Free Return to Oakpine by Ron Carlson

he drank coffee in the lobby of the little hotel. He’d been to his hometown five or six times in thirty years, and he wondered if this would be the last trip.
    He went out into the surprising air, and it all fit again, the size of the sky, the emptiness north and south, and now the railroad and the river and across Main and Bank streets and the towering clusters of trees pulled him to Poplar Grove, and then slowed to a crawl, he turned onto Berry Street, his windows down and the morning as sweet as anything he’d known as a boy, the smell of the dew and the leaves whispering and holding the fresh light. He hadn’t thought about this part, being alone on his old street. He hadn’t planned it. Somehow he had hoped to finish his part with the property in one weekend, but as soon as he drove onto Berry Street, he felt the weight of the ages, and then he saw his house, and of course it was more real than any of the plans he had for Denver.
    Standing on the cement porch, he could see there was more work than he could do in a week, and for some reason for which he had no explanation, he wanted the work. The place had claimed him, the shushing trees and their clashing shadows had claimed him, his old porch, the house. Hell, the drive up. He closed his eyes and stood still. The smell of the dew lifting from the old brick. He felt the wiring in his neck; he was tired, and he knew if he sat on the stoop, he’d be there all day. He hadn’t stopped in thirty years, and he thought that and then dismissed it. “Thirty years,” he said. And he knew it was true: he hadn’t stopped.
    He cuffed the keys from his jacket pocket and tried the door. The entire lock cylinder turned with the key, and he couldn’t get it back out. Through the two large front windows, which were plated with grease and dust, he could see that the house was scattered with stuff, boxes, furniture, debris. His renters, the Gunnars, hadn’t called him. When he didn’t get July’s rent, he tried to reach them. Their phone was disconnected in August. Mason had called an old classmate, Shirley Stiver, who handled real estate, and had her go by the place. Even after her report that the house was abandoned, it had taken him until now, mid-September, to drive back up from Denver. The Gunnars were history. Mason Kirby looked at his watch. Shirley would be over in an hour.
    This was the house he grew up in, and though it looked like a ruined artifact, he knew it hadn’t changed. The sunlight on the red bricks and the smell of the trees and the gardens in the early fall altered his breathing as he kicked through the high grass into the backyard. There was a metal clip and a cord on the clothesline as well as a worn oval in the shaggy lawn; the Gunnars must have had a dog. He was history too. The back porch door was open two inches, and he remembered: it was never fully closed. The door was always a bad fit, but now it wouldn’t open either. He bumped it with his hip. It had swollen and chafed against the planking of the floor. He grabbed the handle and remembered the noise. It made a sweet little ring for some reason, something loose for decades. He nudged the door again with his hip, and the old sheet of plate glass popped, and a crack ran diagonal across the pane.
    He was able to pry open the two old hinged garage doors, and daylight was visible between many of the planks. The dark space was mounded with dank trash dating back, he supposed, through the Gunnars and their six years in the house, through old Mr. Jared, who died there after nine or ten years as tenant, all the way back to his parents, who had raised Mason and his sister in the place. They’d been gone for almost twenty years now. It had not been in his plans to visit the cemetery, but as he looked around at the stained boxes sitting in the gloom, he knew his plans had changed.
    The voices of children drew him back out into the open air, and he saw the