“Really?” she asked.
Farm raised his hand.
“Only one of you has? Weird.”
“To be fair,” Farm said. “I saw the videos a long time ago, but I didn’t remember it was them until you said it.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Margot said. “Vogel was about to lose the show until these guys came on. They were crazy and hilarious and heartbreaking. Hoot lost his hearing in an industrial accident and was on disability. His kids learned sign language to talk to him. June was television’s first official hoarder. Who knew there was a market for that. As weird as they are, their community got behind them. Their church, too. It gave you faith in people. The shoot was perfect, too, until we started loading all of June’s junk out of the house. Apparently nobody told June that we couldn’t renovate the house unless it was empty.”
“I can see where this is going,” Karin said.
“We had all these Boy Scouts in gas masks they made themselves out of water bottles and damp rags. They marched out all these disgusting sacks of old stuff. Apparently, it was helping them get some kind of disaster merit badge. They began tossing her junk into the dumpster, June noticed, and started flipping out. ‘That’s my stuff,’ she screams. ‘My treasures. I’m gonna sell that on eBay.’”
“Sell it?” Farm asked.
Margot shrugged, “That’s what she said. But she came completely unglued, grabbing stuff from the boys, taking it back inside, screaming at them to stop.”
“Someone got this on tape, I hope,” Bill asked.
“We were rolling the whole time,” Margot said.
“Nice,” Bill said. “That’s how you do unscripted television.”
“Actually, it was so awful we wanted to stop, but Vogel wouldn’t let us. He said if we did, we’d never work again.”
“Being a jerk doesn’t make him wrong,” Bill said.
Margot ignored him. “June was out there knocking over thirteen-year-old kids. The daughters were crying. Hoot, who can’t hear a thing, is in a chaise lounge with a newspaper over his face. Vogel starts swearing at June, then he storms off saying stuff like ‘Did any of these rednecks even read the contract?’ By the end of the day, June has chained herself to the blade of the bulldozer, screams when anyone comes near, says she won’t talk to anyone but Vogel, but Vogel has taken off. Nobody could find him for, like, an hour. When he came back, he had a set of bolt cutters.”
“Really?” Farm said.
“Bolt cutters. He sent all of us away, and then spoke with her for a half hour, maybe. When he got back, he threw the chain on the ground with the lock still on it. ‘Somebody order a shipping container and have it delivered. Don’t rent one. Buy it,’ he said. ‘We’re putting her crap into it. Also, they’re all going to Six Flags. I don’t want them around for the next part.’ Nobody knew how he pulled it off, but we were impressed. We still hated him, but, you know, props to the little guy for that.”
Farm was in the corner, looking at his phone, laughing a little and shaking his head. “I’m watching some of that episode,” he said. “You aren’t doing it justice.”
“It gets worse. We send these people off and started figuring out what to do with all of this stuff. It wasn’t all going to fit into the container. We knew that much. Sending them to Six Flags bought us a little time, so we all hit the sack. That night, at like two in the morning, the house exploded.”
“Shut up,” Gavin said.
“It was supposedly a gas leak. Everybody said it was a miracle nobody was in the house. June’s sister said it was surely the hand of our Lord, Jesus Christ.”
“Vogel did it,” Karin said.
Margot agreed. “That’s my theory.”
“He totally did it,” Gavin echoed.
“That’s what I would have done,” Bill said. “Make it look like an accident. Get some insurance money as well, right? There wasn’t any tape of the explosion was there?”
Margot nodded. “That’s how we knew it wasn’t 100 percent an accident. Vogel had a GoPro mounted to the excavator. He told the police he keeps one on site for security.”
“Does he?” Farm asked.
Margot shook her head. “He does not.”
“Son of a gun,” Bill said.
“What did June do?” Karin asked.
“It put her in the hospital. She thought it was her heart, but it was panic attacks. Vogel must have bribed somebody, because he had the crime scene cleared out and the excavators back to work a week later.”
