The Family Plot by Cherie Priest
“Oh. That.” She shrugged. “With all this dust, every little move you make shows up. Which reminds me: No one gets started on any cutting or removal without a mask. There’s probably asbestos, mold, you name it up in here.”
“But, seriously,” Brad insisted. “What were you doing in here?”
“Sometimes I pace around when I’m thinking.” Or talking to myself, or to houses. She didn’t say that out loud.
“In a figure eight?”
“It’s as good a shape as any.”
Gabe frowned. “Looks like you’ve been ballroom dancing.”
“Yes. I was ballroom dancing in my work boots.” She whapped him gently on the shoulder, and ignored the pathway in the dirt. “Then I did a little tango into the dining room, pirouetted through the kitchen, and sambaed up the stairs. Come on, I’ll show you.”
She gave her crew the same cursory tour she’d taken alone, and made sure to declare vocal dibs upon the master suite. Brad took one of the other rooms. Bobby wanted to double up with Gabe, but he said no. He wanted the attic.
“But there’s bats up there, and Christ knows what else. You’ll wake up in the morning with rabies,” his father warned.
“I don’t care. I don’t want to share with nobody.”
Dahlia shook her head. “Your dad’s right—and that’s something I won’t say every day, so you may as well listen. Why don’t you take that little dressing room—or see what’s behind door number three, if you want your own space? The door’s stuck, but you’re a big boy. You can shove it open. We’ll have to get in there eventually, anyhow.”
He shot a side-eye toward the attic stairs, then back at the jammed door in the hallway. “I’ll check the room out later,” he semi-relented. “There’s plenty of time.”
“True,” Dahlia agreed, and she headed back downstairs, the rest of the crew following behind her. “But only sort of. We need to get started, if we’re going to stay on schedule and budget. Let’s open the trucks, pull out the bolt cutters, and check the carriage house. Then we can start making lists, and getting more specific with our task plan.”
“Is there any power out there?” Brad asked.
“I’d be shocked to find any,” she said. “To the best of my knowledge, we only have power and water for the house.”
Then Gabe wanted to know, “Are we going to turn off the water when we get inside the walls? Like we do the electricity?”
She tromped down the last of the stairs, leaving fresh prints across the figure eight and muddying its shape. “Maybe, but I haven’t seen any bathroom or kitchen fixtures to get excited about. They’re all mid-century, but not in a good way.”
Bobby darted around her, heading for the front door. “Some people like mid-century. And this family was shitting in high cotton. Even if the fixtures are ugly, I’m sure they’re good quality stuff. We ought to take them with us.”
“And we might, but only as a last resort—and only if there’s room. We’re here for last century, not mid-century. Or … the century before last, technically. Stupid millennium.”
“We’ll have plenty of room,” he said stubbornly.
“We’d better not. We ought to be able to fill the trucks and then some, without ever resorting to that other junk.” She pushed past him, reaching the front door first, and grinning like it was some kind of victory. She drew back the bolt and wrenched it open. She paused at the threshold, but didn’t look back when she spoke. “Everybody get that? Kitchens and baths are last resort. Don’t let Bobby tell you different.”
“Fuck you.”
Now she turned around. “That’s not a nice thing to say to your boss.”
“Uncle Chuck’s my boss.”
“Uncle Chuck isn’t here, and you’ve already had a talking-to about that. Now open your goddamn truck. I think you’ve got the pry bars and cutters back there. Gabe, lend me a hand, if your dad’s gonna be a pain in the ass.”
“Yes ma’am.”
Bobby glared at Gabe, who ignored him while he unlatched the back of the truck and hoisted the door up overhead.
Bobby reached inside and drew a toolbox out of the back, its metal corners dragging with a screech along the truck bed. “This is what they call a hostile work environment—you know that, don’t you?”
“Nobody here gives a good goddamn, Robert.”
“If you don’t call me Robert, I won’t call you Dolly.”
