The Root Cellar - Part V
A novella.
The next morning, Skip and I are on the deck, basking in a cloud of soft, eye-opening mist from the waterwheel. His nose is poked between the slats below the railing. Mine poked in a cup of coffee. We’re watching an otter splash on the surface of the sunlit river down below, backstroking its way from one side to the other. On the far bank above the cliff, the leaves on the hickory trees are fluttering in the breeze like jumbo yellow butterflies trying to escape into the blue above.
I could get used to waking up this way.
Turned out nothing out of the ordinary happened between Rick and I. Just two slightly snockered, middle-aged orphans who slept the sleep of death—in separate beds—after tossing two empty wine bottles in the recycle.
Rick left an envelope marked “estimate” on the café table, along with a brass key and note:
Hope we didn’t wake you—help yourself to whatever.
There’s no house alarm. Just lock up when you come and go.
Extra quilts are in your bedroom closet (cold front this weekend).
I’ll be back a week from today. Text if you need anything. Rick
PS: The estimate is just to be on the safe side.
PSS: Last night was nice.
Yes, Rick. Yes, it was. And I’m glad you think so, too.
I sit down at the table and rip into the envelope. The detailed three-page construction estimate totals $162, 934.28. Seems shockingly low. Even if he can’t bring it in for that, I might give him some slack on the high side.
Without the distracting company of my contractor, I close my eyes and start building it in my mind, as I’ve done a hundred times before. It always happens like one of those time-lapsed captured projects you’d see on This Old House or HGTV. Up go the studs, joists, walls, roof—all in fast motion. On goes the clapboard siding, soffits and eaves. In go the windows, doors, plumbing, wiring, decorative elements, floors, furniture, appliances. Then everything slows down as I install the last thing myself: a pot of water on the stove boiling orange rinds, chunks of apple and tiny rafts of cinnamon. I’m standing over it, the aroma filling my soul with everything I’ve ever been deprived of. There’s a window seat for Skip and he’s basking in the morning sun from the bay window. If he could only open his drowsy eyes he’d see the snow geese outside pecking their way through the soggy autumn corn stubble, migratory strangers passing through from the north.
“Use your powers of visualization,” Angela, one of my favorite therapists, once said. One of her many creative grieving techniques.
Then some new kitchen additions flash in my mind, unwilled—ones that have never occurred to me before now: antique Mason jars on the countertop next to the stove still containing their original contents and labels. Nine chapters of what’s beginning to feel like a story. Of course, as destabilizing and unnerving as the task might turn out to be, I still have some reading left to do. Motivated I guess by some combination of duty, curiosity and closure.
All of which sounds embarrassingly delusional since I am the least superstitious or irrational person I’ve ever met.
“Hey buddy,” I say, standing up and stretching. Skip pounces over, makes a lap around my legs, sits and gazes up at me. “Keep mommy from going crazy, okay?” I say, bending over and scratching him behind one of his big, brown nacho-shaped ears.
He blinks three times, which I take to mean, “You got it.”
* * *
Upon our return and for the next few days, I started building a massive brush pile next to the foundation while also sampling the contents of the jars by date—one day at a time.
That afternoon—Wednesday—I pick up where I left off by cracking open the jar titled DESPAIRING - May 24th, 1930. It tastes remotely of apricot devoid of its original tanginess. No unusual visions or dreams, even during a nap in the hammock. But that night back at Rick’s place—swallowed by the big, puffy, four-poster bed in the guest bedroom—something stirs me from a dead sleep: my grandparents standing next to a mule. A strange man holding the reins and my grandfather stuffing a wad of money in his shirt pocket. Then the man walks off with the mule. There were no tears this time, only two long, still-young faces with hollowed out, expressionless eyes.
Thursday, SURPRISED - October 15th, 1933. Plum jelly, I surmise, gut-churningly sweet. Hours pass. And then, late in the day while hiking and hacking my way towards the back of the property, the image of a hospital birthing room somehow replaces my normal physics of seeing. She’s screaming, my grandfather squeezing her hand next to the bed. The doctor hands one baby to a nurse, then another. She holds the fraternal twins in the crook of each arm, cleaning their faces with a piece of blood-soaked linen. When the nurse gently places the babies on either side of my grandmother, I understand that the boy is my father.
