Castle: A Novel

by J. Robert Lennon

  Even from my vantage point on the driver’s side, it was obvious that the plot of land began, in fact, on the right. Jennifer was holding the map upside down. I told her so, and she corrected her grip with a small grunt of acknowledgment. Clearly she was not the type to accept others’ authority with ease.

  The road took on a more steady, if slight, grade now; the car began to climb. The land was heavily wooded, and unremarkable in every way. Yet the sight of it filled me with excitement and foreboding. I felt powerfully the rightness of the decision I had made to return here, and I gripped the steering wheel harder.

  We rose gradually on the undulating pavement, and eventually came to a crossroads, the corner of LYSSAand PHOEBUS. There was a clearing here, and a white house, large and clapboarded, with drooping eaves. Saplings grew all around it, right up against the foundation. Beyond it the road sloped away, and in the far distance, outside the influence of the thick gray cloudbank that covered us, I could make out the glimmer of a lake. I drew to a stop on the shoulder.

  “That’s the house,” Jennifer said. “Like I said, it needs work. On the other side of the street is Fordham County, and that’s Wanona Lake way down there.”

  “It’s a beautiful view,” I said.

  “Yeah, I guess it is,” she replied, without enthusiasm.

  We turned right and continued our journey around the property. From fallow spots along Phoebus Road it was possible, in places, to see over the trees and into the interior of the plot: gentle green swells of forest draining toward the village. Though the odometer indicated that we had covered very little distance, the journey seemed to be taking quite some time; I gave the car a bit more gas. Eventually we reached a road called Nemesis and turned right onto it.

  “The roads have unusual names,” I said.

  She spoke with rote weariness. “The men who divided up the county named the roads after Greek gods,” she said. “They had this idea it was supposed to be some enlightened, you know, what do you call it.”

  “Utopia?”

  “Right.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  She shrugged. “Well, it didn’t pan out, anyway.”

  A little while later the road ran over a culvert; a corrugated pipe jutted out on either side, admitting a small creek. “Okay,” Jennifer said, “this corner isn’t part of the property. The creek cuts it off.” A few moments later we came to Minerva Road and turned right yet again. We crossed over the creek a second time, and soon we were back to Phoebus. We retraced our route, returned to the upper corner of the land, and parked on the shoulder to take a closer look at the house.

  The windows were cracked and dirty, and on the door hung a NO TRESPASSING sign. The yard bore evidence of once having been entirely covered with coarse gravel, through which rangy weeds now grew. We stepped onto a rickety wooden stoop, and Jennifer fumbled through a ring of keys. In a moment, the door opened with a creak, and we stepped inside.

  I was pleasantly surprised at how nicely the interior had been preserved. The walls were filthy, but the lath was intact, and the wide floorboards were tight and true, if scratched. Bare wires trailed out of ragged holes in the ceiling. Jennifer led me in silence from room to room. We walked slowly, gently, as if in an effort not to disturb someone or something that lived here—but of course there was nothing. The house was empty and forgotten.

  The stairs creaked as we climbed to the second floor. There were not many rooms, but they were large and high-ceilinged, and the master bedroom was fully twenty feet square, with a bank of tall windows that, if cleaned and reglazed, would doubtless appear quite beautiful. The view north and east was spectacular.

  “That would be the whole property, there,” Jennifer said, pointing. The land sloped gently away from us, and the village of Gerrysburg was visible in the distance through the dusty windows. But what drew the eye was a feature in the very center of the woods: a large gray outcropping of bare rock that jutted out from the carpet of trees. I made a quick judgment of the distance and determined that it had to be at least a hundred and twenty feet tall, if not more.

  The sight of the rock moved and disturbed me. Its incongruousness here, the way it interrupted the gentle curve of the land, seemed like some kind of challenge or rebuke. It appeared much the way I imagined a great whale might, breaking the surface of a calm sea to draw a mighty breath; and like a whale, its imposing nature enticed the viewer to conquer and claim it. I stroked my chin, to indicate to Jennifer that I was deep in thought. “Tell me about that rock,” I said.

