Maynard’s House

by Herman Raucher

  He let the bag drop with a loud thump, deliberately. As expected, it got everybody’s attention. Martin, who had been standing at the stove rubbing his hamhock hands before it, looked over at Austin as if deciding whether or not to eat him right then and there or wait until he got a little bigger. “Drop somethin’ there, Chief?”

  “You’re some kind of funny lumberjack, ain’t ya,” said Austin, giving no true thought to the possible consequences of such a lunatic question.

  Martin was unruffled. “Funny? Lost a dollah bet on ya, Chief. Figured y’d be dead.” He helped himself to some coffee, what was left of it in the tipped pot.

  Austin, ridiculous in his blanket, continued tempting fate. “Well, you figured wrong, you tall turd.”

  Jack gulped, unsure of what Martin’s reaction might be to that. But Martin reacted rather objectively.

  “Ain’t so tall. Got a brothah what’s tallah.”

  “Is he turdier?”

  “Can’t say as he is. Fair to say we’re equally turdy. Just what do ya mean by ‘turd’?”

  “Cow flop.”

  “What I thought. No mattah.” Martin sipped and switched the subject. “What do ya think it’s worth, my returnin’ ya bag?”

  “What?”

  “Ya bag. Must be worth somethin’!”

  “A dollar.” Austin’s attitude was distinctively take-it-or-leave-it.

  “A dollah?” Martin registered anguished surprise. “Hell, if I was an official railroad porter, ya’d nevah get me to carry that bag all this way for a dollah.”

  Austin was crafty. “Are you an official railroad porter?”

  “Nope. Can’t say as I am.”

  “Then all you get is a dollar.” Austin dug into his pocket and found his money. He hoped he had a single in there, because he was pretty sure he’d be getting no change if he were to hand Martin anything larger. He found a single and slapped it onto the table. “One dollar. For services rendered.”

  “Obliged.” Martin took the dollar and, in the same motion, handed it to Jack. “Give this to Nawm, will ya? Tell him I’m paid.” He finished up his coffee and took his cue from the clock. “Got to be goin’. Twenty mile of track got to be busted out ’fore I can give old Annabel a rest. Hear that MacCauley Notch is downright impassable.” He was at the door, smiling at Austin. “See ya, Chief. And watch where ya step. Might meet a turd what’s a little smarter’n you are.”

  In moments he was gone, the depot house still trembling in his wake, old Annabel bumping and lumping her way farther north.

  Jack was picking up around the room, picking up and straightening out, resettling what the snow-pusher had knocked askew. He spoke flatly. “Shouldn’t of given him the dollah, Austin.”

  “No?”

  “No. Goin’ to ruin it for everyone else leaves a duffle bag on the tracks. Goin’ to set a bad precedent.”

  “What should I have given him?”

  “Nothin’.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Should’ve just said, ‘obliged’—like he did. Would’ve been enough.”

  “Well, he took the dollar.”

  “’Cause ya give it to him. Never would’ve asked for it.”

  “Sounded to me like he was asking for it.”

  “Nope. Martin’d never be that vulgah. He just asked ya what ya thought it was worth. You come up with the figure—and the dollah.”

  Austin was annoyed with the whole thing. “Maybe I’m just offending people because I turned up alive.”

  “Was pretty thoughtless of ya. Nobody up heah likes to lose a bet.”

  “Yeah. I’m gettin’ that message.”

  “After the train comes in, we’ll go up to ya house.”

  Austin was surprised. “You mean that same train’ll be back?”

  “Track’s busted out. Why not?”

  “But…they let me walk all this way—”

  “They didn’t let ya. They just didn’t stop ya.”

  Austin was fuming. “They said they’d be backin’ up, all the way to Millinocket.”

  “Which they did—to let the snow-pusher on. Then they all had a night’s sleep and got back onto the track.”

  “Jesus Christ, I don’t believe it. I could’ve died out there!”

  “A-yuh. That’s what they were bettin’ on.”

  Austin inhaled and exhaled deeply, to defuse himself. “People really have a lot to do up here to occupy themselves, don’t they?”

  “A-yuh. Whole area can get pretty racy on occasion.”

