Rain Watching

Nana died in the Granite State nursing home in early October.  She had been there for over six years and during that time my older sister, who said she had Nana’s power of God, had tried to sell Nana’s house, but in six years, no one had expressed an interest in the old farm house.  

At the urging of a real estate agent, my sister kept pouring money into the house to increase the house’s curb appeal.  “Curb appeal?” I said, over the phone, “The house is on the end of a dirt road.  There is no curb.”  At such moments, my sister would fall silent.  Not only did she have the power of God on her side, but if I pressed further I knew I would get the “if you think you can do better” spiel that I’ve heard all my life.

Neither my sister nor I live close to New Hampshire anymore which makes doing anything in-state difficult.  My sister had spent hours on the phone getting Nana into the home while all I did was put up some front money to get her in.  I give credit to my sister for all the time she’s put into clearing the way for Nana.

Just before Christmas my sister sent an e-mail asking if I could go close the house up for the winter.  I have no idea how she knew I was in New England, although I’m often back in the winter and she’s often back during the summer.  She went on that Sumner, the real estate buffoon, said he expected no more showings until spring.  I raised my eyebrows.  Somebody actually looked at the house this year?  The power would be on thanks to the outside security light and cameras, she wrote, so you could stay the night.  It would save me (and God, I thought) money if you could check on things.  Of course, if your disability prevents you from helping out, I’d understand.  My disability.  This was my sister for you.  I have a prosthetic below the right knee that I got thirty years ago thanks to Uncle Sam.  She knows it causes me no problems.  She ended with I’ll let Sumner know you’re coming if you need keys or whatever.

I wrote back:  Will check on house, I still have keys.  Don’t call that asshole.  I backed spaced over this last and said I didn’t need any help.

Without snow New Hampshire is a pretty barren landscape in late December.  I almost wished I had driven my Chevelle SS up from Florida.  It would have been fun pissing around some secondary NH roads in a car that could at least get out of its own way.  But that was just wishful thinking.  Many of the roads I remember as being all but empty as a teenager were now clogged with traffic.  So in the end, I did what I always did: Flew into Logan and got some limp-wristed econo-box.  I was on a mission for someone with the power of God, so what did it matter.  The car’s Stereo had an MP3 input and sounded good.  That was something, I guess.

My sister and I grew up in Goffstown.  Nana’s house was just shy of 60 miles northwest, but in the 1960s that was a long way.  It was even a big deal when mom got her on the phone person-to-person.

It was getting dark when I got to the house.  I parked on the new pea-stone drive in front of the garage, but when I got out, I noticed three things.  First, it was a lot colder than it had been in in Connecticut in the morning.  Second, the air was full of flea-sized snowflakes.  Three, the house had new Aluminum siding.  Four, the new security light was humming and a deep honey colored before snapping to white.  I decided to put the rental in the garage.  I didn’t want to have to get out and chip windshield ice in the morning.  To my surprise, half of the garage that served as a shed for rakes, mowers, flower pots, wheelbarrow and general junk was empty - stripped clean.  I shouldered my gear and half-wondered if I went over to the Sumner residence I’d find a lot of this stuff.  One thing for sure, there was no snow shovel in sight.

At the back of the house was a pile of construction crap left over from the siding operation.  The trash was discretely positioned so you couldn’t see from the front of the house or even from the garage.  What a shit job, I thought.  Power of God or no, sis, these guys saw you coming.

I let myself into the kitchen and then went around the first floor turning on lights.  They all worked.  Great!  Wall phone was dead.  I knew there would be no cell coverage out here.  These rooms had been stripped, too.  There wasn’t a stick of furniture anywhere.  I found the thermostat and when I turned it clockwise, I saw a blue spark followed by a rushing sound of the oil burner in the cellar.  Al Hum Do LiLah, I said which is Arabic for praise be to God.

Nana’s bedroom had been moved to the ground floor so she wouldn’t have to go up and down stairs in her early nineties before she went into the home.  The door was locked, but I found a key on a nail by the side of the door.  That does a lot of good, sis, I thought.  Lock the door and leave the key where anyone can find it.  I had to push the door in and when I switched on the light I saw that all the missing furniture had been carefully, even expertly, stowed in Nana’s bedroom.  Someone had to work at getting four rooms of furniture: tables, chairs, bureaus, wardrobes, rolled up rugs, hat racks, sofas and god knows what else all to fit.  The bed was still available with pillows and blankets.  I guess my sister thought I was going to sleep here.  I managed to walk to the window that looked out at the garage.  The snow was getting heavy.  When I turned back and looked at the room with bureaus stacked three high, I thought it was just too creepy.   All sorts of weird shapes and shadows rose up in the room and unnerved my imagination.   “This puppy ain’t staying here tonight,” I thought. 