“They’re doing a whole show about hoarders now,” Farm said. “I have a buddy doing postproduction. I just texted him. He said to stay away from hoarders. It takes all kinds of training.”
“That episode changed the whole show. Starting in season two, no more renovations. We started fresh each time. It saved us so much money, and people loved the demolition. But look, we’ve got a contract to shoot these locations. I don’t need to tell you what will happen if we don’t wrap the season.”
“I can’t shoot in that dump,” Bill said.
“Agreed,” said Farm. “If I run power into a place like that, we’ll all wish I didn’t.”
“Vogel gets here when?” Gavin asked.
“His plane lands tomorrow at two,” I said.
The waitress brought our food, warned us about the plates, and left. But nobody started eating. We all just sat there looking at each other. You could see that each one of us had a clear picture of how bad it was going to get.
“They don’t really want us around, so I’m not sure how we make it work,” Karin said.
“Understatement of the year,” Bill said, unwrapping his fork and knife.
“Maybe Vogel can do that thing he did five years ago,” Farm said.
“You mean blow the place up?” Bill said.
“I mean be the redneck whisperer,” Farm said. “Seems like he got her off that bulldozer.”
In the end, we all agreed to keep to business as usual. We’d go to the location, plan our shots, schedule the interviews, keep the production moving forward so the completion bond company wouldn’t get their pants all bunched up. This gave everyone enough of a breather to start eating. Nobody talked for about five minutes, which gave Margot time to order a second blue margarita.
THE CREW GOT UP EARLY to make use of the golden hour. Bill and Karin agreed that good light would take the edge off our B-roll. Right before we turned into the Jessups’ driveway, Farm pointed out a crazy orange Honda with a big, stupid spoiler on the back. “It’s trippy how stuff that would be normal in LA looks so crazy everywhere else,” he mused.
We parked next to the house, and everyone sat in place, drinking coffee and checking phones until Margot got us started.
“Until we hear otherwise, we just follow the shot list, pick up Vogel, and get him here for the interviews. Bill,” Margot said, “can you make it pretty?”
“There’s not enough lipstick in the world—”
“Don’t say pig,” Karin interrupted.
Bill scowled.
“It needs to look like we tried,” Margot said.
“It hardly matters. We’re doomed,” Gavin said.
Each of us fell to our lackluster work. I sat in the van, logging miles from the trip down here from Michigan, when I heard noises on the roof. As I looked up, somebody spilled out of an upstairs window and ran along the roof like a cat burglar. A second or two later Hoot Jessup busted through the front door with a shotgun. He was watching the guy above him as he cocked the gun, pointed it into the air, and fired a warning shot. One of the daughters appeared upstairs in the next window over, looked down at her dad, then turned to watch this escape artist flee. He was tall and strapping, but he looked like he was still in high school.
Hoot followed the kid on the roof with the barrel of his gun and shot again. I ducked out of reflex and then lost track of the guy until I heard a great boom above me on the roof of the van. Hoot reloaded, swung the shotgun in my direction, and fired. I dove behind the
dashboard again, expecting to be covered in safety glass, but there was only a skittering sound on the windshield. I only knew the window was intact because the kid rolled down it, bumped across the hood, and dropped cartoonishly out of sight.
Hoot looked pleased with himself and howled in victory.
The kid popped up with his hands on the front of the van and his back towards Hoot. He was unbelievably handsome, like a fashion model, his eyes wide with fear. I thought of what Farm had said a few minutes ago about things that seem wrong here but that would fit in fine in LA. This kid looked like every head-shot waiter I’d ever seen in Hollywood. We locked eyes and I screamed “Run!” and waved at him frantically. When he turned, I saw two giant hearing aids clipped into his hair. All I could think was, How very strange.
Above us, the Jessup girl opened her window and began screaming obscenities at her father. The kid looked up, blew her a kiss, and sprinted down the driveway unscathed.
Bill popped up from the floor of the van. I had no idea he was even there.