  “Look, I’ve got my duffle. Why do I have to wait around?”

  “Because, Austin, everyone who had a bet on ya is goin’ to be on that train.”

  “What the hell do I care?”

  “Well, there’ll have to be a habeus corpus afore any money can change hands. Seems to me ya owe that much to the people what bet on ya.”

  “I don’t owe anything to anybody in this whole world.”

  “All the more reason.” He sat down and it was apparent to Austin that, like it or not, he’d be waiting for the train from Millinocket. “Should be here in an hour or so. Care to wager on just when it’ll come in, Austin?”

  Austin sat down. “Yeah. Thutty-five cents.”

  “Too steep. No bet.”

  4

  Jack Meeker proved to be right about the train, the clattering thing rolling up in just under an hour, a half-dozen mackinawed men soon clomping about in the old depot house, breathing steam and sipping coffee out of blue-and-white speckled cups—and looking at Austin as if he were Dr. Livingstone.

  Some money changed hands, all of it good-naturedly. And some sideways questions were asked of Austin, about his health, his war experiences, and his home town, Cincinnati making about as much sense to those men as Shangri-la. But, for the most part, it was a rather congenial respite for them all, even for Austin, Guerney being the one exception—that dour man sulking in a corner, playing at being catastrophically undone by his thutty-five-cent loss, mostly because it was expected of him, he being the town “cheapo.”

  Norm appeared to be the greatest beneficiary of the betting and said as much to Austin. “Didn’t do too bad. Comes to eleven dollahs, thutty-five cents.” He riffled the singles and jangled the change.

  “I guess Guerney paid,” said Austin.

  “A-yuh. Through the nose. But he wouldn’t pay for those othah two fellas. I don’t remember any othah two fellas, do you?”

  “Jack shot ’em.”

  Norm never batted an eye. “Well, then, Guerney’s right in not payin’, as that’d be against the rules.” Norm studied Austin for a moment and then spoke quite innocently.” I don’t see my lantern anywhere. Wouldn’t happen to know where it is, would ya?”

  “I guess it’s lost.”

  “Lantern cost me five and a half dollahs.”

  “I thought you made me a present of it.”

  “I saw it more as a loan.”

  “You made eleven thirty-five on the whole deal, right?”

  “A-yuh.”

  “I’d say the five and a half was an investment, to help you win.”

  “That what you’d say?”

  “I’d also say, though I’m no expert, that you can deduct it from your income tax.”

  Norm nodded, beginning to see the wisdom of Austin’s thinking. Then he brought up a new and imposing problem. “Chocolate bar cost me twenty cents.”

  “Tough shit.”

  “A-yuh.”

  Norm smiled and strode away. And Jack Meeker, who had overheard it all, also smiled. And Austin smiled at Jack, who winked in return, as if to say, “Ya learnin’, Austin. Ya learnin’.”

  An hour or so later, the mackinawed men were back aboard their “little train that could,” heading into further spine-tingling adventures with a whistle and a toot, while Austin sat alongside Jack in the feistily churning open-topped jeep that had a snowplow slung horizontally across its front, like an elephant carrying a log.

  The sun was
sharp, the landscape a crisp mixture of blue sky, low snowy hills and ice-crowned trees as the jeep pressed along a road that didn’t happen until the snowplow carved it out.

  They drove a fair amount of time with neither of them talking, giving Austin a chance to take in the countryside with nothing in his head but a clean blackboard. There was no wind to speak of and no airstream created by the slowly grinding jeep. It was quiet. Oddly quiet. Awesomely so, the air dry and crackling, the crystalline embossed horizon catching the sun and flashbulbing it back.

  Austin knew that he was in the White Mountains and was staggered at how those mountains rose almost perpendicularly from ground level. Somewhere, way up there, he could see how the trees backed off, nothing showing but eroded topsoil that had been clawed out by ice-age glaciers—one peak in particular climbing so abruptly from the relatively flat snow that it seemed to be still on the move, still rising, extending well beyond the point where the tree growth stopped, to a spot somewhere in the blue mist where it topped off into a group of summits like a crowd of giants.

  “Mount Katahdin,” said Jack. “Indian dialect. Means greatest mountain. Goes well over five thousand feet.”

