Authors: Erik Tomblin
The new paint looked even brighter in the approaching daylight. A low fog hung at the edge of the yard, poking out from the woods as if curious over the new arrival. There were a few large trees visible in the front yard, placed far enough apart as to not interfere with one another. They were old (some kind of willow, Isaac guessed) with low-flying branches, some of which were so heavy that they sloped out and touched the ground. Spanish moss hung in the boughs like dusty spider webs. The lawn was well kept, a dark fescue variety that enjoyed the shade from the trees. Isaac also noticed that it seemed recently trimmed.
"You guys thought of everything," Isaac whispered, thinking of the attorneys involved in the trust. Of course, they had simply been following instructions.
But whose?
Before he could get too deep in these thoughts, Isaac cocked his head to one side and turned the heat down while lowering his window an inch. The far-off wail of sirens was, he hoped, a good indication his phone call had been understood. It didn't take long for help to arrive. The sirens grew louder, their echoes bouncing around in the small valley. Isaac could see the flashing lights through the trees as the emergency vehicles approached: a fire engine followed by an ambulance. He felt a little silly to be attracting so much attention his first twelve hours in this tiny town, but as he pulled himself out of the car and the pain reminded him why he'd called to begin with, he welcomed the strong sense of relief upon seeing them pull into his driveway.
Isaac sat on the front porch steps of the old house as the emergency vehicles disappeared behind the trees down Mt. Zion Trail. The morning had warmed a bit, and the coffee a deputy sheriff had been kind enough to bring by helped warm his insides as he watched the house's shadow shorten atop the grass and gravel. The fog was retreating back into the woods, and the thin layer of moisture blanketing the lawn and car was fading at a similar pace. He stared at the wooden steps under him, letting his eyes trace the path of each grain.
As the paramedics had tended to Isaac — checking his pulse, blood pressure, and basic neurological responses — a pair of firefighters entered the house carrying a clipboard and what Isaac guessed was some kind of carbon monoxide detector. After seeing the knot on the back of Isaac's head, one of the paramedics offered him a ride to the hospital. He declined; the dizziness had passed and there was only the slightest sting coming from the area of impact. He made due with an ice pack, which he held over the lump until the pain had been numbed away.
Isaac was signing a form stating his refusal of transport to the hospital when the two firefighters returned. They'd asked him a few questions, and he told them exactly where he'd passed out. The two men went back in, only to return a few minutes later to say the house was clean of any such deadly gases. One of the two, a man not much older than Isaac, stated it was unlikely that there would be any, considering all of the appliances were electric and no gas line ran down this particular road.
"What about hallucinations?" Isaac had asked him.
The young man looked up from his clipboard. "What about '
em
?"
"I don't know," Isaac hesitated. "Could something in an old house like this, something from asbestos or old paint cause hallucinations?"
He didn't miss the quick grin exchanged between the two men. The older of the two took over as the paramedics looked on, stifling their laughter.
"I don't know if you've noticed, but this house has been renovated somewhat recently. As long as you're not gnawing on the walls or any other illicit substances, you should be fine."
Isaac started to stand, but a wave of vertigo pushed him back down. "Look, there was something upstairs. A door. It came out of—" but he stopped, unable to ignore the obvious ridicule the men surrounding him were enjoying.
"A door?" the firefighter asked, smiling.
Shaking his head and trying to massage away the throb, Isaac shook his head.
"No, never mind. It was probably nothing."
"
Mhm
," the man grunted, nodding to his partner who followed him down the steps and back to their vehicle.
After they had left, Isaac struggled up the stairs and into the hallway. A cold sweat had broken out across his brow as he approached the bedroom door. He stared at the wall just to the right, waiting for some aberration to appear. He shuffled about the area, keeping his eyes glued to the space where he was certain he'd seen something the night before. When nothing out of the ordinary happened, he breathed a small sigh of relief, grateful to be proven sane, if only for the moment.
Back on the porch and sitting in one of the rocking chairs, he occasionally probed the tender spot on the back of his head and sipped coffee that was already lukewarm. Isaac deliberately avoided thinking too much about the results of the firefighters' inspection. Instead, he began to plan his day, wanting to get as much done as necessary to make his trip here as short as possible. It seemed like a nice enough place, but if his first few hours were any indication of what living or vacationing in this house would be like, he'd soon be contacting a realtor.
