(4/10) The Julius House

by Charlaine Harris

  “It’s a good idea, getting the farm for him,” she began. “He always hated someone else having it, someone else letting it fall into ruin. But Joseph always had it in for Martin, in particular, though he wasn’t too fond of Barby. I’m not either, for that matter. One of the disadvantages of being married to Martin is that Barby becomes your sister-in-law . . . I’m sorry, I promised myself I wasn’t going to be bitchy. Barby had a hard time as a teenager. The reason the blood’s so bad between the kids and Flocken—Martin’ll never tell you this, Barby told me—is that she got pregnant when she was sixteen, and when Mr. Flocken found out, he stood up in front of the whole church—not a mainstream church, one of these little off-sects, or off sex, ha!— and told everyone in the church about it, with Barby sitting right there, and asked their advice. So she got sent to one of those homes and missed a year of school and had her baby, and gave it up for adoption. And nothing ever happened to the kid who was the dad, of course, he just went around town telling everyone what a slut she was, and what a stud he was. So Martin beat him up and blacked Mr. Flocken’s eye.”

  What a dreadful story. I tried to imagine being publicly denounced in that fashion, and cringed at the thought.

  “Okay, the farm is south of town on Route 8, and you can’t see the house from the road, but there’s a mailbox with ‘Flocken’ on it by the gate.”

  I copied the directions onto the little pad the motel left in the drawer below the telephone. “Thanks,” I told her. And I braced myself for the advice.

  “Martin has a lot of good qualities,” she said unexpectedly.

  She was giving the good news before the bad.

  "But you don’t know everything about him,” she went on slowly.

  I had long suspected that.

  “I don’t want to know unless he tells me,” I said.

  That stopped her dead. And I couldn’t quite believe that had come out of my mouth. “Don’t tell me,” I said. “He has to.”

  “He never will,” she said with calm certainty. Then her mouth twisted. “I’m not trying to be bitchy, and I wish you luck—I think. He never was bad to me. He just never told me everything.”

  I watched her while she stared into a corner of the room, gathering her strength around her, regretting already her display of emotion. Then she just got up and left.

  It took everything I had not to get up and run after her.

  The next morning I met Mary Anne Bishop at her of fice. I was in a brisk frame of mind. I asked her which farms we were to see today, looked at the spec sheets, and asked that we see the one on Route 8 first. Looking a little puzzled, she agreed, and off we went. I looked carefully at each mailbox as we passed, and spotted one labeled “Flocken” just before the farm we’d come to see, which we toured quickly. I paved the way by telling Mary Anne that the area felt right, but the farmhouse was too small. On our way back to town, I asked her about the road that led from the mailbox over a low hill. Presumably, the farmhouse was not too far from that. “I liked not having the house visible from the road,” I commented. “Who owns that property?”

  “Oh, that’s the Bartell farm,” she said instantly. “The man who owns it now is called Jacob—no, Joseph—Flocken, and he’s got a reputation for being cranky.” But she pulled to the side of the road and tapped her teeth with a pencil thoughtfully.

  “We could just drop in and see,” Mary Anne said finally. “I’ve heard he wants to move, so even though he hasn’t listed the farm, we can check.”

  The farmhouse was large and dilapidated. It had been white. Now the paint was peeling and the shutters were falling off. It was two-story, undistinguished, blocky. The barn to the right side and back a hundred yards or so was in much worse shape. It had housed no animals for some time, apparently. A rusted tractor sat lopsidedly in a field of weeds and mud.

  A tall, spare man came out of the screeching screen door. He didn’t have his teeth in, and he was leaning heavily on a cane. But he was shaven and his overalls were clean.

  “Good morning, Mr. Flocken!” Mary Anne said. “This lady is in the market for a farm, and she wanted to know if she could take a look at yours.”

  Joseph Flocken didn’t speak for a long moment. He looked at me suspiciously.

  I looked straight back at him, trying hard to keep my face guileless.

  “I represent the Workers for the Lord,” I said, making it up on the spot. “We want to buy a farm in this area that needs work, a secluded farm that we can renovate. When the work is done, we’ll use the dormitories we build as shelter for our members.”

