J. Lennon - Castle

It would please me to be able to say that I felt, upon my return to the house, a reprise of the confidence and enthusiasm that had braced me the previous day, when I announced to Jennifer that I wished to buy it. In fact, the sight of the place filled me, at first blush, with weariness and dread. Of course, up until this moment, the house was all potential — its glorious restoration existed only in my imagination. To view it now merely brought to mind the toil and frustration I might endure while renovating it. But there was something more contributing to my sense of unease: the house appeared different. The flaking paint revealed itself to actually be peeling, as though from an underlying dampness and rot — an impression strengthened by the moldy odor emanating from the house’s interior. The roof seemed sunken somewhat, perhaps the product of weak, decaying beams. And, most disconcertingly, the house’s trim lines now gave the faint impression of crookedness. I walked slowly around the place, stepping carefully over some broken cinder blocks and fallen branches, assessing the angles. Was it listing to the north? Or leaning to the west? Its lopsidedness seemed to change character depending upon my vantage point. In the end, breathing clouds into the cold air, I ran to my SUV, pulled a spirit level from my toolbox, and took some measurements. To my mingled relief and dismay, and in spite of my clear impressions, the house stood true. With a shrug, then, I set to work, determined to put all bad feelings behind me.

My first task was to prop up the sagging porch and repair the front stoop. This took me all of the first afternoon and evening. I am a highly organized and energetic person and I am accustomed to getting things accomplished quickly and thoroughly — but I must have fallen out of practice, because I made several mistakes, including an incorrect measurement and an uneven cut. Nevertheless, by nightfall I had completed my work on the porch and stoop, and was able to walk into the darkened house as if it were already my home.

That night, in my motel room in Milan, I watched television until I fell asleep. I woke up at three o’clock with every muscle in my body tensed, full of anxiety about the work ahead of me, and about the inevitable delays and obstructions that would hinder me from completing it. I had learned, however, to calm my mind and body using various relaxation techniques, and within the hour I had gotten back to sleep. I woke for good at six, showered and dressed, and returned to work on the house.

All that second day I made repairs to the roof. I had the hardware store deliver a telescoping ladder, several boxes of hot-dipped galvanized nails, and a few bales of asphalt shingle squares. I was lucky: the present roof was thin and only one layer deep, and I was able to lay my new shingles right on top. It was possible to spike the ladder into the ground at a gentle enough angle so that I could push several squares in front of me at a time, and thus make great progress without assistance. By noon I had covered half of one side, plus a gable. I also discovered that my initial impression of the roof — that it was sunken in places — was in fact erroneous. The roof was flat, and the underlying support beams strong.

The sun was bright that day, and the air moist, and I drank a bottle of water while gazing out at the monumental stone in the middle of the woods. As I watched, a hawk, a distant speck, glided across the land and alighted on the leading edge of the rock, as if to survey his domain. I felt a kinship with the bird, and was filled with a sense of renewed pleasure and purpose.

By the middle of the fourth day, I had completed the shingles and added flashing to the chimney and vent pipes. Then I started in on the clapboards. The years of dirt and peeling paint came off easily with the sander, and I was able to complete the painting prep work by the following morning. Indeed, I was beginning to feel as though the work was going my way, that I had at last taken control of the house. It was at this point that I clumsily knocked over a can of red paint that I had bought for the window and door trim; somehow the lid came loose — an irresponsible paint-mixing clerk at the hardware store was to blame, no doubt — and the paint spilled across the newly rebuilt porch and down the front steps. I began to clean it up, but soon realized that there was no point in wasting my cleaning supplies on an essentially impossible job. I decided to just leave it as it was, until I could decide on a color for the porch. However, the spilled paint left the strong, if irrational, impression that the house was drooling blood through its open mouth, like a road-killed animal. In the end, I simply painted the entire porch red.

On the afternoon of the fifth day, Jennifer stopped by to tell me that the sale would proceed on Monday, just three days away. She had failed to find me at the motel, and a sixth sense had told her I would be here. She emerged, in fact, from her car with a sly smirk, as though she harbored some kind of secret; but then she looked around the tool-strewn yard, and her expression was supplanted by one of astonishment. She gave me the good news, then asked, “Did you… put on a new roof?”

“And I repaired the porch. And painted it.”

She frowned as she said, “But Eric… you don’t own it yet.”

I laughed. “In my line of work,” I said, “you do what has to be done, and you do it as soon as you can.”

“What line of work is that?” she wanted to know.

“Infrastructure and information,” I answered.

She gazed at me quizzically, as if this weren’t the answer she’d been expecting. “Okay… ,” she said. “And you got in how?”

“Weak lock,” I replied. “And tell me something. You might have phoned me. Why come all the way out here just to give me this news?”

Jennifer opened, then closed, her mouth, and blushed deeply. “Slow day,” was her answer, and then she left me to my work.

By Monday, I had painted the house, and I reported to the closing meeting with my body and clothes flecked with dots of pale yellow — my choice for the clapboards. There was no room at the real estate agency, so the meeting was held in the quiet study area of the public library. There sat Jennifer, at a small study table, across from another real estate agent and an attorney, both representing the state office responsible for public lands. I was the only participant not wearing a suit, a fact that filled me with a special pride. I signed where I was told to sign, and handed out checks, drawn on the account I had opened just the other day at the only bank in Gerrysburg. When it was over, I shook hands with everyone, accepted the thick folder of papers that certified my ownership of the land, and walked to my car, breathing in the crisp spring air. For the first time since I arrived, dark clouds were massing on the horizon, and the breeze carried the metallic tang of an impending storm.

As I prepared to climb in and leave, I heard a voice: Jennifer’s. She had jogged up behind me, her high heels clicking and scraping against the sidewalk. I turned and regarded her broad smiling face, free of any of the doubt or mistrust it had harbored just a week before.

“So!” she said, trying to catch her breath.

“Yes?”

The real estate agent shrugged. “Oh, nothing — it’s just that it’s been a real interesting week. Everyone’s curious, you know. That’s a big plot of land.”

I took a glance at my watch. “It certainly is,” I said.

A brief silence opened up between us. “Okay, well,” she stammered. “I guess… you know, good luck doing whatever it is you came back to do. And, you know, thanks.”

“For what?” I asked her, choosing to ignore her prying non-question.