“What was that?” he gasped.
“You get any tape of that?” I asked.
“Not without combat pay,” Bill sneered. “I was on the ground.”
I climbed out of the van and looked around. The windows upstairs were empty. My people were getting up and dusting themselves off. Hoot stood in the entryway, watching the empty turnaround. His shotgun breech was open, and he pulled out the spent shells, replacing them with new ones capped in yellow wax. He loaded the second shell and snapped the shotgun shut, turned, and headed back to the house.
“What the hell were you thinking, man?” I yelled.
“He can’t hear you,” Margot said, pointing to one ear. “Remember, he’s deaf.”
The rest of the crew didn’t discuss it, they just started loading stuff back into the van.
“I think he’s shooting rock salt loads,” I said. “I wouldn’t worry.”
“Does it matter?” Karin asked. “I’m not sticking around to find out if it’s safe.”
She looked rattled. I’ve seen that look on folks before. “It’s pretty hard to kill somebody with salt,” I said.
“Well, I don’t want to be anywhere near him or his salt.”
“Me neither, man,” Farm said.
The rest of them said pretty much the same thing. It was a complaint without a plan, so while we were coming up with something we could actually do, a police car pulled up the driveway and two cops got out. The one driving was tall and young and wore iridescent sunglasses that made him look like a mercenary. The one riding was about twice his age, short, with some gut over his gun belt. He opened a big, thick leather notepad.
Skinny said, “Somebody call 911? We got a report about gunfire.”
Chubby said, “Dispatch gave us a name, Bill Drummond. Which one of you is Bill?”
I jabbed my thumb in Bill’s direction.
Skinny turned to Bill. “Who was shooting?” He still had his sunglasses on.
“The deaf guy who lives here. He went back inside.”
“Hoot?” Chubby asked.
“I guess,” Bill answered.
“He use a shotgun or something else?”
I told them it looked like a 12-gauge break action, probably a Remington.
Skinny finally took off his shades, and the two of them nodded at each other. “Sounds about right,” the other cop said. “He point it any anybody?”
“Some kid came out of the upstairs window,” I said.
“But was the gun pointing at the kid?” Chubby asked.
We all shrugged. “Sort of?” I said. “We all ducked, so it’s hard to tell.”
Both cops chuckled, and Skinny spat on the ground.
“He shoots that thing off two, maybe three times a month,” Chubby said. “It’s not real ammo. It’s salt. I tell him he’s going to ruin that firearm, but he doesn’t listen.
Margot jumped in. “I’ll guess shooting off a gun around here doesn’t get a person jail time.”
“Well, that’s a bit of a gray zone. Incorporated Anadarko ends somewhere around here. There’s maps at the county, but for day-to-day thinking we just let it be fuzzy,” Chubby said.
The driver put his shades back on. “If you don’t mind me asking, can you describe the juvenile who came out of the window?” he asked.
“Tall, muscular, handsome kid with huge hearing aids,” I said.
The cops looked at each other and raised their eyebrows.
“What does that mean?” Margot asked.
“Oh, that kid has been shot at six ways to Sunday,” Chubby said. “Didn’t know he was fooling around with a Jessup girl to boot.”
Margot was disgusted; Karin, too. Bill was chuckling. Gavin and Farm just stared at the ground. Above us all, the sisters had gathered in one window. June was in the next window over, all of them staring down at us like a line of birds.
Chubby hoisted his belt and tried to strike a pose of authority. “Y’all probably know, but if somebody calls 911, we’re obligated to drive out here and check it out. But since this is a yes-gun/no-bullets situation, we aren’t going to arrest anybody.”
Skinny interrupted. “What are y’all doing in Anadarko anyway, all the way from”—he leaned around to see the license plate on our vehicle—“California?”
Margot stepped up for this. She had the script memorized: “We’re from the TV show Revive Your Dive, and we’re shooting a follow-up segment—”
“Oh,” Chubby said, “you’re the guys who blew up the first house.”
