by Ike Hamill
“Gus!”
Her voice was faint. He wondered how many times she had called and he hadn’t heard.
It served her right. She should worry about him. How could she even consider moving? The house was theirs. All of that mystery would eventually belong to him. None of that would be possible if they moved. His cousin, Sam, had explained it.
Thinking about Sam, an idea popped into his head.
Uncle Auggie would be there in a few weeks. He was coming early, along with his girls. They usually came a week or so before New Year’s so they could spend Christmas and get everything ready for the reunion.
Auggie didn’t say it that way though. He had a funny way of saying it. It took Gus a second to remember the correct wording.
“We have to redd up the old gal,” Gus whispered. That was the way that Uncle Auggie always put it. Uncle Auggie always put Mom into a good mood. Once he arrived, she would stop talking about moving. All Gus had to do was keep her put until then, and it would be okay.
With that thought, Gus stood up and brushed off his pants. He patted his secret tree.
His eyes wandered to the window on the second floor of the wing. Usually, there was nothing to see. The sunlight bounced hard off those windows and stopped him from seeing anything beyond the glass. Now, with the last of the light drying up, Gus had a pretty clear view below the half-lowered shade. Someone was up there, looking down.
Gus blinked and forced himself to stare until it didn’t look like a face anymore. It was some kind of reflection or a weird shadow. If it was a real person, they wouldn’t be able to hold still that long. Still, he raised a hand in a wave before he started walking back the length of the wing towards the front of the house.
His mom had the lights on in their living area. Gus and his mom only occupied the front room of the first floor. That gave them the bathroom under the stairs, a living area, and the tiny area that they called a kitchen. Uncle Jules always said that someday he was going to show up and they would be living on the porch. Nobody ever laughed at that.
At least she wasn’t waiting outside.
When he came through the door, she was putting away the dishes, pretending like everything was normal.
“Good. You need to finish up your reading and then start your report.”
“It’s not due until Friday.”
“I know that,” she said. “You’ll have all week to goof off if you get a good start on it tonight.”
Gus frowned. This was her way of changing the subject. Until he did his work, she would talk of nothing else. Gus found his paper and the book. He took them back out to the porch, letting the screen door slam shut behind him.
# # # #
“I did the whole thing,” he said. He fluttered the paper in the air before he folded it in half and tucked it into the book.
“I’ll check it later,” she said. She was reading her own book at their tiny kitchen table. In his spot, she had left her jeans and sewing kit. He was expected to do all his work before turning to entertainment, but she had done nothing with her jeans except move them around all day. Gus pushed them to the center of the table as he sat down.
The pincushion bumped into the back of her hand.
“Ow,” she said, looking up from her book.
“Mom? Can we stay until after New Year’s?”
“I’ve thought about this a lot, Gus, and I really think we need a clean break. We can’t keep wasting our time here. It’s an investment that will never pay off.”
“Just until after New Year’s?”
She was already shaking her head.
“I just want to have one more New Year’s here with Uncle Auggie and Isla and Millie. I like it when Uncle Jules comes and then Sam and Penny, and Aunt Allison.”
Her face began to soften at the mention of those last two. His mom loved little Penny. She was almost the same age as Gus, but his mom treated her like she was a little kid. And his mom maybe loved her Aunt Allison most of all. She would talk with Aunt Allison for hours and hours after everyone else had gone to bed.
“We’ll still be able to visit,” his mom said. “We can go down and visit on weekends and stuff. We don’t have to wait for them all to come here.”
“But I like when everyone comes here. We’re all under the same roof and it’s so much fun, like a sleepover. Besides, you always say that we can go visit everyone, but we never do. The only people we visit is Uncle Auggie and Aunt Kate, and Aunt Kate hates us.”
“Gus, she doesn’t hate us. That’s incredibly unfair. They just don’t have the biggest house. It’s not the best place in the world for company to visit.”
“But that would be the same for us if we moved to Augusta. You said that we could get one of those apartments, but those are all one bedroom, right? Where would anyone stay if they came to visit?”
“I didn’t say they would stay with us. We could visit them if they stayed here, couldn’t we?”
He worked hard to keep his voice calm and flat, like hers. If he started whining, she would shut down the conversation immediately.
“It wouldn’t be the same.”
She exhaled through loose lips, sounding like a horse. His mom blinked slowly at him, considering all the facts.
“If we stay,” she said. “If!” she said when she saw the excitement beginning to show on his face. “Then we’re moving out in January when everyone is gone. In fact, I’m going to put the deposit down on the place so we’ll have to go.”
Gus nodded. Uncle Auggie would talk her out of it.
“This is the last year. I’m serious.”
“Thank you, Mom,” he said. He kissed her on the cheek before he ran away.
Chapter 2 : Auggie, Millie, and Isla
“TAKE YOUR BAGS,” AUGGIE said while the car was still in motion.
Millie already had her seatbelt off.
“Do not get out of this car until we’re stopped, Mill.”
She chuffed out a quick sigh as she dropped her shoulders. It was precisely the way her mother expressed frustration.
