Dec 16, 20178 min read

22 The Woods – The Buyer (2015) by LV Gaudet

Cody blinks his eyes open. They feel grainy, gummed up. His mouth feels pasty and he imagines how bad his breath must smell. His throat is sore like it gets when he’s been snoring too much. The after effects of all the dust in the air from cleaning a house that hasn’t been set foot in for thirty years.

He sits up stiffly, swinging his legs to put his feet on the floor and leans forward, hanging his head. He rubs the sleep from his eyes; a dried crust of mucous partially gluing his eyelashes closed. It is the effect of all the old dust in the house.

He is stiff and sore from his fitful sleep on the couch.

“I guess I’d better get my butt in gear. I have a lot to get done today.” He gets up, stretching with a groan, and fumbling his way groggily to the kitchen, reflexively looking for coffee.

Cody stops in the middle of the kitchen, looking around him. He spots an old coffee pot, the kind you fill with water and heat on the stove to percolate coffee grounds into that smooth nutty brew so many thrive on. He walks over, picking it up and pulling the lid off to look inside.

“How does this thing work?”

Putting it down, he rummages in the cupboards, wishing he’d thought to bring coffee and a coffee maker. He finds an old metal tin marked “coffee”, opens it, and sniffs the grounds.

He pulls it away, making a face.

“Thirty year old coffee, I don’t think so. Looks like I’ll have to go somewhere for coffee.”

He turns on the tap, intending to drink from the tap. There is a faint hiss of trapped air escaping and nothing else.

“Oh yea, I have to get the water turned on too.”

Cody does the only thing he can do to freshen up. He brushes his teeth with no water to rinse, combs his hair, puts on deodorant, and changes his shirt.

His stomach gurgles, telling him he’s hungry.

He grabs his keys and heads out.

Getting in his car, he checks the time on his phone.

“Still pretty early. There probably isn’t much open yet.” His stomach gurgles hungrily, reminding him about priorities.

“All right, food first.”

He drives back to the bar he ate a late supper in the night before. The bar won’t be open this early, but with luck the restaurant attached to it will be.

He gets there and the restaurant is open.

He goes inside and sits at the same table he had tried to sit at the night before, before being relocated to the bar. There are a few other people from town sitting at scattered tables. They give him curious glances, wondering who the new guy is.

He sits there for ten minutes before a waitress comes around. She grabs a coffee pot on the way past the counter, stopping at each table to freshen their coffee and visit.

Watching her, he estimates she’s his age, maybe a year or two younger. She has that friendly small town fresh-faced look, clear eyes, and a smile that lights up her whole face.

Cody’s stomach rumbles with hunger again. It’s gnawing at his empty gut, making him feel impatient and annoyed with the chatty waitress.

Suddenly, she’s standing over him, startling him out of his dark thoughts.

“What can I get you, hon?” She’s already pouring coffee in his cup.

“Two eggs over easy, bacon, hash browns, rye toast, and jam and orange juice.”

“That sounds like a sunshiny breakfast.” Her smile never falters and he immediately regrets his curt tone of voice. She’s gone faster than she came, giving his order to the kitchen.

Cody looks around, spies a newspaper abandoned on another table, and retrieves it, bringing it back to his table.

He starts reading it, uninterested in the articles, but killing time and trying to take his mind off the empty hunger gnawing at his gut. It’s not a large newspaper, its circulation limited to the small area that envelopes a few small towns. He finishes the paper and looks around. There is nothing really to look at. A couple at one table sipping coffee, the woman giving him the occasional suspiciously curious look. He decides she doesn’t like newcomers. An old man sits at another table. Cody is pretty sure he’s been reading the same article in the paper since he got there. The occasional vehicle drives by outside the window.

The waitress is there suddenly with his breakfast. She sets it down, freshens his coffee, and is gone before he can react.

He looks down at the plate. His breakfast is smiling back at him. Two bright over easy eyes and hash brown hair with a crooked melon slice nose to go with the goofy lopsided bacon grin. He can only shake his head as he pours ketchup over the hair and starts hungrily devouring his new friend. Cody can’t stop the small grin that turns the corners of his mouth up. She forgot his toast and juice.

She slips the bill on the table on the way past, her attention directed to another diner coming in the door. She greets the man coming in with a wide smile, her eyes shining. They talk quietly and she nods, hurrying away to grab the coffee pot while he finds a seat.

The man is in his twenties, Cody notes, probably around his own age. He feels a flutter of jealousy and pushes it down.

“She’s not my type anyway,” he tells himself. Pulling his wallet out, he leaves cash on the table to cover the bill and a generous tip. A bigger tip than he would normally leave for exceptional service, and this was not that.