“Fine. That’s a deal.”
Brad looked like he wanted to open his mouth and say something, but he wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t family.
Dahlia stopped by her own truck for the satchel she used as a purse, because she felt naked running around without it, and she still wanted an antihistamine. Her phone was in there, anyway. Dad wanted pictures, and she needed to take some.
Everyone else picked up something useful but heavy—crowbars, bolt cutters, sledgehammers—and added work gloves and masks to the pile.
This first trip around the property was a survey mission. Over the years, she’d learned the hard way that the best use of her time was to get a plan in order, then get to work. Diving right in was more her dad’s style, but she was working on him; one of these days, he was bound to admit the useful glories of a list and an itinerary. Maybe one of these days real soon, if she could break down and cram enough Withrow stuff into the trucks before he got there—but that would all depend on what they found in those two tantalizing structures.
Across the great yard they all traipsed, and when they reached the carriage house, Gabe whistled like he was impressed. “It’s even bigger, up close. They must’ve had some big-ass carriages.”
“High cotton,” Bobby reminded him. “Nothing but money, these people. This was the four-car garage of its time.”
Brad offered the bolt cutters to Gabe, since he’d shown the most interest. “A lot of these old things were converted for vehicles, usually in the twenties and thirties.”
Gabe examined the loosely hanging padlock. He positioned the bolt cutters and snipped the thing off with a hearty press. “Uncle Chuck said it’d been closed up for eighty years.”
“That’s what the Withrow lady told him.” Dahlia stepped forward and drew a corroded chain down and away, dropping it into the grass. “Now, let’s get all hands on deck for these doors, boys. They’re heavy as hell, and the hinges are broke, to boot.”
“Hang on a sec,” Gabe offered, and took up a position beside her.
Brad reluctantly joined Bobby on the other door. He couldn’t figure out where to put his hands for the best leverage, but he made an honest go of it. “On the count of three?” he suggested.
On three, all four people pulled, and the great double doors split open like a wound. They cracked, splintered, and scraped along the ground, just far enough to admit the whole party standing shoulder to shoulder.
Dahlia would’ve preferred a wider opening for the sake of the light, but that wasn’t in the cards just yet. She was fairly confident they’d have to cut out the doors with a Sawzall or just pry them free when they needed more clearance. They weren’t chestnut like the barn, and they weren’t worth saving.
She stepped forward into the long-closed building, casting a weird, short shadow in front of herself. One by one, her companions did likewise.
Brad pulled a mask out of his back pocket and held it up to his face. Before Bobby could make fun of him, Dahlia said, “Hey, good idea. Masks on, folks.”
“Are your allergies acting up?” Bobby asked.
She couldn’t tell if he was being an ass, just curious, or even trying to be friendly—which was possible. He could be a kiss-ass when it suited him. “Always, but nobody needs a noseful of paint chips and termite shit. There’s nothing manly about a fungal infection, so everybody’s going to suck it up and be safe. Now, let’s uncover these windows and let a little light in here…” She looped her own mask around the back of her head, so the rest came out muffled. “So we can see what we’ve got to work with.”
&n
With feeble optimism, Gabe tried, “You said you’d be shocked if there was any power out here. Oh, wait, I get it: shocked.”
“No pun was intended,” she said. “But we’re definitely out of luck.”
His dad confirmed, “Yeah, I didn’t see any lines running from the house.”
“Me either,” Dahlia muttered. “So it’s daylight and flashlight, or no light for us.”
She took a pry bar to the nearest boarded-up window, and pulled the boards down in under a minute. To her left and right, the guys each picked a spot to do likewise. Soon they had a whole row of east-facing portals sucking up the late-morning sun.
It was enough to get started.
“Good God, what’s this over here?” Bobby asked everyone and no one in particular. He pulled a pair of screen doors loose and pushed them aside; their wire mesh collapsing to rusty particles when they hit the dirt floor. “It looks like part of a truck. Or … a whole truck? Buried under all this junk?”
