Disclaimer: The following short story contains strong language and explicit content. Reader discretion is advised.
Maggie heard footsteps echoing through the old house. Dad’s house in winter was never quite warm, but never too cold. The kind of old, drafty house that meant you had to keep your socks on all the time. A wood fireplace heated the living room and larger parts of the house, and electric heat blissfully warmed the bathrooms. The smell of wood burning permeated the house, and the faint undertones of mildew and chainsaw gas mixed with oil lingered in the garage. She pulled the blankets up to her chin and prepared for the cold blast of air as the door swung loudly open when Kenny kicked it “Wake up Maggie, I think I got something to say to YOUUU” he sang. Her brother was already fully dressed in camo coveralls and orange hunting garb. “C’mon Magpie, go huntin’ with me” he said as he reached for her mattress. Knowing what was coming she shouted laughingly, “OK, OK, goddammit, I’ll go! Stoooop!” He flipped her mattress into the floor anyway. “Ok, get ready, I’ll be in the truck.” Hunting that fall really just meant driving to different potential hunting spots and smoking the slimly rolled joints that were his signature. He would say, “Would you rather have two skinny women or one fat one?” Whenever someone commented on the size of the joints. Maggie donned her coveralls and joined him in the old flatbed Chevy parked in the drive which, mercifully, had working heat.
Later that morning, she arrived home badly in need of a nap while Kenny made Ramen noodles; she reckoned he was badly in need of a therapist and smiled at his antics. “Goddamned motherfucker” he was saying, having to wash a pot to boil water from the heap of dirty dishes piled into the sink.
Up a creaking staircase with a wobbling banister was a landing wall-papered in brown and tan jungle animal print, the monkey’s and giraffe’s eyes always stared creepily as she climbed to her room. The once-beige carpet long ago turned to a different hue. A bookshelf lined the long wall to the left and even before she could read they had enticed her- the smell of the old pages, the fascinating covers. But there were other books with naked women, and calendars with the same hung in the bathrooms. And once she had found a discarded sex toy her brother had purchased as a dirty prank for an ex-lover. She heard many times, “Yeah, she’s a purty woman, I like women with that tan skin and dark hair” Daddy would say of them. When she was a little girl she would stand in front of the mirror of the antique dressers and suck in her tummy, fill her training bra with tissue, and pretend that she was a “purty” woman. She imagined that someday she might shed her freckles, that her pale skin would tan, that her auburn hair would smooth and grow long and dark. In contrast, Emily Dickinson, Rudyard Kipling and other voices were there, in the background of her psyche.
In winter, the upstairs was mostly unheated, and often left unoccupied, abandoned for the warmer rooms downstairs. But Maggie’s room had an electric heater, and if you kept walking straight from the top of the stairs, past where the chimney jutted up and through the floor to the ceiling, its bricks creating a pyramid in succession upwards, you would enter her room, what they all had dubbed the ‘A-frame’ room for its high vaulted ceiling.
All of her siblings had occupied the room at one point in their lives, but being that they were so much older, she’d never had the displeasure of sharing a room. The room had been painted a nauseating pink when she was ten and had come to live with her Dad for a few short months, and it remained so for many years. There was a door that opened to the outside which revealed a small balcony overlooking a small valley, and at the top of the next hill, the town square. It was called “Town Hill” by the locals and at the bottom in the valley was a carwash, an ancient feed mill that was still in operation, lined by a small creek that ran the length of the little valley and was fed by a freshwater spring.
Upstairs, but at the opposite end of the house from the A-frame room, was the ‘Blue Room’. Called that because the carpet was blue, as was the paint on the walls, the sink and toilet in the bathroom, and the comforter on the king size bed. In the winter it would remain unoccupied, save the mice who might seek refuge there. Too hard to heat, Daddy would say. The room was never fully finished, the divorce took place before the remodeling was done on the house so that room often stood cold and empty and reminded Maggie and her brother that they were unfinished too, and probably too expensive to heat.
