J. Lennon - Castle

After several tries, I found a working outlet in the hallway, and with my extension cord was able to use the sander in every room. In spite of the sawdust, the house seemed brighter and cleaner with the floors sanded; the boards lightened and showed their grain as I ground them down. I got through one small bedroom and part of another before I was interrupted by the electrician, whose presence in the cellar I had forgotten. I turned off the sander and asked him how things were going.

“Welp, Mr. Loesch,” he said, “you got some surprisingly okay wiring down there. The cloth insulation got worn off here and there so I want to replace some of that. And I put in fuses and tested your outlets for you and they’re all working now, but if you want to be safe I think you ought to let me put in grounded ones for you. And if you want to put the money in, I’d recommend we do a circuit breaker box. Your fuse box there is working okay, but it’s rusted half through. And in my professional opinion you could stand to get a dehumidifier going down there.”

I thanked Heph and told him that I would go ahead with his recommendations.

“Can’t get to it all till next week, Mr. Loesch, but I can do it all in one day for you, maybe Wednesday, let’s say?”

“Wednesday will be fine, Heph.”

“Glad to hear it, Mr. Loesch. You’ll be safe using the electricity until then. One other thing, though.”

“Yes?”

“It’s a while until warm weather, and it’s awful cold outside today. Looks like there’s still propane in your tank, too. You want me to try turning on the furnace?”

“Sure, Heph,” I said, “that would be helpful.”

I followed him down the stairs and into the kitchen, where he took off his paper boot covers and plunged down into the darkness. He seemed to expect me to follow, but I hesitated, as before, on the top step. When he reached the bottom, he turned to me. There was light down there now, apparently from a bare ceiling bulb, and so his flashlight was holstered on his belt.

“Ya comin’, Mr. Loesch?”

“No thanks, Heph,” I said. “I’ll wait here.”

He frowned. “Welp,” he said, “if you poke your head down, anyway, I can show you how to get ’er going if she goes out. The pilot light, I mean.”

I realized that there could be no reasonable explanation for my reluctance to follow, so I braced myself with a hand on the wall, and slowly moved down the stairs. After half a dozen steps, I lowered myself to a sitting position. Heph looked at me, puzzled, and not without some amusement. But I took a deep breath and looked around the cellar.

It was not any different from any other cellar of its era. The floor was hard-packed dirt, the walls stone, their whitewashed facing dry and crumbling. A single bare bulb hung from the ceiling next to a large, filthy furnace. A heavy door, like that of a safe, was open in the side of the furnace, and wide black ducts snaked out in every direction, to disappear into the floor joists above.

“This used to be a coal furnace, see,” Heph said. “There’s still coal dust all over the place here. Somebody converted it to gas.” From his pocket he produced a packet of matches. “You want to come see how to do this, Mr. Loesch?”

“No thanks, Heph,” I replied. “You just show me from there.”

Heph leaned in the little door, and I heard a metallic scrape. There was the snick of a match against sandpaper, and the quiet gust of a gas flame igniting. Heph pulled his head from the door and shut it tightly. Beyond him, behind the furnace, the cellar seemed to disappear in its own shadows; no wall was visible.

“So alls you have to do now is go on upstairs and turn up the thermostat,” he said.

“Heph, may I ask you something?”

“What’s that?”

I pointed over his shoulder. “Can you see what’s back there?”

He frowned and turned around. “Mr. Loesch, I don’t believe I see anything at all back there.”

“There’s no wall?”

Heph laughed. “I’m sure there’s a wall there, Mr. Loesch.” He came to the stairs and climbed up, stepping neatly around me. At the top, he put his boot covers back on and beckoned for me to follow. I did so. We went into the large front room, where an old thermostat was affixed to the wall beside the door. It had the coppery look of an art deco building facade, with an old mercury thermometer running up the center, like a vein of blood.

“You want I should go ahead and give you some heat, then?”

“Yes, please do, Heph.”

He reached out and turned the little thumbwheel at the bottom of the thermostat, and immediately we heard a clank, a pop, and a rumble as the gas caught fire. A few seconds later, musty air rose from the heat registers and filled the room. I felt, for a moment, as though some animal had awakened underneath us, that we were enveloped by its hot breath, and I suppressed a shudder.

Or perhaps I didn’t quite suppress it, because a wry smile played at the corner of Heph’s mouth. “You planning to live alone here, Mr. Loesch?” he asked.

“That’s right,” I said, sounding, I’m afraid, rather uncertain.

“Lots of character in an old place like this.”

“I suppose you could say that.”

He stared at me for a moment, and I stared out the window. HEPHNER ELECTRIC, read the sign on the door of his van. In spite of his friendly manner, the electrician was making me somewhat uncomfortable. His backwoods charm and colloquial speech did little to dispel my sense that he was observing and testing me, gauging my reactions to his supposedly innocent comments and questions. Though his motives did not seem hostile, he put me on my guard. I wanted him to leave, and when I cleared my throat, he took the hint. “Welp, see you Wednesday, then, Mr. Loesch,” he said, and, having brought my dormant house back to life, walked out the door.

It took me most of the next week to finish the floors and walls. To seal the floorboards, I buffed in a carnauba wax blend, and the result was a pleasingly light-colored finish with a dull, almost pink, glow. After long consideration I painted the interior walls pale yellow, to match the exterior, and refinished the kitchen floor with black and white linoleum tiles.

It may seem improbable that I should be able to accomplish so much in so little time, and I will confess here that it is not without pride that I so present myself. As I believe I have said, one area of my expertise is infrastructure — its creation, maintenance, and repair — and the tasks required for the renovation of a house happened to fit neatly into my particular skill set. The fact is, I would have been perfectly able to replace the old wiring myself. But Heph had made electricity his career, and so had all the necessary tools at his immediate disposal. It was only for the sake of convenience and safety that I brought him into my temporary employ.

Over the days leading up to his return, I strove to complete my basic renovations and began to think about the weeks ahead. There were things I wished to accomplish. One was to move myself out of the motel and into the house. I was growing weary of the motel’s sterility, its numbing sameness, and I had come to resent the dull and frustrating drives to and from the city of Milan. The time had come to equip my house with the basic furnishings necessary for living, and occupy it in earnest. In addition, I had spent many stray moments during my labor gazing out the windows at the woods, and had become eager to explore them. I wanted especially to trek to the large rock, and find out if it could be climbed. Perhaps, as well, the creek that formed the northeast border of my property harbored trout — and doubtless the woods were home to any number of deer, which I could hunt, and which could serve as food. I hoped to minimize my trips to town for provisions, and so I was determined to dig and sow a garden, and perhaps to find and pasture some small animals, goats I supposed, for their milk. It was with considerable excitement that I contemplated buying myself some hiking equipment, guns, and fishing gear, and placing an order for good, dark soil and compost from the garden center in Milan.