“It’s going to take quite a few more five-thousand-dollar checks before I’m able to think about that,” he said. “But I want you to notice we have a private road, too.”
“And a country place.”
“Yes. Actually, it’s amazing how much of the life of the rich is merely a glamourized counterfeit of the life of the poor. Did you know that penthouses were originally built to house the janitors who cleaned the buildings upon which they stood? That was in the days before elevators. The richest people lived on the ground floor so they didn’t have to climb stairs.”
We went around a sharp curve too fast, then down into a dark little gulch, then, all of a sudden, out of the trees and into a sunny clearing.
An old, old farmhouse stood there, with hollyhocks around it and purple morning glories climbing up the front porch. The house was two stories high, with turrets that didn’t match and a steep roof that was green with moss; the rest had been white once, but so much paint was gone that it was pale gray.
“I bet it’s haunted,” I said.
“It is,” Blue admitted as he climbed out of the car. “If you were to stay overnight, we’d find out whether the ghosts liked you. They’re rather a nice crowd, really. Good country people.”
“Dead country people.” I wasn’t sure he was kidding me.
“Aren’t we all.” He helped me get out, and I thought of the time I’d helped him get up into the CW&N car. A guy about twenty, with a tangled beard and hair to match, was standing in the doorway like he was waiting for us. I didn’t know his name, but I remembered having seen him around Barton. “This is Muddy Brooks,” Blue said. “Muddy, this is Holly.”
Muddy nodded and smiled; he’d lost a couple of teeth. I looked at Blue, and Blue said, “Mrs. Maas. Muddy does most of our cooking and keeps the place swept out.”
“I see.”
“Muddy, Holly will be here until about dark. Do we have anything to eat?”
“Bread,” Muddy said. “I baked today. Coffee. There’s some of that apple butter left, and I could check the snares.”
“Do it, please, and ask Tick to bring in some firewood, if you see him. We’ll have a fire tonight.”
We went on into what I guess had been the parlor in the old days. It was a big room with windows pretty near solid around two sides, so that there was a lot of light in spite of the morning glories. There was a fireplace in it with lots of ashes, an old flattop desk that might have been a teacher’s once, with a radio on it and a swivel chair behind it, and about six other chairs; as far as I could see, the swivel was the only chair that wasn’t busted some way. Blue put me in a nice carved-oak morris that was perfectly okay except that the cushions didn’t belong to it and the stick that was supposed to let you move the back up and down was gone and a three-foot piece of copper tubing was doing the job instead.
“Do you want your foot up on something?” Blue asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “That would be great.”
He shoved over a green plastic hassock that had sprung a leak, and Muddy came in carrying chipped white mugs that looked like they’d been ripped off from a diner. The coffee was hot and black, very strong and very, very bad.
“You said you wanted to get your head straight,” Blue told me. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Listen, I guess, if I feel like talking.”
“I can’t stay around—I have errands to run. I’ll be back this evening, though, and I’ll listen then. All right?”
“All right.”
“You’ll be safe here; I don’t want you worry about that. If you need anything, yell. Muddy or Tick will get it if we have it.”
“All right,” I said again. “Who’s Tick?”
“Tick is Bill. He’s crabby, but don’t worry about it. You won’t be able to make friends with him, so don’t bother to try; but his meanness is all talk, and he doesn’t talk much.”
“These guys work for you? Tick and Muddy?”
Blue shrugged. “You can put it that way if you want. Or you could just say they live with me; legally I own this place, and a lot of the Hollander Safe and Lock Company’s five thousand is going to take care of back taxes on it. Or you can say we’re a commune of three; when you don’t have money, it doesn’t matter what your economic system is. Now I have to go.”
Only he didn’t—at least, not right away. He went farther back in the house somewhere. I could hear, faintly but clearly (because that house was one of the quietest places I’ve ever been in), his dialing a phone. I couldn’t make out what he said; there was another phone over on the flattop desk, and I had to fight the temptation to hobble over and listen.
After a while he came back, and I asked, “Something you didn’t want me to hear?”
Blue shook his head. “When I deal with people, I’m often forced to promise that what they say—even their communicating with me at all—will be held confidential. I try to keep that promise.”
“That’s what I said,” I told him, but I had to say it to his back.
After that I sat and thought. Outside you could hear the wind in the trees maybe once every five minutes, but that was all. There was somebody else in the house moving around, mostly upstairs, but there was nothing scary about it—he sounded like he must have been working because he moved too much for loafing, but it wasn’t restless pacing up and down either, just somebody walking when he needed to get something. Eventually I heard him come downstairs for maybe the third or fourth time, and he stuck his head in to look at me. He stayed long enough to let
