Robinson - Part IV

The siblings reckon with what's become of their family's estate.

The final installment of my short story, Robinson. In part 3, the narrator and his sister spent weeks restoring Daisy and Gary’s home after their uncle’s passing. Ten years later, they return to the small Illinois town to see what’s become of it.

We decide to go to the antique store before visiting the property. Alex suggested it, and I happily oblige. She came all this way, she deserves to have a little fun before the grand finale.

I wait outside, watching an old man on a bench smoke a cigarette down to the filter. In twenty minutes, only two cars pass down main street. They’re both trucks. I get a few side-eyes, as I always do in this town. Not much has changed here in the last ten years, nor will it likely in the next ten.

Alex comes outside with a paper bag of trinkets, postcards, and books. She smiles. “Want to see what I got?”

“Of course,” I lie.

We sit on the bench, sharing a 7-Up while she goes through her bounty, insisting I hold and examine every item. I feign interest for as long as it takes. When we’re done, we get in the rental car, and set our course for the house.

---

It’s been a decade since we mixed Daisy and Gary’s remains together and scattered the ashes throughout their property—among the leaves, beneath a tree, by an old bench where they spent countless afternoons watching birds and listening to the water and the wind.

The ashes were more substantial than I’d expected. Chunks of bone and mineral in a bed of chalky talcum powder. I dumped the last of them into the creek. They hit the surface of the water and immediately began to dissolve. I watched them cloud up the stream, then disappear forever.

We took one last walk down Rocky Road before heading out. It was strange to be there in the summer. The usually flat and bleak fields were fully alive with towering stalks of growing corn, a dense forest of vibrant green.

“I can see why they loved living out here,” Alex said. “I’ll miss this place.” 

A dog howled in the distance and she smiled. “I’ll even miss the Junk Yard,” she said. As if on cue, a few kittens ran out into the road. We picked them up and carried them with us, tickling their little chins as we walked, cooing and groping at them until they squirmed and meowed to be let down.

The Junk Yard down the road looked as desolate as ever. The howling dogs were gone, but their cages remained, rusted and leaning against the side of the trailer. Two broken down cars were parked on the lawn and there was now a couch sitting out front. A tattered confederate flag waved from atop the trailer, overhead.

As we gawked at the now-familiar spectacle, an engine rumbled in the distance, followed by the churning of rubber on gravel. The rare sound of a car rolling down Rocky Road.

We shoo’d the last straggling kitten back into the yard, then stepped out of the way as a pickup truck passed. It slowed down and pulled into the Junk Yard. Two young men in camouflage pants and flannel shirts climbed down from the truck and started unloading crates from the back of their pickup. They were our age, maybe younger. The next generation of junkers. 

We headed back to Daisy and Gary’s house, got in our car, and left Robinson for good.

---

The day of the auction, we were set to call in at noon. Alex called me at 9am. I plugged one of my ears with a finger. “I can’t really hear you. What’d you say?”

She repeated herself, louder, agitated. “We’ve got a problem.”

When George Banks pulled up to the property that morning, everything was set. The weather was perfect, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. As the first potential bidders were arriving, he let himself inside the house, to double check everything was alright.

It wasn’t.

George Banks found himself wading through six inches of water. There’d been a leak. A very, very severe leak. Out back, the water meter was spinning wildly.

He had to alert the auction goers of the situation. He didn’t sugarcoat it; there’d been a bad leak overnight. There would be some serious water damage and the house was being sold as-is.

Multiple times, George confided to my sister just “how bizarre” the whole thing was. They’d checked all the pipes two days prior. Nothing had been amiss.

---

At noon, Alex conferenced me in and we listened as the auction started, George’s assistant narrated the whole unfolding saga. The house went up for auction first.

For ten wooded acres, a free-standing two-car garage and a 3-bedroom, 2-and-a-half bath house, you could expect millions in Los Angeles or San Francisco. George Banks had urged us to banish those kinds of numbers from our head.

“This is a great property. And it’s a rarity that some wooded acreage comes on the market these days. So it’s a big deal. But this is Robinson. Keep your expectations in check.”

There was a flurry of bidding early. We listened breathlessly as the numbers climbed, and then… quickly and abruptly stopped.

Sold, for $36,300.

The auction continued, but I couldn’t listen anymore.

---

A few hours later, Alex called me back.

“More bad news.”

“Do I want to know? How much did the rest of it go for?”

“Not much. What we expected. But the house, I mean. The winning bidders.”

“What about them?”

“It was the Petersons. They own the property down the road.” She didn’t need to add anything else, but she did. “The Junk Yard.”

We’d just sold our aunt’s house for pennies on the dollar to the one family she would have never wanted to have it.

That night I started to cry. Then I remembered the mysterious water leak. I kept seeing that rare sight of the young Petersons unloading their truck on our final walk down Rocky Road. My tears stopped and something darker overtook me.

I smashed my TV. “Our TV,” as my wife corrected me when she got home to find our 42-inch appliance in hundreds of pieces, across multiple waste bins. “What the hell happened?”

“I don’t know,” I said sheepishly. “I lost control.”

She would quote me on that years later, during our divorce proceedings. Her lawyers pointed to it as evidence that I was unstable, that I’d made her feel unsafe, that I was a loose cannon who could go off at any minute, and that the emotional damages she was seeking against me were more than justified.