“Izla, don’t forget your fog thingy,” he said. She didn’t care. The day before, all she had talked about was showing her little fog ball thing to her cousin, Gus. Auggie thought it was a good idea. If Isla didn’t feel like she was getting enough attention from her cousin, she would get angry or go off on her own.
One more thing occurred to him before he pulled to a stop.
“Jackets!”
“We’re going right inside, Dad,” Millie said.
“And the first thing you’ll probably do is run back outside. Take your jackets now.”
She obeyed, but only after a chuff-sigh-shoulder-drop.
When he finally stopped, they were off to the races. Their hands were full of all their possessions that they would drop just inside the door and forget about immediately. Auggie’s mind was on to other things. He had a trunk-load of groceries to put in his sister’s little fridge until the big one was cold enough, and he had a ton of cleaning to do before it was time for Isla and Millie to go to bed.
All those thoughts were buzzing through his head as he got out of the car. His breath puffed out in a white cloud. The dooryard looked warm. The golden light was inviting when seen from the comfort of the car’s interior, but it was much colder here than back at home. June had said that the fall had been strangely warm. Her definition of warmth was calibrated to a different scale.
He didn’t even notice his sister June until he turned for the trunk.
Auggie nearly screamed.
“Jee-zum! You scared the piss out of me.”
Her smile was beautiful but it disappeared quickly. They hugged. June always hugged in the same way—one arm around him, two quick slaps on his back, and release.
“Good drive?” she asked.
“Good ’nuff. How’s everything?”
“Work is okay. I have my own crew now. I drive the van. Instead of just two of us taking two hours, we descend on the place with four or
five girls and knock out a whole bunch in a day. It doesn’t work with every client, but some people really like it.”
Auggie tried to make the right noises in the right places as he popped the trunk and grabbed all the bags with cold items. He handed a couple to his sister while she talked.
“Gus is doing well in school. He’s trying to prove to me that his teachers are really good so I won’t want to switch him. You just wait until your girls are old enough to be devious.”
“Oh, trust me, Izla is already devious. Mill is just stubborn. Two different approaches, same headache.”
He was trying to avoid getting sucked in to the discussion about her moving. If he started talking about it casually now, it would make his later conversation that much more awkward. He left the trunk open and started to carry his bags across the lawn. His sister fell in beside him.
“The other day, Izla figured out where…”
“Oh!” June said, interrupting, “don’t let me forget to tell you about Ernie Rice’s new girlfriend.”
“Girlfriend!”
“I know!” June said.
The screen door flew open and banged against its stop. The spring groaned as three kids streamed through the door and then pounded down the stairs.
“Zippers up. Gloves on,” Auggie said.
“Be back for dinner,” June yelled.
The kids were around the corner with no indication that they had received their orders.
“Gus is getting tall,” Auggie said. “I think.”
June barked out a quick laugh.
# # # #
June buzzed around, vaguely helping out where she could, as Auggie put away the cold stuff temporarily in the little fridge. When he was nearing completion, she must have sensed it. She disappeared to the porch, out in the cold December, before he even approached the door to the hall. This is how bad she had gotten—she couldn’t even watch someone else go into the belly of the house.
Auggie shook his head. Her superstition was infectious. His hand paused before he turned the knob. Auggie frowned, disappointed in himself. He opened the door and stared down the dark hall for a second, daring the shadows to produce some ghoul. It was nothing but a dusty old hallway. He flicked on the lights, bringing life back to the place for the first time in nearly a year.
As he walked towards the real kitchen, he took inventory of the spiderwebs that would have to be knocked down. His sharp eye also spied a scatter of mouse droppings. There might be a nest to ferret out. One year, he hadn’t found the mice in the mattress until he tried to settle in for bed. Their squeaking had launched him back up like an electric shock.
Auggie reached the end of the hall and turned on the kitchen lights. Only one bulb lit up. Covered in dust, it gave off thick yellow light. The fridge was pulled away from the wall and the cord draped over the counter.
The sharp edge of the formica dug into his waist as he leaned over to try to plug it in.
Something was going to grab his hand. He knew that there was something hiding in the dusty shadows behind the refrigerator, but he reached anyway. For Auggie, that’s what being a father had gifted him. He still had the same imagination and fears of his youth, but he had learned to properly ignore them and put himself in obvious danger anyway. Most of the time, the perceived threats had no teeth anyway.
When she coughed, Auggie forgot about plugging in the refrigerator. He spun so fast that he lost his balance and his legs tangled up. Auggie fell to his knees.
There was nobody there.
The kids were outside and June would never set foot that deep in the house. Still, he had heard someone cough.
“No,” he whispered.
That was a lie he had told himself. He hadn’t heard someone cough, he had heard her cough. Mumma’s cough was unmistakable. She had quit smoking before he was born, and she had died when he was only five, but he could still clearly remember Mumma’s cough.
“Nope. We ain’t doing this,” he said as he pushed to his feet. His first stop was the windows. He jerked the bottom of each shade, making them roll up and emitting a cloud of dust from each one. The low sun flooded in, chasing away the ghosts. Auggie waved a hand in front of his face, fanning away the dust.