  “Why this farm?” he said, speaking for the first time.

  Mary Anne looked at me. Why indeed?

  “Not only does it meet the criteria my church lays down for me,” I said staunchly, praying for forgiveness, “but God guided me here.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Mary Anne looking over the mess of mud and weeds dubiously. Perhaps she was thinking God apparently had it in for me.

  “Well, then, look around,” Joseph Flocken said abruptly. “Then come on in and look at the house.”

  There wasn’t much to look at outside, so we murmured together about acreage and rights-of-way and wells, and then went inside.

  Martin’s childhood home.

  I gave Flocken some credit for trying to keep the kitchen, the downstairs bathroom, and his bedroom clean. Beyond that he had not troubled, and observing the pain it caused him to move, I could not blame him. I tried to imagine Martin as a child running out this kitchen door to play, climbing up the stairs to the second floor to go to bed, but I just could not do it. Despite the immeasurable difference loving parents would have made, I could not see this place as anything but lonely and bleak. So great was my wish to be away that I negotiated for the farm in an abstract way. Flocken obviously relished details of how the church members would have to work their butts off to build their own shelter, so I managed several references to the strict work habits my church required and encouraged. He nodded his gray head in agreement. This man did not want anyone to have a free ride, or even a pleasant one.

  He and Mary Anne began to discuss the selling price, and suddenly I realized I had won. All it took was someone asking, someone he was convinced Barby and Martin would not want the farm to go to.

  I wanted to leave.

  I leaned forward and looked into his mean old eyes.

  “I’ll give you this much and no more,” I said, and told him the sum.

  Mary Anne said, “That’s a fair price.”

  He said, “It’s worth more.”

  “No, it’s not,” I snapped.

  He looked taken aback. “You’re a tough little thing,” he said finally. “All right, then. I don’t think I can take another winter here, and my sister in Cleveland has a spare bedroom she says I can have.”

  And just like that, it was accomplished.

  I shook his hand with reluctance; but it had to be done.

  Chapter Two

  The purchase went swiftly since there was no loan to approve. I’d thought I’d have to do a lot by mail, or perhaps make a return trip, but it wasn’t necessary, to my relief. The essential work had been accomplished after three days were up. By the time I drove my rental car back to the airport in Pittsburgh, I’d paid two more visits to the bookshop, eaten in every restaurant in town, and rigorously avoided Cindy’s Flowers. If I could have announced who I really was to someone, I might have passed the time with people who knew the man I loved, but I had to stay in character when I wasn’t in my motel room. The chances seemed distant that someone would find out the real reason I wanted the farm, someone who liked Joseph Flocken enough to tell him. But I couldn’t risk it. So I was virtuous, and ran in the morning, tried not to eat too much out of sheer boredom, cruised all the local shopping, and was heartily sick of Corinth, Ohio, by the time I left.

  I swore I’d never wear my hair in a bun again.

  I wanted Martin to meet me at the airport, so passionately I could
taste it, but of course he’d want to know why he was meeting a flight from Pennsylvania, and I didn’t want to give him his wedding present in the airport.

  When I got off the plane in Atlanta I felt more relaxed than I had in a week. Carrying my luggage as though it were feather-light, I located my old car in the longer-term parking, paid the exorbitant amount it took to get it out, and drove off to Lawrenceton reveling in the familiarity of home, home, home.

  When I passed the Pan-Am Agra plant on my way in to town, I had to stop.

  I had only been in the plant a couple of times before, and felt very much out of place. At least Martin’s secretary knew who I was.

  “I’m glad you’re back,” Mrs. Sands said warmly, her grandmotherly voice at odds with the luridly dyed black hair and lavender suit. “Maybe now he’ll be happier. ”

  “Something wrong?”

  “Oh, he got some mail from South America that made him angry, and he was on the phone all day that day, but he’s back to normal now, just about. Go on in.”

  But I knocked, because he was at work; so he was looking up when I came in.

  He dropped his pen, rolled back in his chair, and came around the desk in a second.

