The rest of the feeding was hardly worth mentioning. He spread feed for the chickens in the center pole barn and put feed out for the pigs, filling both of their waters. He collected the rest of the eggs and made his way inside, feeling the air conditioning against the thin layer of sweat he had earned for his efforts. He set the egg bucket in the mud room sink. He would have to clean off the layer of chicken shit before they were fit to eat, but that could wait until breakfast.
He put his hands on his lower back and leaned backward, feeling that glorious series of pops run up his spine, feeling the relief spread between his shoulders. His neck was next, one sharp crack to the left, five softer clicks to the right. His fingers laced and stretched forward, his knuckles and elbows sending off a chorus of freed air from his joints. He whipped his leg to the side a few times, finally catching it right and releasing the pressure on his knee with a hollow clonk, the other knee sounding much the same. They were the trickiest joints, but he’d had plenty of time to figure it out since the dislocations.
His knees were the only joints that popped from an injury, the rest were just from years of the chasing the relief that came with the noise. One wrong step a pile of sand to a concrete slab at a job site years ago, and his knee had buckled underneath him, sending him falling five feet into the sand, screaming every curse he could think of, making up a good few, but no one came to help. The massive concrete slab between him and everyone else had silenced his cries. He still wasn’t sure just how long he laid there screeching, it felt like an hour but had to have only been minutes. The scene was still clear in his mind, pulling himself onto the slab like the hero in some overwrought action movie after “falling” off a cliff. Limping across the concrete, his knee screaming in protest. Good times.
With the gauntlet of pops run, Ace decided it was about time to bring in his bags. He walked past the mudroom and turned toward the kitchen, taking the first door on his left into the garage. He descended the three brick stairs from the landing and made for the outside door. He had parked right outside, and he opened the truck with his key fob. He had packed light, or rather he lived light. A rolling suitcase with his clothes, a duffel bag with toiletries and some of his books, and another duffel best described as “miscellaneous.” He stacked both duffels on the suitcase, slammed his trunk to make sure it latched, and rolled the whole of his possessions into the home he never asked for.
He dragged his luggage across the living room rug and started up the carpeted stairs, taking them one at a time, his bags lagging one step behind him. He turned left at the top and took the first door on his left, entering the master bedroom. His fathers’ room. My room. He parked his stuff at the foot of the bed, slumping onto the made comforter. The house was fully furnished, but it seemed Ace got his minimalism from his father; nothing in the room but a bed, a night stand on either side, and a wall-mounted TV across from it. There was an office connected to the bedroom separated by a set of curtains at the empty doorway in the short hallway leading to the master bathroom, but Ace didn’t know much about computers. At any rate, if there was anything worth finding on that old hunk of junk the lawyers had scrubbed it clean well before now.
Something jumped onto his chest. He opened his eyes and found a calico cat loafing on his chest, staring him in the eye as if it were daring him to move. The lawyer has said nothing about any cat, bet there one was, purring contentedly as it closed its eyes. Its fur was mainly white, splotched across its back and face with a mix of orange and striped fur. Ace signed and stroked the cat, scratching its ears as its purring redoubled, leaning into his touch. He scratched its neck and found it had a collar with a small flat pendant. He held it and twisted it toward the light, examining the etching. It was a flower, a daisy.
“Daisy, huh?” If the cat recognized her name, she gave no sign. Ace had always liked cats, they were all born deaf to the worries of others. He had respect for a creature that did as it pleased, no matter what anything else wanted. Daisy, for instance, wanted to lay on his chest, and here she was, holding him hostage. There was nothing for it, and he was too tired to resist his fate. He laced his hands behind his head and closed his eyes, dozing off as the cat purred happily on top of him.
When he woke up, the Daisy was gone and night had dawned, the room around him shrouded in darkness. He lurched to his feet and tripped over his luggage as he tried to find the light switch, fumbling around blindly until he finally reached the right wall. He pawed against it until he finally flipped the switch, shielding his eyes from the blinding light. Too dark, then too bright. Sounds about right. He groaned as his eyes adjusted: he hated rhyming, especially to himself.
He flipped on the lights as he made his way downstairs and to the kitchen, his growling stomach demanding satisfaction. According to the lawyers, Dad had quite the stockpile of canned and dry goods, as well as a freezer full of frozen dinners, and Ace decided to pick something from the latter category. He settled on a two-piece frozen “cowboy chicken” dinner, a leg and a thigh with a side of mashed potatoes. It had two cooking times on the box, one for a microwave and one for an oven. The oven was forty minutes longer plus preheat time, but Ace had no doubt it would be worth the wait. He fumbled with the oven controls for a few minutes and eventually set it to the right temperature, idly poking through the cupboards until it beeped. He peeled the corner of the plastic covering the meal and set it on a metal tray, placing it in the oven and setting the timer.
