The Old Caldwell Place

My first thought was that an alien had dropped by for breakfast.

My grandmother was in a fuzzy pink housecoat and matching slippers with her silver hair in tight pink spoolies under a glittery hair net and no make up.  She was drinking coffee and scanning the tiny island paper that arrived monthly, grumbling to herself as she dug into her pocket for her cigarettes and saccharine.  The kitchen was sunny and warm and smelled slightly of Airwick.  Nana smelled of cold cream and smoke. I took my seat across from her and she pushed a new package of pull-apart cinnamon rolls toward me along with a plate of softened butter.  My mother would not be happy to see me spread butter over the already sweetly iced rolls but for Nana it was an old habit and she loved the combination of melting icing and butter - like potato skins with butter and sugar only better - and she'd passed it on to me years ago.

Hmmph, she muttered and gave the little newspaper a stern, two handed rattle as if it had spoken out of turn,
The old Caldwell Place burned again.

She peered over the top of the paper and gave me a narrow-eyed glance as if she thought I might argue.

When?  I asked neutrally and after a quick pause, she shrugged but didn't answer.

Nana had never thought much of the old Caldwell Place - or any of the Caldwells, for that matter - Ethan and Emily's uncared for old homestead had not been on the island but rather just a few miles past the ferry slip on the way to the mainland.  It was a sorry looking old place, a little on the spooky side, some said, neglected and in need of every kind of repair with a perpetual brood of unruly and ragtag children running loose day and night.  A pair of rusted out old cars bordered what once might have been a driveway but what was now barely a path.  A pile of discarded tires sat under a tree.  There were random piles of hubcabs, rain rotted stacks of ruined lumber, coffee cans, abandonded machine parts.  The whole thing looked like a badly drawn and crookedly hung picture.  We'd passed it with every trip to and from the mainland.

I declare I don't know why the province just doesn't just condemn it and carry it all away, my grandmother said nastily, I shudder to think what the inside must be like.

Ruthie flashed me a wicked grin at that - we both could've told Nana exactly what it was like on the inside - and I jabbed her smartly in the ribs.

Something to add, girls? my eagle-eyed grandmother inquired sweetly with a glance in the Lincoln's rearview mirror.

Oh, no, ma'am, Ruthie said quickly.

Nothing at all, I added, probably too loud and Ruthie pinched me.  We both had to work hard to stifle the giggles and then my mother half turned in her seat and gave us a warning glare.  We immediately straightened up and began flying right.

It had been on a dare, of course.  One of the Sullivan boys had called us chickens, said we were "good girls" and "scaredy cats" and would never have the nerve to break the rules.  Ruthie said we'd be skinned alive if we were caught but it was my own brothers who turned us.

Ain't takin' no sissy girls, they'd announced and Ruthie and I were all in.

We pedaled the length of the island, crossed the ferry on the pretense of buying Jersey Milk bars at East Ferry, then pedaled round the hairpin turn and straight up the mainland.  It was a glorious summer day, windy and warm and smelling of salt.  Gulls shrieked behind us and the hayfields were hazy bright.  Even in the early afternoon sun, the old Caldwell place looked abandoned and forgotten - slightly treacherous, I thought - but we walked our bikes in bravely, past the scrap heaps of second hand bricks and several wheelbarrows full of pop bottles.  An avalanche of children spilled out the front door, a pack of dogs descended on us from the shadows.  Ethan, harnessing up an old and decrepit looking mule, barely glanced at us but Emily, one baby on her hip and another strapped to her back, swung the precariously hung screen door open wide, smiling at us despite the missing and broken teeth.  Her hair, widely streaked with gray, hung in a long coiled braid well past the middle of her back.  She was pale and hunched over, barefoot and wearing a ragged shift dress.  I thought I'd never seen a more tired looking woman, exhaustion came off her in waves and still she managed something that was a little like a welcoming look.

It was dark inside and there wasn't much furniture.  You could see daylight through some of the floorboards and in patches on the roof.  There were no interior doors, only blankets hung over the openings and kept in place with nails.  Some swayed lightly in a breeze we didn't feel.  Two oil lamps burned a sickly yellowish from the rack and ruin mantle.  The windows were covered in plastic sheeting, ash buckets sat unemptied by the fireplace, one side wall was almost completely exposed down to the beams with baby clothes hung randomly on the protruding nails.  It was impossible to take in, impossible to understand that people lived here, ate and slept and found the strength to face another day here.  Emily laid out slices of bread with butter and sugar and I thought of Nana's bright red and white kitchen, the linoleum she was always planning to replace, the little wooden gadget Uncle Len had designed for the hot water faucet that always ran scalding, the steady hum of the refrigerator and the lights that needed only the touch of a finger on a wall switch, the pantry with its overflowing stock of canned goods and cookie jars.  Each spring, Aunt Vi and Aunt Pearl came to clean and air and make the house ready for our summer visit - the woodshed was filled, the grass cut, the linens changed - and when we arrived, the dining room table would be set with a bubbling pot of fish chowder waiting on the stove and fresh flowers on the counters.  One of the village boys would have washed the windows until they shone and there'd be a fresh coat of paint on the flagpole.  Water would've been run through the pipes and the well tested.  Every glass and plate in every cabinet would have sparkled.

Here in the dull and disturbing poverty of the Old Caldwell Place, I began to feel ashamed.  I thought Ruthie might have felt it too and we didn't wait on the boys, just eased out, mounted our bikes, and rode for East Ferry as fast as we could.  We didn't talk about what we'd seen - or how it had made us feel - and by the time we passed it again and Nana had mentioned about the province coming and condemning it ......well, a considerable amount of summer had passed.  We let ourselves think we'd exaggerated or made it all up. It was easier than remembering, we thought, the bad stuff always is.

Ethan and Emily had long since moved on for a warmer climate when the first fire broke out that November, Ruthie wrote me.  She sent me a tiny photo from the paper, a grainy black and white of the the remains of the foundation and the chimney, three quarters buried in snow and looking unbearably sad.

The second fire, some ten years later, claimed what little was left.

They let it burn, my grandmother mused, Guess sometimes that's all you can do.