  After a few minutes, I said, “We should either lock the door or postpone this until tonight.”

  Martin glanced at his watch. “I guess it’ll have to be tonight,” he said with an effort. “I should have an appointment sitting out in the reception area by now. Mrs. Sands is probably wondering what to do. However—I don’t mind keeping him waiting . . .”

  “No,” I said, trying not to giggle. “I have to confess, it makes me feel a little self-conscious knowing Mrs. Sands is sitting out there. Tonight, then?”

  “We’ll go out to eat,” he said. “I know you won’t feel like cooking, and I won’t get through here until seven, so I won’t have time.”

  Martin’s cooking is limited to grilling steaks, but he never minds doing it.

  “See you then,” I whispered, giving him one last kiss.

  He tried to pull me back, but I wiggled away and grinned over my shoulder at him as I left the room.

  “Bye, Mrs. Sands,” I said in what I hoped was a collected voice. It probably would have been more effective if I hadn’t suddenly realized my blouse wasn’t tucked into my skirt any longer. I scooted across the room quickly, catching just a glimpse of the dark-complected man waiting to see Martin; a man with a heavy, piratical mustache, thick black hair, and ropelike arm muscles. He looked more like a nightclub bouncer than a job applicant.

  I called my mother from the town house to tell her I was home, and learned what had happened in town in the few days I was gone.

  “Thanks for the flowers, Aurora. I don’t know what the occasion was, but they were lovely.”

  I started. I’d forgotten all about sending the flowers from Ohio. I mumbled something deprecating.

  “Have you seen Martin yet?” Mother was asking. She sounded as if the question were loaded. I could see her at her desk at Select Realty, thin and elegant and self-possessed, remarkably like Lauren Bacall.

  “Yes. I stopped by the plant. But he didn’t have much time. We’re going out tonight.” If I’d had antennae, they would have been pointing in Mother’s direction. Something was afoot. “How’s John?” I asked.

  “He’s just fine,” she said fondly. “He’s been planting a garden.”

  “In the backyard?”

  “Yes, something wrong with that?”

  “No, no,” I said hastily. If I’d ever doubted my mother adored her recently acquired second spouse, I knew differently now. I could not imagine in a million years my mother allowing someone to dig up her carefully groomed backyard to plant tomatoes.

  I hung up shaking my head, decided to put off retrieving Madeleine from the vet until the next day, and carried my bag upstairs to unpack, happily, in my own bedroom.

  I scrubbed my out-of-state trip away in my own shower. I dried my hair. I took a nap. After I woke up, I went down to my basement to pop a load of clothes into the washer. The neighbor who’d been collecting my mail brought it over. I thanked her and she left. I stood by the kitchen counter leafing through the assorted junk. Suddenly, I let all the pleas from new resort areas and all the sweepstakes offers slip through my fingers to land in a heap on the beige formica.

  Perhaps because I was tired, or shaken out of my usual routine . . . I don’t know why. Suddenly I was asking myself, Why am I marrying Martin? There were gaps in his history. He was more than he seemed. There were moments when I found him a man of frightening capabilities. He could be tough and ruthless and hard.

  But not with me.

  I was getting maudlin, silly. I shrugged physically and mentally, shaking off the dramatic notions I’d entertained. I sounded like the heroine of one of those romance novels, the gals who think with their vaginas. I tried to imagine Martin and me posing for one of those covers, me with my bodice artfully slipping, him with his “poet shirt” strategically ripped. Then to complete the picture I added my favorite glasses in their bright red frames, and the half-glasses Martin wore when he read. I laughed. By the time I had put on makeup and chosen a dress, one Martin had bought me and made me promise to wear with no one but him, I felt better.

  Actually, he’d said, “Never wear that unless you’re with me, because you look so good I’d be afraid someone would try to lure you away.”

  Maybe that was the reason I was marrying Martin. He arrived at seven on the dot. I had the deed tucked

  in my purse. I was determined we wouldn’t give in to our hormones, but would actually make it to the restaurant, because I’d had this movie in my head of us swapping wedding presents in a restaurant, and I couldn’t get rid of it. I think we were supposed to wait until the rehearsal dinner, but I knew I couldn’t keep a secret from him until then, even a short three weeks.

