The Caretaker
Another short story by C. C. Brower. Also available in “When the Cities Died, I Danced”
Another short story by C. C. Brower.
Available in “When the Cities Died, I Danced” — for more information, visit: https://calm.li/CitiesDied
Herman Gauss found a caretaker through an ad he placed. One he did not want, but felt he needed.
As a reclusive writer, he didn’t much care for what he got, but had some wishes. Since he’d never married again, the idea of having a female moving about the big empty house made him both worried and content. He had been happy to live quietly at the end of a long, dusty road, but found his cleaning habits left too much dust around.
He wanted to write, not clean house. He didn’t want his solitude interrupted, but would appreciate having the dust gathered out of the corners and the occasional hot meal he didn’t have to prepare himself.
So he placed an ad through an agency. He paid them to find and pre-interview the applicants. They would send over one at a time, only sending the next in line when an earlier one disqualified themselves.
And the reasons for the disqualified applicants seemed inconsistent and even frivolous. But the company was only paid to send applicants, so the money would keep coming to them until Herman ran out of it, or they ran out of applicants. (Word can get around about certain ads…)
Maggie was herself quiet and happy to have such a job. She was a student of writing, but had never published. Her shyness found her many admirers, but never a long relationship. That’s not to say she didn’t have strong opinions. And perhaps those were what drove her would-be lovers away. She never talked about her personal life, even when asked.
How she got hired was a bit of a mystery. She wasn’t outspoken much, but was firm and unmoveable when she was. It wasn’t that all things should be a certain way, but certain things should be kept in certain ways.
The hiring company took this minor loss of income in stride.
Herman got used to the curtains on the west being open in the morning, and the curtains on the east only open when the sun had passed the house peak, where the west curtains would be closed. He didn’t mind that if he came in early from his walk, he wasn’t allowed back in his own study until the cleaning was finished. Maggie didn’t work to keep the porch as spotless as the rest of the house inside. So when Herman was refused access to his inner chambers during its cleaning, he would come out here. He took the rough broom and ash shovel, and picked up and threw out the worst-offending dirt clods and dried mud clumps. He’d even pick up his boots to put them outside on the steps so that he could empty the tray they sat on. All to help get rid of some of the dust. At least those in the form of dirt clumps.
In Spring, he would find occasion to take his heavy overalls and coats to put them into a standalone porch cabinet out of the sun. Heavy gloves would go into porous bags and onto one of its upper shelves. However, he wasn’t permitted to clean the windows or screens of that porch. Maggie would have a fit, in her own quiet way, if he tried this.
The house soon became Maggie’s as much as Herman’s, although he still had title to it.
While Herman was busy in his study for hours, Maggie would finish up her housework and do some writing of her own on the kitchen table. Herman had noted that she always had a legal pad in her bag and would find her writing at it when he came out into the kitchen for more coffee.
After a year, Herman gave her a room of her own to write in.
Her long legal pads stacked up neatly in a corner of the room until they were nearly as high as the desk top. That desk and her chair, plus a small lamp, were the only furniture in that room. They were placed at a definite angle to her window, not aligned to any wall. An oval hook-rug, created with brown, tan, plus a few green yarns as accent, fit under the desk and ladder-backed chair. This was the only covering for the wood tongue-and-groove plank floor.
The walls were plain, paneled over the original lath-and-plaster. While they showed marks from the children who had grown up in them, there were no nails or screws sticking out to hang things on. The one exception was a set of hooks installed into the door back, which held Maggie’s shawl or jacket, depending on the weather.
As you can expect, her room was spotless. The single drawer in that simple desk had a supply of pencils and a sharpener. One tiny trash bin carried those sharpenings away daily, after the writing was done. There were no pens anywhere in that room. There were two erasers, but these showed little use. One eraser remained in its original plastic wrapping.
Herman’s study was not so tidy. Its walls were filled with shelves. Books were crammed into their place with various bookmarks. They were of all sizes and widths. Some covered with ragged dustjackets, others were scarred and scuffed paperbacks. If a book was pristine in condition, it was usually in a pile on the floor. Once Maggie tried to straighten those piles into a neat and tidy alignment, but Herman wouldn’t have it. Apparently the odd corners sticking out told him what book it was and what was in it. He didn’t expect to have to read the script on the spine to do so.
A big wide old table was used as his writing desk, with an old keyboard and all-in-one monitor on it. Old mugs held a variety of pencils, pens, and markers. Pads and notebooks of graph paper stuck out above or beyond the books in stacks next to the computer. And also between the table legs at its base. A pile of thumb drives had its own zippered binder, which was kept open by the tall stacks of them.
