Chapter 8 #2
My shoulders let go, bit by bit. Nobody here cares if I say ain't. Nobody here hears my vowels and grins like they’re in the middle of an interactive dinner theater.
I pass the fire department, the closed feed store, the little brick library where I used to check out ghost stories and hide them under math homework.
I drive until my thoughts stop making full sentences.
Then Crane House appears through the trees.
I hit the brakes hard enough that the thermos rolls off the passenger seat.
The house sits on the ridge like someone dropped a chunk of another century on a Tennessee back road and forgot about it.
Steep gables stab at the gray sky. Narrow windows look out from under warped trim.
The porch sags so far that one corner is nearly in the dirt.
Gingerbread trim, once delicate, has gone silver and splintered.
Vines crawl up one side, threading through a broken window as the mountain takes it back.
A crooked marker leans near the drive. It’s one of those historical decorative markers that implies that, at some point, someone thought this place was worth saving.
CRANE HOUSE.
The name opens a drawer in my head. I've seen it before. Years ago, maybe more than once, always through glass or a camera, always from a distance. Local story. Doomed place. Another beautiful thing everyone figured would be lost.
Maybelle Crane lived there. Healer, some people said. Herb woman. Midwife. Witch, depending on whether the teller wanted to spit or whisper. Women used to come up here quietly. That much I remember.
I pull onto the shoulder. The engine ticks. I keep my hands on the wheel for a minute, then get out.
The ground is soft near the ditch. I don't cross the fallen chain at the drive; I just stand at the edge of the property and look. Around here, you don't step past a boundary line unless you're looking to end up on the wrong side of a barrel.
One stretch of original railing survives on the porch, half-covered by dead vines.
The brackets under the eaves are carved with leaf patterns, worn smooth.
One upstairs window still has wavy old glass.
The roof dips near the back gable where water has been getting in for years.
Behind the house, the ridge falls away into bare trees and brown undergrowth. Rot everywhere. Beauty everywhere.
I grab my phone. The first shot is flat, just gray sky and dark porch.
I move three feet left and try again. Better.
The dead walnut tree at the edge of the frame gives the roofline something to lean on.
I crouch, mud soaking my jeans, and get the railing in the foreground, the broken window, the gables, the vines crawling into the wall.
For a breath, it's just angle, light, frame. When I lower the phone, my hands are steady. I stand there staring at the house until the cold begins to crawl up my sleeves.
"Crane House?" Lanie says that evening, leaning over my phone at the kitchen table. "Lord, I haven't thought about that old place in a while."
"You know who owns it?"
"Some trust, last I heard. Maybe a nephew out in Johnson City. Somebody who don't come around, that’s for sure.” She squints at the picture and taps one blunt nail near the porch.
"County's been after them. Porch is dangerous.
Roof's going on the back side. Folks talk about fixing it every few years, then they find out what fixing costs. "
"Is it too far gone?"
"Depends who you ask. Depends how much money they got and how much sense they don't." She slides the phone back to me. "Maybelle kept that place standing longer than anybody expected. Had women coming up that ridge at all hours. At least that’s how the stories go.”
I look down at the photo.
"Women with difficult labors. Women who couldn't get answers from doctors.
Women needing things respectable people pretended didn't happen.
" Lanie's voice stays practical, almost dry.
"Half the old women around here have a grandmother who swore Maybelle helped somebody nobody else could.
Folks used to say the house alone could turn things around. "
The kitchen light buzzes softly overhead.
I laugh, bitter enough to taste. "If houses could fix problems that easy, Vanderbilt would've bought it by now."
Lanie doesn’t comment. She just reaches across the table and straightens the edge of the placemat with two fingers. "Probably so," she says. Nothing else.
The next morning, I go to the diner because Lanie sends me for an apple pie to take to the church potluck and she doesn’t want to bother baking one.
Dottie's Place hasn't changed much. Same pie case with lemon meringue sweating under plastic wrap and red vinyl booths. Three men at the counter turn when I walk in, try to place me, and then look away.
Dottie herself narrows her eyes over the register. "That Lanie Montgomery's girl?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Thought so. Ain’t seen you in these parts in a while."
I take a booth by the window and order eggs I don't want. While I wait, I pull up the Crane House photos and zoom in on the porch, then the roofline, then the upstairs window with the old glass.
A man's voice says, "That place looks worse every winter."
I look up. He's standing by the booth in a canvas jacket, dark hair damp from the weather, hands nicked and scarred. He nods at my phone, not nosy, just local. That’s how it goes around Bear Claw.
"Crane House," he says.
"You know it?"
"Jackson Boone." He offers a hand. "I restore old places people keep trying to tear down."
His handshake is warm and quick.
"Annie Dillon. Used to be Montgomery.”
“Lanie’s niece?”
I nod.
He gestures toward the empty side of the booth. "Mind?"
I should, maybe. I don't.
“Help yourself.”
He sits, and Dottie appears with coffee for him without being asked.
"The county's close to condemning it," he says, nodding at my phone. "Back roof's failing. Water's been getting in around that rear gable. The porch needs shoring before anybody steps too heavily on it. Foundation might still be decent, though. Hard to say from the road."
"Has anybody tried to save it?"
"People like the idea of saving old houses more than they like paying to save them."
I look back at the screen. "I photograph places like that."
“Might want to get more just in case.”
“It’s still standing.”
"For now."
The waitress sets down my plate. Steam rises off the eggs. I pick up my fork just to keep my hands busy.
Jackson leans back. "Ever thought about saving one instead of just mourning it?”
“What makes you think I got the kind of money to do that sort of thing?”
“Those boots you’re wearing don’t look like they come from Tractor Supply.”
The fork stops halfway to my mouth. Outside the window, a truck rolls past slowly, tires hissing on damp pavement. I chew and then put the fork down, tired of pretending I’m interested in the food.
"I wouldn't even know where to start."
"Ownership. County status. Inspection. Stabilization before restoration. And a number you won't like."
"How bad?"
"Worse once the walls are open."
“You like being honest, don’t you?”
“Lying ain’t never got me anywhere good in life.”
I ask questions then. Practical ones. Who to call.
What condemnation means. Whether the house can be stabilized before winter.
Whether original woodwork can be saved if the water hasn't eaten too deep.
Jackson answers without selling me a dream.
Every answer has a cost attached. Every possibility has a warning nailed to it.
Still, something in me shifts. It’s not healing or forgiveness.
Want.
I picture the porch standing straight. The windows repaired instead of replaced.
The vines cut back carefully from the trim.
A room upstairs with blackout curtains and trays lined along a counter, the sharp tang of fixer rising under the old plaster.
Maybe photographs on the walls. Maybe stories researched and told properly.
Maybe Maybelle Crane's name spoken without a sneer.
We could tell her story. I start envisioning women touring the place, communing with her spirit.
The idea is too big. Too early. Half-formed and foolish. I hold my coffee cup in both hands and let the heat soak in.
That night, in Lanie's spare room, I sit on the bed and open the photos again. Just rough phone shots. Muddy light. Crooked framing. Nothing I'd print. I zoom in on the upstairs window, then the porch railing, then the roofline against the ridge. My thumb hovers over the screen.
For years, I've photographed places after people have decided they're no longer worth saving.
Crane House is still standing.
So am I.