Folklore

The old and broken down truck had a wooden back panel to replace where the actual trunk door had been torn off by a deer gone rogue. Or so Henry, the driver, had explained to Ebrelle, in a tale told with gesticulating hands that she watched, hoping they’d return to the steering wheel. She was squeezed between chicken feed and hay that had started to collect between the threads of her jeans, poking up against her legs. Henry, an aging man with half-moons looped beneath his gray-brown eyes, had greeted Ebrelle with kindness and a plethora of such stories. She didn’t mind, and if anything it made the long ride over the dirt roads of wide fields of empty grass a lot more palatable. Her hair whipped in the free wind in the open back of the truck, which she’s pretty sure she wasn’t, legally, allowed to be riding in. But Henry’s passenger seat was taken up by an old wirehound with a muzzle so specked with grey it had even reached his eyebrows. It seemed too cruel to make him take the squished up backside, so Ebrelle had volunteered to sit back with the feed while the dog slept and Henry talked.

He told her stories about deers, which liked to roam these empty, untilled fields. He told her about the little ins and outs of the town she was so new to; the best place to buy coffee was Joe’s Cuppa Joe, or Joes’ (pronounced: Joses) like the locals called it, the bakery downtown was overpriced but had decent blueberry crumb in the winter, and the local doc was a bit of a quack, so it would always be good to get a second opinion in the city for something serious. He spoke friendly to her, even though Ebrelle had just met him that morning. But Henry had known her father, the father who had left her and her mom in the city she was to scour for a second opinion and come to this town with the quack doctor and blueberry crumb and not told them where he’d gone, or Henry that he’d had a daughter. That was, until, the will came out, and Henry was asked to reach out, because he was her father’s closest friend, and he hadn’t known she’d existed until her father’s home was left to her.

Ebrelle sat back against the poking hay and tried, and failed, to tuck a strand of her hair away from her face. Still it whipped out in front of her in little dark reddish-brown strings. It only managed to be shoved aside when she turned her head to the side, and looked out over these rolling fields of green. Some breeze, which was far too weak to compete with the strong gales the car tugged from the air as it leapt and bounced over the unpaved roads, bent the tall grass down flat, creating ripples of a pale pastel green over the rich, dark hills. Just beyond those hills and their stacked-stone borders could Ebrelle see puffs of green cloud-trees, and beyond that the dull pale shimmer of early spring sunlight on the coast, and past that… well, there laid the curve of the world, pulling far away from her. Somewhere near the edge of the curve Ebrelle could see a single ferry tugging through the gentle sea (if a sea could ever honestly be described as gentle), away from this little island town and towards the city her father had left her in, and now dragged her out of from beyond the grave.

A deep divot in the road sent the rickety truck pitching down and bopping back up. For a moment the hay lifted from its placement against the flat bottom and Ebrelle went gliding with it. Her hands gripped the taut blue-and-yellow striped ropes that held the bales together, anchoring herself to that which was already tossed in the air. Her heart leapt with the truck, and time slowed down as the wind stopped pushing the wave of pale pastel and her string-hair stopped flying and she was suspended in air and time for a moment, feet off of the ground, off even of the plastic mat on the truck.

Then it all came crashing back down, jostling into uneven order and Ebrelle rocked back and forth like those little hula-girl bobble heads truckers with more serious trucks are so prone to carrying (if movies and shows are to be trusted, which they usually weren’t).

“Woah, there!” Even Henry’s hands had slapped back onto the steering wheel, and the wire furred dog lifted its bleary eyes, blinking them around with his pink-brown nose twitching against the air.

Henry adjusted the mirror, so he could look out and back to Ebrelle, “’pologies there, Ebs. You a’right?”

Ebs. Ebrelle had been given a variety of nicknames throughout her lifetime (never as quickly as Henry had bestowed them upon her), but she usually bopped back and forth between “Belle”, “B”, or, once, “April”, which had originally stemmed from a misspelling on a company name tag and a lack of drive to correct anyone in the office. “Ebs” was a new one, and she thought it probably stemmed from Henry having first seen her name on the will, rather than heard it spoken aloud.

“I’m alright!” She had to fight the wind for her voice, yelling against it. “... How much longer?”

“Just ’round the bend now!” Henry turned the wheel into a wide C of a road. With no one else on the path, and there’d been no one else for quite a while now, he was going rather fast. Ebrelle again grasped the strings of the bales, her legs bent and braced against the plastic mat as her body tilted to the side. She watched a bucket of tools wobble and pitch over, collapsing as it spilled a hammer and nails and even a screw driver which all rolled precariously towards the high edge of the side wall, before coming to a rattling halt as Henry evened out onto the straight road, and everything rattled, again, back into place.

