Chapter 4 Missing Laundry
Summer time in the country for me was a dream come true. No school and waking up when you wanted to was what I really looked forward to then. However my Mom didn't feel the same way apparently. She woke us up as Dad left for work or soon after he left. We had just moved in and this time it wasn’t another apartment like before. This was a house on a small farm with a barn out back and corn fields on three sides. Those corn stalks stood so tall they made a great privacy fence all on their own. The barn had a single horse that the landlord said was best left alone. The horse was nice enough but didn’t like too many people.
He had said that we could feed it apples but not too get to close to the fence to do it and not to try to ride the horse. Well it wasn’t my first time around horses but I knew enough not to irritate an animal that looked down on me. It was quiet in the country but we were not exactly out in the boonies. This particular part of the country was next to the highway and so close to town it would only take twenty minutes to walk to the shopping centers and fast food restaurants. A neighborhood by itself on the very edge of my home town. City water and sewer was the only thing missing here. A few large trees kept the back yard shaded this time of year.
One of them had created a problem with the well water we later found out. I had never put much thought into the color of water before then until I left some in a drinking glass and it left a rust colored stain. Not a Kool Aid color you hope to ever see as a kid. No country home is complete without a dog running around chasing you in the yard and warding off strangers and Trixie was no different. Our dog was a black and white Chihuahua instead of a Retriever or a Collie. A sassy chubby little thing and she hated the basement of that house as well as the barn for some reason.
My younger sister and I had finished putting things away and we were allowed to ride our bikes on the rode out front as long as we didn’t go far. Oh boy I couldn’t wait. The rode stretched a mile from the main road past a plant nursery and into the little neighborhood past the corn field that separated us. Mom kept Trixie in the house as we left and we off to explore the neighborhood. We turned left and away we went. About a hundred yards ahead of us was our first stop which was a small church parking lot where other kids were riding their bikes as well. We began to talk and I realized that they had been watching us from a distance as soon as they saw the truck pull into the driveway a few days before we met.
They were nice enough but a lot more mischievous than we were willing to be. Soon after that my sister and I had decided we had better return home before we ruined a good thing by not making an appearance at home before Mom came looking for us. When we returned home we decided to pay the horse a visit. When we got close to the barn the biggest black horse I had ever seen came out of the barn and slowly walked closer to the fence. My sister picked up an apple from the ground where others had fallen from the tree but not close enough for the horse to feed from it himself. Reluctantly she held the apple out in front of her between the wooden slats of the fence. The horse stretched his neck out, raised his upper lip, gave us a big grin full of yellow teeth and pulled the apple from her hand. She pulled her hand back so fast you would have thought her arm had a rubber band in it. Okay now it was my turn.
Sure I let her go first because that’s what gentlemen are suppose to do or at least that’s what I say now but back then she had simply thought to feed him first as I waited to see if she would get bitten or not. I picked up an apple and held it out awaiting the smile and snatch I had just witnessed with my sister. I hadn’t seen a horse snarl before then but sure enough this one did just that as he attempted to eat my hand in one quick bite. I saw him walking around inside the fenced area beside the barn after that but I didn’t get near that fence again. Sometimes animals just don’t like everyone they meet. One afternoon my sister and I decided to ride our bicycles the opposite direction we had usually gone before on the road.
We headed for the nursery and this took a few minutes to get to the end of the road on a bike. Our mother had been doing laundry as we left and we didn’t want to stick around to help fold socks. The laundry room was a converted porch just off of the living room before you entered the kitchen. Mom would sit on the couch and read “Her books” as Dad referred to them. Mom’s books were actually detective magazines she had picked up in various used stores. That day she had fallen asleep while reading and was awakened by the feeling of someone sitting on her back. She gave out a shout to us exclaiming “Get off of me right now!” and turned her head to which one of us about to really get it. We arrived in the driveway to her yelling at us to get in the house right now.
Worried looks on both of our faces did not match our mother’s expression as she stood in the back door.
“What did we do Mom?” we both asked.
“Which one of you was sitting on me and wouldn’t get up when I told you to?” Mom asked us in very frustrated tone?
I told her we were riding our bikes out front and she didn’t buy it as we were told to play in our rooms until Dad got home. So off we went. Mom continued to talk as we ignored her and Trixie continuing to barking at her for yelling at us.
