|
No Expiration Date
by Ian Woollen This should be a poem, titled: The Man Who Became a House. That’s what Ben’s younger siblings called him. Teasingly and fondly. Without old Ben holding the fort in Terre Haute, Rick and Beth would have no homeplace for holiday gatherings. Their parents died a decade ago. Departing in a fireball collision with a coal train on a sleety New Year’s Eve. Everyone else, including the cousins, had fled Terre Haute for points west. Except for The Man Who Became a House. He didn’t get that memo. Or the memo about finishing school, or combing his hair (a wild tonsure now), or learning to drive. After a couple drinks, Rick and Beth, both forensic pathologists, play at locating Ben on the spectrum. The geek spectrum. The loser spectrum. It’s not much help. He defies categories. Thus the poetry of Ben. His every-day is every day. Rick and Beth act like twins. Long united in an effort to survive and thrive, despite their parents’ lack of parenting. Same college. Same graduate school. Same lab work (with archeologists to analyze skeletal DNA). A few behavioral differences. Beth is gushingly devoted to her Adult Children of Alcoholics group. Rick acts more stoic, wears sunglasses all day, believing he gains an advantage if his eyes are masked. Beth promises to care for The Man Who Became a House when he gets too old to stay in the place. Rick insists that their brother will need a clinical facility, and besides, he would never leave Indiana. Ben reliably pays the bills and oversees maintenance on the old dwelling, a stone 1850s farmhouse, engulfed by the suburbs. The parents bought it in 1970 from an elderly, childless couple and renovated most of the history out of it. Pouring concrete in the dirt cellar and knocking out walls and turning the attic into a bar. Ben claims to have a sixth sense for knowing when the windowsills are starting to rot, when the hot-water heater needs replacing. Lying in bed upstairs, he can feel the plaster lathe crumbling, little by little, in the dining room ceiling. He paints the porch every three years. Each spring, he plants petunias and marigolds in the flower boxes, just like his mother. We, us, Ben’s neighbors, the Greek chorus, we call it a labor of love. We cite Ben as an example of true devotion to one’s parents. We knew his folks as decent people overall, even with the alcohol problem. Ben interacts reasonably well with the public. He ushers at church and volunteers as a re-enactor at the Underground Railroad Museum. Ben effectively plays the mean plantation-owner who comes in search of his runaway slaves in the historical drama performed every Saturday at 2:30 p.m. from April through November. When asked about taking the role, so at odds with his temperament, Ben explains, “Nobody else wants it, and, heck, I kind of look the part.” Hulking shoulders, intense monobrow. A gentle giant. * But during their recent Christmas visit, Rick and Beth noticed things slipping around the house. Dead bulbs in the dining room chandelier, trash bags piled up in the pantry. Mice droppings and a cracked window in the laundry room. Out-dated food in the refrigerator. Rick and Beth, suitcases packed for the airport, finally decided to address it with their older brother. They gathered in the front parlor. Like the once-in-a-blue-moon family meetings their parents held, when sober. Rick said, “I know we’re all getting on a bit. You’re going to be sixty next year. Have you ever given any thought to…when you might need some help.” Ben said, “With what?” Beth said, “Oh, you know, stuff around the house.” Ben said, “No, they wouldn’t understand.” Rick said, “Understand what?” Ben said, “The house talks to me.” Beth said, “What do you mean?” Rick interjected, “Sure, right, your sixth sense thing. But the helper would just be for daily type chores.” Ben said, “No, the house talks to me.” Beth said, “What does it talk about? Mom and dad?” Ben said, “No, farther back. The long past.” Rick said, “Jesus Christ…” Ben said, “Not that far back.” * Rick and Beth conferred via Skype. Different time zones. Beth’s tired face plastered with wrinkle cream. Should they involve the minister? Social services? Beth and Rick had been trained by their functional alcoholic parents to view their older brother as harmlessly eccentric. Part of the family’s complex dance of denial, Beth insisted, and that’s why Ben is finally breaking down. Rick countered that her theory sounded too ACOA. It’s probably early onset dementia. Rick, an electronics buff, suggested that on their next visit (after the annual conference in Chicago), he could surreptitiously install a tiny video camera that would yield more information on what exactly was happening. Beth cautioned, “What if Ben’s sixth-sense feels the camera? What if he finds it?” Rick countered, “We play dumb. We say it must be left over from Dad spying on Mom. We blame it on them. Just like with everything else.” * Rick successfully hid the camera in the tall bookshelves of the front parlor. Still full of their father’s law books. The live-feed also gave a partial view into the dining room and front hall. The video footage only complicated matters. Ben ritually appeared at the same hour every day, dressed in his plantation-owner costume. Speaking in a chant-like tone, he moved slowly from room to room and recited a list of ‘I remember…’ scenes from historical events in the house. Long-ago scenes from the 1850s that he could not possibly know in such detail. “Do you think it’s some kind of memory-palace thing?” Beth asked, on their next call, “Or more like a reverse memory-palace. The house is remembering things through him.” “I think he’s whacked,” Rick said. “It’s giving me nightmares.” They watched for another week. Same thing. Ben was apparently convinced that the stone house had been a stop on the Underground Railroad. He repeatedly mentioned two runaway slaves from Mississippi who were afraid of being returned to their plantation after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act. They committed suicide and were buried in the cellar. Under the modern-era cement. This would explain the noise, when Ben was not visible on-camera, of a shovel or a pick-axe digging in the basement. And perhaps the trash bags. “Heck, we didn’t check what was in those trash bags,” Beth said. “Wish I hadn’t made him toss them,” Rick replied. As forensic bone specialists, they were slightly intrigued, but mostly weirded out. Rick added, “We’re going to have to get him committed.” Beth agreed in principle, but she argued for a more strategic approach. Align with Ben. Take him seriously. “We don’t want him to see us as his enemy. Let’s recruit some archeologist friends. Do a proper excavation in the basement, and console him when nothing is found, and then institute some changes.” Rick reluctantly went along with the gag. Only, it wasn’t a gag. Beth made it happen, enlisting a crew of Indiana State graduate students and a few neighbors. It rained all week. We worked together under the guidance of the director of the Underground Railroad Museum. We discovered two complete skeletons buried together in a rotted coffin. We also found a parchment text, written in flowing, quill-pen script, inside a rusted tin that described the situation almost exactly as Ben had imagined it. Ben was the hero! Picture in the newspaper with his hair combed. The community rallied and raised money to restore the house to period style, as an annex for the museum. Six months later, Ben moved out to Denver to live with Rick. As his caretaker. These events had triggered something mysterious for Rick. Nobody could figure it out. No medication seemed to help. He went into a severe depression. Slept all day, wearing his sunglasses. Deleted his social media accounts. Got one D.U.I. and then a second. Lost his teaching job. Beth’s theory: finally acknowledging the unspoken possibility that their parents’ New Year’s Eve crash was a double suicide too. She composed a poem and posted it online: you think it’s just a matter of thinking old pain must have an expiration date you think you know what lies underneath the foundations of our story but there’s always more than what you think |
|
