Chapter Five
Five
It turned out culch meant junk. And when Jake said the house was full of culch, he meant it.
“Watch where you step,” he warned us as he took us around the back of the house. “Elton from next door keeps this side cut back and mown,” Jake told me. “Which is good of him. He doesn’t have to.”
Flo trotted along behind Jake, taking the whole place in and looking like she was at Disneyland. “Mom, look, there’s attic rooms!” She pointed up at the shingled roof behind the brick chimney. “I call an attic bedroom!”
“It might be a while before you’re sleeping up there,” Jake warned her.
“Why? Are there ghosts? Do we have to get an exorcist?”
“There’s no room for ghosts, what with all the junk. And how do you know about exorcists at your age?”
“You don’t know what my age is. I could just be a very short teenager,” Flo rebuked him.
“Fair enough, kid.”
“Why is it full of junk?” I asked, jumping in before Flo could really start in on him.
I tried to peer in the side windows, which were whimsically round, like portholes, but they were too dirty to see through.
I got a funny little twist in my stomach at the sight of those round windows.
They were like something out of a fairy tale.
“It’s kind of a long story.” Jake sighed.
“Give me the short version,” I suggested.
“There was a lady who lived here, she was a hoarder, she doesn’t live here anymore.” We’d reached the end of the neatly clipped and mown pathway and found ourselves blocked by overgrown bushes. Jake held back branches covered in splashy red berries. “Through you go.”
Flo slipped through easily, but the space between Jake and the house was narrow and I was forced to all but rub myself against him as I followed. He was warm against my back and a slow shiver ran through me. I felt him tense at my touch. I guess I rubbed him the wrong way.
The backyard was a wall of green. It was as though the woods had spilled all the way to the back porch.
Once there might have been a garden under there but now it was a wildwood, with tangles of saplings around the old trees.
The wind soughed through them, causing the leaves to snap and ruffle.
Where flowerbeds and vegetable gardens once might have grown, there was waist-high grass dotted with wildflowers.
The overwhelming green tangle breathed the perfume of sap and summer.
“It’s a little wild,” Jake told us dryly.
“It’s great.” Flo’s eyes were shining. “Are there any magic trees or tunnels or anything?”
“Are there snakes?” I added, eyeing the tall grass.
“Probably.”
“Probably!” I scanned the ground for signs of movement.
“Don’t crash out, Mom. There aren’t venomous snakes in Maine, I looked it up.” Flo was completely unfazed.
“Getting bitten by a nonvenomous snake would still hurt,” I snapped at her. I had visions of her ankles covered in puncture wounds. “You’re not to touch them.”
“It’s good to have snakes. They keep the rats and mice away, right Mr. Abernathy? That’s what my reptile book said.”
“Jake,” he corrected her. “No one calls me Mr. Abernathy.”
“Can I keep a snake for a pet if I find one? The book said snakes make good pets.”
“Absolutely not.” This kid was going to be the death of me. “You’re not so much to look at one if you see one.”
Flo rolled her eyes. “That doesn’t even make sense.”
Jake cleared his throat. “If you take the place, which I doubt you will once you’ve seen inside, you can hire someone to come mow the grass and cut things back. I know a guy.”
I tried to imagine what that would cost, given the scale of the job. The yard looked huge.
“It’s got the bones of a decent garden under all the overgrowth,” he said, staring at the impenetrable greenery.
“Somewhere back there is an old vegetable patch, and a well, and a bunch of crabapples. You could make crabapple jelly if you’re the jelly-making type.
” He gave me a sideways look and rubbed his nose.
It was probably clear I wasn’t the jelly-making type.
But maybe I would be, if I had an orchard of crabapples?
“There are some outbuildings too. But they’re also full of culch.” He seemed demoralized on my behalf as he considered the yard. His hair tumbled back from his furrowed brow. “Anyway, we’d best get in.”
Get in? How? As far as I could see, there was no way to even reach the back stairs that led to the porch.
“These push back easily enough,” he said, pushing more red-berried limbs away as he inched along the rusty corrugated iron that formed the right half of the porch. “This here is the laundry,” he called over his shoulder to me, tapping the iron sheeting. “It’s in original condition, you might say.”
I could feel the bushes scratching at my bare arms and legs and wished I’d worn jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, instead of a tank and shorts. Especially given the threat of snakes. I noticed Jake’s hand drift down to brush Flo’s shoulder, just to make sure she was safe and following close.
