Then, a really weird thing happened. My mother began to evolve. She stopped drinking so much and stopped taking pills. Instead of medicating herself enough so she could hide in bed, she actually began to speak her mind and say no when people tried to pull a fast one. I stopped hating her and began to cheer her on.
She said something really interesting to me one day.
“Everyone is full of crap until proven otherwise.”
That was a step beyond how I saw the world. Her cynicism had progressed so far that it had blossomed into arrogance. I adopted her new slogan immediately.
Along the way, I must have forgotten.
This man on the floor, who is clearly delirious and hallucinating, has just told me that there are vampires in the cellar. For a terrible, shameful moment, I let that idea frighten me. Blame the little kid who came up to Uncle Walt’s every summer. That little kid still occasionally whispers in my ear.
“It’s okay, Mr. Engel, the sun is out,” I say.
His wide eyes blink and he relaxes his grip on my hand.
“I turned off…” he says. I follow his eyes to the far side of the room. There’s a fan there. Its metal blades aren’t turning. “The fan. They don’t like heat.”
“They don’t?” I ask.
“Vampires,” he whispers.
This is potentially really bad news for Mr. Engel. If he turned off the fan before he collapsed from heat stroke, then his psychosis must predate this illness. That could spell bad news for his future. I imagine myself going through his things, looking for an address book of a daughter or cousin. They might have to get him declared unfit so they can put him in assisted living or something.
I’m being silly though. He only latched onto the idea of vampires because I mentioned them. That can’t be the reason that he turned off the fan. I release my hand from his. The fan isn’t turned off, it’s just unplugged. The cord is two cloth-covered twisted wires that end in a rubber plug. I pinch the thing between my fingers, hoping that it doesn’t electrocute me when I try to plug it in.
It doesn’t.
The fan cycles up, blasting an amazing amount of air across the kitchen.
Mr. Engel moans.
“If you get too cold, I’ll turn it off,” I say as I return to him. “They don’t make them like they used to, right? That thing really moves the air.”
The wind makes the closet door bang against its frame. There’s an eye hook latch on the outside of the door. I revise my opinion—it wouldn’t be a closet door with a latch on the outside. That has to be the door to the cellar, right? Another chill moves through me and I blame the air across my sweaty shirt. Any other thought would be childish.
I laugh at myself and the corners of Mr. Engel’s mouth turn up. His eyes are smiling along with me.
“You’re feeling a little better, aren’t you? Would you like another ice cube?”
I’m still talking way too loud. He has given me no indication that he is hard of hearing. Then again, at his age it would be silly of me to assume otherwise.
I get up again to open the ancient refrigerator. I like the latch on the thing. When it closes, it really locks tight. I wonder why they got rid of those. Before returning to Mr. Engel, I press the cellar door shut with my toe and put the hook through the eye. What a grizzly name for that kind of latch—putting hooks into eyes.
Mr. Engel is watching me do all this with his one good eye. I wonder if the milky one got a hook through it.
“Can you take this?” I ask, pressing the ice cube into his hand.
His fingers close around it and he grimaces.
“It’s cold, huh? See if you can put it to your lips. I’m going to look for the ambulance. I’m afraid they might have gotten confused and gone right by your house.”
(I would have heard them.)
I would have heard them.
The front door was wide open this whole time and there was no sound until I turned on the fan. I would have heard any vehicle rolling down the dirt road. Over at my uncle’s house, I swear that you can hear traffic a mile off. The sound is so out of place.
At night, when we would sit on the deck on the roof of the barn, Uncle Walt would swear that he could hear the highway in the distance. I never could. I think he was making it up. I wish I was there now—back at Uncle Walt’s.
I came up here to clean the place out so I wouldn’t feel bad about putting it on the market. I couldn’t bear the thought of giving up the place before I went through all of Uncle Walt’s possessions. There might be something in there that he really treasured and forgot to put in his will. A more insightful person might be able to understand what that means. Am I worried about my own legacy? I don’t want to be forgotten after I die—is that why I’m so concerned about what Uncle Walt left behind?
Surely he doesn’t care at this point. Whether or not one believes in an afterlife, I’m almost certain that the dead are able to leave behind their earthy concerns.
“How long has it been?” I whisper.
My phone doesn’t have the answer. The phone call I tried to make earlier isn’t recorded on my list of recent calls—I guess because there was no signal? So, I know what time it is now, but not how long I’ve been waiting.
“Ten more minutes,” I say to myself. “Then I’ll figure out what to do.”
It would take me nearly twenty minutes to get to town and I figure they’ve been on the road for at
