HAUNTED HEADS

a novella by Gary Canup

Chapter 2

The late afternoon was sunny and drowsy and after the long drive from the city, they were nearly there. Beyond the barbed-wire fences overgrown with bushes and weeds, cattle grazed in the pastures, corn and tobacco grew in neat rows in the fields, shadows haunted the dark-green woods, and blossoms colored the gardens of the farmhouses set off at a distance from the main road.

Following another long arduous term of graduate courses at the university and a hectic week of final exams, a restful weekend in the country was just what they needed. They had slept late that morning, a Friday morning, and had departed soon after noon, were finally nearing the end of the three-hour drive relieved only by a refueling stop midway and by a late lunch in a small-town cafe. They had passed the journey admiring the rustic scenery, listening to CDs of classical music, and conversing mainly about literature. They were both aspiring writers; he wrote poetry, she wrote fiction. Although he was the only one published to date — small literary magazines that paid only in contributor copies had accepted three of his poems — they both knew that she was the more talented and the more likely to make a living from writing. But Tyler Fenton did not need money from writing. His family was rich. The car he was driving was a BMW. His father was a self-made millionaire who expected that his son's dabbling in poetry was merely a "bohemian phase" that the young man would soon get over before entering the family business, a course that Tyler had no intention of pursuing. He loved his life with Nattie and certainly considered it more than a "phase." Nattie was actually writing a novel for her MFA in English, planned to pursue a doctorate, then teach and write. Tyler did not know what he wanted to do with his future. Right now he wanted only to write poetry and to be with Nattie. He had read chapters from her novel-in-progress. It was good. It was damn good. He was proud of her and loved her passionately. They had no plans to marry or to breed.

Nattie affected a whiny little-girl voice. "Aren't we there yet?"

"Almost," he smiled.

"How many more roads, Daddy?"

"Just one more."

At the rusty old mailbox on which someone long ago, probably his grandfather, had painted FENTON, the lettering faded and ghostly now, he turned down the narrow gravel lane that would take them to the farmhouse, barbed-wire fences, thickly overgrown, also bordering the lane and the BMW kicking up gravel that clattered against the underside of all that costly German engineering and raising a cloud of dust that coated his expensive polish job.

"Your precious car's getting all dirty," she observed.

"No problem," he joked. "I'll just buy a new one."

"Only one lane," she noticed. "What happens when another car is coming from the opposite direction?"

"It almost never happens. I recall it happening only once when we were kids. Father and the other driver edged way over to the right, until the righthand tires were nearly in the ditch, and then we inched past one another, smiling and saying howdy. It's extremely rare, though. Only one other farmhouse is serviced by this road and it's a couple of miles beyond Grandfather's. This might be one of the least traveled roads in the universe."

He smiled reminiscently.

"You know, when I was a kid, we made this trip to my grandparents' house once a summer, and when I got to be about seven or eight, Father used to let me lean over the front seat and steer down this portion of the road. He drove really slowly and said, 'Just keep it in the ruts, son. Keep it in the ruts and you'll be fine.' It was an enormous thrill."

"I can just see your little seven-year-old face all lit up," Nattie said. "Did you keep it in the ruts?"

"You bet I did."

"But you're not anymore, are you."

"Hardly."

"Did your father let you make this turn into the semicircular drive?"

"No chance. He didn't want me to plow into those trees there. He had taken over again by then."

They came to a stop in the middle of the gravel-covered semicircular driveway before the cracked concrete walk that led to the screened veranda of the old farmhouse. He turned off the engine, and though the engine had been quiet, they could really hear the singing of the birds now, even moreso when they opened the doors, but that was all they heard, no sounds of traffic, no roar of jets overhead, just birdsong and country serenity. They climbed out of the car and shut the doors and luxuriously stretched their arms and legs.

"Oh, I am so tired of sitting," she said.

