After dumping the waters, attaching the hose, and pulling it over to clean the cans out, I went back to turn the hose on, and nothing happened. I turned the knob back to the right, then back to the left. Nothing, again. I went into the pump house, not sure of what I was looking for, and I found two electric panels on the wall with lights on the front cover. One had a blinking red light on it, so I timidly opened it up to find a small motherboard with a few resistors, capacitors, and switches on it. I tried to think back on an electronics class I took a few years ago, but I was lost.
Elliot came back from feeding the goats and found me scratching my head. He looked inside the pump house and saw the power was on, checked the wires and board. He flipped the circuit breaker in the breaker box on the house, but the control box came back on with the same flashing red light. I checked the house water, and it was fine, but that left watering the chickens and goats. That’s right, the goat waters were on the same line. Since I had just dumped out all the chickens’ water, we were stuck filling the cans by running a hose into the house and carrying the full cans out to the coop. That sucked for me, since one of the full cans equals about half my weight, but Elliot carried them fairly easily. Then we got some buckets from the shed, filled them, and carried them over to the gate on the goat field. As ten or so goats crowded around me, I sat the water down and they started drinking like they hadn’t had water in a week. I turned to go get another bucket, when one of them decided to stand on the rim and shoved the bucket over on its side, spilling about three gallons onto the ground. They looked up at me as if to say, “Are you going to do something about this?” I could feel my brain pulling away from my skull just for a moment, then I grabbed the bucket and started back for the water hose.
“Hang on.” I saw Elliot disappear behind the house and quickly reappear with a tire in each hand. He carried them over to the gate and sat them down where I’d just been. “Try that.”
“Is that why you keep all those tires?”
“There’s about a million uses for an old tire. You don’t know you need ‘em ‘til you need ‘em.”
When we’d set up six buckets, we went in the house for a break, and I found the number for the pump guy, which Elliot said was my only option at this point. I left him a message and then called Bill Conliff to tell him what was going on. He didn’t say much but asked if he could come out in about an hour to talk to me. That made me a little apprehensive, but I agreed. Elliot and I went out and fed the dogs. Fortunately, their water was on the same line as the house. Whew.
In less than an hour, Bill showed up, and we all went inside and sat at the table to talk. He smiled and pointed to the loft area. “You know, I used to stay up there.”
“You lived with my parents? Did I know that already?”
“Maybe. I was in my teens. My parents kicked me out, and they let me live here for a couple of years. They’re the reason I was able to go to college, you know … Anyway, a couple from Northern California are interested in the house.”
“But it’s not on the market.”
“I know, but the local realtors know about it. They consider it kind of like an off-market listing. If they have a buyer who wants something they know will be coming up for sale, they keep it in mind. When they heard about your dad’s death, they knew there would be a possibility of the property opening up.”
“Yeah, but there are repairs that need to be done, right?”
“Well, the buyer would cover those if you agreed to the price and other terms. They haven’t made an offer yet. They’re just inquiring, and I needed to get an answer from you before responding.”
“I don’t have any idea of a fair offer.”
“Me, either, but they would definitely offer you below market value. The sale would go through pretty quickly. Your dad managed to leave almost no liability on the place. My understanding is that they would raze this house and some or all of the sheds and build a larger house and garage in their place. They seem happy with the pastures, unsure if they’ll keep chickens.”
I thought about everything my dad had made disappearing in