It rains buckets on Friday, which brings on another migraine and turns out to be a harbinger for AFRAID - July 4th, 1937. I sample it just before lunchtime after I was finally able to open my eyes. Contents unidentifiable, but it tastes like the air smells—dead, rotting leaves and algae-covered rocks. I gag and heave it back out into the sink, along with half a bottle of Gatorade I’d chased it with. After taking a double dose of meds and passing out in the bunk, everything starts trembling. At first, I think it’s the camper, but then realize it’s happening elsewhere according to my mind’s eye: a terrifyingly large funnel cloud closing in on a white farm house. Chickens tumbling end over end through the air, thousands of shingles taking flight—even pots of petunias and a baby doll. Or was it a girl? Just as a bolt of lightning splinters a big tree next to the house like brittle matchstick, I sit up and scream.
As inconceivable and mysteriously painful as this process is, I tell myself: Keep going. If you stop now there’ll be too much time to deliberate and ruminate and ask questions, like: WHO WILL EVER BELIEVE ME? Besides, Katherine, how would it look if you came unhinged? It’s unattractive.
A frigid wind roars in Saturday, so Skip and I stay in the camper most of the day. After lunch, as much as I dread the next jar, I open it anyway. ANGRY - August 10th, 1941 is a dark, blood-like goo. One whiff triggers a series of violent sneezes. An icy bottle of Gatorade at my elbow, I touch my finger to the goo, then slowly put it to my tongue and lick it off. But nothing, no taste—for a few seconds anyway. Then, just as if I’d chugged an entire bottle of hot sauce, detonations of pain. Barely extinguishable, even after several gulps of the Gatorade. The after-effects came later, back at Rick’s. I’d fallen asleep on the sofa in front of the fireplace. Started hearing things—sharp, swatting sounds which soon materialized as a confusing and brutal vision: my grandfather—much older now—striping the bare buttocks of a young boy with a horse whip as he leans against the weathered, gray boards of an outhouse. A watermelon lay at my father’s feet as he bawls in agony.
I sample EXCITED - March 13th, 1954 early Sunday morning and find it surprisingly palatable, sort of a bright, tart kick with a hint of residual sweetness. Elderberry? Unlike the others, I don’t have to wait very long. In fact, after only about an hour, my mind lights up with a clear, bright vision: my grandfather, grandmother and father—now a grown young man—are gathered around what appears to be a newly installed toilet, taking turns flushing it. They’re beaming with excitement. It brings me to tears. Not because they were so happy, but also that there’s no twin sister or daughter standing with them.
Early in the day on Monday, I uncap JOYFUL - April 14th, 1966. It tastes impossibly fresh. Some sort of blackberry/blueberry hybrid? I even put some on a cracker, have it with my coffee. Almost immediately I suspect changes—not in my imagination, but in my senses. Everything looks clearer, more three-dimensional. Especially the pair of cawing crows that land on the wood pile outside the camper. It sounds like each one is perched on my shoulders, squawking an inch from my earlobes. My skin begins to slither across my fascia, as if I’ve just slipped into a garment I’d never worn before. Blood is swimming and gushing into parts unknown. This went on all day until, while driving back to Rick’s, an image appears in the crystal blue sky above the hood of the Subaru: wrinkled hands dotted with age spots attaching a plastic hospital bracelet to a soft, flabby wrist of a newborn baby. Katherine Anne Mathieson, April 14, 1966.
On Tuesday, I get back to the farm early. But after a few minutes, while Skip is dancing around under a pair of swooping blue birds, I notice some achiness in my joints as I stare up into the cold, gray uninviting dome over head. I’d planned to start collecting bowling-ball sized rocks from the the creek bed for a future fish pond, but something else suddenly sounds more satisfying: a bottle of riesling in front of the fire at Rick’s place with Skip’s warm body curled up next to me on the sofa. Especially now that the fatigue is accelerating and my face feels colder than the coldest ice pack.
I go in the camper for more dog food and to grab the last remaining jar, too, with the expectation that I’ll find the courage to open it later—taste the epilogue (confusingly) titled HOPEFUL - December 21, 1970.
Come what may.
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Come what May! Hopeful.....
I can't wait for the epilogue.