Just as soon as he made the turn did Ebrelle feel him begin to slow down, and she twisted her head around to see what they were approaching now. Once, her father’s home, now, hers.

It was a ramshackle old thing. Perched at the peak of a hill that looked out on one of those identical rolling hills of grass, puffs of deep forested trees, and eventually the sea. The only difference was that between sea and shore there was a small town. The only town on the island, which seemed mostly made of empty grass hills and abandoned homes, much like this one, perched on their peaks. Henry pulled up the parking break without turning the car off, swinging his door open to step down to a waist-high wrought-iron gate hooked into her own stacked stone wall. The lock had long since rusted off, and he needed to do little more than nudge it with his foot for the thing to swing wide open with an ear-raking screech.

“I’ll go ‘head an’ pull the truck up a bit more, less of a hassle to move your things to the porch if you’re right up against it.”

Her things. A backpack and a suitcase weren’t much of a hassle at all, but Ebrelle nodded and went along with him as Henry adjusted his belt and swung himself back into the driver’s seat. The wire-dog flopped over with his head on the center console, and Henry gave him a pat on the head as he pushed the break back down and let the truck roll idly forward through the broken gates and onto her new property. He stopped just a few feet later, and Ebrelle stood up to brush the hay from her blue jeans. She leaned down and grabbed the backpack to swing it over her back, but by the time she reached for the suitcase Henry had made his way back around and snatched it up.

“Oh no, Ebs, you’re not boutta carry everything in on your own. Not on my watch!” He proclaimed this with a kind of pride, and so Ebrelle thanked him and made the short leap off of the back of the truck and onto the dirt that crunched and rocks that rolled under her sneakers.

She could get a better look at the house here. A grey and faded red brick chimney stuck just past a pale, perhaps once blue paneled rooftop. The wood seemed too heavy for its own weight, and so the entirety of the house seemed to sag just a bit, like it were tired, and waiting to collapse into bed for a good night’s rest. The porch Henry had spoken of was inarguably the newest part of the cabin. Some of the wood there actually retained its color, painted a different, fresher blue than the roof, but still peeling all the same. A rocking chair sat outside on the porch, and Ebrelle couldn’t help but think it’s a shame the chair and porch faced inland, towards the long road with the hills, and not outward, to see the sea and the trees.

It must look beautiful during the fall, she followed up the thought with another, when all those green ground-clouds turned fiery and bright. And it would be great for sledding in the winter, assuming there would be both snow and a sled she could use.

“The keys are under the mat,” Henry explains as lets the passenger side door open so the old hound can lope out, sniffing around the grass ground and wandering slowly towards the house. Both Henry and the dog walked the confident familiarity of people who knew this place, this house, a lot better then Ebrelle, who stepped cautiously after them, following the spaces that Henry walked on as if the rest of the land would eat her up if she misstepped. “I wanted to be sure you had ’nough food in the fridge so you wouldn’t have to make the long trek back to town for a while but I wasn’t sure if you were, uh, if you had any… allergies or preferences or…”

He gave an awkward cough while he shouldered open the front door, which was slightly warped at the top, creating a small gill of open air. “Anyways, there’s some uh, lettuce. Bread. A bit of cheese, I think? Mayo and mustard and ketchup and the like… uh… I put some sliced ham in there but if you’re vegetarian or whatnot I can always take it back with me, promise it didn’t touch anything else– wrapped it in a plastic baggie just to be sure. Oh! And some banana bread from the bakery, as a welcoming gift.”

“Thank you, Henry.” Ebrelle smiled at him, although stepping in this home sent a sick feeling twisting up her gut. He was still here, her father, even if he was no longer alive in the space. He occupied it in the setup, the wide living room with no television but heaps of books shoved into bookshelves and a crooked easy-chair with a clear body imprint on its bottom seat. He was there in the dishes stacked to dry in the rack by the kitchen sink, the ones that had birds and flowers painted on them and the ones that were plain as a clear midday sky.

At least she wouldn’t have to purchase any furniture, and she could redecorate in time. Make this space her own.

Ebrelle turned to Henry, brows furrowed, “About groceries, the ride up here was a lot further then I assumed. I don’t have a car,” but the town was directly down, past the hill and the trees and between shore and… well, the same as always. “Is there a path through the woods?”

“No path, no, but if you walk straight you should be fine and get there eventually.” Henry pulled his hat from his head, with the suitcase set in the living room he was free to scratch his fingers through the thin wisps of grey that covered his balding head. “But you probably don’t wanna trek through the underbrush each time you gotta get milk, huh?”