Brad hopped to his side. “Something from the early twenties,” he assessed with a squint. “Garage gold, if it’s intact.” While Bobby excavated the vehicle, Brad scoped out another nearby pile. “I think there’s an armoire over here. It’s under a bunch of windows, and a ladder, and … is that a cupola?”
Dahlia raised an eyebrow. “Are you kidding?”
“Probably went on top of this place, or the barn, or some other outbuilding that’s no longer standing. It’s not very big…” He stood beside it, demonstrating that it was only as tall as his shoulders.
“Is there a weather vane?”
“Nope. There’s a notch for one up top, but it’s missing.”
“Maybe we’ll find it later.” She wandered farther down the line, scanning the ancient tangle of detritus. Broken statuary here, horse tack there. Farming or gardening equipment—it was hard to say precisely what kind. A narrow, curved object standing up on one end—and leaning against a row of crumbling wood shelves.
Gabe came up behind her, and squinted at it. “What’s that?”
“Looks like a bridge. The kind you put over a runoff gulley, or in a garden.”
“Huh. Well hey, I’ve found something cool over here. Come check it out.”
Back around another corner, almost beyond the sunlight’s assistance, Gabe showed off a rowboat filled with doorknobs, a metal fan, and half a dozen cracked slabs of stone. “Here we’ve got the S.S.… something or another. I can’t read it. The paint’s all come off.”
“I can’t tell, either.” She picked at a flake, and it fell to the ground. The boat was yellow once, with white trim and black letters to tell its name. She thought the wood might be maple or pine, but it was hard to tell in the dark.
“What’s with all the doorknobs?” Gabe asked.
“Heaven only knows.” She dragged a gloved hand through the little pile, and was pleased to see the glint of brass and scrollwork. “But they’re old, and they’re lovely. We’ll take ’em. I wonder what these…” Her voice trailed away as she pushed at the topmost stone slab. It only moved half an inch, but Gabe added his weight to the effort, and it scooted aside.
Their little corner of the carriage house went quiet.
Gabe whispered, “It looks like a tombstone.”
She wiped the back of her hand across the freshly exposed surface, but that didn’t reveal any clues like scrollwork or letters. “Maybe? I don’t see any names or dates. But it’s the right kind of stone, and the right shape.”
“They’re all the same,” Gabe noted. “What’s that, four or five of them?”
“Yeah. I don’t know, they might be something else. Paving stones for a garden? We found that bridge over there, after all. Once upon a time, this place might’ve been landscaped out the wazoo. Anyway, if they are tombstones, they aren’t very big.”
“Maybe they’re for kids.”
“Wow, you’re morbid.” She elbowed him in the ribs, but gently, and with a smile. “Good find, sweetheart. I’m going to make one more pass, and then go get the lanterns. You stay here and pick a few big items we can yank out into the yard so we can clear out some room to work.”
She left the shadow of the dark structure and stomped back into the sun.
The day was getting warmer, but it wouldn’t top seventy degrees by suppertime, and the sun would have tipped behind the mountain before that. The entire estate sat in Lookout’s shadow, where it was cooler and darker than the rest of the city, even in summer.
The steep grade did something funny to the light, Dahlia thought. It spilled between the half-naked trees in a warm yellow glow, but vanished too soon, leaving a dry grayness in its wake. Or maybe it was just the season—the smell of fall coming in fast, and winter sneaking up behind it—that made everything feel so sharp and loud: the distant sound of a train calling out as it crossed the overpass, and the sound of the Withrow house itself, neglected and angry and unloved.
The grass was high enough to slap against Dahlia’s knees when she trudged through it, back across the yard to the trucks parked side by side on what should’ve been the front lawn, but was now just a derelict space where the only things that grew were overgrown. But that’s what happened when you stopped working against the weather in Tennessee. It all got away from you, and the land went back to seed faster than you’d ever think. You leave it alone for a few years, and this is what you get.