  We went to the Carriage House, because it was the fanciest place in Lawrenceton, and our reunion was a fancy occasion.

  We ordered drinks, and then our food.

  “It’s early to do this, Roe,” Martin said and reached across the table to take my hand, “but I’ve got your gift, and I want to give it to you tonight.”

  “I have your gift, too,” I said. We laughed a little. We were both nervous about this exchange. I supposed he’d gotten me a diamond bracelet, or a new car— something costly and wonderful—but I never expected a real surprise. He reached in his coat and pulled out a legal envelope.

  He’d changed his will? Gee, how romantic. I disengaged my hand and took the envelope, trying to make my face blank so he wouldn’t read disappointment. I slid a sheaf of stiff paper out, unfolded it, and began reading, trying to force comprehension. Suddenly it came.

  I now owned the Julius house.

  I felt tears in my eyes. I hated that; my nose turns red, my eyes get bloodshot, it messes up my eye makeup. But whether I wanted to or not, my eyes began to leak down my face.

  “You know how much this means to me,” I said very quietly. “Thank you, Martin.” I picked up my huge cloth napkin and gently patted my face. Then I fished my own legal envelope out of my purse and shoved it across the table. He opened it with much the same apprehensive look I must have had. He scanned the first page and looked away, over the heads of the other diners, blinking.

  “How’d you do it?” he asked finally.

  I told him, and he laughed in a choky way when I talked about my representation of myself as a religious cultist. But he kept looking away, and I knew he would not look at me for fear of crying.

  “Let’s go,” he said suddenly, and groping for his wallet, threw some money on the table.

  We got out the door, adroitly dodging the young woman with the reservations book, who clearly wanted to ask us what was wrong. I put my arm around Martin ’s waist, and his arm snaked around me, and I went across the gravel parking lot pretty briskly for a short woman wearing heels. Of course Martin wouldn’t forgo opening my door for me, though I h
ad often reminded him I had functioning arms, and by the time he had gotten in his side, he was really breathless from trying to tamp the emotion back down inside. I turned around in the seat to face him and slid my arms around him. Sometimes I am very glad I am small. His arms went around me ferociously.

  He was crying.

  My husband-to-be handed me the keys to our house the next morning.

  "Go see it. Make some plans,” he said, knowing that was exactly what I wanted to do. I was pleased to be going by myself, and he knew that, too.

  I showered and pulled on blue jeans and a short-sleeved tee, slapped on some makeup, stuck in some earrings, tied my sneakers, and drove a mile north of town.

  The Julius house lay across open fields from Lawrenceton, the fields usually planted in cotton. As I’d pointed out to Martin, you could see my mother’s subdivision from the house—if you went to the very back of the yard, out of the screen of trees the original owner had planted around the whole property, which was about an acre.

  A family named Zinsner had built the house originally, about sixty years ago. When the second Mrs. Zinsner had been widowed, she’d sold the house for a song to the Julius family. (“No Realtor,” my mother had sniffed.)

  The Julius family had lived in the house for a few months six years ago. They had renovated it. T. C. Julius had added an apartment over the garage for Mrs. Julius’s mother. They had enrolled their daughter in the local high school.

  Then they had vanished.

  No one had seen the Juliuses since the windy fall day when Mrs. Julius’s mother had come over to the house to cook breakfast for the rest of the family, only to find them all gone.

  The wind was blowing today, too, sweeping quietly across the newly planted fields, a spring wind with a bite to it. The trustee for the estate, a Mrs. Totino, Martin had told me, had had the yard mowed from time to time and kept the house in decent shape to discourage vandals and gossip. It had been rented out occasionally.

  Today the yard was full of weeds, tall weeds, but this early in the spring, they were mostly tolerable ones like clover. The clover was blooming, yards and yards of it, bright green with bobbing white flowers. It looked cold and sweet, as though lying on it would be like lying on a chilly, fragrant bed.