  “I suppose a glacier left it,” she replied, her voice echoing flatly in the empty room. Her arms were crossed and she hugged herself in the damp cold.

  “It’s possible to reach it through the woods, I’d imagine.”

  She let out a snort of laughter. “If you buy the place, you can do whatever you want,” she said. “I’m sure you could get there, it can’t be more than half a mile.”

  I nodded, as though considering. But I had seen enough. I turned to Jennifer. Her eyes widened, and the corner of her mouth twitched. I said, “I’ll take it.”

  She scowled, blinking. “What, this place?”

  “Yes,” I laughed. “I’ll take it. The price seems reasonable to me.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No, I’m not. It’s exactly what I’ve been looking for.”

  She stared at me, silently, seriously, judging. “Believe you me,” she said. “I would be totally happy to sell you it. But I just have to know if you have any idea what you’re doing.”

  “There’s no need to worry about me,” I said with a smile.

  She seemed to soften, her features relaxing, her arms falling to her sides. She sighed. “Well, okay, whatever then. You can still change your mind. Come on back to the office and let’s get started.”

  “Wonderful,” I said, and for a moment, I felt as though I should shake the agent’s hand, or engage her in a friendly embrace, something to commemorate the occasion. And perhaps sensing this, she quickly moved into the hallway ahead of me, and down the stairs to the door.

  I would spend most of the next month working on the property. At first I was frustrated, when it became clear that it would be at least a week until I actually owned the house and land: lawyers would have to be consulted, meetings arranged. I left it all to Jennifer, however, and set to work anyway. Who could complain? My first act was to call the power company to have them turn the electricity on. But the power lines, having long ago fallen into disuse, would prove to be damaged, and it would take some time to repair them. No matter: I drove into Milan, where there was a large chain hardware store, and bought a generator. I also bought lumber, sawhorses, a circular saw, a sander, screws and nails, a hammer, and a rechargeable drill. Almost at random, I chose several colors of interior and exterior paint, and sufficient cleaning supplies to last me a year. At a gas station, I filled the tank of my SUV, and two five-gallon cans as well. I checked into a motel, paid two weeks in advance, and drove to the house to begin work.

  It would please me to be able to say that I felt, upon my return to the house, a reprise of the confidence and enthusiasm that had braced me the previous day, when I announced to Jennifer that I wished to buy it. In fact, the sight of the place filled me, at first blush, with weariness and dread. Of course, up until this moment, the house was all potential—its glorious restoration existed only in my imagination. To view it now merely brought to mind the toil and frustration I might endure while renovating it. But there was something more contributing to my sense of unease: the house appeared different. The flaking paint revealed itself to actually be peeling, as though from an underlying dampness and rot—an impression strengthened by the moldy odor emanating from the house’s interior. The roof seemed sunken somewhat, perhaps the product of weak, decaying beams. And, most disconcertingly, the house’s trim lines now gave the faint impression of crookedness. I walked slowly around the place, stepping carefully over some broken cinder blocks and fallen
branches, assessing the angles. Was it listing to the north? Or leaning to the west? Its lopsidedness seemed to change character depending upon my vantage point. In the end, breathing clouds into the cold air, I ran to my SUV, pulled a spirit level from my toolbox, and took some measurements. To my mingled relief and dismay, and in spite of my clear impressions, the house stood true. With a shrug, then, I set to work, determined to put all bad feelings behind me.

  My first task was to prop up the sagging porch and repair the front stoop. This took me all of the first afternoon and evening. I am a highly organized and energetic person and I am accustomed to getting things accomplished quickly and thoroughly—but I must have fallen out of practice, because I made several mistakes, including an incorrect measurement and an uneven cut. Nevertheless, by nightfall I had completed my work on the porch and stoop, and was able to walk into the darkened house as if it were already my home.

