Horsekeeping

by Roxanne Bok

  I decided to wake Dad. He was barely coherent having taken a sleeping pill. But he and Mom eventually crept downstairs and suggested we water the roof, at least where we could reach. He wrangled the not-quite-long-enough garden hose while I jogged back to check on things at Ursula’s. Blackened firefighters, shed of their suffocating suits, lay sweating and exhausted on tarps absorbing oxygen administered by EMTs. They were guarded from overexertion by clearly defined rules of engagement, and I witnessed one firefighter debating his minder for the nod to get back to work.

  Chip was one forced to rest. Two even slept, fatigue trumping adrenaline. The rest, taking turns, ringed the structure on the ground and angled high on wedged ladders, all aiming hoses into windows toward sucking flames; thus tiered, these slick, black mermen spewed water to arc a grotesque fountain, their yellow chest reflectors glinting light from the flying droplets. For all that, I was witnessing a lost cause. Already the roof had burned away, and the flames controlled every inch of what had been a red-sided, white-trimmed nest of domesticity woven through with memories—most recently two lives lived, celebrated and treasured. I mourned how quickly a life-long collection of comfort, a home as opposed to a house, could, literally, go up in smoke: the photo of Ursula’s husband, Glen, by the pond with the dogs jumping up to a treat he held aloft; crumbling letters and yellowed postcards in collapsing shoe-boxes; a favorite, well-seasoned cast-iron skillet; stashed addresses of old friends; a moth-sealed, creamy lace wedding dress. I imagined Ursula’s future years of suddenly remembering, at odd times spurred by a casual sight, sound or smell, another precious keepsake she once had owned and had forgotten about until that moment, now permanently gone: a pansy-embroidered handkerchief of her mother’s, the bin of Glen’s old wristwatches and their sprung springs, the cockeyed door-frame in the pantry, the sweet lilac bush that crowded the porch rocker. Then I heard some firefighters shout that they had run out of water.

  Only townspeople housed near the village center drink from centralized water and empty into sewers. The rest of us dig wells and install septic systems. Ursula’s property borders a small pond filled periodically by runoff heading to the Housatonic River from the higher hills in the hundreds of wooded acres behind. Being summer, the pond and its feeder streams were bone dry. My indoor swimming pool held potential, but the barn that held it—situated up the hill in the woods, aesthetically out of sight—was deemed inaccessible. How can they be out of water, I wondered? There was no shortage of equipment or companies responding. Indeed, the newspaper would cite that thirteen fire stations helped out, one of the largest responses in the town’s history. But there is rarely enough trucked-in water for thirsty fires like these. Several trucks eventually headed half a mile down the road to Dutcher’s bridge where eighteenth-century pioneer Dutcher ferried travelers across the Housatonic. Now, under the overly constructed concrete and steel span that encourages speed and accidents, the firemen found a suitably inclined bank allowing the tanks to suck up river water.

  I checked on Ursula again.

  “Should we move you to my house, Ursula? You can’t be too comfortable in that chair.” I looked to the EMTs for guidance.

  “That’s not a bad idea,” she said, strangely chipper. “There’s not much left to see here.”

  Jacquie nodded her approval.

  “Do you think you can make it up our hill?”

  “Of course; I’m not that old, yet.”

  Slowly we guided her bent form along the road, up the gravel drive and through my kitchen door. The slamming screen snapped the quiet while I flipped the lights. Ursula practically disappeared in the comfy swivel rocker and sipped some water. My parents gathered and we listened to her stories about her abusive parents, her Lyme disease and her distrust of all politicians local and federal. She appreciated an audience. Her lighthearted excitement disconcerted, but we attributed it to shock. George, who later told us he had gotten Ursula and the dogs out of the house—and Ursula more than once since she had to collect her handbag first, her hat second, and tried to go to the bathroom, third—was having trouble breathing and had been whisked away to Sharon Hospital for treatment. At 3:30 a.m. my dad, who was not in the best of health, went back to bed. I sent Mom with him and called the hospital.

  “George, how are you?”

