Wildwood. Elinor Florence
the wall in half, and we went into the dining room.
Now I could see the bay window, composed of four long rectangles of equal size — two in the centre and an angled window on each side. The room was spacious enough for a dining table covered with a sheet, a large sideboard, and a treadle sewing machine draped with a fringed shawl. In one corner, surprisingly, stood a double bed.
“Your great-aunt slept down here after the stairs got too much for her,” Old Joe explained.
“I don’t understand why everything is still sitting here. It looks like she just left the house yesterday.”
“She didn’t need anything where she was going, except her clothes and a few personal things. Maybe she was hoping to come back someday. Or maybe she left everything here on purpose so somebody else could use it.”
A set of double-sided cabinets with red- and green-glass panes was built into the interior wall. I could see straight through them into the kitchen. We entered the kitchen through the adjoining door. Sadly, it looked even worse in daylight. The varnished fir cabinets, with brass hinges and hardware, were dulled with age and smoke. A green-painted door with an iron latch stood ajar beside the cook stove, revealing a large pantry filled with a jumble of cooking utensils, bottles, and tins.
I looked doubtfully at the hand pump, set into a wooden countertop covered with green-speckled vinyl. “Where does the water come from?”
Old Joe snorted. “Well, you don’t got to worry about the plumbing, because there isn’t any except this pump here. Let’s see if it still works.”
He went over to the sink and grasped the pump handle. He gave it a few sharp strokes but nothing happened except a wheezing sound.
Glancing at my face, he said: “Don’t give up hope yet. This is how they got their drinking and washing water into the house. There’s a pipe connecting this pump to the well down below. It probably needs to be primed.”
“How do you prime it?”
“Pour water down it. I’ll get some from the truck.”
After he went outside, I remained motionless while my eyes roved around the room. It was so dingy I didn’t want to move, in case I accidentally touched something. Even the windowpanes were clouded with grime.
In a few minutes Joe came back carrying a five-gallon plastic jug. He unscrewed the cap and poured water into the top of the pump assembly, then raised and lowered the handle vigorously. A few more wheezing strokes, and the gasping changed to a deeper sound and suddenly water gushed out of the spout.
“That’ll do her,” he said. “You won’t need to prime it if you’re using it every day, because there’ll be standing water in the pipe.”
A pail sat on the kitchen counter, with a tin cup hanging from the rim. He held the cup under the stream then took a few large gulps before handing it to me.
Overcoming my revulsion at drinking from someone else’s cup, let alone one that probably hadn’t been washed for decades, I rotated the rim slightly and took a tiny sip. It was delicious. I drank another mouthful. It was ice cold and almost sweet compared to the metallic, chemically treated water we drank in Arizona, pumped through a pipeline for hundreds of miles.
“That water didn’t have to come far,” Old Joe said, as if reading my mind. “The well is right under our feet. Pierre Chatelaine witched all the wells in the territory. He’s long dead now. But he was a master witcher — took a green willow branch and stripped the twigs off and walked around until the branch pulled right out of his hands. The well here is only about twenty-five feet deep, fed by an underground spring. It’s probably good for another hundred years.”
I took another drink of water — my own water.
“It’s soft, too. When you put soap in there, it will lather up like nobody’s business. I know you’ve got your problems down in the States, but up here we’ve got lots of water, nothing but water. It’ll probably be the salvation of us if we have another world war. Or else our downfall if the Yanks decide to take it away from us by force.”
“You said the house doesn’t have any plumbing,” I said, returning to the main point. I didn’t want to come right out and ask him about the toilet.
“That’s right. This pump is all you’ve got in the way of running water.”
He opened the cabinet door under the sink. “This here is your slop pail. See how the water drains down the hole into this pail? When it’s full, throw it out the back door. Don’t forget to keep an eye on it, or it will overflow.”
“And the bathroom facilities?” I forced myself to ask.
“There’s a toilet beside the barn. If you’re too fussy to go outside in the winter, you get yourself a honey pot. Buy a big galvanized bucket, put a seat on it, pour in chemicals to mask the smell, and empty the darned thing every morning.”
I stepped backwards, almost falling over the rocking chair, speechless. This was too primitive for words.
“You know, it wouldn’t take much to plumb this place.” He looked around speculatively, as if he were talking to himself.
“Pardon me?”
“I was thinking out loud. If somebody wanted to modernize this house, it would be pretty simple. Just build a ground-floor extension off the kitchen for your electric furnace and your hot water tank, maybe even a second bathroom. Run the pipes up the side of the house and straight into the upstairs bathroom. It would be a piece of cake.”
“Well, I haven’t got that kind of money. And I won’t be here that long, anyway.”
Old Joe ignored me. “You can wire up these old houses pretty good, too. It’s a lot easier to plumb and wire a house that never had anything in it to start with. You should see some of the remuddling jobs I’ve had to fix.”
I tried to turn his attention back to the present. “Mr. Daley, what did my great-aunt use for lighting?”
“That’s one more thing you don’t have to worry about,” he said cheerfully, as if giving me good news. “There isn’t any power out here. Even the town of Juniper didn’t get electricity until the 1960s. This house was too far off the main line. Mrs. Lee was a good sport. She always said she liked using candles and lamps just fine.”
I turned with trepidation to the stove in the corner. “And what about cooking?”
“This old stove will work all right.” Old Joe walked over to the range and used the lifter, a piece of twisted metal obvi-ously designed for that purpose, to lift all six stove lids on the surface and check inside. “A stove like this throws off a real good heat.”
“But surely it won’t heat the whole house.”
“Nope, there’s a furnace in the basement for that. Let’s go downstairs and take a look-see.”
He opened the door next to the pantry. Inside was a wooden staircase leading into the earthen cellar. We descended while Old Joe shone his powerful flashlight on our feet.
This was a depressing place, hung with cobwebs as thick as fishing nets. On one side a set of shelves held glass canning jars and cans of paint, covered with a layer of grey velvet dust. In the corner was a gigantic contraption with pipes leading out of it like a metal octopus. I assumed this was the furnace. Beside it stood a large wooden box as tall as my shoulders, half-filled with dead branches and chunks of firewood.
I tried not to disturb anything while Old Joe opened the furnace door and poked around. “This is what they used to heat the house in winter. But you and the little girl can’t keep this thing going around the clock. You’d better shut off the upstairs and live downstairs. The kitchen stove will keep it nice and snug.”
“Where would I get firewood?”
“I know two brothers who cut and sell firewood. You can order a couple of cords from them. Do it quick