“Not… ideally.” She chewed on the inside of her lip– she’d need a car. She’d need a job, too, but she’d need a job to get a car and a car to get a job.

“I can lend you my son’s old bike,” Henry offered after a pause, “Ya can’t take it through the woods, likely, but you can ride to and from town and it’ll be a bit faster. Mostly downhill down to the town anyway.”

Which also meant mostly uphill on the way back… Well, she’d always meant to do a more intensive workout routine. “Sounds great, thank you, Henry.”

He grinned, a big and toothy expression that pushed the bubbles of his red, round cheeks up into his eyes. “’O’course!”

A heavy hand came to pat on Ebrelle’s shoulder, Henry started to say something, then stopped to consider what he was about to say. He tried again, patting her shoulder with the same gentle, slow motions he’d used to pat the head of the hound, “Look, Ebrelle, I hope you know that no matter what mighta happened with your old man… you’re welcome here, okay? Whatever you need you can rely on me. I left my number and a few others pinned to the fridge, you got it? Don’t hesitate to call, not for rain nor shine nor any other reason.”

It was less a matter of what happened with her father and more a matter of what didn’t happen. Namely, approximately twenty-two years of not-happening, and the previous two-years something might have happened… well, she wasn’t exactly old enough to remember anything those first two years.

Still, Ebrelle nodded, and placed her hand on his in a similar dog-pat comfort, “I promise I will. I… really do thank you, Henry. For all your kindness and help.”

His beam was back, and his hand pulled away to shove itself deep in his pants’ pocket, “O’course! It’s what I’m here for.”

Henry gave a wink and was drawn by a bark at the door, the hound’s deep rasp calling him to check his watch and look to the truck. “I’ve gotta get back home now, my boys’ll be back from school soon and I should get dinner started before they come… I don’t suppose you’d wanna join us?”

Ebrelle shook her head, “I should get unpacked and settled, thank you, though.”

Henry nodded, “Okay, well… call us if you need anything– anytime!”

“I will.”

He hesitated a moment more, perhaps feeling like he should do something, say something… but Henry appeared to come up blank, and just gave her one last nod and one last reminder to call before he got to his goodbye. Ebrelle stood on the newest-old porch and waved while the hound hopped in before him and Henry pulled out of her little dirt driveway, back down to that C-curved road, where he quickly disappeared, over the horizon like a tugboat ferry headed towards the city.

Only once Henry was gone did Ebrelle let out the breath that had been caught in her lungs since she first received that strange, surreal call. Only once he left did that call actually feel real. Her father, a man she didn’t know, had passed away and left her his home on a small island isolated from the city. And now she was here. It wasn’t just a strange idea, a spark or coincidence in her brain. She was here.

Ebrelle leaned heavily against the railings of her new home. She heard the wood creak and tilt under her palms, and felt the way the uneven shavings pressed into her skin with the threat of splinters. She stayed like that for a moment, just breathing and reconciling this was her new world. She stayed like that until she heard a soft sound, a growl, deep and raspy.

Thinking the old wirehaired hound had leapt from the back of the truck she looked up. There, beyond the stacked stone and the ineffective gate, a dark shadow stood at the crest of the C-turn curve, where it began to dip downhill and you could no longer see what came around it. It was a dog, for sure, but not the wirehair hound.

For one, it was much larger, for a second, it was a deep pitch black. So much so that Ebrelle had to remind herself it was still midday, and not sunset or midnight or some other time that would leave the horizon an inkblot silhouette of itself. Its ears perched up straight atop its head, and its long tail curve down around itself, and for a moment in the haze and mist Ebrelle almost thought that she saw parts of it drift up into the air like smoke. Then, the dog turned, and trotted around the C-curve and down the hill, out of her sight just as quickly.

A stray maybe? Or a wolf? Did they even get wolves here? A coyote?

Whatever it was, it wasn’t like her knee-high stone fence or waist-high broken gate were going to do anything to a beast bigger than a dachshund. She’d ask Henry if they got wolves or coyotes or strays later, and then ask if so what he did to keep them off her lawn. The last thing Ebrelle needed was to be attacked by a feral dog on top of all this.

For now, though, it had turned and wandered off. Which meant it was probably off put by the presence of a human. Maybe it had been surprised, as no one had been in this home for a few months now. Maybe it had thought to move in around the neighborhood, but saw it was now occupied, and would see itself out like any polite house guest that had overstayed their welcome. Maybe Ebrelle was being overly optimistic, but she didn’t want to deal with this now, too. She still had to unpack.

So she returned to that peeling old door, took the key from under the dirty welcome mat in front of it, and locked the world out behind her.