The House

By Dawn Natelle

The last intermediary chapter. A new arc starts next chapter: Dawn

Chapter 31 – Treasures and SMores

The next day was Friday, and Tanya booted her computer and discovered an email from her college. She had received a mark of 88% on the exam she had taken, so she had one course completed from her winter session. She also noticed the other courses were listed on the computer, which meant she was registered in them. Unfortunately there was no content in the courses: the professors would probably load that next week.

The good news was that there was a schedule listing for her. It turned out that four of her classes had labs, with three scheduled on Wednesday and another on Thursday mornings. So it looked like she would need her apartment in the city for Wednesday nights. A hotel might be a bit cheaper, but she liked the apartment and she would need it for the fall term.

Tanya had woken early, and went down to get breakfast. She saw several of the family in the kitchen, and smelled the wonderful aroma of bread baking. “Breakfast won’t be ready until I get the eggs,” Dary said. “Wanna come?”

Red walked with them to the stables, where he fed and watered the horses while Dary filled her basket. Once done, they headed back to the house where breakfast was served with the farm-fresh eggs. Everyone seemed to know what was going on after, and Dary got the babies. Red was to spend a session with Cooper, the teacher, and Tanya was asked to join them in the little classroom in the basement.

Red was started on his reading practice while Cooper asked Tanya about her courses. “They are on the computer,” she said, “but none of the content is posted yet. I really don’t have to worry about the first seven weeks, before the robbery screwed things up. I guess I will just review the work.”

Cooper was looking over her course outlines. “I think you should plan on working hard right from the start. That way you will be ready when the new stuff hits and can be a top student. I am here to help you whenever you need. I’ll review your papers and help you understand anything you don’t understand from your texts. I took several Sociology courses in university, and I see much of the same material in your outlines.”

“You can scoot off now,” Cooper concluded. “Dary will be upstairs with the babies. She is pretty much caught up on her grade eight classes, and won’t be studying anymore. She will be going to the school in Tweed for exams in June, and next year she will go to Madoc for high school. Red will take his grade nine as home schooling, so in September I will need to find something else to keep me busy.”

In the Great Room Dary was up looking after the twins, and Tanya sat down with her. The babies were at the crawling stage, and Flint seemed soon to walk at almost eight months of age. This made infant care harder, since the girls were often jumping up to pull one of the tots back into the play area. The favorite activity was reading, using both books that Dary and Red had created as well as books that had been bought for the favorite residents of the house.

“What is all that junk in the basement?” Tanya asked about the clutter she had seen while talking to Cooper pushed into one corner of the huge room.

“That is where we keep finding treasures. It was all over down there at first, Sun says, and she and Grey just pushed it around to make some space for the school when I first came here last year,” Dary said.

“Treasures? That sounds like it might be fun to explore down there,” Tanya said.

“We can ask,” Dary said. “I think Red is nearly done on the bus. If we call it cleaning up rather than hunting for treasures, then they might go for it. We can ask Sun when she is feeding the babies at lunch. She might let Red help us. It will help to have some boy muscles involved.”

In the end Grey, Cooper, and John joined in. Sun and Hawk would continue painting the bus. The cleaners had to work quietly while the ladies had their naps, but eventually Lois and Daisy came down to watch, and there was no longer a need to be so quiet.

Red found the first treasure: several broken guitars. There were three in total, all smashed in one way or another. He handed them to Grey, who suggested that all three could be repaired. “In fact, if you can fix all of these, you might gain the skills needed to make a guitar from scratch. Most of the wood in these is maple. There is ebony up here, and we don’t grow that in Canada. But I’m sure we can buy it if we need more.”

“There should be more instruments in there somewhere,” Daisy said. “Horns and violins, I think. There used to be quite a band that practiced down here. They took all the good instruments with them, but any broken ones were left in the pile.”

“I see a horn,” Tanya said, “and look, a sax. Help me pull them out, Red.”

The boy set down his treasure of guitars and pulled out a bugle, a French horn, an alto sax and a clarinet. The horns were all badly dented.

“I bet if you take those out to George, he will teach you how to tap those dents out. I know he did body work on cars for a time, and the skills could be transferrable,” Daisy said.

“What’s this,” Dary said, pulling out an odd contraption. It had a wooden base of 18 by 24 inches, with a pole sticking up one end and a large bulb contraption at the end of the post, with a knob that allowed the bulb to run up and down. A frayed power cord hung down.

“Oh my,” Daisy said with a gasp. “That is Robert’s enlarger. Robert was only 10 when I was born, and he was into photography when he was a teen. He was going to be a professional photographer before he died at 22. There should be more stuff in there.