  Austin nodded and kept staring at the mountain. He had never seen one that tall and that straight up.

  “Don’t feel like talkin’, Austin?”

  “Maynard used to tell me that Maine people didn’t like to talk.”

  “Oh, we talk. We just like to make sure there’s somethin’ to talk about. My fathah used to say that state-o’-Mainers knew not to say anythin’ unless it improved the silence.”

  “Your father say that?” Austin was being patronizing. He knew it, wished he wasn’t, but couldn’t help it. He had lost so much self-esteem in so short a time in that frozen state that any little victory he could get, even a petty one, seemed worth it.

  “A-yuh.” Jack was content to talk no further.

  “What’d he say about this cold weather?”

  “Said it sometimes gets so cold, the words freeze soon as they leave ya mouth. Have to wait till spring to find out what ya were talkin’ about all wintah.”

  Austin liked that one and he relaxed, even smiled.

  “Careful there, Austin. Don’t want to go crackin’ that serious face with a smile.”

  “That was funny. What you just said was funny.”

  “Truth is, no one says much of anythin’ about the weathah, ’ceptin’ fools and strangers, or both.”

  Austin let that zinger go by. He had earned it.

  The jeep was groaning. If there was a heart under its hood it was quite likely under attack. Jack pulled a lever, and the plow raised a few inches, the jeep sighing with relief. “Have to let it win a few every now and then, otherwise it gets to complainin’. Only thing worse than a complainin’ jeep is a dead one.”

  Austin looked over the jeep’s hood at the straight-ahead. There seemed to be nothing out there other than an aimless unraveling of huddled mounds and rises and dips as in a frozen ocean. “How much farther is the house?”

  “Soon as we run out of telephone poles and electric wires it’ll show itself.”

  “It’s cold.”

  “My fathah used to say we only had two seasons. Nine months of wintah and three months of damned poor sleddin’.”

  “Your father say that too?”

  “Actually, ’twer my grandfathah.”

  “Whole family was pretty big on that folksy…stuff.” Austin had wanted to say “crap,” but had censored himself.

  “A-yuh. We been called droll.”

  The word escaped Austin. He hadn’t intended that it be heard. “Sheeeet.”

  “No. Droll. But only if we feel folks are interested in hearin’ what we have to talk about.”

  “And how often is that?”

  “’Bout every othah week.”

  “Regular?”

  “Well…we have been known to skip a week from time to time.”

  Austin knew not to mess with the man any further. He had obviously been funnin’ people for years and was not of a mind to suddenly start treating Austin any differently.

  The jeep hit a hidden furrow and quivered bumpily, causing Austin to grab his duffle bag to keep it from flying over the side. It also caused him to bite his tongue, which he very quickly hung out of his mouth like a necktie so that it could lap up some of the pain-killing cold air. “Na mu of a roe, is it?”

  “How’s that, Austin?”

  Austin drew his tongue back in. “Not much of a road, is it?”

  “All the road we got. Belongs to the Great Northern Paper Company. They let people use it free of charge so we don’t send ’em too many letters of complaint.”

  “And Maynard grew potatoes in this?”

  “Nothin’ grows around here. Frost in every month and snow sometimes in July and August. No—Maynard picked in Aroostook County. Near Canada. That’d be about sixty miles north of heah.”

  “How could anything be north of here?”

  “Can be done. It’s an area ’bout as big as Massachusetts. Fine, fertile potato land. Somethin’ happens with the wind and rivers to make the soil rich. In 1925 over three thousand potato farmers paid off their mortgages with what they grew in that one year.”

  “Your father tell you that?”

  “A-yuh. He was one of ’em. Maynard, I think, worked around the Aroostook River. Did pretty well. Farmers up there send potatoes as far south as Florida and west as Ohio.”

  “You sound like you’re tryin’ to sell me real estate.”

  “None left to buy, ’ceptin’ if ya go due west of here. Lots of real estate there, but it’s all wilderness. Go in there and ya goin’ into the last unexplored area of the United States.”

  “Come on—people go in there.”

  “A-yuh. But they don’t always come out. Nothin’ grows in there but trees, and they’re so hard to get out it just ain’t worth the goin’ in.”

