Mumma's House

by Ike Hamill

  “The bus came to pick you up?” Gus asked.

  “Not really,” Auggie said. “It came as far as the Stuart house and then turned around. We had to walk down there if we wanted to be picked up.”

  “How far is that, Daddy?” Millie asked.

  “No more than thirty or forty miles. Anyway, back to the story, June lost another chicken. There were feathers everywhere and we found one of the feet near a patch of thistle. June also found a patch of orange fur stuck in the thorns. It was that fox again.”

  Auggie put up his hands for dramatic effect. “She. Was. Furious.”

  “What did she do?” Millie asked.

  “Everything she could think of. She dug the fence out of the old brambles and put it up around her chicken yard. She stole Uncle Tommy’s bottle of wolf urine that he used to keep the deer and woodchucks away from his garden and she made a perimeter. She even scouted in the woods, looking in every cave and culvert, trying to find where that fox had its den. There was a smoke bomb that she filched from Jules and she meant to smoke that fox out and chase it away with her BB gun.”

  “Did it work?” Isla asked.

  “It didn’t work at all,” Auggie said. “The fox got another one of those chickens a day later. That’s when GUT told her the secret.”

  “Who is Gut?” Gus asked.

  “Great Uncle Travis. We used to call him GUT. He said that what she needed was foxbane. He said that it grew on the backside of the hill that’s over by Scribner Church. Have you ever been over there, Gus?”

  Gus shook his head. He moved his bookmark and set his book aside.

  “We used to go over there anytime there was a second full moon in October, but that’s a different story. Anyway, June made me and Jules come with her on our bikes while she went over to the backside of the hill behind Scribner Church. Jules was terrified. I can admit that I had some shivers running up my back that had nothing to do with the cold. I don’t know how June was keeping it together. That abandoned church was creepy even in full daylight. That afternoon, with the autumn sun setting and the red and orange leaves blowing around, it was twice as scary as Halloween. We stuck together like glue while June hunted for her foxbane.”

  “What’s foxbane?” Gus asked.

  “Well, according to GUT, it was a type of plant with this weird green and purple flower. It was supposed to be harmless to people and chickens, but deadly poison to foxes. He said that it wouldn’t kill a fox because a fox wouldn’t get within a hundred yards of the stuff. All she had to do was find it and pick it and June’s fox problems would be over for good.”

  Millie took her plate over to the sink. She set it down and ran back to her seat.

  “The only problem that June had was that it was the middle of November. Nothing flowers in November around here. She had to find the foxbane by its leaves and its roots. The leaves were supposed to have little ears and devil horns. Then, GUT said that the roots smelled like fish, and pumpkin mash, and blackberries. Honestly, that’s where I checked out of the conversation. I was pretty sure that GUT was playing a trick on us. He also told us that we couldn’t touch the stuff with our bare hands.”

  “I thought you said it was harmless,” Millie said.

  “Harmless is the wrong word, I guess. GUT said that it wouldn’t kill us, but if a person touched it with bare hands, two days later they would turn into a fox.”

  Gus laughed. A moment later, Millie and Isla laughed too.

  “Anyway, we found the stuff. I should say, June found the stuff. Jules and I mostly jumped at shadows and spun around quickly every time we heard a squirrel or a falling stick. She wore those big yellow dishwashing gloves and dug the stuff up. The roots did smell somewhat like blackberries, from what I could remember. We got that stuff back to the bikes and raced home until our legs felt like hot lead and our lungs were burning.”

  Auggie nodded at the memory and then got up to go wash the dishes.

  “Wait!” Millie said. “Did it work? Did the fox stay away?”

  “Oh, it worked all right. I mean, the fox didn’t stay away, but it worked.”

  A moment later, the story was forgotten by the girls. The doorknob turned and a face started to peek through the gap.

  “Hello?” Kate called.

  “Mom!” Isla yelled. The girls both raced for the front door.

  “What happened then?” Gus asked.

  “I’ll finish the story another time,” Auggie said. He was smiling at the reunion of his wife and kids.

  “This year?” Gus asked.

  “Sure. Of course.”

  # # # #

  “Why don’t you work on the heat and I’ll take the kids out to look for a tree?” Kate asked.

  Auggie frowned as he looked down and scratched the side of his neck.

  Kate rolled her eyes. “Then just tell me what you want me to do. I’m easy, Auggie.”

  “Would you mind going in the basement to man the valves?”

  She put up her hands and shrugged. “Sure. Why not?”

  “Excellent,” Auggie said. “That solves that. We just need some helpers to call instructions back and forth.”

  Millie raised her hand, looking up at her father. Isla, not to be outdone, raised her hand and started jumping up and down.

  “We need one person at the top of the cellar stairs and one person in the hallway,” Auggie said.

  “I call stairs!” Millie said.

  “No! I want stairs. Wait, where’s Mom going to be?” Isla asked.

  Kate saw Gus looking back and forth. He didn’t seem to know where to jump in. While Auggie arranged which girl got the prized position, Kate put her hand on her nephew’s shoulder.

  “Would you help me in the cellar, Gus? I’m sure I’ll need help finding everything.”