   

Most of what my sister considered closing up the house was in the basement.  The basement with its dirt floors and big, irregular stone foundation – what a job this must have been to get done by hand – had been stripped, too.  My sister left a list, of course, and I followed it whether it made sense or not.  Dead bolt the bulkhead door from inside.  New hardware here.  Sumner you bastard, I thought.  Drain outside faucets.  I almost broke off a drain screw off before I realized it had been left open all summer.   Plug in heat tapes (2) for water pipes (2).  The tapes had a small MP3-size control box that sensed when the pipes were getting close to freezing.  Neat, I thought.  I watched tiny LED lights go from red to green.  Never saw these before.  No doubt bought from Sumner’s Gadgets Are Us store for 50% above retail.  Drain toilets:  first floor (1), second floor (1).

The toilet on the first floor had never been brought on-line, so I figured the one on the second floor had never seen water for a couple of years.  But I wanted to see something else.  About the only time I am aware of my “disability” is going up stairs.  I do take care, but it is probably because climbing was never part of my physiotherapy. 

Just as I had thought, the second floor rooms had been stripped, too.  I was looking down at an empty toilet bowl, when I remember Nana’s antique grandfather clock in her bedroom.  As a very young child I remember my mother and aunt arguing that Grandpa had promised them the clock.  They were like little kids in a school yard.  “Did not.  Did so.”  I didn’t remember seeing the clock in the downstairs room, but I’d damn well would check on that.  The thing was probably worth four times what my sister had been overcharged for the siding.  If Sumner had pinched the clock, I was going to get the cops on his ass.

I walked around the empty rooms making sure the windows were locked and looking for a zone 2 thermostat which was something my sister might not be aware of.  Back in the hall, I noticed the pull down door to the attic.  A wry smile came over my face as I wondered if Sumner had stripped it clean, too.

I barely notice my disability climbing stairs but ladders are a little more difficult.  I pulled the door down using a pool cue-size stick with a metal fixture on the end that mated perfectly with the door latch above.  When I pulled the door down a string pulled a light on in the attic.  Neat, I thought.

I unfolded the ladder and made sure it was securely footed on the floor.  I began climbing one rung at a time.  At my age and even without my “disability” my ladder monkey days were well behind me.

I got waist-high into the attic and saw that all the trunks and boxes were still there and probably hadn’t been touched in a decade or more.  The wind was whistling trough the louver at the far end of the attic and there were even puffs of snow inside the louver.  I should have let well-enough alone, but I’m kind of an Antique Road Show type of guy and I wondered what else was up here.  Very carefully, I climbed into the attic and took a few steps hunched over.  This was definitely not a good idea.  I managed to turn around with same dexterity as an elephant on a teeter-board when I saw a cardboard box marked “photos.”  I reached in and the first photo was an 8 x 10 in its own paste-board folder.  It was Nana at seventeen or so.  She still had her never-cut girl’s hair all the way down her back and was twisted left to face the camera.  She was gorgeous.  It’s always a shock when children see folks when they were young and beautiful that they only knew as old.  In gold leaf on the inside of the folder was written “Aladdin, Rochester, NY.”  I remembered Nana showing me this picture as a boy – probably the last time and only time I had been in this attic – and telling me this man from Rochester had come to town saying he was creating a photographic history.  That’s the only reason she posed for him because it was for history.  It was a spiel, of course, but as I looked at this picture, my eyes began to water and I thought, that’s exactly what you did “man from Rochester” you made history.

I would take this picture, but I forgot where I was, stood up, hit my head on a rafter, lost my balance and my disability and I went down the attic ladder head first.   I have to make this up because I was out cold, but it seems likely what happened.

Take it from me, being unconscious is not the same as falling asleep.  When the happy band of gook friends blew up our Jeep, I was the only one thrown free.  An Army Captain told me later I must have crawled into the jungle for cover and this probably saved my life as the Gooks came back and emptied clip after clip into my buddies.  I have no memory of the blast in Nam or anything that followed for the next three days or so.

When I came to I had a lot of pain in my back at my head.  My body had ended up like a ski jump with my legs up the ladder and my face planted firmly on the hall floor.  I don’t know how long I was out, but the oil burner had done yeoman work as the house was toasty warm, even hot.  