Daddy had laid the bricks on the house. It had once been a white, wooden house until the remodel. He was helped by an uncle and another man from the community, both drunks, Maggie’s older sister had told her. It was done before Maggie could remember, but Kenny had put her name in the wet concrete of the driveway with his tiny finger.
In the summer, Maggie and her friends Shelly and Brenda bought Dollar Store nail polish in all different shades and listened to No Doubt, Matchbox 20, and Alanis Morrissette through a static-filled radio station, the only rock ‘n’ roll station for a hundred miles. The old radio was a relic from the 80’s that had belonged to her older sister. It still had a turntable record player and double cassette players. Some kids they knew had CD’s, but they sat in the tiny space where the ceiling met the floor of the A-frame room and gathered around that old radio, painting their nails looking at the ancient books from the mystic shelves out on the landing by the stairs. “My cousin’s friend is really cute, and I fucked him last night” Brenda would say as she applied a glossy yellow. Her brown eyes like saucers under her curly brunette hair. They didn’t believe her, but they asked questions anyway. Did it hurt? Are you guys going out? How old is he? Is he from here?
They were, of course, most enticed by the books about sex. The Playboys, the gritty X-rated novella paperbacks with the 1970’s covers, “Woman’s First Experience of Sex” was a favorite of Maggie’s for many years, and “Sex In History” was most amusing with its pictures of ancient Roman dildos and Kama Sutra poses carved into pottery..
Maggie had first found the Playboys when she was around six years old, and when she got caught looking at them was immediately shamed by her then- step-mother for wanting to “look at naked women”. Not long after that she got caught looking up a girl’s skirt by her step-mother while she stood under some outdoor bleachers at a high school football game. That memory was always one of more amusement than shame, however, so she wondered if she’d confused the two and the bleacher incident came first. It would explain her step-mother’s exasperation at finding her in the bathroom with a nudie mag, a six-year-old girl, cross-legged on the tile, ogling bleached pubic hair…
Even now she ogled other women. She wasn’t sure if it was out of jealousy or attraction, until one night she and Brenda had, under the influence of stolen tequila, had kissed. She would giggle at the thought that the second kiss she’d ever had was with a girl.
Maggie and her friends garnered a sexual revolution through the education they got from the books on the landing. Happily for them, they never experimented with bleaching their pubic hair.
One night, as they sat passing a bottle of MD 20/20 that had been liberated from between the cushions of the fold out couch (a favorite hiding place of Daddy’s) and telling untrue stories of sexual exploits, Kenny burst in the room. Wild-eyed, he kicked open the bedroom door and startled the girls, quickly looking from face to face his dimpled smile brimming with mischief. He was a true cowboy poet, the kind of guy Maggie imagined Jim Morrison would’ve been good friends with had they been fated to meet. He did this often, and sometimes after their initial shock abated they’d sheepishly pull out the pint bottle emancipated from between couch cushions or behind towel racks, and he’d take a shot, maybe he’d recite for them the poetry he was reading that week, using the same tones and inflections momma would use when she got really dramatic about something, and then he’d disappear once more into the darkness of the landing, past the bookshelves and into the Blue Room. Many warm nights they could hear the music and smell marijuana smoke floating across the landing, the laughter lilting and drawing them closer to that world.
………………..
The summer heat was oppressive. A palpable mass pressing into soft, perspiring flesh, full of gnats and mosquitoes and other such nuisances. There was no relief inside the house, Maggie showered then lay naked next to the old box fan. This offered only a brief respite beforeMaggie began to sweat again. Her hair dried quickly as she walked the narrow path through the field between briar bushes to the car wash.