Mine and my sisters’ bedrooms were the only two rooms upstairs and you had to go through mine to get to hers. I didn’t like that at all. My parents’ bedroom was beyond the living room so you had to go through the living room to get to their room. The staircase led into my room and on the wall next to the steps was a toy box. This was a big toy box. The wall was about six feet long and the toy box ran the length of the wall. This thing was massive as it was the biggest toy box I had ever seen and obviously built specifically for that wall. A height of at least three feet off the floor with a slanted lid made of full sheets of plywood and simple hinges inside. Painted with the grey paint you use on a porch outside of the house.
The box was so big inside I didn’t have enough toys to fill the vast space. I had the older metal Tonka trucks you could cut of your fingers with if you weren’t careful. A few small toys were scattered around in it but not a lot to play with but as I was getting older I didn’t need as many so it didn’t bother me as much. I had gotten use to only having what ever would fit in the car as we moved over the years. Fewer toys in the box at this house made me feel like I had the least amount I had ever had before then. I also had to keep my toys picked up now that I had a toy box. I had left a few out one day as Dad had come up to say goodnight to us and stepped on one of them. I heard about that one from Dad all the way into my sister’s room and as he headed back down stairs. I didn’t do it again after that at least not in that house.
One night Dad yelled up the staircase for to quit playing and go to bed. “I’m not” I replied. “I hear you up there now go to bed” he said in that voice that told me, as all kids learn in time, just agree with him and he will go away. Now whether to just agree is a good thing or not I don’t know but it usually worked on my parents. I went back to sleep when only moments later Dad was back and he was on his way up the stairs this time. The light above my head came on and hurt my eyes like a vampire whose coffin had just been opened to the dawn. Dad walked past my bed and into my sister’s room. I sat up and watched my sister carrying her blanket and pillow to the stairs. Dad was at the foot of my bed now and pulled my blanket from the bed and told me to grab my pillow.
“You’re sleeping downstairs tonight where I can see you” Dad explained. I didn’t feel the need to persuade him otherwise. Your eyes get use to the darkness of a room and adjust accordingly enabling you to see around you except for the things you don’t expect to see.
My sister and I hadn’t fallen asleep yet when we saw the white men’s briefs cross over us and up the staircase as the light Dad had turned on tried to keep up with him in his mad rush to the second floor. Now if that wasn’t scary enough for us Dad came back. My sister and I tried to lie as still as we could so as not to make Dad aware of the fact that we actually awake. We heard him say, as he crossed the room like the old
Hertz rental car commercials with the man leaping over luggage, “Get in the car kids”. Before I knew it we on our way to the cheapest motel in town for the night.
We returned the next day and began to pack. While we carried things to the car and a truck my Dad had borrowed from work a few of the kids from the neighborhood stopped by on their bikes. One boy asked me why we were leaving. I told him that the water was bad from the old tree cutting into the well. This was the short version my parents had given to me when I asked. I didn’t buy into it any more than the neighbor kid but I learned not to argue with them. The boy said “Well did you ever meet Billy?”
“Who is he?” I asked.
“Oh he died years ago in the house my Mom said” he replied.
The boy went on to explain that there was a family with a bunch of kids who had lived there. One day they were playing hide and go seek when they ate dinner that night Billy didn’t come out to eat. The Dad went looking for him and said that he must have fallen asleep in the woods. The mother was doing laundry in the basement the next day when she told her husband the clothes were stuck in the chute again and he needed to get them out. The Dad went up to the chute in the wall of the first bedroom and dug out the clothes only to find Billy had gotten stuck in the laundry chute and was smothered by the clothes from the other children. He was so far down in the wall no one had noticed him. I told the boy “Nope never saw him” and went back to carrying out boxes.
The kids rode their bikes back home and we moved into town. Days later I asked my parents why we had left in such a hurry and told them the story of Billy. Dad began to tell me that he had heard my toys being thrown around against the walls and thought it was me. Once my sister and I were down stairs he heard the same thing but louder and went to find out why. He ran into the room and found my Tonka trucks flying through the air against the walls and the lid open on the toy box. Dad now believes that little Billy was getting the toys out of the way of that laundry chute.
I believe it wasn’t my attention he was trying to get but my parents’ attention instead. Billy wasn’t happy about that big toy box blocking his way out and I happily avoid using laundry chutes to this day.
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Thank You
Thank you
Robert Winter
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