  That night, in my motel room in Milan, I watched television until I fell asleep. I woke up at three o’clock with every muscle in my body tensed, full of anxiety about the work ahead of me, and about the inevitable delays and obstructions that would hinder me from completing it. I had learned, however, to calm my mind and body using various relaxation techniques, and within the hour I had gotten back to sleep. I woke for good at six, showered and dressed, and returned to work on the house.

  All that second day I made repairs to the roof. I had the hardware store deliver a telescoping ladder, several boxes of hot-dipped galvanized nails, and a few bales of asphalt shingle squares. I was lucky: the present roof was thin and only one layer deep, and I was able to lay my new shingles right on top. It was possible to spike the ladder into the ground at a gentle enough angle so that I could push several squares in front of me at a time, and thus make great progress without assistance. By noon I had covered half of one side, plus a gable. I also discovered that my initial impression of the roof—that it was sunken in places—was in fact erroneous. The roof was flat, and the underlying support beams strong.

  The sun was bright that day, and the air moist, and I drank a bottle of water while gazing out at the monumental stone in the middle of the woods. As I watched, a hawk, a distant speck, glided across the land and alighted on the leading edge of the rock, as if to survey his domain. I felt a kinship with the bird, and was filled with a sense of renewed pleasure and purpose.

  By the middle of the fourth day, I had completed the shingles and added flashing to the chimney and vent pipes. Then I started in on the clapboards. The years of dirt and peeling paint came off easily with the sander, and I was able to complete the painting prep work by the following morning. Indeed, I was beginning to feel as though the work was going my way, that I had at last taken control of the house. It was at this point that I clumsily knocked over a can of red paint that I had bought for the window and door trim; somehow the lid came loose—an irresponsible paint-mixing clerk at the hardware store was to blame, no doubt—and the paint spilled across the newly rebuilt porch and down the front steps. I began to clean it up, but soon realized that there was no point in wasting my cleaning supplies on an essentially impossible job. I decided to just leave it as it was, until I could decide on a color for the porch. However, the spilled paint left the strong, if irrational, impression that the house was drooling blood through its open mouth, like a road-killed animal. In the end, I simply painted the entire porch red.

  On the afternoon of the fifth day, Jennifer stopped by to tell me that the sale would proceed on Monday, just three days away. She had failed to find me at the motel, and a sixth sense had told her I would be here. She emerged, in fact, from her car with a sly smirk, as though she harbored some kind of secret; but then she looked around the tool-strewn yard, and her expression was supplanted by one of astonishment. She gave me the good news, then asked, “Did you… put on a new roof?”

  “And I repaired the porch. And painted it.”

  She frowned as she said, “But Eric… you don’t own it yet.”

  I laughed. “In my line of work,” I said, “you do what has to be done, and you do it as soon as you can.”

  “What line of work is that?” she wanted to know.

  “Infrastructure and information,” I answered.

  She gazed at me quizzically, as if this weren’t the answer she’d been expecting. “Okay… ,” she said. “And you got in how?”

  “Weak lock,” I replied. “And tell me something. You might have phoned me. Why come all the way out here just to give me this news?”

  Jennifer opened, then closed, her mouth, and blushed deeply. “Slow day,” was her answer, and then she left me to my work.

  By Monday, I had painted the house, and I reported to the closing meeting with my body and clothes flecked with dots of pale yellow—my choice for the clapboards. There was no room at the real estate agency, so the meeting was held in the quiet study area of the public library. There sat Jennifer, at a small study table, across from another real estate agent and an attorney, both representing the state office responsible for public lands. I was the only participant not wearing a suit, a fact that filled me with a special pride. I signed where I was told to sign, and handed out checks, drawn on the account I had opened just the other day at the only bank in Gerrysburg. When it was over, I shook hands with everyone, accepted the thick folder of papers that certified my ownership of the land, and walked to my car, breathing in the crisp spring air. For the first time since I arrived, dark clouds were massing on the horizon, and the breeze carried the metallic tang of an impending storm.