The study was big enough to include Herman’s double bed. A single night stand was at the side nearest Herman’s desk. Maggie changed the sheets on this weekly, and rotated the covers with the seasons.
Maggie would only dust and sweep and tidy in that room. No papers changed position. She did empty the trashcan once a week. Herman would sometimes throw a wadded paper into it and then recover it. After a spat and a fit about a certain thrown-out paper, Maggie found a duplicate of his trash can and would rotate the new for the old, keeping the spare still filled with last week’s “trash” in a closet near the study door. If Herman knew of the arrangement, he said nothing. Maggie did find that closet door ajar every now and then…
Otherwise, the house was as it had been for over a hundred years. Herman had spent some of his writer’s earnings to have it restored after he inherited it, and before he moved in. Many of the floor joists were replaced, and the house was inspected to ensure there was no rot anywhere. The windows were replaced with modern ones that looked the same. The house was tight and draft-free when he was done.
Herman had given away most of the old furniture, and knick-knacks. Then didn’t replace them once he moved in. Relatives were glad to take anything they held valuable, and charity organizations were just as glad to take the rest.
The kitchen contained the most furniture. It had four ladder-backed chairs around a sturdy oak table. The table had a Formica top, rimmed in stainless trim around its curved corners. Painted plywood cabinets were built into the kitchen walls. They held little besides some canned goods and boxed foodstuffs. Stove, refrigerator, microwave, sink completed the spare outfitting.
The living room had a simple, padded oak bench for a couch, an oak coffee table and two brown padded chairs with tall backs, all arranged facing the old fireplace. Herman had installed a fireplace insert to cut down drafts. Another hooked rug covered most of the wood floor. Two floor lamps by the chairs completed the furniture. Again paneling covered the original plaster walls. Here, too, nothing was hung on those walls. The mantel of the fireplace was also bare. This was a room kept clean for necessary visitors, which were few and far between. The spartan condition of the room wasn’t inviting for them to stay long or come back.
To the rest of the world, the house looked the same as it had always been. Barn red with gray trim. The farm itself had no barn, as the original wooden one had tumbled down years before and gradually rotted away. Herman kept cattle and the only sign of this activity was a corral with a loading chute, as well as the graveled drive to it. The cattle grazed everywhere there were fences to keep them in, and trimmed the trees as well. Of course, they left random placements of manure divots, gradually being reabsorbed into what had formerly been lawns.
When a tree would die, it would be left as is, and cattle would use it for scratching. If it was close enough to the house, Herman would cut it up for firewood. The bigger trunks were left, as Herman didn’t see any need to work at cutting and splitting huge slabs just in order to get them small enough to burn. Instead, he would quit cutting at the point where the wood no longer fit his fireplace opening. If the leftover trunks were in the way, he would tow them somewhere more suitable. Meanwhile, new sprouts would grow, if they didn’t get trimmed by the cow’s grazing habits.
Herman held that the farm was there for solitude and inspiration. It had raised a good number of kids, none of which were much interested in farming. There was a small garden where Herman raised various plants that grew themselves from year to year. He only planted that would grow back on their own. He found and placed large, flat rocks or concrete pieces for the walkways in between their rows.
Blackberry and gooseberry brambles grew around the fences, plants that cows would normally leave alone. Fruit and nut trees were left from the original farm, and Herman would replace these as they died off.
Maggie would visit the farmers’ market for any seasonal vegetables. Herman stocked the freezer with beef he had processed. Chickens provided eggs from their standalone shed and fenced-in yard near the garden.
Herman would fertilize the garden in the fall by cleaning out the chicken manure and collecting the cattle divots. He placed these appropriately in the garden and around the trees depending on what was needed where.
In the spring, summer, and fall, Herman would often bring fresh wild fruit in from his travels, which Maggie would make into jelly and jam. Sometimes breads or cakes.
Hard farm work, mostly in quiet, was Herman’s crucible for his work. The only sounds he wanted were the birds in the trees, the occasional cow calling for its calf, and the patter of his keyboard.
Maggie’s own quiet cleaning assisted her inspiration.
One winter, Herman got quite ill. Maggie ran the farm for several days until she got him well again. This was when Maggie moved a double bed into her own room upstairs, along with a wardrobe for her clothes. After she completed nursing him back to full health, she never moved out again.
Neither Maggie or Herman talked about this much. Or said much when they did answer someone’s question.
