Alan prepared himself for rejection. He ended up pleasantly surprised. Skip said he had an appointment nearby that afternoon and would stop in, if that suited. Alan waited in the driveway for his company.
Skip pulled up in a shiny new van, emblazoned with his name. He pulled over to the right, parking where he wouldn’t be blocking the barn door. Alan wore a big smile as he shook the man’s hand.
“Great to meet you, Skip. Thanks for coming,” Alan said.
“Of course,” Skip said. Alan heard the edge of an accent there, and it wasn’t local.
“You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to get someone to come out here. I’m just glad it wasn’t an emergency.”
“Oh, I’m sure if it was an emergency, you would have found help.”
“I’m not so sure. Let me show you the generator.”
Alan demonstrated the unit and explained what he was after.
“Not many people put in those automatic cutover switches for the whole house, but I understand what you’re getting at. I’ll have to order heavy-duty parts.”
“No problem, Skip,” Alan said. “As long as we can do it this month.”
“Shouldn’t be a problem.”
Skip worked up an estimate and left Alan with preliminary paperwork. He promised to not even charge for the initial visit. Alan sat at the kitchen table and spun the paper Skip had left. He couldn’t wait for Liz to get home so he could tell her of his success. After a few short minutes of happiness, Alan’s smile faded.
“I used to do things,” he said to the empty kitchen.
The clock ticked.
Alan pushed away from the table and stormed out the door. He grabbed the broom and headed for the barn. Just to the right of the big door, the barn had a hall that ran the length of the front face. It had a bank of windows that looked out onto the driveway. The windows drew flies. The flies drew spiders. In this, their perfect spider habitat, they grew enormous. The hall was hung from end to end with thick, ropy webs.
“Say goodnight, girls,” Alan said. He swung the broom above his head and took out a couple of mammoth webs. Bulbous spiders scrambled for safety. Alan shuddered as he knocked one of the beasts to the plank floor. These spiders were mottled tan and brown. They almost looked translucent and moved with surprising speed. Alan beat at one on the floor. It had legs that would span his palm and a disgusting round abdomen the size of a robin’s egg. It burst when Alan stomped on it. He worked his way down the gallery.
“I guess the cousins are going to have to find another hobby this year. Spider-gazing is out,” Alan said.
His broom clogged with webs. Alan retreated to the barn door to beat the broom against the frame. When it was clear, he returned to the spider slaughter. Alan paused at the end of the hall and surveyed his work. Dust swirled around in the long light streaming through the window. He doubled-back to touch up a few spots, but it looked good. He opened the door to the cow room.
Some long-ago hands had hung weights from ropes and mounted pulleys to make all these doors close automatically. As Alan opened the door, the pulleys squeaked a little song. Alan dropped his broom and ran for the shop. He banged through the screen door, snagged the oilcan, and ran back for the barn. He oiled the pulley and the connectors where the rope attached to the door and weight. He worked the door open and closed until it moved with silent ease. Somewhere in the back of his head Liz’s disappointed visage floated. Alan swept it away with the next batch of cobwebs.
At some point in the distant past, this room had housed cows down its length. A wooden manger built into the wall would have held their feed. Alan walked down the center, where their manure would have collected in the trough. Someone, presumably the Colonel had cleaned this room of all the animal evidence until it was suitable for storage. Now it housed trunks and castoff furniture. Alan walked the length to survey his new task.
He walked back to the shed and returned with a big red shop vacuum. Alan strung extension cords to get power and fired up the old machine. It’s noise enveloped Alan in a pleasant bubble. He moved trunks and slid around furniture. He sucked up dust, and cobwebs, and strips of paper balled together to form nests for rodents. He kept moving—sweating and cursing as he banged his fingers—until the machine clogged.
He shut it down.
“Dad?” Joe asked.
Alan spun so fast that he tripped and crashed into a dressmaker’s dummy.
“Jesus, Joe,” Alan said. “You scared the shit out of me.”
“Sorry. What are you doing?”
“What does it look like? I’m just cleaning up.”
“Oh.”
“Someone has to, Joe. This place is a mess.”
“Okay.”
“Look in there,” Alan said.
He had to point again until Joe figured out what he meant. Joe was still wearing his backpack. He climbed up the little step to the door built into the wall. It was about the size of a medicine chest. It was positioned on the outside wall, between two rippled windows.
Joe flipped the latch and opened the little door.
The little cabinet housed a collection of small wasps nests. The wasps had found their way in through chinks in the barn’s siding and made their home in the small space.
Joe gasped and shut the door.
“It’s okay,” Alan said. “I think they’re all abandoned.”
“I saw a wasp,” Joe said.
“Just your imagination,” Alan said.
“Did you find anything else?” Joe asked.
“Yeah, I did,” Alan said. Joe was too young for one of the things he’d found. In one trunk, Alan had found a little hand-cranked movie viewer that you held up to your eye. It contained a tiny loop of film that showed a dancing stripper. She never showed any nudity, but it was still too overtly sexual for a child. Of course, Joe could see things a million times more sexual on TV every night, but Alan decided not to show it to him. “Look in that trunk.”
Joe lifted the lid carefully, perhaps expecting more wasps.
He pulled his hand back and regarded the contents of the trunk.
Alan joined him at his side.
“What is it?” Joe asked.
“It’s just a doll,” Alan said. He knew why Joe paused—the thing looked like it had been born in a nightmare. The doll’s porcelain head was at least a hundred years old. It lay on its back with one delicate hand near its head, as if it had swooned. The other chipped hand was draped over its belly. The head was slightly turned away from Alan and Joe. The body was hand-stitched cloth, stuffed with raw cotton that you could see through the rotting fabric. The dress was torn and chewed away. It hung to the side. The legs formed a wide V, with the feet tipped to the sides. The eyes were closed.
“Pick it up,” Alan said.
“No way,” Joe said. “I’m not touching it.”
“It’s just a doll, Joe. Go ahead.”
“Nope.”
“Come on.”
“You pick it up,” Joe said. He angled himself for a better look at the doll’s face. “Why is it all by itself in this trunk anyway.”
“Under that tray there’s a bunch of clothes. I picked it up earlier. It probably belonged to your great grandmother. It’s a part of history.”
“Uh huh,” Joe said.
Alan smiled. Joe looked like he was about to run.
“You want to put it in one of your mother’s drawers to scare her?”
Joe’s face lit up with a smile. Then he frowned and shook his head. “No. She’ll get mad if we move anything out here. This stuff belongs to the family.”
“Joe, this stuff belongs to us. We’re family,” Alan said. He tried to soften his anger, but he heard it right behind his words. “We bought all of this from the rest of Mom’s relatives, and they named their price. That means that we don’t owe them anything. If we wanted to, we could clear out everything and put cows back in here.”