Rock Island Line by David Rhodes (most life changing books txt) 📗

Perry obediently slunk away.

“And I was wondering if I could have the bird feeder that Dad was making in the basement—if it’s still there.”

“Of course you can.”

“It’s yours, stupid,” said Mal.

“The taxes,” Perry mumbled that night before he went to bed. “I suppose you’ll be wanting to pay the taxes from now on.”

July was so excited that he couldn’t possibly wait until tomorrow to see his grandparents’ old house.

“Oh, it’s ghastly, and it’d look so much more fearful at night,” said his Aunt Becky. “I just don’t think it’s fit for a person to live in.”

“Come on, take us out there, please.”

“We can wait till tomorrow, July.”

“No we can’t. Bring a flashlight if you have one. We’ll go without if you don’t.”

Perry was in bed. The three of them drove the five miles out into the country and parked in the overgrown driveway. In the moonlight they could see several broken windows in front. A brief flurry of wind moved the windmill blades around sixty degrees and the shaft groaned.

“Let’s go back,” said Mal, but July had already disappeared into the high weeds in the yard. “Come on,” he said. “It’s only a little ways.”

“There might be chiggers in there,” warned Aunt Becky.

“What’re chiggers?” asked Mal.

“The porch swing’s still here!” sang out July. “Hurry, bring the flashlight.”

Both of them dutifully set off into the weeds and, reaching the steps at the same time, collapsed the bottom board with their combined weight. Mal gave a little scream.

“I tell you,” whispered Becky, “I just don’t think this place is fit to be lived in.”

Then July called from inside for the light and they went in.

“Isn’t this something!” he exclaimed to Mal once he had the flashlight in his hand. “Look at that magnolia wallpaper! Look at the woodwork.”

“It’s awful,” said Mal.

“No it isn’t. Look at these light switches . . . see, you turn them like this. See that? I’ll bet you don’t know what that is.”

“So what?”

“It’s an air control for the furnace. All manual, but it acts like a heat control—it is a heat control.”

They went into the kitchen.

“Is there any water in the house?” asked Mal.

“No,” said Becky from the living room. “The Amish who lived here tore it out.”

“Well, I can see not using it. But why did they have to tear it out?”

“I suppose somehow it got in the way.”

I’m not living in a house with no water, Mal assured herself. If I’m expected to do that, I’m going back home. If there’s no water, no me.

The idea of going back East made her less anxious. After all, she reasoned—whenever I decide to, just leave. Simple. Much of the wood was rotten where the counter was attached to the wall. Rot was in the windowsills, and cobwebs covered the dark ceilings. July saw a grate overhead he could remember dropping marbles down, watching, on hands and knees in the room above the tops of people’s heads. One could clearly tell that as far as he was concerned, he’d found his place.

“Isn’t brownstone a little uncommon in the country?” Mal said to Becky as July stamped about upstairs and they stood still, not wanting to go in any direction without a light for fear of bumping into something or falling into a hole.

“Naturally,” said Becky. “That’s what we kids always thought. No one seems to know exactly how it happened. It’s a much older house than any others around. Even when Dad bought it, July’s grandfather Wilson, no one knew how it’d come to be here. The man he bought it from could show who he bought it from, and that man was dead. The record of deeds showed who he bought it from and nobody knew him, or’d heard of his family. The farm’d originally been homesteaded by a man with an odd last name . . . let me see, some kind of animal or something . . . wait—Kingbird. No, Kingfisher, that was it, Kingfisher, who’dhomesteaded it back in the early eighteen hundreds. But how or why it came to be made out of brownstone is a mystery not likely to ever be turned over.”

“And no one ever knew anything about Kingfisher?”

“Well, not really. John, July’s father, was real interested in it for a while and he looked up all the old records he could find of a famous outlaw named Kingfisher, and it was his contention that it could’ve been the same one. But Dad, like the rest of us, thought it was a little far-fetched—especially because Kingfisher lived mostly farther west and south, and he would’ve had to’ve been in his eighties—and it showed that he kept it ten years.”

“Does sound a little suspicious.”

“Hey, come up here!” called July.

“We haven’t got a l-i-g-h-t,” called Mal.

“Oh, be right down.”

July wanted to spend the night sleeping in the barn watching for owls, but he was coaxed back to the house in Sharon Center by way of going first to Iowa City and picking up Butch and their suitcases. Early the next morning he was outside, clearing away the cobwebs from the Ford, inflating the tires and throwing out the bird nests. The morning grew older. Not knowing much about mechanics, he was always running across the street for advice and tools, a battery, oil and gasoline. Late that evening it started and everyone but Perry took a ride around the block; they used the headlights on the last stretch of the road.

Mal simply waited. Though usually not good at biding her time, she found herself content just to wait until what was going to happen began to show itself. All decisions were off until then. She found sitting in the yard so pleasant and whole afternoons sped by with such quickness that when it would seem she’d just come out, the sun would begin sinking toward the horizon, once noticed go faster, until the chill of the evening and Becky’s call to dinner forced her in. It’s good for color composition,