  “I’m okay (pause) but my lungs (pause) hurt (pause) bad,” he wheezed through oxygen apparatus.

  “Ursula is with me and we’re worried about you. Do you need anything?”

  “No but (pause) I might (pause) need a (pause) ride home.”

  “Sure George. You just call me when they say you’re ready to go. But don’t rush it; let them make sure you’re okay.”

  I remembered last summer George retrieved me from the same hospital after my bike accident. After several hours of waiting in the ER, and several more having gravel dug out of my left palm and my road rash scrubbed with a plastic nail brush, I felt eternally grateful when he arrived five minutes after I called him, and it is at least a twenty minute ride. George had been a loyal caretaker for our property for five years. Living next door meant he was always around in an emergency, and he proved able at most tasks, large and small. His specialty being the grass, he is just as nutty as my husband about grooming it to putting green quality, a challenge given that I vigilantly guard against fertilizers and pesticides. Thick, deeply rooted grass that crowds out weeds is his mantra, and he takes great pride in recounting how many passersby stop to inquire after his secret recipe. He is also happy to do anything, from cleaning and maintaining our two car-seated, kid food-crumbed autos, to clearing our wooded walking trails, to keeping our birdlife singing with full feeders and Crisco suet cocktails, to just being around to police the revolving wheel of workmen needed to keep our old house functioning. A quirky combination of odd and domestic, he can wrap a present better than a Macy’s pro (in desperation I had enlisted him several Christmas Eves), and he went to the trouble of ordering a fade-resistant Old Glory specially run up the Capitol’s flag pole for Elliot’s eighth birthday.

  He talks a blue streak however, to all comers, and I debate whether he has a tendency to spin yarns or is just destined, Forest Gump-style, to have so many crazy things happen to him. Some people think him a bit off, even untrustworthy, but then many people are eccentric, both in the country and the city. I am convinced he pegs us the oddballs, and I can’t argue: why would anyone have such labor intensive infrastructure and not live in it regularly? And care so much about a smudgy car windshield or the spring-fattened birds going hungry during the week when we are not even there? A fraught, oft-bemused relationship between proprietor and caretaker is a strong current and we go with the flow: we are too lazy to look for someone with a stellar resume, so we give ours the benefit of doubt as well as keep our distance, maintain a sharp eye, occasionally wonder if we’re being taken to the cleaners, and accept him with a grain of salt. If George interrupts our Saturday breakfasts with a long, unbelievable story or a gossipy complaint about Ursula, well that’s the price we’ll pay for a house that works and grounds that wow us.

  I figured the hospital would keep George for the night, but he sounded in good hands, and I relayed this bit of good news to Ursula. Then I ran back to her house for a report on the firefighting. No change. When I returned, she was gone. What the hell? A quick search found her in the guest room, asleep on the bed. Apparently she knew her way around the house and her back hurt, so she helped herself. I saw her shepherd’s crook of a fragile body curled over on its side, with her sparse grey locks threading from her grimy boater. In her sleep her hands gripped her cane and pocketbook, likely her only remaining possessions. Her ancient, stuffed wallet was open; cards, cash and bits of cracked, stained paper escaped across the blue damask coverlet. She had been searching for the name of her nutritionist, “the only one willing to help with her Lyme disease,” though George claimed she refused the antibiotics prescribed by her succession of doctors. Crotchety, stubborn and sometimes mean-spirited,
nevertheless my heart went out to her. Not fair, I thought, and I wondered what would become of her.

  By weird coincidence, Ursula’s great-nephew from Illinois arrived the day before the fire for his annual visit. Over the years, Ross had urged Ursula to move in with him and his family, but she would not budge. The man’s a saint for begging. During the blaze, based on Ursula’s vague description of a place called “‘Lantern’ something or other” we tracked him down at a motel in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, but it took him over an hour to arrive, what with driving twenty miles and walking one more in the dark around the trucks and equipment that blocked the road. A cued ghost on the stroke of 4:00 a.m., he appeared just in time to disentangle Ursula from a well-meaning but inept facilitator to the homeless, supposedly connected with the Red Cross.