It was a wonder that things weren’t worse. It was nothing short of a miracle that any paths remained at all, and the creeping vines hadn’t yanked the siding loose from every wall.
She rolled up the truck’s back door and pulled out three or four LED lanterns, bright enough to bring daylight to the carriage house, even in its farthest corners. She slung a couple of head lamps onto her wrist, too, in case anybody wanted one, then closed the truck again. She wasn’t sure why—they hadn’t seen another living soul, but it was habit. She was always more cautious than she really needed to be, or that’s what Andy would’ve said, back when he was still her husband.
Boring and stuck in her ways. Control freak. Totally OCD. That’s what he did say, after the papers were signed. But, seriously, fuck him.
It was a beautiful day, and this part of the job was nothing but fun. She might as well enjoy it. She might as well enjoy something.
Arms full and heart almost light, she headed back to the carriage house. It was right across the yard, but she didn’t take the straight path because she saw a trail worn into the grass. It could’ve been a leftover walkway—or, more likely, where deer came and went often enough to leave a notch.
Taking the trail was easier than lugging all that stuff through the thick grass, and it only took her ten yards out of her way. It was a nice opportunity to see more of the grounds. They were beautiful and mostly quiet, except for the distant hum of traffic every now and again, when someone hit the brakes or the horn over on Ochs Highway. The trees rustled in the wind, and the ground was dry enough that there wasn’t any mud to hang onto her heels.
Might as well take the long way around.
The mountain was just beginning to turn a sharp red all around her, with undercurrents of orange and yellow burning through the forest foliage. In another month it’d all be brown. In another month, those little flashes of color would fall, and rot to mulch.
Except.
Dahlia knew in a blink that something else was on the mountain, moving with the breeze. There was a flash of a different yellow. Butter yellow. It flowed; it didn’t flutter.
She froze, and the lanterns clanked together in her arms.
She’d glimpsed it, but she couldn’t have said what it was. It was only there for an instant: an impression of someone at the edge of her vis
She didn’t see it again, but she spied something else: a suggestion of shapes in the underbrush, something solid and straight-edged beneath a winding, twisted rose tree that’d grown to the size of a car. Her forehead furrowed, making those sharp “elevens” between her eyebrows that she’d always had, and always hated.
Andy used to tell her she ought to Botox it, just to see what it was like. It might be pretty. She’d replied that he ought to wax his balls. By the same rationale, that could look nice.
Goddammit, there he was again, worming into her thoughts unwanted.
Goddam him, in particular.
She set the lanterns down in the grass and gravel near the rose tree, letting the head lamps slide from her wrist. Grateful for her work gloves, she pushed the lowest thorny branches aside, and brushed a smattering of twigs and leaves away from a large, oval tombstone.
She could’ve pretended it was something else, but why bother?
It’d fallen, and it’d been chewed up by the seasons, but she could still read the face: PFC REAGAN H. FOSTER, 1897–1915. The military logo was worn, but still visible. He’d been eighteen years old, and in the army. He’d likely died in World War I.
“Aw.” She scooted over to its side. Call it superstition or politeness, but she didn’t want to stand on anybody’s grave, if she could help it. “Poor kid. Barely any younger than Gabe.”
Dahlia’s knees cracked when she stood up straight again. With her hands on her hips, she surveyed the rest of the area. It was a level corner of the lot, with several more roses and a lilac or two planted haphazardly … or, no, not haphazardly. They were planted deliberately, on an incomplete grid.
She tiptoed through the site, and found another stone. This one was facedown, so she couldn’t read it. When she tried to turn it over, she disturbed some worms, then swiftly lost her grip. The marker collapsed back into the earth with a thud, but beside it, a broken nub was hidden by the grass. She didn’t see the top of the stone, but the bottom bit read, “his everlasting arms.”