With that done, he went back to plugging in the fridge. It sputtered and gurgled as the old compressor kicked in. Before shutting the doors, he checked inside to make sure that it was still clean enough to hold food. It was. Straightening back up, the dust finally got to him. Auggie coughed into a curled fist, just the way that Kate was always telling him was “Disgusting!”
The sound startled him.
It was Mumma’s cough. He sounded exactly like her. It had taken returning to this place for him to realize that he had inherited his mother’s characteristic cough.
“Huh,” he said.
His head whipped to the windows at the movement. The kids ran by outside.
Auggie smiled.
They only saw each other a couple times a year, but the cousins always fell right in together.
# # # #
“Come on,” Gus said. “Let me show you around back.”
“We’ve seen it!” Millie said. Still, she followed close behind as he sprinted down the length of the building. She could hear her sister right behind her. Gus ran alongside the barn, veered around the spot where the old manure shed had sat, and then around the corner to the “back forty.”
There was a long mowed path that led to where the hill rose. That’s where her father used to site in his rifle. He had told her the story a million times. Gus didn’t stop there. He ran off to the north to where the corn field had been.
“There!” Gus said when he had caught his breath. He was pointing at some wilted plants that had given up their leaves and doubled over from the frost.
“What?” Millie said.
“Yeah, what?” Isla said as she finally caught up.
“That’s pot that Jerry planted. We’re not even supposed to know about it.”
“What’s pot?” Isla asked
“It’s illegal,” Millie said. She didn’t actually know what it was, just that her mother said it was illegal.
“It’s not anymore, not here,” Gus said, putting his hands on his hips. His cheeks had little red circles on them, like the porcelain figurines that were at Millie’s grandmother’s house. “It stopped being illegal, so Jerry planted it this summer.”
“What for?” Isla said.
“Wait, if it’s not illegal, then why aren’t you supposed to know about it?” Millie asked.
Gus shrugged. “Well, I mean, even if it’s not illegal, Jerry is just supposed to mow the lawn and cut the bushes and stuff. He’s not supposed to plant stuff here. That’s not what Uncle Tommy pays him for.”
“That’s neat,” Isla said, taking a few steps forward. She put out her hand and reached for one of the stalks.
“I don’t know, I think it’s kinda boring,” Millie said.
“Yeah,” Gus agreed. “It is. You want to go in the barn?”
“No!” the girls said at the same time.
“Come on,” Gus said. “There’s something I want to check out up in the loft.”
Isla looked to Millie.
Millie stuck to her guns.
“Nope. Dad said we’re not supposed to go in there without him.”
Gus frowned. “He never goes up in the loft. We have to wait for Uncle Jules, and he’s never here for more than a day or so.”
“Is it going to snow?” Isla asked. She looked straight up at the sky and stuck her tongue out to catch any snow, like maybe an open invitation would coax a snowflake out of the darkening blue sky.
“It was really warm until recently, but they said we won’t get a white Christmas, but maybe a white New Year’s,” Gus said.
Millie eyed her sister. She couldn’t be sure, but she suspected that her sister’s question hadn’t really come from a legitimate curiosity about the weather. She suspected that maybe Isla had just wanted to change t
he subject away from the barn. Millie was scared of what might be in the barn, but Isla was secretly terrified by it.
“You guys want to see where the frogs used to be?”
“Yeah!” Millie said.
Gus turned and ran off in a new direction.
# # # #
Auggie wrestled the vacuum cleaner from the closet.
“You know, for a housecleaner, you certainly have terrible taste in vacuums,” he said.
June was back inside the house. By the end of his trip, she might even get as far as the doorway to the hall.
“There’s nothing wrong with that vacuum,” she said. “It’s a poor workman who blames his tools.”
“I think you’re butchering that quote,” Auggie said. He wrangled the machine towards the door to the hall. The hose, cleaning head, and canister all weighed a ton.
“When is Kate coming?”
“Christmas Eve,” he said. She always asked. The answer was always the same.
“And how long is she staying?”
“She’s going to her sister’s on the twenty-seventh.”
“And taking the girls?”
“Of course,” Auggie said.
There was a pause where June wasn’t asking a particular question. Auggie answered it anyway.
“It’s not you. She loves you and Gus. It’s the rest of these creeps that she can’t stand, you know that.”
“I feel so bad that I never get to spend any time with her.”
“Think of it this way, she hasn’t spent Christmas with her own family for ten years now, and Christmas really means a lot to those guys. That’s how much she likes you—she endures the creeps and misses her own family just to spend a couple of days with you.”
June nodded.
“And I never come down to visit her.”
“We know it’s tough,” Auggie said. He couldn’t articulate exactly why it was tough, but he knew it was. When Kate would ask what kept June away, Auggie always relied on the same excuses—his sister was superstitious and maybe a little agoraphobic. Plus, her job didn’t allow for a lot of vacation. It was tough for June to travel.