  He gave her a tiny nod. She couldn’t tell if he was being shy or if he was frightened by her. When they went to the top of the stairs and he reached out a shaky hand for the light switch, Kate got a clearer picture. He wasn’t frightened by her, he was frightened by the cellar. She had no love for cobwebs and old mouse corpses, but she decided to show none of that to Gus. He needed a brave role model to set an example.

  “Lead the way,” she said. She put her hand on his shoulder as he slowly descended.

  The rock walls of the foundation seemed to eat the light.

  “Do you see the valve for the first floor heat?” Auggie called down the stairs.

  “We’ll find it,” she said.

  “Great. I’ll tell you when I’m ready.”

  Gus had his hands buried in his pockets and his shoulders hunched. He looked like he was trying to disappear into himself.

  “It’s actually not too bad down here,” Kate said to him. “I’ve seen much worse cellars. The house where I grew up had a dirt cellar, and there was an old well in the corner. There’s this movie, maybe you’ll see it when you get older. Wait, this must be it, right?”

  She pointed at the valve. It was the only handle that wasn’t covered in dust and it was at a ninety-degree angle to the others. Auggie had shut this one off in preparation for his work.

  Gus wasn’t paying attention to the heat. His eyes were darting around all the dark corners of the cellar.

  “You spend a lot of time down here?”

  “Actually?” he said, his voice rising at the end of the word. “This is my first time.”

  “Well, there are a couple of things you should know about, in case you guys ever have trouble. This is the furnace,” she pointed at the giant antique. “That part is the oil burner and this is called the boiler. Over there, you have a water heater, and that’s the pressure tank for your pump. You know how your water surges in pressure every few seconds?”

  Gus nodded.

  “The bladder in your…”

  “Okay!” Millie called from the top of the stairs.

  “Okay what?”

  There was a pause while she relayed the question.

  “Okay, you can start to o
pen the valve,” Millie said.

  Kate narrated as she began to turn the valve. Her parents had always insisted that she and her sister had a firm understanding of how all the major appliances worked. Apparently, June didn’t share that ethos. Gus didn’t seem to follow as Kate explained how the heating system distributed warmth to the house.

  “Stop! Stop! Stop!” Millie shouted.

  Kate turned the lever back off.

  “What’s your favorite subject in school?”

  Gus only looked at her with raised eyebrows.

  “You don’t have a favorite subject?”

  “I guess, not really? I mean, I like to read, but I don’t like it when the teachers talk about what everything means. We had a book report that we had to do and I was marked down a grade because I didn’t think that the author was really talking about his mother. The assignment was to describe how the author was talking about his mother.”

  “What book?”

  “It was called The Empty Hotel, by Rocky Witul.”

  “I don’t know it,” Kate said.

  “Anyway, I was marked down a grade so I sent him a letter and he said that I was right. He said that it didn’t have anything to do with his mother.”

  “Who said?” Kate asked.

  “Okay, turn it on again,” Millie called.

  Kate reached up and carefully opened the valve. The water in the pipe was hot and she hadn’t liked the way the valve had moved when she closed it. It had felt gritty, like maybe something was giving way inside. The last thing she needed to do was have the thing break apart while she was trying to open it.

  “Step back a little, would you?” she asked Gus.

  Gus stepped back warily. Kate laid her hand against the pipe and jerked it back. There was hot water circulating in there. She thought she could hear it gurgling, too, but it might have just been the water in the nearby boiler. The space twisted sound. It was difficult to tell what was coming from where.

  “Who said, Gus?” she asked again.

  “Huh?”

  “You said that someone said the book…”

  “Oh. Yeah, the author said it.”

  “To you?”

  “Yeah, I wrote him a letter and asked him if the book was about his mother. He said that, to the best of his knowledge, the book was about growing up as an outcast and how that sometimes brings out the worst in people.”

  “You wrote to the author and he wrote back?”

  Gus nodded.

  “That’s amazing, Gus. I bet you got back your letter grade after that.”

  Gus shook his head. “No. Mr. Griffin said that I was creative, but I didn’t follow the assignment. I still got a B, so it was okay. Still, it was disappointing.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “Okay!” Millie called.

  “Okay, what?” Kate asked.

  “Okay, Dad says that hot water is coming.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Kate said.

  Gus was looking up at the cobwebs overhead.

  “You want to live down here? I can get one of the girls to bring your food to you and I’m sure you could stay warm if you cozy up next to the furnace.”

  Gus smiled and then raced her to the stairs.

  # # # #

  “You don’t have any last minute shopping?” Auggie asked.

  Kate straightened up with a hand on her back—just in case—and then eased down until she was sitting on her heels. Her knees were fine for the moment, but she didn’t dare spend too much longer on them. Maybe getting out of the old house would be good. Maybe she could forget about the dust that was still under the bed.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “I could still go with you though.”

  “We’ll have to split up,” Auggie said. “The girls are still trying to find one more perfect thing for you.”

  “Ah,” Kate said. “This was a non-vitation, I suppose. You were just being polite, trying to make me feel included, when you actually would prefer that I stay here?”