  As I prepared to climb in and leave, I heard a voice: Jennifer’s. She had jogged up behind me, her high heels clicking and scraping against the sidewalk. I turned and regarded her broad smiling face, free of any of the doubt or mistrust it had harbored just a week before.

  “So!” she said, trying to catch her breath.

  “Yes?”

  The real estate agent shrugged. “Oh, nothing—it’s just that it’s been a real interesting week. Everyone’s curious, you know. That’s a big plot of land.”

  I took a glance at my watch. “It certainly is,” I said.

  A brief silence opened up between us. “Okay, well,” she stammered. “I guess… you know, good luck doing whatever it is you came back to do. And, you know, thanks.”

  “For what?” I asked her, choosing to ignore her prying non-question.

  She shrugged again, this time cocking her head flirtatiously to one side. “For one thing, I get a nice commission from this. You made my month!”

  I felt the edges of my mouth begin to curl. “Well, I’m glad I could fill your pocketbook,” I said.

  She straightened, frowning. “Well, that’s not the only reason I—” She stopped, and bit her lip.

  “You were saying?”

  “Nothing,” she said.

  I waved her away with one hand, and used the other to open the door of my car. “I think I understand,” I said. “And I’m flattered. But I’d prefer it if we kept things between us on a professional level.”

  She appeared shocked. “You what?”

  “Jennifer,” I said. “I know we’ve had some pleasant moments together. But I’m just not interested in any kind of—”

  Her little hands curled into fists now, and her forehead creased. “Hey, look here, mister! What kind of girl do you think I am?”

  I climbed up into my seat. “Forget it, sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “No, you shouldn’t have!” She was truly angry now, her face crumpled into a mass of pink flesh. “You really should have just left it alone!”

  With a grim smile, I shut the door and started the engine. Jennifer took a step back, her mouth open in astonished disgust. She was shaking her head in mock disbelief as I pulled away. I was given, in that awkward moment, to wonder what had happened in this town to cause its inhabitants to behave so peculiarly around me. Given Jeremy Pernice’s coldness, and Jennifer’s absurd antics, I felt as though some strange malais
e had gripped Gerrysburg in my absence, rendering all its denizens nervous and impolite.

  Back on the road, I calmed my racing heart with thoughts of the work ahead. There was much to be done at what had at last become my house, and soon, Jennifer the real estate agent had ceased, once and for all, to trouble my mind.

  TWO

  That Monday, when I arrived back at the house after closing, I found that the power had been turned on. I walked through the empty rooms, pressing the wall switches, and to my surprise found that half the ancient light bulbs still lit. I tested each of the outlets by plugging in a high-intensity halogen clip lamp I had bought, and most of them worked, as well. It occurred to me that the remaining outlets might also be operational, that perhaps the problem was a blown fuse, and so I strolled around the place, looking for the cellar door.

  I found it in the kitchen, next to a chipped, nineteen-fifties vintage refrigerator that appeared to be broken. The door was strange, half-painted from the top down, as if someone had been interrupted during a renovation. It had a ten-inch-square hole cut into one lower corner, as if to allow the passage of a cat, and sat crookedly in the frame. It opened with a scrape and creak to reveal a primitive wooden staircase leading down into a blackness that stank of mold. The light switch just inside the door had no effect, and I wondered if perhaps it was such a good idea to tramp down these rickety old steps in the dark, and fool around with an electrical system that might well present a grave danger to my personal safety. After a moment’s thought, I shut the door, or at any rate tried to—now that I had loosed it from its frame, it would no longer fully close. Worse, gravity caused it to fall open when I released the knob. Such a danger was unacceptable: it was all too easy to imagine myself stumbling on the threshold, falling down the stairs, and lying helplessly on the cold floor. I might end up sprawled there, immobilized by broken bones, as rats and insects crawled across my curdling flesh. I could starve to death there, and never be found…