This Old Farmhouse
A cold short story
This clapboard farmhouse sits waiting for winter, absent from the warm days and cool evenings of autumn. No more children will run past her windows laughing as if the sun will stay forever. The chill of the air, lightly scented with burning fires will cut into the weathered siding, digging deeper into the small cracks, starting its never ending quest of removing another undetermined amount of paint from her sides. Soon the rains will beat against her, adding layers of rust on her hinges and the exposed heads of nails, as she begins to swell like some aged ship reintroduce to the sea. Many creaks in her floor will return while others head south. She will change, this home, this sanctuary from the storms. Fires inside her will start as each log placed into the wood burner attempts to counter the exterior wind driven freeze. She will be both hot and cold, wet and dry, safe and dangerous as she stands firm in facing those elements of the winter as they pound against her. Her doors will increase width; temporally sealing them tightly to each exterior doorjamb, most certainly causing their use as designed to fail. Drafts will seek ways around her walls, sneaking in and bringing forth small cold spots, chilling the surrounding air as if to remind us of where we are.
This clapboard farmhouse, built in 1832 by Great-Grandfather Levi for his new bride is still home to his descendants, I, his great-grandson have kept the home fire fires burning a long time, and though life here is not unpleasant, it is extremely demanding during the cold months when the snows come. For the last 27 winters, each one has left me snow bound, trapped inside for weeks at a time. Unable to retrieve water from the tap, forced to melt snow for drinking and cooking. One year the back porch where I have my writing studio caved in, 7 feet of snow turned into a glacier and advanced half way into the kitchen before the spring thaw came. Lost a lot of my stories not to mention it made the house cold as the North Pole. That was the year my girlfriend Jill had decided to stay the winter with me. We both took sick that year and for a few weeks I was bedridden, not sure that I would recover, Jill claimed that’s as close to death as she’s ever seen a man. Her blankets would pile up on her chair and could be found covering most of the sofa. Her green quilt, the one with the embroidered brown and red leaves became her cocoon, traveling from room to room. My needs for fresh air became a flash point for conflict, and the next 3 or 4 months we fought over whom holds control of the temperature. That also left a lot of time for getting back into bed and making up.
I can still remember that year we spent here together. Funny how winter can change us. It was the next year that she had made arrangements for a more southern location where she thought the two of us would bask while winter did its thing. Since I spent every winter there writing, a disagreement broke out and didn’t end up leaving us in a happier ever after kind of hallmark moment. She left for the winter and I stoked the fire more than ever before. Two stubborn fools we were. She said she be back in the springtime and left.
It was the coldest winter ever recorded that year, reaching minus 15 for 3 straight weeks. My wood was running short even though I had tried to conserve, I had no choice but keep it burning. Had it gone out, death would come in days from hypothermia. In the mean while, I had been very productive writing that winter; with no one to spend the day with I immersed myself in my stories. One story in particular was most certainly the greatest love story I had ever written. A tale so beautiful that each time I read it I cried tears of joy. Back then I did all my writing on my trusty old Underwood typewriter because of the power going out so often. It was about mid December, near as I could tell when I started burning the chairs, most of the firewood was gone and the stockpile outside on the porch had become much to wet to catch fire. I moved the logs inside and every couple of days I would try to burn another one, pulled from the igloo like stack I had built from them around the fireplace. I had already chopped up the butcher blocker cutting board that had stood in the kitchen first, mixing it with the remaining wood, getting three days heat from her. After that the picture frames went, then the headboard and dresser. I had burned every door, all the cabinets, and even part of the wooden flooring. The clothes burned ok but smoked awfully bad, but not as much as the mattress had. I was down to one old wooden chair, and boxes of my writings. It didn’t look good. The boxes went next, and I had to stop eating, having burnt the food as fuel, but not in an ingested way. I had kept her blankets, bundled up in them all, I found myself faced with life without my stories, or death and the chance the world would read them. One by one, a story was pulled apart, page after page kept me alive. The tears became like ice on my face as each one caught fire. The day I burnt that love story all I could think of was her, and the reality that I most likely wouldn’t live to see her again. Thoughts of how horrible it would be for her to open that door and find me frozen like an ice cream ran through my mind, with each moment, and each page I tossed in to burn I formed a plan. I would type her a letter on the back of one of the last pages telling her not to come in, but to go get the sheriff because I didn’t make it. Most everything was now burnt.
As I lay my head down, covered only by the blanket with the embroidered leaves, and with the one page note pinned outside on the door I began to dream. The last of my fuel cast its glow, as the final chapter of the most beautiful love story ever written burned. The dream I had was with me on that beach she wanted me to go to, in swim shorts sipping a nice cool drink, smiling at her, thanking her for her thoughtfulness.
I drifted in and out of sleep over the next few days and I felt deaths icy claws pawing my face. The room had long grown cold. Peaceful thoughts filled my mind. The shivering had past. Numbness blocked any feelings I should have had. My eyes could no longer see although they remained open. I was near death.
Somewhere in my mind I heard her voice, telling me to hold on. Demanding that I not die. In the dream I heard her say “Don’t you fucking die on me”, it was so real that even the smell of smoke was present. The words were like heated water enveloping every part of me. I could taste something warm on my lips. Then I felt my finger move, and that’s when my eyes focused and there she was. The tears in her eyes changed quickly to a sparkle as again she cussed me out, this time for scaring her so badly. She told me she thought she had lost me forever. She had returned and was saving my live at that very moment.
I made it through that winter, losing only the first finger on my right hand to frostbite. The one I hunted and pecked with best. And the very next winter I learned to write in shorts, sipping Mi-ties on the beach as I made every attempt to recreate that love story, only now, she’s on every page.