  “There have to be some people.”

  “Oh, ya might find some life in there. Caretakers. Hermits. Hunters. Indians. People escaped from institutions. Bears. Couple birds. Three maybe.”

  “Indians?”

  “Not the kind ya thinkin’ of. Not with feathahs. Furs.”

  “And nobody else goes in there?”

  “Canoe trippers. Summah months they swarm like black flies, up to the Allagash River region. Campsites stretch all the way into New Brunswick. Lose a few of ’em to the rivers every now and then—but they keep comin’.”

  “You mean…they drown?”

  “Well, they don’t come up.”

  Austin let the subject drop and the jeep plow on, a wind swirling up, prompting him to lower himself deeper into his parka. “Hey, Jack, where does this road end?”

  “Never really ends. Splits off and runs south to Elephant Mountain and north to Allagash country.”

  “Listen, not to be disrespectful, but if I’m goin’ to live up here I’m goin’ to have to get a few straight answers. I mean, no more of this quaintsy-folksy stuff.”

  “Ya nevah said anythin’ about livin’ up here, Austin.”

  Austin thought on that. Jack was right. He had never said it because it had never occurred to him—until just then, the wind seeming to whip the idea into his head. And he felt his fingers twitching, in his gloves, in his pockets, and a sweat building under his clothing; and a twinge of fear rollicking through his stomach. “Well—it’s a possibility. For a while. Couple days, I don’t know. There’s nothing pressing in my life, calling me back. I mean, I didn’t exactly leave my heart in Cincinnati.”

  “Road’ll run ya up to Ripagenus Dam, which is about five miles west of Baxter State Park. Ya house’ll be a left turn from here, northern shore of Nahmiakanta Lake.”

  “Jesus Christ…” Austin sank even deeper into his parka, his upper lip hanging over his collar.

  “Indian names, Austin. ’Most everythin’ up here has an Indian name. ’Course, later, when the English came, they spent a lot
of time namin’ things, too. Lakes, mountains, ponds. In the wintah it was about all any of ’em had to do—namin’ things. French did it some, too. ’Bout the only names we don’t have up here is Chinese and Russian, and maybe a little bit of Hawaiian. And a smatterin’ of Hebrew.”

  “Any other houses around?”

  “Might be a couple. Early townsfolk built homes close together for mutual aid. But, where you are, houses’ll be furthah apart. Wouldn’t go lookin’ for none if I were you. And, if ya were to find any, ya wouldn’t want to count on anyone bein’ in ’em. From what I remembah, Maynard liked it that way. Liked to be by himself in the wintah. Hibernated. Bearlike in that respect, Maynard.”

  Jack turned the jeep, against its will, to the left, where it groped and pawed crankily before sniffing its way onto an unseen road, after which it moved along more obediently, though oil fumes sifted up from between its floor struts as if to deliberately assault its riders’ noses. It was not a vehicle that Austin particularly trusted. Rather, it was more akin to an attack dog—loyal for as long as you kept it in line; demonic should you turn your back on it or forget to give it water. Certainly it was not something anyone would care to casually cross with a Chevrolet Impala.

  Jack called out invisible sites like a tour guide. Austin couldn’t see them, because there was nothing to see, but Jack called them out all the same. “Chesuncook Pond. Pym Pond. Buck Pond. Bean Pond.” At Bean Pond the ride got a little better, but not by much.

  “Excuse me for asking, but are we still on the road?”

  “More or less. We just picked up the old Appalachian Trail, Austin.”

  “Yeah—I didn’t think it was the new one.”

  “Runs from Mount Katahdin to Mount Springer—in Georgia. ’Bout two thousand miles. Lean-to shelters all along the way, ’bout one day’s hiking time apart. ’Course, that’s in the summah. Wintah might take ya longer.”

  Metal markers periodically bore out what Jack had said. APPALACHIAN TRAIL—MAINE TO GEORGIA. And large wooden signs indicated the distances in miles from place to place. But all signs, metal and wooden, quickly disappeared when the trail swung obliquely to the right—the jeep, rather arbitrarily, juggling on more or less straight ahead.