People in town might have talked about this, but it didn’t matter to either Maggie or Herman. Maggie did the weekly shopping for food and house supplies. Herman visited the local livestock auction regularly. He was there to check the prices for his cattle, and as much to get inspiration for his books. In town, or at the auction, they had conversations, but were known to just smile and nod more than voice any opinion.
Both seemed content with how things went.
They would talk over meals, in quiet and short sentences. Otherwise, the silence of the big farm house was only affected by the season’s storms that occasionally thundered, or whistled, or roared.
The porch was most affected by that weather, more than the occupants.
In summer, the screens would let some wind-blown rain in.
By the end of fall, the windows would replace them and be battered by gusts.
In the winter, the windows would frost over. Both Herman’s and Maggie’s boots would bring in snow, sometimes ice.
The spring would prompt rotating the windows back to storage to let fresh spring air in again.
The house inside would stay temperate and clean. Both writers would be hard at work in their comfortable silence, regardless of temperature or wind outdoors.
Maggie recieved a present one day. Herman had a laptop delivered for her.
This was one of the few times they had a discussion outside of meal times. Maggie seemed to protest, but Herman repeated that he thought that would help speed her writing progress.
He revealed that he had read several of her yellow pads and found them to be quite good. “Sufficient for publishing,” was his phrase. Maggie blushed, one of her rare few times.
Herman also had a satellite antenna installed that year to bring them Internet access. Before this, Herman would mail a flash drive of his works to his publisher. What mail he got before then was in letter form or he answered on his phone.
His quiet mentorship of Maggie got her first book published. Soon after that, they started sitting in the living room in the evening, each in their own tall, padded chair. Herman had gotten them both tablets and they read each other’s works.
Maggie wrote Romance, Herman wrote mystery-adventure stories.
They’d make notes in the margins and as bookmarks of sentence improvements and apparent plot holes. Their sharing sped both of their works, and improved them.
Herman started putting love interests into his stories. Maggie started including more mystery and action in hers.
Eventually, they became co-authors on a few longer stories. And readers started finding the other’s works. Both Maggie and Herman became well-known under their own names, as well as their many pen-names.
When Maggie started bringing childbirth and child-raising scenes into her stories, Herman brought this up at one of their mealtime conversations. She thought this was an interesting thematic element she wanted to explore. And she started a children’s series. Herman then produced a new series with a family adventure in it.
Unknown to Herman, Maggie had added a freestanding shelf to her room, and had shelved books in it. When this was filled, she started stacking books on the floor beside it. They were neat, tidy stacks and organized by size with the largest and thickest nearest the floor. A small stool kept the lowest one high enough to be swept under.
One day, Maggie found that one of the kitchen chairs had been moved to her room, and one of her shelved books had been left on it. A bookmark was in a particular spot. She left it exactly as she found it. Day after day, she saw that the bookmark moved further through the book. And when it was about to reach the end, another book took it’s place and the process continued.
Herman soon found a nightstand had been placed on the far side of his bed. A book was on it, with a bookmark. He noticed it, but didn’t touch it. It’s bookmark moved through the book gradually, and then another book would replace it.
One day, Herman stopped Maggie and surprised her with a hug. This became a daily occurrence they both enjoyed.
Maggie started going on walks with Herman around the farm to help him check on the cattle he raised, and helped him repair the fences.
Herman was of no use to her in cleaning the house, but started gathering wild flowers for the kitchen table. He also moved some wild roses next to the house, which he said was to keep the cattle from rubbing on the house-corners. Both knew that was a “stretch” as no cow had ever been permitted to scratch themselves in that fashion.
One stormy, windy winter night, Maggie joined Herman in his bed under the deep covers. Herman visited her bed the following evening.
Some months later, Herman brought an antique single bed with new springs and mattress from town. He assembled this in the other upstairs bedroom. Maggie found pillows, fitting sheets and covers for it. Maggie also later brought back a wardrobe and chest of drawers, plus a nightstand. Herman then brought a small set of shelves. And he put her series of children’s books in it, neatly arranged. Maggie had his series of family stories placed on a bottom shelf.
Herman and Maggie still live and write in that old farmhouse at the end of their long, dusty road. In the evenings, they still sit in their tall, padded chairs and make notes on each other’s writing. Now a child is between them, quietly playing with toys or reading books on the hooked rug that covers their living room floor. In the afternoons, you can see the three of them walking around the farm, hand-in-hand as they check the cattle and get their inspirations for more writing.
And their child has plenty of ruled pads to draw and write in.
Hope you enjoyed this short story by C. C. Brower.
Also available in “When the Cities Died, I Danced” — for more information, visit: https://calm.li/CitiesDied