"Busy morning?"
When the voice cut through the lingering chill in the air, Isaac dropped his
styrofoam
cup, and the last few tablespoons of caramel-colored liquid splashed across his boots.
He jerked his head up, rousing an echo of the pain from earlier. A man stood roughly eight feet in front of him, in the grass and to the left of his car. The stranger was maybe an inch taller than Isaac's five-foot-eleven. He looked sixty, sixty-five, and wore a long-sleeved plaid shirt under a faded pair of overalls. He was thin, with long, gangly arms. His legs may have been just as wiry above his well-worn, leather work boots. A straw hat completed the Norman Rockwell-
esque
image standing there.
"You okay, sir?" the man asked when Isaac didn't respond.
Once it landed there, Isaac couldn't pull his gaze away from his face. His eyes searched over the old man's features, and he had the sensation he was looking at a map of a familiar road. Though sure he'd never met the man, Isaac felt he'd seen him before, or seen someone like him. Some movie star from an old Western maybe?
"
Fella
?"
Isaac stuttered out a few syllables before gaining control of his tongue.
"Oh, yeah. I'm...fine, I suppose."
The man watched him carefully, silently, yet Isaac wasn't as uncomfortable as he felt he should be. Closing the distance between them, the stranger spoke again, extending his hand.
"I'm Walter. Or just plain Walt, if you like."
Isaac leaned forward and shook the man's hand. He wasn't sure he was ready to stand again just yet. His muscles were quivering anew with the little effort he'd just exerted.
"I'm Isaac. Isaac Owens."
"Nice to meet you, Isaac," Walt said, then stepped back to lean against one of the rails flanking the steps. "You just get in town?"
Isaac nodded. "Yesterday. I drove in from Nashville." He looked behind the new arrival, scanning the yard and driveway for some form of transportation. When he saw none, he couldn't help but wonder where Walter had come from.
As if hearing the question in Isaac's thoughts, Walt turned and pointed off into the woods across the road where the mailbox labeled "90" stood.
"I live up there, about a hundred yards down that other driveway you might've noticed. I heard the commotion down here and I guess my curiosity got the best of me. By the looks of it, I move a lot slower than I thought I did."
Isaac smiled, still not in much of a mood to laugh. He glanced over Walt again and noticed how the man's hand trembled a bit as it hung at his side.
"You want to take a load off for a few minutes?" Isaac asked, turning his head to nod toward the pair of rocking chairs on the northwest corner of the porch.
"If you don't mind a little company, at least until I get my wind back."
Isaac stood and waved Walt up onto the porch. They each took a rocker, sitting back and wincing from their own personalized pains. The younger man couldn't keep from sighing as he leaned back, his taut muscles finally allowed to relax a bit.
"I take it you've had a rough time of it this morning?"
Isaac let a small laugh escape. "That's one way to put it," he answered, then proceeded to tell Walt about his fainting spell the night before and the subsequent events up until Walt had shown up, though saying nothing about his hallucination. "I suppose it was road fatigue, maybe stress. I don't know." He glanced over at Walt, who was watching him with a curious glimmer in his eyes that faded as soon as their gazes met.
Walt looked out into the front yard. "Hate to hear you had such a hard first night in your new place."
"Well, it's not exactly my place. I mean I own it, apparently, but I'm just here to check it out, see if it's something I might want to keep. I travel a lot, so a place this far out probably wouldn't work well as home base."
"Oh, yeah?" Walt asked, still staring out over the yard with a look that belied his interest in the conversation. "What kind of business are you in?"
"I'm a performer. I write and sing my own songs, do tours to support my records. Not as glamorous as it sounds, but I have fun and can still pay the bills."
Walt nodded, finally turning back to look at Isaac. Now he appeared a bit more interested.
"Seems to me a place like this would be worth hanging onto. All that traveling and living from city to city...a man needs a place like this to keep in touch with his roots, with himself."