The municipal office is open now and he goes there.

A woman around thirty looks up at him from her desk. She gets up and comes to the counter.

“Can I help you?”

Cody notes the light makeup, just a little around the eyes and lipstick that almost matches her lip colour. She’s not too thin, with some shape to her, still slender, but in the way of a woman who exercises. Plain, but not in an un-pretty way.

“Yes, do you know where I can get services hooked up? Water, electricity, that kind of stuff.”

Another clerk he didn’t notice before comes bustling over. She’s older and larger, with maybe thirty pounds of unhealthy lifestyle wrapped around her. Her pale skin looks paler with the heavy makeup and her frizzy hair seems uncontainable despite her best efforts. Her clothes are out of style and too tight in places. He suspects she drives into the city to shop at a thrift store for her clothes. With the tired lines on her face, he pegs her as a mother who probably has little time, if any, for herself.

She comes at the desk, staring at him eagerly. “You bought the old Bennett place, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” he answers, sounding uncertain.

“Wow, I thought that place would never sell. It’s been sitting so long. No one has even ever been in there for thirty years. It must be in pretty bad shape, being neglected for so long.”

He shrugs. “A bit dusty.”

She laughs a little too loud and heartily at that.

“So, what can we do for you?”

“Where can I get services hooked up to the house?”

She laughs again. “It must have been a dark night.”

He shrugs. “It wasn’t bad. I have a lantern. I was tired and went to bed early.”

She gives him a few phone numbers and he’s on his way.

“It will take weeks to get services hooked up. But if you call these guys and tell them Sally gave you’re their numbers, Sally, that’s me, they’ll get you to the top of the list.

“Stop by and let us know how it’s going with the old Bennett place,” she calls out to him as he leaves.

He stops outside to make the phone calls and is pleasantly surprised to find Sally was right. The bored noncommittal two weeks to get the water turned on and six to eight weeks for the hydro both suddenly became happy promises to have him hooked up by the end of the week, if not sooner.

“You can’t not love small towns,” he says, pleased with his progress.

His next stop is a store. Walking in, the store feels like a throwback to the old general stores from the days of settlers and cowboys. And old-timers version of the modern day Wal-Mart, with a little of everything.

Taking a buggy that has seen better days, one wheel wobbling dangerously as he pushes it, he starts filling it with the essentials. He frowns at the higher than city prices on everything. A new mop and pail, broom, cleaning and shower supplies.

He grabs a few towels. He hasn’t checked out the towels at the house, but after thirty years he imagines they are probably brittle and falling apart.

He finds some mousetraps just in case, and stocks up on paper plates and plastic cups and cutlery.

Cody gets to the cash register, and then remembers the batteries he almost forgot. Nodding to the confused looking cashier, he returns to the aisles in search of batteries, finding them and a cheap coffee maker.

“That’s a lot of stuff,” the cashier smiles when he comes back to the check out.

Cody gives him a nod. “Just a few things I need.”

“You must be the guy that bought the old Bennett place.”

“Word sure spreads in a small town, doesn’t it?”

The cashier smiles and nods, ringing up the purchases.

After paying, Cody wheels the cart outside and loads the stuff in his car before returning the cart. He can’t help but notice every person who passes by looking at him curiously.

His next stop is the grocery store, where he again notices most items are priced higher than he’s used to.

“Small towns,” he shrugs, “I guess it costs more to stock these little stores.”

He fills a cart with a couple cases of water bottles and carefully chosen food. With no water or electricity, he’s limited in what he can store and eat.

Cody again is questioned on being “the guy” who bought the old Bennett place as the clerk rings up his purchases, packing them into bags and a cardboard box, and he’s on his way again, returning to The Old Bennett Place as he’s come to understand his new house is called.

Arriving at the house, it takes him a few trips to bring in his haul. On his last trip, bringing the box with groceries back, the receipt blows out of the box. It flutters with the breeze, rolling in the air, and lands in the longer grass at the edge of the yard.

He puts the box down to retrieve the receipt. Walking over, he bends down to pick up the receipt and notices something in the grass. He walks over to investigate.

Lying in the grass just outside the yard on the side of the house is an old stained and weatherworn baseball. He picks it up, looking at it thoughtfully, walking back and picking up the box of groceries.

“The baseball must have been there for years. Thirty years?” He wonders. “It’s possible. It could be a long lost baseball belonging to one of the boys who used to live here. Probably the older boy’s, who’s bedroom sports baseball and soccer trophies,” he guesses.

Keeping the baseball, he goes back to pick up the box of groceries and brings them into the house.