  Waking her, Red Cross man had said: “Ursula, it’s not too early to begin thinking of where you’ll go in the next chapter of your life.”

  “What do you mean?” Ursula leveled him a squint that made me glad she didn’t have her rifle.

  “Have you thought about assisted liv–”

  “I will NOT go to any of those places,” Ursula snapped, propped on her elbow, shaking her fist. “They try to kill you in there, and the food is just horrible. I’m never going back there!” She gathered her handbag’s contents in preparation for flight.

  “But you need someone to take care of you. I know how these things go. I had a fire once myself, and I learned valuable life lessons. You’ve lost everything. You can’t begin to know what’s involved here.”

  “I can take care of myself! I have done so for sixty years. I told you, I’m never going to a home. I won’t do it. I’d rather die.” She reached for her stick to beat the idea out of him. “Leave me alone!”

  At first I stayed mum because what do I know about assisting in a trauma? But this was ridiculous.

  “Maybe she doesn’t have to make a life plan while her house is still ablaze. And, it’s four o’clock in the morning,” I said.

  I had heard from George that Ursula was hardly destitute: apparently she was the kind of old lady that saves used twine but has files full of AT&T stock certificates issued decades ago. When Ross arrived, the mysterious trauma junkie had already exited, but not without reiterating to me, on my own dark doorstep, his plan for Ursula and his own life’s “revelations.” Later I found out that Jacquie was our local Red Cross affiliate, and she had never heard of this mystery guest. Who did I have in my house: an insomniac nut with a police radio and a compulsion to meddle? Strange things do go bump in the night.

  I gave Ross and Ursula some privacy at the kitchen table, but resisted the lure of bed. I wandered the halls aimlessly—a strange feeling, not knowing where to put myself in my own home. Marie reappeared to check in and confirmed the obvious: Bird Bottom would be a total loss. Helpless, we bandied platitudes about two hundred and fifty years of history down the drain and how the important thing was that everyone escaped safely. We expressed optimism about the cats, notoriously wily survivors.

  Pat the fire marshal arrived. He gently questioned Ursula and shifted to a lengthy discussion with Ross. By the time Ross escorted Ursula through my front door to go back to his motel, dull light inched across the horizon. My kids never heard a thing. This was good and bad—they would be well rested, but raring to go in about forty-five minutes. It was 5:15 a.m.

  I climbed into bed, my body so grateful to be horizontal. I dialed Scott knowing he’d be rising for his gym workout back in NYC. I was done-in but wound up: like a kid with a secret to spill and punch-drunk with exhausted excitement. Scott answered, a little anxious at the early call.

  “Hello?”

  “You won’t believe what happened,” I said with disingenuous calm. “Ursula’s house burned down.”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “Totally demolished, and it’s still burning.”

  I satisfied his questions, as best as I was able, realizing the difficulty of his grasping such a changed landscape in the ten hours since he had driven off. I fell lightly asleep for half an hour until my kids woke me for breakfast and camp. As usual. Just another day. Except that a burned-out bonfire smell of smoke hung thick in the humid air. The road remained closed off throughout the day, following firefighting stakeout procedures against flare-ups. Despite all that dousing water, the site burned for another twelve hours and smoldered for two days more.

  I wandered my eight acres of yard examining notepad-sized, carbon-black pieces of burnt paper. Mostly book pages, the high heat char-coaled them such that I could still read the even blacker words, like they were printed from the devil’s own underworld press. Ursula curated an important, personal library of old books at Bird Bottom, mostly about local history and the genealogy she studied. Overnight these phoenixed treasures floated down, summer leaves of incinerated stories across our green grass and away into the woods. I knelt to collect them, soiling my fingers, but soon gave up, allowing the trees to reclaim their kind’s earlier sacrifices. I kicked aside foil wine caps and singed labels from kitchen staples, Pillsbury and Bisquick. Smoke still billowed into the sky.

  The kids took the news with vague interest. Healthily self-absorbed they went about their morning routines. I returned from camp drop-offs and was met at my door by our housekeeper Maria.

  “George is pacing around outside,” she said. “He looks terrible. I wasn’t sure what to do.”