“I used to do photography, and that is an enlarger,” John confirmed. “There should be a lens that goes in here. You put a negative into this: well, after we replace the broken glass. The knob raises or lowers the head to focus the negative. Then you expose the paper on the base. You need chemicals and trays to process the print.”

“Look, here is a box with stuff in it,” Red said. “And there is a silver suitcase behind it.”

“Those are the trays, and some bottles of chemicals. They will be pretty much expired years ago and worthless. But here is the lens for the enlarger,” John said, looking through the glass at a light. “It looks like it is pretty well intact.”

By then Red had wrested out the metallic suitcase, which was only silver in color, not precious metal.

“That is Robert’s camera case,” Daisy said in a whisper as John opened it.

The lawyer let out a gasp as the case was opened to show a small black camera and several lenses in it. “That’s a Hasselblad. That kit is probably worth over $1000. And what is that file cabinet in the corner? I might be able to use that in my office.”

It took John and Grey together to wrestle the file cabinet out of the corner. It turned out to be full of negatives. Daisy confirmed that the pictures were those Robert had taken, and it was clear that she would love to see negatives made into prints.

“Uncle John, can you teach me how to use this camera?” Dary asked.

“Sure thing, peanut,” he replied. “And I think we will have to think about setting up a darkroom down here too. It looks like Daisy would love to see some of those negatives made into prints.

Other treasures came out of the pile. There was a large collection of clothes in boxes, which Daisy said were props for the shows that her dance students wore in the shows they did. Most were smaller, but would fit Dary, but Tanya found more than a few that would fit her and were retro-chic again.

Then there was an old sewing machine and considerable amounts of material. Daisy agreed to teach Dary how to sew, and Tanya wanted to be included in those sessions as well. About that time Sun came in, and heard the offer, and begged to be included: she found it almost impossible to find clothing that fit her properly.

When all the treasures were removed, the pile in the corner was much smaller. Dinner that evening was a rushed affair cleaning up left-overs, since so much time had been spent in the basement.

In the evening Dary and John worked with the camera, and the girl was soon taking photos of everyone in the family: without film in the camera. John promised to take her to Peterborough where she could get some of the 120 film the camera needed, and also to find out about darkroom supplies.

The next afternoon Grey got Dary and Tanya and handed each of them a loaded backpack. Dary had been through this before, but it was Tanya's first trip to the Grove with Grey. Tanya discovered that her spirit animal was a squirrel, the same as Dary’s. They went to the camp and set up, and then Grey and Dary led the girl to the grove. It was Dary who told which tree was which, and described the bark and tree shape, with Grey only stepping in when she was wrong (seldom) or forgot something.

Grey added information about the buds of each tree, which were just coming out, and described the shape of the leaves. Dary showed Tanya how to make a proper fire, and took her to the spring where Tanya was amazed at the taste of the cold water: she was used to the fluoridated water from the city. The water at the house was pure, but not so cold as the spring water.

They had a campfire to warm up the stew that Grey had prepared the night before. This was uncooked, and thus had to spend more time on the fires, with one girl or the other occasionally poking it with a sharpened stick to see if the vegetables in it were done.

After the meal it was only starting to get dark, so Grey took them into the bush to the east and followed along some deer trails he knew of. They spotted three deer: one doe and her two fawns had nested for the evening, and when the three came silently upon them the momma stood up between them and her fawns. Once the little ones were on their feet, the doe ushered them away from the humans, and ran with them at their speed.

“So cute,” Darla said. “All those little spots. Is it true the spots tell you if the fawn is male or female?”

“No,” Grey said. “You can only tell by looking closely at the space between the rear legs. The myth that the dots on a male are straight is untrue. The spots are camouflage, so any fixed pattern would be less effective. They ran away too quickly for me to be sure, but I think those were both little girls.”

After the walk, which ended in dark, a new fire was set up and Grey told Dary to look in the bottom portion of her backpack. Inside was a package of graham crackers, big marshmallows, and bits of chocolate. “Smores!” she called excitedly from the wigwam. Grey had been picking up twigs along the walk, using his knife to cut them from the green saplings along the way. He had about 10, and showed the girls how you make smores in the bush. Each twig had three small branches at the end, and you could use another twig to weave between the three. This made a small pocket that could hold the two crackers with marshmallow and chocolate between them.

