“That’s right. You’re a pilot.”
“Used to be.”
“You ever see any UFOs?”
“I did not.”
“Believe in them?”
“No.”
“You should. This universe is a very strange place.”
“You know this from personal experience?”
He raises the caterpillars that pass for eyebrows. “So, your new home,” he says, ignoring your question. “I would not be surprised by anything at all my mother or my father left behind in that house. As you must know by now, my mother was nothing if not eccentric. And she was mighty ill toward the end.”
“No, I didn’t know that.”
“Huh. I woulda thought she was still a source of gossip up in Bethel.”
“Rest assured, she isn’t.”
Outside Hewitt’s door, a town sand truck rumbles by, and the two of you sit and listen. The storm windows rattle.
“She was once,” he says. “That’s for sure.”
“Why?”
He shrugs. “People are just built the way they’re built.”
You point at a dusty photo on a wall of dusty photos at the edge of the kitchen. It’s a teenage boy holding a fishing pole and a brown trout that must be a foot and a half long. “Is that you or your brother?” you ask.
“That would be Sawyer.”
“Did your mom become more eccentric after he died?”
“Ayup. I suppose she did.”
“How?”
“Losing a son cannot be easy on any mother.”
“Do you have children?”
“Nope.”
This is starting to feel to you like an interrogation, and you don’t like that. But you don’t seem to be getting anywhere with your questions. And so you change your tactics. “I like this little city-St. Johnsbury.” You are careful not to add a question to the statement, hoping he will offer something back without a prompt. But he just sits back in his chair, pulling his folded hands off the table and into his lap, and stares at you with a face that is absolutely unreadable. You have the sense that, if this becomes a contest to see who can remain silent the longest, you won’t have a chance in hell. Suddenly you are aware of how hot he keeps this house, and you look back into the living room and notice for the first time a cast-iron woodstove the size of a dryer. Atop is a black kettle steamer shaped like a sleeping cat. The place seems to be filled with these unexpected, oddly domestic touches. You are pretty sure he is not married now; you wonder if he was once.
“There are a few things in your parents’ house that I’m hoping you can explain to me,” you tell him finally, when the quiet has become interminable.
“You know, I haven’t been inside there in years.”
“I didn’t know that, either.”
“Ayup.”
“Can you tell me about the door in the basement?”
“You mean the door to the basement? The one in the kitchen? Or the wheelbarrow ramp?”
“Neither. I meant that piece of barnboard with the thirty-nine carriage bolts that goes to nowhere.”
He arcs his eyebrows and actually chuckles the tiniest bit. “Thirty-nine, eh?”
“Yes. Thirty-nine.”
“Seems a mite excessive. I just guess my father was a tad eccentric, too.”
“What was it? Why did he seal it up? Please?”
You hadn’t meant for that last word to have such a pleading quality to it; there was an unmistakable tenor of begging to your tone. But, much to your surprise, it seems to have an effect on Hewitt Dunmore. The moment he starts to speak, you realize he is about to say more than he has the whole time you have been with him in this overheated kitchen. He is finally going to tell you a story.
“It was a coal chute. But hasn’t been that in years. The way my father explained it, Mother had gotten a little paranoid. Start of her Alzheimer’s, maybe. She was afraid of someone sneaking in through the chute. You know, they’d climb through the latticework under the porch, and the next thing you know, they’re inside the house. So, as I understand it, my father put a wooden beam across the door and thought, That was that. Didn’t do at all, not in my mother’s eyes. Mother wanted more. Now, usually my father was very good with her when she got like that. Even before the Alzheimer’s, she could be a bit difficult. And she was always like a dog with a bone. Always. Just wouldn’t let something go. So, you might say that my father was making a statement with a wall of two-by-fours and all those carriage bolts. Weren’t no intruder going to get into the house that way, thank you very much.” When he is done, he shakes his head and grins. Then: “Thirty-nine, eh?”
“Yes.”
“Guess Father didn’t have a lot to do that day.” He gives you a small smile.
“Tell me, is that how your mother passed away? Alzheimer’s?”
“Ayup.”
“I’m sorry.”
He pulls his hands from his lap and, elbows at his sides, raises his hands, palms up-a universal gesture for resignation. Then he folds his arms across his chest.
“I think, in her paranoia, she left behind some other things,” you continue.
“Wouldn’t surprise me.”
“She seemed to have hidden things.”
“That would be Mother. ’Specially toward the end.”
“We found a knife under a heating grate. A very sharp carving knife.”
He shakes his head. “Oh, I am sorry about that. You have small children, as I recall.”
“We do.”
“They weren’t hurt, were they?”
“No. Emily-my wife-found it.”
“I heard after the closing that your girls are twins. My lawyer told me. I didn’t know that.”
“Yes. Fraternal. Not identical.”
“I was a twin.”
“I know.”
He sighs. He seems about to say something more but manages to restrain himself.
“There’s more,” you tell him finally. “More things.”
“Go on.”
“One of my girls came across a disposable cigarette lighter in the house.”
“A lighter? Huh. Well, I doubt that was Mother. A workman, maybe.”
“And there was a crowbar and an ax.”
“Hidden, I suppose.”
“Yes.”
“Well, I would guess we can pin those items on Mother and on her Alzheimer’s. She musta been mighty scared.”
“Was she afraid of anyone in particular?”
“Just burglars,” he answers simply, though he draws the word out into three syllables: bur-ga-lers.
“Burglars.”
“Ayup.”
“So she hid weapons so she could defend herself.”
“So it seems.”
“Did your father know?”
