Day 162 - Upside Down- Chapter 10 - (1740 words)

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UPSIDE DOWN, BACK TO FRONT

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 10

After

The road to the cottage was bumpier than he recalled it to be. It had been way too many years since he had been out here and he was unsure how he felt about it.
The money was still an issue of course. He would get to that. He would get to them.
“Is this it?”
James is in the back seat looking down the curve to the weathered house at the end of the road/driveway. In the country the distinction between road and driveway can be blurred sometimes.
“Yeah.” There was a sudden catch in his voice. It was harder to be here than he thought. Maybe this could work for him. The direct approach had not been that successful and he was tired today. A fight, and pushing too much, too hard today seemed like a waste of time and effort.
So much effort and for what?
The house seemed tiny to him now, but the massive doorframes of his mind were now pressing sides in a tunnel to him.
The car juddered over the cattle gate.
The brown, dusty sight of the house loomed large. Smaller than in memory but towering as he drove up to the porch and glided to a gentle stop. The handbrake, usually yanked on with a ratcheted rasp was held in check, eased up and released in place under as much tension as he could muster in silence. As he let go Ivan could still feel the impression on his palm.
He held his hand up, see the depth of it, rather than looking at the house.
The house now his. The house he wanted less to do with than his father had.
James and Sam didn’t move. Waiting for Ivan to step out first.
After a long while, the sun beating through the windscreen was too much to bear without air and movement.
He opened the driver door, and in tune the other two mean got out of the cat with him. Even though he had initiate the move and was first to open the door, he was conspiciously last to stand by the car as the others waited on him.
Why am I moving so slowly?
He shook the cobwebs out of his mothballed childhood and took deliberate steps onto the porch, up to the front door.
He had the keys.
The door, unlocked.
In silence the three men walked inside and moved from room to room. There was an old cathode TV, and a VCR connected to it, it’s size and square framed bulk a testament to an owner not moving with the times. How long had it been since his mother had passed? 3 months? 4? 6? He couldn’t recall.
They were still married, even after 20 years or more apart. She had stayed out here in the house, the house where he grew up and grew hard. Dad had taken off for the city when she threw him out of the house. When he was old enough Ivan had followed him, planning on a life reconnecting with his Dad, but the bottle had got there first. It was a few years before the booze had aged him badly, Ivan had done his apprenticeship, was working a garage job for a man older than his father and had lost touch with all parts of his life previous.
Then it all came back. His father returned with tales of lost years and the things that had mattered. How he had been the architect of his own demise, but that his biggest mistake was not looking after his wife, Ivan’s mother, well enough.
He had ceded control, that had been the issue. All problems can be worked through with direction and leadership. He had let her down and let her go.
He should have held on, press harder to keep them together. Inattention and lacking that strength had been the end of the family, not…
Ivan’s dad had ever finished that sentence, Ivan had never asked what it was.
His mother had stayed silent, even when her almost teenage son had begged in tears for Dad to come home, but she had been resolute. Unwavering in her position.
He had broached the subject once, and that was when his Dad had given him the speech about leading by example. Being strong, being the back bone of the family.
Events and problems and issues. All irrelevant if you know what you want and you want people to come along with you.
Confidence, not salesman like confidence but real confidence. The feeling that you not only know what you are doing, but that you know you are the only one who does. Show that and people will do what you want. What you say does not matter. What you do, how you do? That’s what matters.
Whatever it was that happened, his mother never let go of it.
By the time he had crawled out of the bottle, by the time his doctor had woken him to the damage he had done to himself in the lost years, it was too late.
The house was resolute as his mother was. It didn’t welcome him back like he thought it would.
It seemed hot against him, still and unbreathable in it’s walls.
Above the fireplace a faded family photo of himself as a child, his father standing behind him and his mother, a step to the right away from under his father’s arm almost at stretch to be as far as she could without being obvoiusly detached.
Is this when it started?
They were all smiling at this time, even as his mother sought to find that space where she was an individual.
When Ivan left home she never tried to contact him.
She waited for him, unbeknownst to anyone. Not willing to come and find a junior version of her husband at the end of that long road, happy to assume that as long as Ivan did not seek her then he was seing his father in others, and not her.
Sad was not how she saw it, but it calcified over the years until she passed. It was not until the power company were checking the meter, a few days later that she had been found. His father had been contacted, by the family lawyer.
He was still the registered owner of the house.
Even in the lost years when misery was the family he wanted, he still rose to the demands of a husband and provider. Ivan had know that he still sent money to her, through the lawyer and the trust he had set up from the business. He had cut himself off from those funds, struggled for years with Ivan and himself, never asking for help but allowing himself to be helped by his son.
The son who had cut corners.
The son who had, taken advantage of those not family to take care of those who were.
The criminal son.
While all this waited here. It wasn’t worth a lot, but he had to see it for himself. The lawyer had a certain amount left in the accounts and also said that the house was worthless, but the land? It was in an area where urban spread was only a decade or less from reaching. He could sell it to investors now and make a decent profit, not quite as much as what was in the van, wherever those bastards had hidden his money. If he was patient though, in 10 years the accumulated land and houses on it would be in the tens of millions, a long term risk.
Money in the hand, money on the potential of others lives expanding this way.
It was probably inevitable.
It felt like a lifetime ago, the future to Ivan was as good as history to him. Disconnected and distanced from reality.
With a loud crash the picture ripped from the wall and cracked on the floor. He stomped it into the ground and kicked at it until it was in pieces. He did not see his companions at all as he stomped the remains into the floor boards until it resembeld nothing.
The can of petrol came from the back of his car. With abandon he spread it liberally, not caring houw far it went or when it ran out. The last few drops shaken violently about, catching his clothes uncaring. The empty can clattered through the kicthen door and then he was on the porch.
Ivan pulled a matchbook from his pocket. He didn’t smoke but a lot of his customers and associates did. This matchbook was his own, his garage and phone number emblazoned on it with his own slogan running alongside that detail.
We take care of our own.
It was reference to the nature of his business, get to know your customers and treat them like they are your own.
He lit a match and let it burn to his fingers.
He felt nothing.
He lit a second and leaned into the doorway, careful not to let his clothes near whatever was coming next.
The match lit the fumes before it hit the floor and in seconds the dry, brittle rug took the floor and walls to flame as he stood in the door.
Sam and James were already in the back seat as they drove away the flames dancing in the rear view mirror.
“Are you okay?”
Jame had a hand on Ivan’s shoulder as he stared at the picture on the wall. Was that him as a child? It was hard to know, that looked like him standing at the back, it must have been his father. They looked nothing alike then, but now?
Sam touched his other shoulder and James let go and walked outside leaving Ivan in peace.
In silence Ivan followed him out and directly to the car.
They could see his tension coiled and ready to snap, so they said nothing. Unsure if violence or tears would explode out if pushed they let him leave the house untouched and unlocked.
They drove away, the house only burning in Ivan’s mind and the flames dancing in his eyes.
The juddering of the cattle gate closed the feeling in all of them.
They drove back to the city in silence, all three men feeling the heat of a fire that was never really lit.
When the car pulled up a set of lights, on the great south road, near his home Ivan spoke.

“I won’t wait.”