It was not easy to cook them. Just tilting a little let the soft goopy mixture fall into the fire, but seeing the tasty treat burn away in the fire encouraged the girls to learn quickly to have a steady hand. After about three of the treats were cooked the green twigs started to burn, and Grey had to supply another branch. In the end, they ran out of crackers first, with each of the girls cooking about five: enough for a tasty treat at the end of their long hike.

The girls snuggled together in the wigwam under several skins, while Grey sat at the fire for another hour and then went into his wigwam. He woke before dawn. Everyone at the house said that he had an internal alarm clock, but in fact it was Mimiha who would wake him before sunup.

The girls were waked while it was still dark. Dary knew the routine, and made the first dash for the latrine. When she came back and started to dress she told Tanya where she had gone, and the older girl suddenly realized she had a pressing need and darted off.

They each had a drink of water, and filled a cedar canteen with spring water before following Grey to the river as the pre-dawn light started to illuminate their way. They got to the river, which was several feet higher than normal due to the spring runoff. The three sat on a log near the forest and watched the animals come to the water to drink.

At one point Grey pointed, and the girls saw the deer from last night come down to drink. There were other deer at the river, but these were the only group of three. Tanya saw a black bear and her two cubs from a distance. She was surprised at how small the mother was. The girl’s experience prior to this had been TV or the movies, where big grizzlies or polar bears are usually shown.

“I thought bears were bigger,” she whispered to Grey.

“She is a little smaller than normal, but not much,” the man replied softly. “But you don’t want to get between her and her cubs. Those are only a few weeks old. You are lucky: you don’t normally see them out of the den at that age.”

“They are so cute,” Dary said. “Can we take them home with us?”

“You could only do that if you killed the mother? Do you want to do that? I won’t, but I do have my bow back in the camp.”

“No, of course not,” Dary agreed.

“If you did take the little ones: say the mother died in an accident. Could you raise the cubs?” Tanya asked.

“Many times there are cubs who lose a mother,” Grey said. “The cubs usually die in their den waiting for her to return and feed them. If you found them then, and brought them to the house, you could raise them. But they are only little and cute like that for a few months, and then get as big as the mother: bigger if they are male.”

“I know of a gas station that had a bear chained up in the side yard, and people used to stop to get gas there so the kids could see and sometimes feed the bear,” Tanya said.

“That is terrible,” Grey said. “It is like slavery, chaining up a wild animal, even if it is tamed. The creatures of the forest deserve to live free and wild, taking their chances in the open forest.”

When the girls finally tired of watching the wildlife, they walked along the River. A fish jumped one of the rapids. “That is a Brook Trout,” Grey explained. Sun and I ate many of them when we were living in the camp.”

“You lived at the camp?” Dary asked. “She had not heard the full story of how the two came to the area.”

“Not our camp,” Grey said. “We had another camp on the other side of the river. It is on conservation authority land. This side is owned by Daisy. We lived over there for two years. We came to this side and were at the new camp for only a few days when the house caught fire in a lightening storm. We ran to the house and put out the fire, and Daisy didn’t want us to leave. Now we just find more and more people, and the house is nearly full.”

Soon they were walking through the grove, and later approached the house. As they neared Grey noticed a man near the stables talking with George. They went that way, since Dary wanted to check out her hens, and see where Red was.

“Hi neighbor,” the young man said, and then Grey recognized him. It was Paul VanKleek, the youngest son from the dairy across the road. “My term at university just ended and I wanted to come across and see how the horses are making out. And George has been telling me that you have treated him right.”

Grey noticed that the boy was talking to him, but was staring at Tanya. “This is Tanya Keith, Paul. Paul VanKleek, Tanya. They run the dairy farm across the highway from here. Paul and his family donated the horses and the wagon, and George too, I guess.”

“I think I’ve talked to George more in the past half hour than I did in the 18 years he lived at our farm,” Paul said, still looking at Tanya. “He tells me that you folk let him eat at the big house.”

“Yes, and we have a Sunday lunch coming up soon,” Grey said as he watched Sun, Red and Dary headed off to the house. Would you like to join us?” Grey asked the boy.

“Better say yes, boy,” George said. The ladies in the house put on a good meal. “Plus you might be lucky enough to sit next to that pretty girl.”

Both Tanya and Paul turned red, but not enough that they didn’t mind walking side by side to the house. George and Grey walked a bit behind, with the old smith chuckling as he talked about young love.

Paul called his mother from the house and told her he was eating at Ridge House. And Tanya did manage to save him a spot at the table next to her, where the two compared their first years at university (Paul) and the college (Tanya).

Before the end of the meal Paul had offered to let Tanya have dinner at the dairy’s farmhouse, and she agreed. It was clear to everyone in the house that the two were connecting.