But it was a lie. I’d set out to destroy something and I hadn’t stopped until blood from my knuckles stained the walls. Those backwards hicks had broken into my family’s home and caused as much damage as they could. That whole godforsaken town had eaten away at Aunt Daisy and Uncle Gary, year after year, poisoning their spirits and choking their livelihood until they withered away and died. Then it had spit on and robbed their graves. Smashing a TV was the least I could do. It was a small placeholder for the retribution I would one day seek. I did it because I wanted to.

I didn’t lose control at all.

---

We park on the side of Rocky Road, just before the house comes into view. We get out and Alex closes her door loudly. I shoot her a look. “Shhhh.” 

“Sorry,” she mouths.

The sky is a rich, deep blue. The air is thick and muggy. I breathe it in deeply.

We get to Daisy and Gary’s driveway. The Peterson’s driveway.

The structures haven’t changed much, not in essence. They’re still standing. The windows of the house are filthy and curtainless. The garage where Gary’s Harley Davidson once sat, polished and proud, now houses the rotting husks of two totaled cars. The lawn is overgrown. It’s a good sixty feet from where we’re standing to the front door of the house, and every square inch of it is littered with garbage.

“Oh my God,” Alex says. “Oh my God,” she says again, but this time it sounds like she’s crying. I don’t look over at her to confirm this. I just start walking.

Several decaying tables lie on their side, clumps of weeds and grass growing out sideways from underneath them. Beyond them is a refrigerator, also on its side. The back of the fridge has been dismounted, its coils and grill laying flat in the grass.

Up ahead, a cat sits atop a stack of pallets, looking straight at me. Its eyes are old and morosely submissive. I wonder if we’ve met before, when it was just a kitten, its whole life ahead of it. And now here we are. It gives me a look, like it’s egging me on.

Do it, it seems to say. Do it.

I scan the house, looking for some sign of life inside. Then there’s a thud below me and a terrible jolt of pain as my foot catches on something. I go down.

“Oh, Jesus.” Alex is standing over me. “Are you alright?”

But I don’t think I am. My ankle is twisted terribly. I look at the big, rusty, purposeless pipe that caused my fall. I let out a low, guttural noise of pain. I’m so angry. I feel rage running through me like an electric current, my veins buzzing like copper wire.

Alex struggles to help me up. I put a little weight on my left foot and the pain is searing. I lean on Alex, pressing down on her shoulder so forcefully that she almost falls over.

“Come on,” she says. “Let’s get out of here.”

“No. No.”

“You’re hurt. And this is terrible. I don’t know what we were thinking.”

She looks nervously back at the house.

“They’re not home,” I say.

“Maybe not, but I don’t want to do this.”

Alex helps me back to the driveway. She turns to leave and I let her go. I stand, balancing on one foot. There’s something cold inside my clenched fist. I’m holding the lighter.

“I don’t want to see anymore,” Alex says, and again, it sounds like she’s crying.

A hundred thoughts go by so rapidly, I can’t make out a single one. But when they’ve passed, I’m holding the lighter out in front of me, looking directly into Alex’s eyes. There’s a flash of recognition, and I can see that she knows what I’m planning, what I’ve been planning all along.

“What? What is that?”

“Fuck these people. Fuck this place.”

“What are you going to do, huh? Are you stupid?”

“You’re not angry?”

“Of course I’m angry. These idiots have defiled my childhood. But the only thing to do is walk away. It’s time to leave. I don’t know why I even let you talk me into this.”

“Maybe because you knew what I was going to do.”

“No.”

“Maybe because you want to see it too.”

“There could be people inside. You could kill them. You could go to prison.”

“I don’t care.”

“Aunt Daisy would be ashamed of you.”

“Aunt Daisy is fucking dead.”

Something shifts in Alex, in the way she looks at me. There’s a deep sense of pity in her eyes. “I know you’re hurting. But I don’t want any part of this. I’m leaving. With or without you.”

“Then go.”

I turn my back on her and start hopping towards the garage. I look back, just in time to see Alex disappear around the bend. I hear her get in the car, start the engine, and after a few minutes of idling, she drives away.

I won’t see her again.

I stagger around the garage lamely, rummaging through piles of scrap under the workbench. I find what I’m looking for. A canister of gasoline. I give it a good shake. There’s enough.

I hobble out of the garage and over to the house. It takes nearly 10 minutes to cover about 30 feet. Halfway there, I try putting weight on my bad foot again. The pain is so intense that I almost black out. 

I get to the side of the house and uncap the canister. The stench of gas hits me. I feel lightheaded. I brace myself with a hand against the cheap vinyl siding of the house. For a second, I’m worried about leaving fingerprints. Do fingerprints survive fire? Does anything?

I laugh. As if I could even escape this inferno if I wanted to. I tilt the can and begin to pour. Along the side of the house. In the grass. Gasoline glugging out.

A sound from inside the house. I freeze. There it is again. A sort of whine. A cry. An animal? A baby?

I imagine a dog, alone, trapped inside, sitting atop familiar furniture that my rational mind knows is long gone.

I dump the rest of the can and shake it, letting the last few drips fly out where they may. I toss the canister into the grass, where it lands with a loud, hollow clang.

I pull out the Zippo and flick it to life. The flame sways back and forth. I hold it close enough to my face to feel the heat of it. I can smell my nose hairs singeing. Again, I hear a whine from inside the house. I tell myself that it’s okay. It will be quick. Only survivors feel any lasting pain. 

There will be no survivors this time.

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