Dad stepped into the empty dining room, taking long strides like a giant observing his surroundings. He was a giant to me in those days. At 6 foot 2 inches, and me only around 4 and a half feet, he towered over everyone in his day. He surveyed his surroundings from a different angle from everyone else. Now he looked around the room, and I knew that he was trying to ignore the bare sheetrock with paste so thick on the walls it could have been a decoration unto itself. A solitary old couch, musty and moldy, torn, by who knows what, in half sat in the little window corner.
"Good, solid oak floors," Dad commented, stamping his shoe on the floor. A stray spider scrambled up its string. I watched it, trying to keep my mind off of the despair this place was emanating. This wasn't a place to live in. This wasn't home. I might have been young, but I knew there was something wrong from the minute I stepped into that dining room.
"What's the foundation like? Did I hear you say something about that?" Dad looked at the realtor guy, head tilted as if exaggerating the realtor's small stature.
"Ah, well, yes. The man who looked at it the other day said that there was some damage that could seriously inhibit the construction of the house, but it isn't a problem yet. That is why we call these fixer-uppers." The man laughed.
"And the roof?"
The man lost his smile. "That, too is in need of repairs. But that isn't very urgent either. Remember, all of these problems will help to lower the value of the house. The mortgage rate will also be lower. With time, you could raise the value of this house by triple." The man looked at Dad hopefully. Dad nodded.
"All right. We'll get back to you." The man nodded. We followed him out of one of the double set of doors that led out of the front of the house. I breathed a sigh of relief. My parents and the realtor man talked about specifics for the better part of the hour, while I took the chance to explore the property a little more. I asked them for permission to leave, and Dad nodded absently, listening to the guy list off numbers.
The grass was wildly overgrown. It came up to my hips as I tried to wade through it as I made my way around to the rear of the house. The backyard dropped off the hill that the house stood on, and beyond where the property ended you could see the patches of cattails where the swamp was.
I tried to make my way down the little decline, tripping over something in the grass. A little chicken wire fence had surrounded the side porch, but now the grass was so overgrown that it was hidden from view. This fence really made the backyard look ratty, an untidy feeling gave me an itch in the side. I got up, and my gaze rose to view the house. It was just as intimidating from this side as it was from the front. Whoever constructed it must have been trying to give the impression that the house just loomed over you. The white paint on the sides was starting to peel, and in some places the wood was bare. The walls just went up and up, leaving a little gable up on top to remind you of how tall it was. The black shutters were scary to me then. It made the house look like it was from an old picture. The house didn't feel as big on the inside as it did on the outside. Probably only about 40 x 60 feet. The height gave it an inhuman look that sent my head spinning. As I looked up, I saw the chimney on the rear end of the house, bricks missing with a tilt that reminded me of pictures I had seen of the leaning tower of Pisa.
I circled around to the back. An old barn stood there, looking like it was just going to fall over with the next sneeze. I tried to keep my distance, worried that my allergies would act up again. Looking through the crooked front doors I could see heaps of trash. it looked like ordinary garbage to me, but I knew that there would be treasures in there, waiting for discovering. There was an open loft, with old pieces of iron machinery sticking out. I'll come back to you later, I thought to myself.
A line of trees followed across the yard, each one a little younger than the one preceding it. There was a little wooden swing tied to the second last of the trees. It swayed in the wind, ominous in the afternoon light. I sat down on it, but it was a little too small for me. That was strange. I had never before found something that was too small for me, being so scrawny that I earned the name "Sticks".
Having failed on the swing I worked my way to the rear side of the barn. a small wooden shack that I suspected to be a chicken coop sat on the side of the barn. I looked inside, but it was too small to be of any use as a fort or hideout. The other building connected to it on the rear side of the barn did have some promise though. There was a lot of junk in there, all abandoned by the owner.
His wife was sick, and he couldn't afford to clean all of this out. At least that was what the realtor said. The owner just left it "as is", and the sale would go to his wife’s hospital bills. He was dirt poor by the time he decided to sell the house. I remember the realtor's look of sadness as he portrayed the situation to us. Dad had hurried to change the subject to lighter matters, but we all remembered. Maybe that was why this place brought all of these feelings of despair.
I made my way back up from the backyard to where my parents had been standing. The realtor had left, and I found my parents looking at the foundation on the other side of the house. To me it looked all right, and I would have commented on it if I hadn’t caught that distasteful look in my Dad’s eyes.
“This is going to cost a lot. Maybe too much. It may not be worth it.” He looked at my mother. She was looking at the house. I knew that she liked it. She really appreciated the old Victorian houses that gave me the creeps.
“It’ll be our home with a few months of work,” she said, looking up at Dad with a smile that begged him to keep the house she found. He looked at her with a perplexed look.
“if you want a house that threatens to fall over every time a good wind comes through, it’s fine with me.”
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