"This is the homeplace," Tyler announced, gazing around fondly. "This is where my grandparents lived for about forty years and where my father's side of the family all gathered for visits and reunions as long as my grandparents were alive. There's a lot of nostalgia here and it was important to keep the house in the family. Nobody wanted to see it sold to outsiders after Grandfather joined my grandmother in death. So my father bought the place and I offered to fix it up and make it suitable as a vacation retreat."

"You've told me all that, sweetie."

"So what do you think of the place?"

"It's charming, Tyler, absolutely charming. You did a wonderful job renovating."

He was opening the trunk, watching her survey the house and grounds. To the left of the house lay the garden and then the fields that stretched all the way to the main road. The house was well-shaded and woods sprawled behind and to the right where a hundred yards distant stood a couple of barns. He removed their luggage, one small suitcase apiece, and closed the trunk. He loved the sight of her standing there in her T-shirt and cutoffs, the woman he loved here in this place he had so dearly loved as a child.

"Come on, I'll show you the inside."

They went up the walk arm-in-arm carrying their suitcases to the pair of steps that led to the screen door which Tyler opened and they entered the porch and let the door bang shut behind them. To the left were a couple of springy-bottomed chairs, to the right a porch swing suspended from the ceiling on sturdy chains. Curtained windows looked into the front rooms.

"A porch swing!" she exclaimed. "How adorable!"

"Seats either three children or two adults," he informed her, while unlocking the front door.

"Has it always been there?"

"For as long as I can remember."

He pushed open the door and they entered the living room and set down their suitcases. The room was newly carpeted and wall-papered. The furniture, consisting of a large sofa, two easy chairs and a Boston rocker, was new but old-fashioned. He had reluctantly gotten rid of his grandparents' shabby old furniture. Pictures decorated the walls and potted plants stood here and there on small tables by the windows. The other window overlooked the sun-drenched garden to the side of the house.

"Very folksy," she remarked.

"I wanted to modernize while still preserving the original old-fashioned character of the rooms. I took out my grandparents' old TV, though."

"Good."

"They only get a handful of channels out here anyway."

"What's this room to the right here?"

"That's the front bedroom."

"It looks very feminine."

"That used to be my grandmother's old room. I kept all the original furniture, by the way, including that frilly dresser over there. It must be an antique by now."

"Did your grandmother die in this room?"

"No. She died in the hospital. Congestive heart failure."

They crossed the living room towards a broad entranceway that led to the dining room. Just before the entranceway, to the right, though, was a rather small door.

"What does that door open on? A closet?"

"Believe it or not, it opens on the stairs that lead to the second floor. My grandfather slept up there."

"Your grandparents didn't sleep together?"

"Not at the end they didn't."

They passed through the broad entranceway.

"This here was the old dining room. As you can see, I've replaced the dining-room table with a deluxe pool table."

"It sure is a beauty," she said, running her hand over the flawless felt.

Tyler looked somewhat guilty. "The big old dining-room table used to be the centerpiece of the entire household. It was where my grandparents took all their meals, of course, never failing to say grace beforehand. It was where they discussed their lives. It was where we all ate when we came to visit. They definitely would not have approved of my taking it out and putting a pool table in its place."

"What's that room?" To the right were a couple of doorways, one on either side of the refrigerator. The doorway to the left of the refrigerator obviously opened on the kitchen, but she had gestured toward the doorway on the right.

"That's the back bedroom. As you can see, it has a feather bed and is more crudely furnished than the front bedroom. When I was a kid and we visited for a weekend or a week, my grandparents slept upstairs, my mother and sister slept in the front bedroom, and my father and I slept in this room. Back then, it was Grandfather's room. He always kept a loaded Colt revolver hidden in the fold of a newspaper on top of the bureau. I used to be fascinated by it." He entered the room and lifted the fold of newspaper. "See, it's still here."

"Damn it, Tyler, you know I don't like guns."

"This is the country, Nattie. Everybody has guns."

"Get rid of it. Why are you keeping it there?"

