pulp. We stayed with Warren for three weeks before we moved into our Wildwood house.
Long after they put me to sleep each night, my father and Warren would either sit and talk at the picnic table in the kitchen or build something. On the talking nights, I’d creep to my perch on the bottom step and listen to them drink beer and curse my mother.
I remember Warren once saying, “Don’t tell me that, Don. I’m a cop,” and my father tapping his bottle against the table edge, responding, “That’s exactly why I’m telling you.”
On the building nights, there were hammers and saws, that ratchet sound a driver makes when there are no more turns to be made. The same sounds drift toward the Rippee barn this week.
I never saw what Dad and Warren built, and no amount of brain juicing pulls more substance to the surface.
When I shut Nick’s car door, a deer munching on low-hanging branches bolts into the adjacent field. The old blue-and-white rope, tire long removed, sways in the wind like a noose. Knowing Gladys is tracking me through the binoculars, I turn toward the Rippee barn and put a thumb in the air. Okay so far. My head pounds with adrenaline as I stare at the white two-story farmhouse. Its friendly parts: large dormer window with bright blue shutters, wraparound porch, rooster weather vane atop the metal roof. Its not-so-friendly parts: the brick cellar with the rusted door near the side porch, disconnected gutters, unpinned latticework that clacks in the summer wind, brownish-green mold crawling up wood siding to the roof. A house with two personalities.
There are no signs of traffic on the lane. Nothing to hear but crickets and my own beating heart.
I rub my hand over the bowed gray-wood table on the deck and recall countless meals. Boxes of gas station–fried chicken. Over-grilled burgers. Warren’s special recipe waffles with bacon and maple syrup in the batter for my birthday celebrations. It’s strange how my acquaintance with his house feels like familiarity with Uncle Warren. And how maybe everything I’ve always believed is a fabrication.
There’s a stone rabbit key box under the forsythia bush. When I shove the yellow buds and whip-like branches aside, the rabbit’s gone.
I search everywhere and find the rabbit without its key on the first step of the cellar. I tug on the kitchen, front, and back doors, and they’re all locked. Lucky for me, the bathroom window isn’t latched. The picnic table scrapes long trenches in the grass as I drag it toward the house. Standing atop the wood, I lift the windowsill high enough to squeeze through and drop into the room.
I strain my ears even though I know he’s not here. My heart is the only sound in the house. Get in. Get out. I head toward the kitchen.
Warren wasn’t kidding. The house is a wreck. Clothes and bags are strewn across the living room floor, a pillow and blanket laid out on the couch. Two boxes of cereal are on the counter; a milk carton open next to them. There’s construction equipment scattered all through the mud and laundry rooms. A stack of lumber sits in the entry corridor. I should go straight to the attic and look for the train, but that padlocked door to the basement won’t let me. There are two locks now and I swear there used to be just one.
Several key sets hang on a hook by the window. None fit either lock. There are a few obvious places to check for more keys: four drawers beside the stove, the flour canister on the counter, the wooden bowl on the table. I find batteries, salt packets from McDonald’s, a tape measure, rubber bands long melted into the drawer bottoms, broken pencils. No keys among the madness. I’ve all but made up my mind to use the tire iron in Nick’s trunk to break the lock when there’s a sound behind me.
“Looking for something?” a male voice asks.
I drop the lock and it clangs against the door. Fear tiptoes up my body. The only weapon in sight is a pair of kitchen scissors, but I can’t slide them off the counter without drawing attention.
“Thea, it’s been a long time.”
I stay still, considering my options. Run. Turn around. Pray.
“Tsk-tsk-tsk. Warren said you might turn up.”
I make a hectic grab for the scissors and spin.
Uncle Scottie blocks the exit.
He has a gun.