Daddy had built the tiny gate for her when she was small so she could walk to her favorite spot without him. It kept her off the road with dangerous blind curves, and she was able to catch crawfish and buy Yoo-Hoo with the quarters a sweet neighbor would give her when she paid a visit to him and his mother. The neighbor and his mother were both old in Maggie’s eyes, and it wasn’t until she was quite grown she realized that they weren’t married, but that he had been slow, probably as much a child as she was, and still lived with his elderly mother. When she was six, she once stayed too long at the creek and her freckled skin became sunburned. She visited their house and, exhausted, fell asleep on their old vinyl couch and Daddy had come looking for her, worried. He had picked her tiny body gently off the couch and she awoke in her bed later that night.
Today, she pushed the gate open and hopped into Shelly’s mother’s car, an Oldsmobile the size of Connecticut. The old seats felt like the vinyl couch she’d fallen asleep on as a child, and her thighs stuck to them. Shelly’s bright red hair blew out the window as they desperately cranked them down attempting to capture a breeze. “I’ve never been to Tennessee, ” Shelly had once said. “Yes you have” Maggie had said and laughed hysterically, “that’s Claytown, it’s the next town over, we live on the state line!” she had laughed until tears streamed down her cheeks “Fuck Mags, I didn’t even know” Shelly had said in a slow, southern drawl.
As the sun set, the sky caught fire in purples and pinks, and stars splashed across a deep blue in the east. The tree line began to flicker in succession as if a Christmas display had been turned on in June, the lightning bugs dancing seductively to the songs the frogs sang to the Twilight.
Maggie pressed the Wild Turkey to her lips in the shed behind Shelly’s house again and again while a cute boy named James strummed his guitar and sang. A few other boys were playing pool, and everyone was careful to avoid the holes in the floor. The shed had a tin roof that leaked when it rained. An old radio and one bare light bulb were powered by an extension cord that filched power from the doublewide mobile home where Johnny and Shelly lived, and an old couch and several broken and battered chairs were scattered around where the pool table sat in the middle. Both of them with fire-engine red hair and dull looks, Johnny and Shelly were always kind and Maggie enjoyed their company immensely, but they were irredeemably dumb sometimes. The shed was a haven for all of them, but especially Johnny and Shelly, their mom worked long hours at a local grocery store, and their father was still in prison.
As the Wild Turkey took hold and the shed party got more raucous (the boys were building a bonfire now) Maggie walked to the end of the gravel drive and met a small black car and climbed into the passenger side.
She’d been in this car many times before. He was nearly ten years older than her, truly forbidden. She was “jailbait” he would tease her as he suckled her nipples and nibbled her ear lobes and she felt herself ache and throb, for what she wasn’t sure. He always coaxed her gently, backing off when she pulled away. She’d snuck back in with lips raw and chapped once from kissing, Kenny had met her at the top of the stairs and had accused her of being drunk. Maybe so, but she hadn’t touched any alcohol that night. She could smell his cologne on her shirt and in her hair, she was certain Kenny would smell his cologne too and know what she’d really been up to. She’d rather he thought she was drunk. Tonight though, the Wild Turkey was pulsing inside her, her heart raced and she felt the cold wind in her hair and smiled, the first time she’d felt good cool air in days. He pulled the tiny, two-door Ford down the gravel road into the near-forgotten cemetery and they climbed into the back seat.
Maggie made her way back up the gravel driveway towards the shed where Shelly met her, staggering a bit, “Where have you been?” She screeched and laughed and threw her arms around Maggie’s neck, the now-empty bottle still clasped in her left hand. “He came and picked me up,” Maggie said slyly and grinned, still a little buzzed, feeling different, but not sure how exactly. “Oh my god, did you do it? I’m sooo glad. It’s about fuckin time” Shelly slurred and tried to take a drink from the empty bottle.
