The only evidence I see of them consists of smeared fingerprints on the windows. Leaning close, I try to make out swirls and circles in the oil. Their prints don’t look like ours at all. It almost looks like the marks were made by scales. That revelation sends a shudder through me. I’m not a big fan of snakes.
Uncle Walt always used to say, “They can’t hear you screaming at them like that, and if they can, they don’t understand you.”
It didn’t stop me from yelling every time I lifted a bucket and found a coiled snake underneath.
“There are no venomous snakes up here,” my uncle would always say. It didn’t matter. I wasn’t reacting out of a fear of envenomation. The fear was fundamental. It still is. I don’t even like watching snakes on TV. The way they move is unnatural.
I’m standing here at the bottom of the stairs, lost in memory, because I’m afraid of what I might find on the second floor. The bedrooms upstairs are supposed to be safe. If I find something up there, I’ll never be able to fall asleep in this home again.
I tap my sharpened stake on a stair tread and take a step.
(I swear I heard something.)
I swear I heard something.
The room next to the bathroom is the one that Uncle Walt always used to call “Grandma’s room.” When Mom would come to visit, he would say, “You can take your mother’s things up to Grandma’s room, of course.”
That would cause Mom to make a face and backhand Uncle Walt while he feigned injury.
Uncle Walt was thirteen months younger than Mom.
My uncle would hold up a bulb before he changed it, and say something to her like, “When you were my age, did they have these fancy lightbulbs?”
Mom always gave him the same dry laugh. In every way, Mom seemed much younger than Uncle Walt, but the comments about her age always offended her.
I can see under the bed in Grandma’s room from the stairs. That’s one hiding spot I can check off the list.
I start with the bathroom, sweeping aside the shower curtain and jabbing into the empty space. I look behind the door and declare the room clear. In Grandma’s room, I look in the wardrobe and see the clothes that I’ve managed to forget about. Mom always left clothes up here for her visits so she wouldn’t have to travel with a big suitcase. Back at home, she went through clothes pretty fast. Using Goodwill like her extended closet, she cycled outfits for the season and her changing moods. Up here, she wore a pretty consistent uniform.
“What does it matter?” she would say. “There’s nobody up here worth looking good for.”
“Not at your age,” Uncle Walt would say.
That would earn him another hit.
Grandma’s room doesn’t have a closet. It’s quickly finished.
I move on to Uncle Walt’s room.
His room is still filled with mysteries. With my broom handle, I lift the skirt on his bed and peer underneath. This seems like a horrible invasion of his privacy, even though I only find dust bunnies under there. I haven’t even started to empty out this room. I’ve been leaving it for last.
Uncle Walt never hesitated to answer any direct question, but he still seemed like a very private man.
On one visit—I must have been in my early twenties—we were sitting at the kitchen table when I finally got up enough nerve to ask, “How come you never had a girlfriend… or a boyfriend?”
He smiled and laughed.
“I did. Once. It ended poorly and I decided that, for me, the risk wasn’t worth the reward.”
“What risk? Getting your heart broken if it doesn’t work out?”
He shook his head. “No. Not that. Infection.”
I misunderstood at first. I thought he was talking about literal infection, like something sexually transmitted. He must have grasped that his statement could have been misconstrued because he immediately clarified.
“Heartbreak is finite for most people. It’s like a cracked rib. The pain is terrible, but you don’t even have to put a cast on it. It wouldn’t do any good. After a while, the pain subsides and you’re good as new. For me, a heartbreak is a compound fracture. My internals pierce through the skin and let all kinds of pathogens in. Last time, I realized that the next break would likely kill me.”
He had weaponized his own metaphor and used it to put a cap on his own joy.
I told him as much.
Uncle Walt agreed with me. That was the frustrating part with him sometimes. You could point out his hypocrisy and he would listen thoughtfully. Then, instead of changing his behavior, he would simply agree and keep on doing whatever he was doing.
I pull open one of his closet doors and look at the hanging clothes for a moment before I push them aside with my stake and probe the corners with the flashlight beam. These clothes still hold his shape. The hanging overalls bulge out in the middle and I can see the mouth of the pocket where his hooked thumb stretched the seam.
I check the other closet. This one holds a dresser with tall drawers. I shine the flashlight on either side to make sure that nothing is hiding in the gaps.
My room is next.
The sheets and thin bedspread are swirled and tossed.
Uncle Walt always insisted that I make the bed each morning.
“It makes a world of difference in how you greet the day,” he said. “Night is for wild dreams and disorder. Put everything in its place when you wake up