“Down the other end there’s a screened porch. It used to be quite nice, back in its day.” He paused. “But the screens all need replacing.”
Everything needed replacing. The back stairs looked rotten through.
“They’re not as bad as they look,” Jake said, when he saw my horror. He stood on them to show me, then jumped up and down on the middle step. “Safe enough.”
“Why couldn’t we go in through the front door?” I asked as I watched Flo follow him up the rotten-looking stairs.
“It’s boarded up.”
I’d seen that much. “But why?”
“The glass is smashed. Like most of the windows.”
Right. This place might be on the market for a song, but how would I ever afford the cleanup? New glass for the front door and windows, new stairs and screens for the back porch, a complete cutting back of the backyard… The costs were adding up and we hadn’t even set foot inside the house yet.
Flo wriggled past Jake as he opened the back door. “Mom, look at this place! It’s a museum.” She disappeared to the right.
“Be careful!”
Jake stepped back to let me by, but the space was narrow and once again I ended up rubbing against him. Once again, I felt that slow shiver flow through me.
“She’ll be okay. I went at it with the bug spray a few days ago,” he assured me, his voice oddly tight. “There’s no spiders or anything.”
Oh, good God, I thought as I took in the interior.
Spiders or no spiders, it was horrifying.
The place wasn’t a museum, it was a junkyard.
It was far worse than the photos had shown.
The “laundry” on the right was nothing but a lean-to made of corrugated iron; it looked like it was being held together by rust. It was filled to the brim with antique appliances, chief among which was a laundry mangle that must have been more than a century old.
It was a tall cast-iron contraption with two big wooden rollers, which were turning now, thanks to Flo, who was gleeful with her discovery.
“Watch your hands with that thing,” Jake warned her. “It’s wicked painful if you get them caught in the rollers.” He was standing close behind me and I could smell the salty, woody scent of him. Like driftwood warming in the sun.
“What is it? A torture device?”
“A mangle,” he said calmly. “It’s how people used to squeeze the water out of their clothes and sheets.”
“Cool! Mom, we’re keeping this.” Flo gave the rollers a cheerful slap with her hand, like she was smacking the rump of a horse she’d bought at auction.
There was a stack of discolored copper tubs in the back corner of the lean-to, and a water pump over a concrete trough.
And then there was the proper junk: an old stroller and a couple of rusty bicycles, both missing wheels; parts of a baby’s crib and a brass bed; old tin cans with faded or missing labels; even an ancient surfboard that must have been nine feet long.
“There’s a bathroom through that door at the end there,” Jake told me, pointing to a door. “The toilet still works. Kind of.”
“Kind of?”
“It’s nothing a plumber couldn’t easily fix.” He didn’t meet my eye.
“Mom! Look!” Flo was off again, diving out of the laundry and toward the screened porch. The back “room” was one long space, half iron-clad laundry and half screened porch. “It’s a swing!”
“Don’t!” I leapt after her and managed to keep her from sailing straight onto the dusty swing, which was hanging from the rafters. I had a chilling vision of the whole thing crashing down, bringing the ceiling with it.
“It’s okay.” Jake was calm. “I checked it the other day.” He lowered himself into the slatted wooden swing. It creaked but held. “The place is safe enough. It’s just…”
“… full of culch?” I finished.
I thought I caught a flicker of humor at that. I wondered what he’d look like if he smiled. Annoyingly, he looked pretty good grumpy, but I bet he’d look spectacular with a smile.
“I mean,” he said, clearing his throat, the humor disappearing back into gruffness, “I wouldn’t go playing with the broken screens. They’re sharp. And the mangle will hurt you if you stick your hand in it. It’s not totally safe. But safe enough, so long as you’re careful.”
Flo hopped up onto the swing next to him. “How good is this? A swing in your living room!”
“This isn’t the living room,” Jake corrected her.
He lifted his feet from the floor as she kicked the swing into motion.
“This is just the porch. For summertime. So you can relax and enjoy the garden without getting eaten alive by the bugs.” He cleared his throat awkwardly as we all looked at the rents and holes in the screens.
I took in the “garden” through the disintegrating screens. I couldn’t say that the thought of staring at that jungle, with the looming mess of the laundry at my side, was relaxing, bugs or no bugs.
“How come there’s so much furniture in here?” Flo asked. She pointed to the pile of furniture down the side of the porch. Three sofas and a bunch of wooden chairs, all in a stack. And then some end tables, piled higgledy-piggledy.
“It had to go somewhere,” Jake said with a shrug.