  We found him in the driveway, a wreck: his face was flushed, creased and drawn all at once, and his eyes receded red and watery. In a croaking whisper that grated my ears, he cried through his story.

  “George, what are you doing here? I thought you were in the hospital.”

  “I walked. I’m looking for my car.”

  Ross had taken Ursula to his motel in George’s car since his was inaccessibly down the closed road. The alternate route spared Ursula a last view of her burning house. She never did return, refusing adamantly even to scavenge important keepsakes. In my mind’s eye she looked even more desiccated, almost transparent against the backdrop of a motel room. With all physical evidence of her life erased, she floated, an unan-chored ghost. George, however, stood solid and desperate.

  “You walked? From where?”

  “The hospital.”

  “What? Why didn’t you call me? I told you I’d come get you!”

  The hospital is at least fifteen miles away. I was also shocked they would let him leave in the condition he appeared to be in.

  “I only have hundred dollar bills. They wouldn’t give me change and wouldn’t let me use the phone,” he whimpered.

  “Did they release you? Are you okay?

  Silence.

  I intuited he had snuck out.

  “They were so mean in there. So I walked home in my bare feet and shorts.”

  He was still crying, and his voice deteriorated. But he needed to talk. “You walked bare-footed?”

  Incredulous, Maria and I looked at each other and down at his feet, in shoes.

  “I got these from the garage just now. . . . But I couldn’t believe it. No one would pick me up,” he complained, outraged. “I tried to get a cup of coffee in the gas station, but they locked the door and wouldn’t let me in.”

  George was in shock and paranoid to boot. So I tried a little humor with the truth.

  “George, no offense, but you look like a mass murderer even now. With no shoes or shirt, how could they guess you were a victim of a fire? You look like you’ve been on a three-day bender.”

  He laughed through his tears.

  “I wouldn’t have picked you up, and I know you.”

  He laughed a little harder and coughed.

  “Why don’t you come in and have something to eat. And I don’t think smoking is a good idea.”

  We all looked at the lit cigarette he cupped in his hand. He had told me he quit last year. I witnessed him get heavier and then thinner again, so I figured he had relapsed.

  “No, no, I
can’t eat, and I have to go next door to see what’s happening.”

  “Are you sure? Do you need some money?

  “I got plenty of money.” He pulled out a stack of hundred dollar bills.

  “Well, let me give you something smaller, so you can get a cup of coffee when you want one.”

  He took my proffered twenties with gratitude. “I lost all my money in the fire. This is all I was able to grab.”

  “What do you mean? Don’t you keep your money in the bank?” I asked with the sinking feeling that he would be exactly the person to stash cash around the house.

  “I used to hide some money in my bedroom, but they say not to keep it there, so I had most of it in the hallway. The fire was bad there.” He started to cry again.

  There was nothing to say.

  We stared at the ground.

  He shuffled down the road.

  It was a pearl of a day with the same cornflower blue cloudless sky that back-dropped the Twin Towers assault: oblivious nature rubbing its overbearing resilience into the wounds of our puny disasters, or so it seemed. But, like an astringent treatment in the midst of tragedy, quotidian life ticked on, then and now. All morning that 11th day I watched the towers burn from our uptown, thirty-seventh floor apartment. At mid-day my dog still needed to be walked despite tragedy. As Velvet and I headed south on 1st Avenue, our regular route, the day still shone brilliantly, and my dog sniffed the same tree-protecting pachysandra beds, peeling hydrants and rusted signposts, and peed and shat on the curb. “Go hurry up, Velvet, go hurry up,” I urged as usual. Like every other day, I collected her waste in a blue plastic bag and tossed it in the nearest trash bin.

  “Good girl, Velvie, good girl.”

  If not for the flow of dusty, dazed people shuffling almost exclusively north positioning me against the current like a spawning salmon and the black grey smoke ballooning eastward across the distant southern skyline, I would simply have taken the day for granted: a lovely late summer boon. This beautiful day, July 11th, Ursula’s home, and all she had, was gone, but my horse was on his way nonetheless.