Isaac, staring back at Walter through narrowed eyes, couldn't suppress the quizzical little grin that danced across his lips. Was it so evident that he had indeed grown a few roots in country living, mostly through trips to more rural relatives' homes and long summers at his grandfather's? It was, he thought, also a little presumptuous for Walter to question Isaac's self-concept. Even at a much younger age, Isaac had always thought he had a pretty good idea of who he was and who he wanted to be. That was especially true up until a year ago, a time when suddenly nothing made much sense or seemed important enough to pursue clarification.
Let's not go down that road
, Isaac pleaded with himself.
Not right now
.
"Maybe I'm talking out of place," Walt continued. "It
ain't
my business."
"It's okay, really. It's still possible I'll hang onto it. The place seems nice enough, barring the events of last night and this morning, anyway. I'm just not sure I'm ready to take on a place like this, or even ready for a nice long breather somewhere this far outside of a good music scene."
Walt chuckled. "You've obviously never heard me on the harmonica. There's a pack of wild dogs that come by for a tune just about every night. I figure even though they're howling, they must like it to keep coming back."
Isaac was quickly beginning to enjoy Walt's company. The laid-back, small-town attitude he remembered so well from his youth was strong in these parts, and it was a pleasant change of pace from the exaggerated importance that seemed to be put on everything in the entertainment business.
Before Isaac could ask his new friend any questions about the house (maybe Walt knew who had lived here before), the distant rumble of an engine sifted through the trees. Walt stood, staring off toward the road. He lifted one shaky hand at Isaac and nodded.
"I'd better be getting on. I have a fresh pot of coffee waiting for me and if it sits too long then I'll be sitting too long later on, if you follow me." He winked, smiled and turned to leave, then looked back at Isaac. "Like I said, I'm just up the hill a little ways. If you stick around long enough and don't mind listening to an old man talk, come on by and I'll treat you to a bowl of my famous chili."
Walt turned again to leave before waiting on an answer.
"You want a lift back?" Isaac offered, rising from the rocking chair.
Walt just shook his head and waved the suggestion away. "No, thank you, sir. I'm not too old for a little walking now and then. You take care of that bump on your noggin."
Isaac stood for a moment, watching the man maneuver down the steps and out into the yard. He wasn't sure, but he thought he saw Walter glance a few times toward the road, then adjust his pace so that the approaching Ford pickup would pass well before Walter had made it to the road. Once the vehicle turned down the driveway, Walter seemed to pick up a little speed, making it across the road and disappearing down the heavily wooded path to 90 Mt. Zion Trail before Albert Trammell eased out of the driver's side door of the old, rusted Ford.
§
Albert and Harold flanked Isaac, both declining a seat. He felt funny sitting there, the two older men standing on either side, as if he were being interrogated. In one amusing sense, he was.
"We heard all the commotion over some eggs and bacon at Mama's," Albert said, looking over at Harold, who nodded in agreement. "Then Deputy Willard dropped by for a load of coffee and told us he was headed out this way. We would've come out earlier to check on you, but thought it'd be best to let Willard and them do their job first."
"I'm glad you came out, though I'm a little embarrassed about all of it."
Isaac didn't miss the glint of anticipation in the men's eyes. They had come to check on him, but they also wanted the scoop. Life in Holden had a way of making even the smallest event into more than it really was.
Not wanting to disappoint his new acquaintances, Isaac told them the same story he'd told Walter and, previously, the paramedics and firefighters. They leaned back against the porch railing, their gazes not leaving his face until the story was told and their appetite for news satisfied, at which point Harold looked out into the yard at nothing in particular. Albert apparently decided the other chair appeared comfortable enough and took a seat next to Isaac.
"You feeling alright now?" he asked, leaning back.
"Just a little sore. I still have to walk around the property a bit, see what I've got here."
"Harold might be able to help you out with that," Albert said, glancing toward his friend. "He used to run around these woods in his younger days.
Ain't
that right, Harry?"
Harold shot a nervous glance at the two other men, letting it linger a bit longer on Isaac before he looked back out into the yard. "Yeah. Been a long time, though."
"I suppose it has," Albert agreed, nodding thoughtfully and looking at the planks of the porch floor, as if mentally calculating just how much time had passed for the two old friends. "Anyway," he continued, looking back up at Isaac, "we didn't just come out for a little gossip."