"Old time's sake, I reckon. Anyway, I came to see this as my room. I thought you and I would sleep here. Our visitors can sleep upstairs and in the front bedroom."

The window of the room overlooked the croquet court, then the woods and the nearer of the two barns. Tyler could tell that she did not think much of the room and it was more than just the gun. They exited the bedroom.

"That doorway at the rear of the dining room opens on the bathroom. I had it installed myself. It has a commode, a wash basin and a shower stall but no bath tub."

"You mean your grandparents never had an indoor toilet?"

"They had an outhouse. At night, if you had to urinate, the ladies squatted over a chamber pot kept underneath the bed; the gentlemen went outside and peed on a tree."

"How primitive."

"If you think that's primitive, wait till you see the old outhouse. That was the only place you could go to take a dump. The place is a depository for forty years and three generations worth of Fenton feces! It reeks to this day. It was always occupied by wasps and daddy-longlegs and if you couldn't actually feel a spider crawling up your ass you could at least imagine it."

"How charming," she sniffed.

Tyler laughed.

"Why did you have the bathroom installed off the dining room?"

"Pool room, now. Because that was the only practical place to put it. The door to the bathroom used to open on the enclosed back porch, half of which I had converted to a bathroom. The other half is still the back porch, accessible from the kitchen."

He followed her into the kitchen, a standard large country kitchen with an electric stove, a sink, counters and cabinets and cupboards, and a table and chairs by the side window. The back window was over the sink. No microwave, no dish washer, and there had not been enough room for the deluxe refrigerator.

"Shouldn't we be plugging in the refrigerator and turning on the water and gas and things like that?"

"I called ahead. The caretaker saw to it all."

"We're gonna have to go grocery shopping to stock the fridge for when our guests arrive tomorrow."

"We can do that tomorrow morning. They won't get here till early in the afternoon at the soonest."

She stepped out onto the screened back porch which had always been used for utility and storage instead of sitting.

"This porch used to be twice as big as it is now, but as I told you, the remodelers used half of it to install the bathroom. Grandmother kept the slop bucket out here and Grandfather used to shave out here where it was bright with sunlight. See, there's his smoky mirror and there are his straight razor and lather mug and brush on that little shelf there." Tyler smiled nostalgically.

"Why do you still keep your grandfather's personal articles?"

His smile faded. "I don't know," he said. "They're a part of the house, I guess. They belong here. I couldn't very well throw them out. I really don't know."

"They do add a homey touch, I suppose," she conceded.

"I used to sit in that chair right there and watch him shave when I was a kid."

"The chair looks homemade."

"It is. Grandfather was good at weaving rope to form the back and seat of wood-framed chairs. No telling how old that particular chair is, but I suspect that's still the original rope. That's why it's all frayed."

She stepped outside the screen door to the backyard and Tyler followed.

"Good Lord, look at all the outbuildings!"

"That one right there was the smokehouse, and that's the wellhouse; all the water used to be hoisted out of the well by hand, but I had an automatic pump installed and pipes connected to the kitchen and bathroom. Behind the wellhouse is the shop. Then forward of that is the garage."

"Where does that thin fading path lead to?"

"Back to the rear of the grounds and to the outhouse. To the right of that are all the old chicken coops and pens."

Beyond the chicken coops a rusty barbed-wire fence separated the rear grounds from the deep woods.

"So what do you think of the place?"

"It's charming, Tyler, it really is. It's a lovely place to spend a weekend, but I wouldn't want to live here."

"Oh, neither would I."

"It's too isolated and primitive and you know I like modern things."

"So do I," Tyler hastened to say. "So do you feel like eating now or do you feel like going on what we kids used to call a nature walk?"

"I feel like walking. I'm so tired of sitting."

"Good, before the sun goes down I want you to see the remains of the old log cabin where my father and all his siblings were born — the great man's humble beginnings, so to speak. We have to go before we lose the light. You wouldn't believe how dark it gets here in the country at night."