Written Dec. 2021

The diesel in the basement tank lasted until late February, where he had the fortune of an early spring. But on some of those nights, the only thing that kept the pipes from freezing over was the fire he tended. Like a derelict trawler scraping the ocean floor for tuna, he picked the forest clean of brush and tinder, carrying it in bundles back to the house. He’d snap off branches and keep the straighter pieces just to burn them anyway. A cabinet full of caulk tubes let him seal the place up and trap the heat, but some parts of the house simply breathed. The windows were roughly installed dual single panes, the molding was decades out of date, and water stains in the basement ceiling showed that a glacial leak had spent a lifetime pooling out from below the kitchen sink. But day in and day out, he huffed wood in out of the cold, he cleaned out corners, and he took stock.

And there wasn’t much to take stock of. It was sparse in the house. The Shower’s had taken every worthwhile stick. The rest was destined for a contractor's dumpster. Some household supplies remained. Bleach, detergents, a sponge. Old cabinets with a few cans of meat. A sack of flour and a bag of rice infested by weevils. Pots with dings and residue, a cast iron pan coated with rust. He scrounged enough bedding and trapped enough mice that he could sleep at night in relative comfort. For the time, he could make do.

When the storm had subsided, he took the opportunity to see the extent of the property, which he had only ever spied as a boy from the road some half mile down the lane. There was the house, which was a Sears catalog blueprint built sometime in the fifties. It was small and not the preferred chateau-esque steads that were sought after by out of state buyers. The interior hadn’t been updated since the seventies, and only necessities had been expensed. It was gonna be a teardown, but mostly because there was more money in developing the property whole.

Across the courtyard was the barn. An uninsulated Morton building, dirt floors. It was largely empty as well, save for a workbench with some scattered tools and a Ford tractor that looked passed over for years. Behind it was a wellhouse and a shed with some yard implements and a full axe, and fuel tanks encased in a concrete foundation, bolted down. They were about a quarter full each, one of diesel, one of gasoline.

There were also a pair of grainage silos, rather small in stature as far as grain silos went. One held molded corn, which smelled of rot and dung, and the other had a pittance of wheat that had been rather well preserved.

He sat at the front window one day, counting cars. Three passed the entire day. Nobody really came down this road anymore. It used to be the shortest way to the highway, but it had been bypassed by roads carved across what used to be the Sowa farm which was now a small union of suburban developments and stripmalls some three miles down the road. Most of the surrounding land was marsh owned by the state. He was in a pocket of sorts. His own little world.

He walked once a week to Bay Ridge, about seven miles upstream. Standing there on the main street in his musty coat and his slick wellies, he hoped he’d avoid meeting anyone he knew as a boy. And he did. His parents had lived on the other side of Garvey before moving. Back then, they usually went to Blaine instead, which was closer, and nicer, and prettier. But Blaine was a hard walk, and it offered the same meagerity as Bay Ridge for his current station in life. Food banks are food banks. He would be walking all the same, the soggy cardboard box full of Korean mackeral cans, sacks of beans and rice, eggs, government cheese, expired corn chips and nachos. He was only asked if he wanted more. Nice people, but he preferred to be brief.

And there did lay some forward thinking on account of the Shower's. A small cluster of solar panels adorned the southern facing roof. Standard self-reliance overcame skepticism some decade ago if but for a moment. The power draw was a bit worse that it should be, based on his calculations, but it was enough to run the house’s well and sub-pump. Anything more had to be managed, and lighting at night was kept sparse.

The Spring emerged into a wet season, but he had spent the winter preparing. The battered library in Garvey had farming manuals, vestigial from its now dead agricultural past, and he had scraped together enough money in his credit union account to buy a carburetor, motor oil, and a gasket kit off eBay. The Ford 8N roared again after five weeks of plodding tinker.

And one day, while digging out the rotted wood beam of the porch, he heard a fat CLINK. Tapping it a few more times with his shovel, he dug it out and heaved from the mildewed and foul smelling soil a waterlogged footlocker. And inside was just over twenty thousand dollars bundled neatly in ziploc bags and spewing ledgers. He remembered as a boy the seasonal help Showers used when he used to do vegetables and potatoes, and the ledgers were dated as such with hours and days and initials. To no one’s surprise, much was kept under the table.