I’m not a moaner, but I moaned a lot as I got my feet off the ladder and after a great deal of pain, got myself to a sitting position.  I was so dazed and hurt, I wasn’t thinking clearly.  There was no out-of-body editor watching me from behind and whispering in my ear, telling me what to do.

How I got to my feet, I have no idea.  But the full knowledge that no one was going to bring aid can be a great motivator.  I remember standing for a brief second free of the ladder and the hallway wall and crumpling like the fall of a great empire and falling down the stairs.  I landed on my back and heard my head hit the floor with the sound of a cracked egg on a kitchen counter.

Stories have a beginning, middle and end, but here my story goes, for lack of a better word, sideways.  I apologize.  I know I cannot bamboozle anyone, but this record is a given, a testament of sorts.

I come to later.  How much later I don’t know but the lights are off, the heat is off and even the outside lights are off.  The power is gone.  I am shivering with cold.

Then, I am in the bed in Nana’s room with blankets and a comforter over me, over my head.  I am freezing to death.  When I peak out of my coverings, I see the snow has blown up on the porch and is halfway up the window.  The sound of the winter wind is evil. I am freezing, shivering, freezing to death.

When, how, why this happens, I don’t know, but there is an intense light in the room.  I can sense this light even from under the blankets.  It’s like the extended light an old flash bulb, almost a liquid as if fills the dark room.  And this light is followed by the loudest thunder clap I’ve ever heard.  The storm must be directly over my head.

A curtain of rain slams into the house.  I hear it on the roof of the porch and against the window.  It sounds as if someone is turning on a hose.  More flashes and booms follow.  I begin to feel warm, even cozy.

I poke my head out and there is a yellow glow from a space heater on the floor pointed at me.  The power is still off, but this little heater, sits on the floor with a cloth covered cord snaking its way under the stacks of furniture to an outlet I cannot see. Its shiny aluminum face is red hot.  It’s thawing me out.

Is there anything more comforting than the sound of rain when you are in bed, warm and dry.  My head is resting on two pillows now and both my arms are outside the blankets.  It is morning.  Someone is in the room looking out of the window.  Nana, my sister, mother?  I don’t know.  I want to speak to her, to call her by name, but I cannot.

Now, I’m at the window.  Someone has left a small tray with and silver coffee pot and an ornate coffee cup.  The pot is beautiful with steam listlessly emerging from a silver swan’s neck.  I pour coffee into the cup.  Its aroma is bracing, almost overwhelming.

I look outside.  The snow has long gone.  The rain is different now, cold November misty.  I know exactly where I am:  Weare, NH.   A red VW Beatle is parked just outside a dilapidated barn, pointed nose to nose with a black 1957 Buick Roadmaster.  Two short people are making their way up the grass to the mouth of the barn.  The man in a gray fedora and gray overcoat and the woman under an umbrella has a hippy-hitch of a woman who has a true disability.  Take it from me, I recognize a disability when I see it.   I wish I knew who these people were.

I’m on Spring St.  It’s summer.  A heavy rain starts and I watch drops explode on the pavement and the smell of hot pavement comes up to me.  In the open barn door across the street five children stand looking out at the storm.  The have found some old clothes in the barn and are playing dress up.  A loud thunder clap hits and they scatter like bowling pins.  In a moment they reappear, screaming with delight.  It’s funny to see.

I’m getting the knack of this rain watching.  I’m at Barnard’s playground during a rain delay.  I’m on the third-base side sitting in front of an AirStream trailer that’s been made into a restaurant.  Under an awning, I sip a cold beer in a beautiful pilsner glass.  The grandstand is full.  I know many of these people, but just like the high school tribe of ball players that is traipsing by me, I cannot put a name to any of them.

This then is what death is:  the rain is a catalyst to see loved ones, usually in the past, but in the future, too.  Whenever it rains I can see.  I can see everyone and everything.  The only thing I cannot do for all those I know, try as I may, is to remember a single name.

FG           1/11/2016

 On December 30 at 3pm I thought I was dying.  With two IVs and blankets pulled over my head, I had this dream.

I’m still sick and go back to see a doctor again today.  I expect to get passed off to another hospital for some invasive procedures.  Even at ten cents on the dollar paying for this is going to be a problem for me.  If I do go, I won’t have an internet connection either, so this may be it.  Thanks for reading, thanks for being my friend.  Beanie