Maggie sat alone on the second step, just past the chimney, between the nauseating pink of the A-frame and the haze of the Blue room. There was a ceiling fan over the stairway that offered some relief from the humid hell that had become her late-august bedroom. She wore khaki green shorts and a white tank top, hair still wet from the shower she sat leaning back on her elbows hoping to cool off before returning to the A-frame. She could hear the music wafting over the landing from the Blue Room “I’m a Joker, I’m a smoker, I’m miiiidnight toker” and heard the voices inside the room singing along. The door cracked loudly open and scraped reluctantly along the carpeted floor the way doors in old houses do and her cousin emerged. He was bearded, with a long black ponytail, a pot bellied man with cheap tattoos. He wore a Cherokee medicine bag around his neck and proclaimed to be a “Medicine Man” but his eyes were as blue as the rest of the family’s. He always smelled of cheap cigarettes. She remembered for a moment that when she was a little girl he rode a Harley Davidson and he scared her. He didn’t scare her anymore, he was her brother’s favorite, and her brother was her favorite. He was only ten years younger than daddy, a man in his forties, ancient by Maggie’s standards but “a cool old guy” because he smoked pot and drank. He’d come to live with them after he and Kenny had quit their jobs over in Hazard.. Maggie smiled when he appeared, hoping to be invited into the party. A cigarette hung out of his mouth as they exchanged pleasantries and he called her girl. “Hey girl” He said, “What are you doing out here?” Just trying to cool off, she replied, suddenly feeling very alone and wishing her brother would emerge from the Blue Room as well. Jailbait. The term seethed in the back of her brain now. She could smell the alcohol seeping out of his pores and he dropped hot cigarette ash on her as he leaned over the banister railing gazing down at her drunkenly with a look she recognized saying, “Yeah, it’s hot in here alright.”
………………….
On the hunt for old vinyl, Maggie climbed the stairs to Daddy’s house. It’s a new hobby of hers, collecting old records. She knows that in the upstairs closets are old records, archaic, covered in dust and smelling of mildew, from a time before she existed. A time told to her as bedtime stories: a fairytale. Dad isn’t home, and it’s the first time she’s been alone in the house in over a decade. The stairs are wider than in most homes, the carpet has changed and the old chimney no longer asserts itself through the second floor and out to the rooftop, the woodburning stove replaced by propane in her late teens. The creepy brown wallpaper was painted over, a baby blue, but she can still see remnants of animal eyes sadly peering through, a bygone era still telling tales.
There had been an attempt at redemption, she thinks for a moment, in those years when the bricks were stripped, and paint applied; the beige and beer-stained carpet ripped up and thrown out. But the house had other plans for itself and clung desperately to its misery. The mold and disdain bled through despite it. There are two tiny closets in the upstairs landing, and she heads for the one just outside the A-frame room. The folklore of the house says that when the wood paneling is pulled away, revealing the crawl space there was a red rocking chair that would begin to rock on sight. But it was only ever seen by children. Certainly, when she was younger and had heard the story she would say, “Yes! I’ve seen it!” but she had no real memory of it now; she had been a child so briefly. Now, at 33 years old, she pulls open the tiny door exposing the hodgepodge mess inside with its familiar smell and a chill still runs up her spine as she struggles to quickly flip on the fluorescent light overhead. It flutters for a moment, along with her heart, and finally illuminates. The paneling is in place, there is no small red rocking chair. Only the 8-tracks, milk crates of vinyl records, her sister’s old band hat, a poster Kenny drew for a contest sometime in the 80’s. Somewhere, but not immediately visible, she knows are letters her mom wrote to Daddy while he was overseas. Several lifetime’s worth of memorabilia- none of it hers.
Maggie pulled out the crates of records, closed the door and sat on the floor and began to search. She picked out some Ozzy, a Cher album, the Eagles. She is most happy that she found an old Black Sabbath album in great condition, and several records with Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra.
She created the stack of records bound for her collection, and leaned against the wall looking at the clutter of furniture, the dismal display of pictures and junk, and to her beloved bookshelves- and wept.
Feature Photo by https://unsplash.com/@lishakov