A niece had come by at one point to visit and relive some memories. She caught him out in the field, turning over the wet corner with the plow he found in the woods. She waved him in. The Ford sputtered over. He idled it down and pulled the brake. She walked up to him and studied his face.

"Hey." She said.

"Hey." he said back.

“What’re you doin’ here? Grandpa sold the place, don’t you know.” She said to him.

“Yeah, I know.”

“So what’re you doin’ here? Are you one of the contractors?” She was already working on the puzzle.

“No, I’m not.”

“You a cousin off the Wester side of the family?”

“No.”

“Well, who the hell are you?”

He sat silently, her face cocked in confusion. He drew an uneasy breath.

“I used to live on the other side of Garvey as a boy. We moved away a while back, and well, it’s a long story but I’ve been sorta squatting here since Christmas. I know it's sold, and I’ve been waiting on waking up to a wrecking crew to knock it down, but it ain’t happened yet.”

She stood there, looking at his clothes.

“I was wistful for a while, but the work around here has thankfully taken that from me. Each day, there’s something to do, and I suppose it’s all for nothing once they move on in here and tear it all down. For now, it’s where I lay my head and spend my time.”

She toured around the small greenhouse, freshly built from heaps of wet lumber that he smoked dry and slathered in linseed oil. A plastic cover trapped the heat, stretched over frames. She inspected the sprouts beaming out through the soil in their trays.

“What are you growing here?” She thumbed the cobbled shelving in the humidity.

“Flowers.” He said.

“Why flowers?”

“They are sort of, indomitable.”

“What?”

He was quiet a moment.

“There- There's an old adage. People will always buy flowers. People buy them in the good times to forget the bad, and people buy them in the bad to remember the good. People always buy flowers.”

She stared at the stems pushing through the soil.

“And I guess I’d rather grow them than buy them.” He said.

They spent the afternoon fishing. She showed him the spot where she caught sunnies and bluegills as a kid with her father. An irrigation pond nestled at the edge of the woods.

“You know, I’m kind of happy you’re here.” She said.

He adjusted his reel. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you are probably finding out, this place doesn’t inspire much. Grandpa and my old man and my uncles used to bicker all the time about it. They rented ground in Lareston, ran a stand a while, and they bickered all the way to the auction last summer. And this piece, the lynchpin of it all, well, no one wanted to take it. They’d rather sell it and split the money between the brothers. And that’s a shame, I guess, because no one will take up the mantle, well, later on when it’s houses, I mean, I guess.” She floundered a moment.

A bird flew by.

“I guess I’m trying to say, it’s a better thing that this farm is being tended, even if it’s not gonna be that long. So I guess I’m glad you’re here.”

“Thanks. Anyday now though.”

“It will probably be a while. I heard some shit-” Her line dipped and she put up a roaring fight.

Triumphant, she glowered, showing off a runty bluegill.

The developers played too close to their line and went under. Her words got him curious, so he dug into it. Donuts for the county clerk to go through the public tax record and a few nights on library wifi said as much. Currently, some heartfelt remediation and protracted lawsuits have placed the deed into an asset box. It'll sit there for a while, he’s sure. He thinks. But that day will come.

Here he sat again, staring at the dimming ember in the hearth. The house was warm. The diesel on the tank, refilled. A small but proud Christmas tree stood in the corner, the trade made last July when he was hocking Dahlias in the empty lot in Blaine. That was back when he just had the pedal bike and the pull behind wagon. He winded down for the evening, another Holiday he did persist. Pomegranite tea in his hand, this time hot, but still with Kahlua. The shadows on the wall no longer took the guise of memories past. Rather, they hypnotized him, as he thought about the now.

The old service truck he bought just a month ago was parked outside, plow on the front, still hot from scraping asphalt the entire evening. Lot of folks happy to have their place clean on Christmas. He came home to find she dropped off a gift to him. “Good tidings, Good luck” was written on the label. He handed to her the last time a book of pressed flowers and a pointsetta from his current batch.

He unwrapped the little box, its outside a festive pattern of tulips in red and white. Inside was a little Casio watch. He looked at the time, 9:48, but figured it wasn't too late. He dialed her up.

It rang.

"Hello"

"Merry Christmas."

It wasn’t going to be forever, but he sold flowers.