Margot raised one finger in protest. “On accident. That was a gas leak, officers. Total accident.”
The two cops shared a quick wordless exchange. Chubby closed his notepad and slid it into his back pocket. “We appreciate y’all’s due diligence, but we’ll manage on our own,” he said.
“Have a good day,” Skinny said, touching a finger to his shades. They both got in the car, backed up, and drove off.
MARGOT LOOKED AT US AND we looked back. It was clear from the body language alone that nobody wanted to stick around. Everyone also understood that leaving would be complicated. Before anyone had the chance to lodge a complaint, Margot said, “You know … I’m going to talk to him. Darryl, will you come along? Be my muscle?”
“Me?” I said.
Everybody else thought this was a great idea, and they piled into the van while Margot and I went to the door. She rang the doorbell about a half dozen times, and after a very long while, Hoot came to the door wearing purple sweatpants and a black T-shirt with an American flag and a bald eagle on it. He didn’t mask his displeasure. She tried to talk to him, but that just frustrated them both. Hoot eventually went into the house and returned with a whiteboard and a marker. He gave it to Margot and gestured for her to write. We need to go over your contract, she wrote. When Hoot read it, he frowned and grudgingly invited us to come inside.
There was nowhere at all to walk unless you just decided to step on things: newspapers, bulging black garbage bags, piles of magazines tied in bundles with twine, things stacked with sheets of newspaper in between. The junk wasn’t scattered randomly, there were zones of it, like sections of a department store. In one place there was a collection of materials for craft projects. In another, there was a grouping of things stuffed into plastic grocery sacks. Near the kitchen was a zone for dirty dishes. I’m not sure what was in the kitchen, and I wasn’t eager to find out. Near the bathroom was a weird archipelago of car parts and jugs of fluid, and, of course, an accumulation of litter boxes. Mostly, you didn’t see any one thing, because it all became a texture, like the fuzz when a TV goes out. Same went for the smell. It wasn’t like discovering something dead, but it was enough to make you switch from your nose to your mouth.
It took some doing, but we came to a spot with an already reclined recliner. Hoot handed the whiteboard to Margot and pointed to a couch opposite the chair. He gestured for us to sit, then plopped himself down. He pulled a second whiteboard from
the side of his chair and got a marker from a cup of them sitting next to the lamp.
I tried to let the good part of myself do the thinking, and I tried to feel bad for these people instead of disgusted. Hoot looked up at us with these thick glasses that were coated in a fine spray of white paint. The quarter inch of gray stubble that covered his face and neck made him look like a homeless person. Nobody was sure who would start, and small talk is pretty much impossible with a whiteboard.
Margot uncapped her pen and wrote: We have to shoot some interviews with you and your family and get footage of the house. We need to clean up to get it done.
Hoot said back, “What for?”
Margot wrote for a long time: The contract you signed five years ago said you agreed to keep this house as your primary residence for five years and that you’d allow us back to do this follow-up. You also agreed not to make major changes. Once we’re done, Chuck Vogel will sign over the deed, and the house will be yours, forever.
Hoot couldn’t read it from his chair, because the writing was too small, so he gestured for Margot to bring it over. Once he read it, he handed it back.
“House was ours before you got your hands on it.”
Margot stiffened and tried to get ahold of her breath. She wiped the board clean with her hand. That’s true. She scrubbed it again and wrote: But your old house is gone.
Hoot laughed out loud. “Duh.”
All this is beyond my control, Mr. Jessup. It’s Vogel and the network, she wrote.
Hoot’s eyes crept back and forth between us while the wheels were turning in his head. “Never seen anyone pass a buck like you, honey.” Hoot was furious, and watching him boil over in silence was unbearable. I can see why Margot wanted me in here. Hoot interlaced his fingers and set them on his belly. “You should run for president,” he said. His eyes were like concentric circles.
Margot was just about on her feet when I put my hand out and said, “Don’t let him get under your skin. He’s trying to work you up.”
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