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Forty-five minutes away from dinner, Ace found himself with time to explore the house. The ground floor was an open concept, double-wide empty doorways connecting the kitchen, dining room, living room, theater room, and conservatorium, or ‘music room,’ for those who don’t speak pretentious. The exception to this rule was an unpainted door leading to a hallway at the base of the stairs. There were two bedrooms, both full of boxes of junk, two bathrooms, both with moldy toilets, and a second mudroom. The entire wing had a layer of dust, as if it hadn’t been touched in months, if not years. At some point he’d have to go through it all, either that or just dump it. Maybe he’d flip a coin.
He closed the hallway door and trudged back upstairs, turning right and opening the first door on his right. The lawyer had called it “the cedar room,” which was fairly accurate; a square space with a structural wall bisecting it into a U shape, the irregular walls fashioned with cedar paneling. There was a comfortable looking chair in one of the nooks with a recessed light in the ceiling above it; the perfect reading spot. There seemed to be an access to the attic from the room as well.
The door clicked behind him as he fantasized about the future time he would spend in the cedar room, finally catching up on the books he had allowed to accumulate. There was a door at the end of the hall to his right, and the bedroom behind it was completely empty, saved for the bare twin-sized mattress. A hallway on the right wall led to a bathroom, flanked by a pair of closets halfway down the hall. The carpeted bathroom was unremarkable, just as dusty as the downstairs wing. There was nothing interesting in this room, and he made for the stairs, content to scroll on his phone until his food was ready.
He froze at the top of the stairs, staring at the door to his right. It hadn’t been there earlier, he was sure of it. Not during the tour, and not when he had come upstairs. A strange pit of dread opened in his stomach, a feeling he hadn’t recognized in years. Without deciding to do so, he reached out and slowly turned the knob, his heart pounding as the hinges creaked inward. His feet moved on their own, and he crossed the threshold, struck by his surroundings.
It was a fully furnished room, a bed to his left with a dresser opposite to it and a desk to his right, toys and art supplies scattered about the floor. He picked up a toy at his feet, some kind of transformer, its left arm broken off at the elbow. Something on the desk caught his eye, and he dropped the hunk of plastic as he went to examine it. It was a Polaroid photo of a man in a wife beater with long brown hair holding a baby, his eyes mostly hidden as they were fixed on the infant. There was something oddly familiar about it, something haunting. He flipped the photo and his eyes went wide at the writing on its back.
‘Daddy and baby Aesop,’ written in blue cursive. Ace dropped the picture, backing away from it as if it were a rabid animal. His breath quickened, his knees quaking as he finally recognized his surroundings. The gray walls finally came into view, that orange stripe cutting through at eye level, burning bright in his spinning vision. The marks carved into the desk dug deep into his mind, those carvings he had carved into his own desk so many years ago.
He burst out of the room, slamming the door behind him, pressing his back against it as he slid down to sitting. He struggled to control his breathing, his heart pounding in his head, fear coursing through his veins for the first time since he was old enough for the room behind him. That was his room, his childhood room, and for decades that picture had been all he had known of his father. His head spun and he buried his face in his hands, trying to force sanity back into the world.
Beep!
His eyes snapped open.
Beep!
He blinked. It was the ovens timer, but that couldn’t be right; it had been set for forty-five minutes, but it hadn’t been nearly that long. Has it? He pushed himself to standing, willing his legs to steady. He took a moment to breathe, listening to the beeping oven, forcing himself back into the present, pushing the room from his mind. He turned around, intending to open the door just long enough to lock it from the inside so he could seal it for good, but there was nothing but a wall. Just as it had been during the tour.
He wasn’t sure how long he stood there, staring blankly at the wall, hearing the beeping oven in the background, but something rubbing at his calf snapped him out of it. He looked down, and it was Daisy, rubbing against him, making soft noises. He bent down and scratched her between the ears. He looked at the wall one more time, then went downstairs to eat his dinner, the cat following close in tow. It had cooked for a bit too long: the chicken was a little dry and there was a thin layer of crust atop the mashed potatoes, but it was otherwise good enough. It’ll make a turd, as his mother would have said. He shredded some of the thigh on a plate for Daisy. She purred loudly as she ate.