  “Not at all,” Auggie said. “Gus is coming with us, so there’s no real need to stay. I’m just saying that at some point we’re going to have to split up.”

  It was impossible to read what Auggie was really trying to say. He was too good at hiding his wishes. The decision came quickly to Kate—if she couldn’t discern what was going to make him happy, she might as well make herself happy. At the moment, staying in one place would be a good start.

  “You go,” she said. “That way I’ll be here when your sister comes back. Nobody wants to come home to an empty house on Christmas Eve.”

  “Good point. Excellent. We will see you soon.”

  She followed Auggie out to June’s living room so she could say goodbye to the girls. They were too busy trying to impress their cousin to notice. Isla gave her a quick wave before they left. The door shut, blocking out their noise and chaos. Kate let out a long exhale. She let her eyes linger on the details of June’s corner of the house.

  The setup was efficient—that was certain. June and Gus shared one bureau, although it looked like there might be some flat storage containers under the futon. Perhaps June kept her summer clothes in there and swapped them out.

  Under the dresser, Kate saw two rows of shoes. The winter boots had a spot next to the door. June and Gus had two arm chairs on the other side of the coffee table. The leather chair looked big enough to curl up in. It would be a good place to take a nap on a rainy day.

  The kitchen area would never produce anything other than basic sustenance. A few cabinets supported a counter and a sink that was plumbed with flexible pipes that disappeared into a hole in the wall. A microwave, toaster oven, and mini-fridge were the only appliances that Kate found. She knew there was more storage somewhere though. She had seen a waffle iron and hotplate at some point. They had to be hiding. Opening the cabinets, Kate only found provisions.

  Kate smiled and whispered, “She’s practicing for an RV. She’s going to retire and leave all this behind.”

  The bathroom was the most incredible part. The toilet and sink were tucked under the stairs. The shower was the only place where a normal person could really stand up straight. When Gus got older, he was probably going to develop a curve in his spine.

  Kate shuddered. The living quarters were making her feel claustrophobic. June and Gus were cramped into one room in a house that had to be at least four-thousand square feet, if not more. There were unending rooms and halls, upstairs and down the wing, but June never used them and sometimes it seemed that Gus didn’t even know about them.

  Kate had grown up in a farmhouse. Some of the details of this place were strikingly familiar. The windows didn’t have counterweights. Instead, the sashes ran up waxed chases and were held in place by the pressure from thumb latches. Kate remembered the way that the storm windows would rattle in the wind. Her parents used to close off the formal dining room in the winter—it was too drafty to heat. June’s tiny apartment was like the inverse of that. Instead of closing off one room, she had closed off the entire house beyond this point. Auggie never really talked about his sister’s weird behavior.

  He always said, “That’s between her and Mumma’s house.”

  Kate went to the door that led to the hall. Crossing that threshold, she immediately felt better. The rest of the house was neglected and dusty, but it wasn’t so cramped with life. She could breathe easier not surrounded by June.

  She shut the door behind herself, blocking June out completely.

  Kate still had work to do.

  # # # #

  Auggie had done a decent job in the bathroom, but the kitchen had required a good scrubbing. There had been a layer of sticky dust on all the counters. It almost felt like a greasy fog had moved through, depositing a film on everything.

  “French fries,” Kate said to herself, rolling her eyes as she remembered. Henry had shown up with a portable fryer and had cooked what must have been fifty pounds of fries the year before. He had said it was
a Kilgore tradition.

  Kate scrubbed the last of the counters and rinsed her sponge in steaming water. The room was actually warming up. Auggie had fixed the heat.

  The kitchen looked pretty good, actually. Even filled with people, it never really felt like the place had life, but at least it was clean. There was something missing in a kitchen that didn’t get used everyday. It was difficult to put her finger on. Maybe some drawings on the refrigerator, or a houseplant or two would liven it up. The place needed some organic touches to give it a soul.

  Looking for the pantry, Kate opened up a door.

  She clicked on the light and cocked her head. Somehow she had forgotten that the laundry room was there. The lid to the washing machine was propped up with a box of detergent.

  She opened up the dryer.

  When the light came on, Kate screamed.

  She stood up and put a hand on her chest, waiting for her heart rate to return to normal. It had just been the shock of it—she wasn’t afraid of mice. And, even if she had been afraid of mice, there was nothing frightening about mice so tiny. They were so young that they hadn’t done anything but twitch their little noses at the sight of her.

  Kate drew her hand down her face as she considered them.

  “I don’t even understand how you got in there,” she said to the mice. They shrank down at the sound of her voice. She left them there to go back to the kitchen, rummage through the cabinets, and come back with a plastic container and some tongs. One at a time, she picked up the baby mice and deposited them in the container.

  “There are nothing but tiny vents into a dryer, right?” she asked them. They didn’t answer. They were quite docile in the bottom of the container. Kate wondered if the mom mouse would come back and wonder what had happened to her brood. More likely, she had split when she heard Kate moving around. These mini-mice had been abandoned in a hurry.

  “The door must have been open a little, right? Did I miss that?”