Granddad's House

I realized just before we got off the interstate in rural North Carolina that I didn't remember how to get to my granddad's house.

We'd been warned three times already about what my grandmom called "the Resident," a large snake--probably a copperhead--that had taken up lodgings in some forgotten badger hole under a nook in the house. Last time my uncle had visited the house, he'd seen it flash back into its hiding place before he could capture it. We'd also been told to pick up plenty of jugs of water, because, although the water line would be on, it would have sat in the pipes too long and would be too rusty to drink.

Granddad died ten years ago. He had routine vein surgery in his legs and a couple of days later, his heart just stopped beating. It was a shock mainly because, as my brother said, he wasn't someone who quit things. For the sixteen years that I knew him, he constantly and quietly went about his business, keeping the homestead safe, mowed, and running well. He had a garage full of tools, wood, and objects that he'd never thrown away because they might come in handy one day. And, unlike most packrats, he actually used the things he'd saved. He was always coming up with ingenious solutions to everyday problems in maintaining several cars and what had been originally a summer cottage in the western North Carolina mountains. Things didn't break and people were always safe wherever Granddad Okie was. 

That's the view I had growing up, anyway. We'd visit the house, which was just up several gravel roads from Saluda, NC, and I would rarely see my granddad for whole days. But I had no fear of anything in those dark, quiet woods: snakes, bears, dry wells, broken-down cars could do their worst, but my granddad would come from behind, as silent as a midnight snow, and fix it. He never failed to.

And then he just failed to keep living one day. Grandmom, though she loved the Saluda house, was legally blind and it wasn't safe for her to live there long after he died without family or neighbors to check on her daily. So she packed her favorite things and moved into a house 30 miles south, in Greenville, SC close to my aunt's place. Over time, those of us from out of town stopped visiting the Saluda house; Grandmom's Greenville house was where people gathered to see our matriarch. There was never time to see the ghosts of Saluda.

But I got married last year, and somehow in 3.5 years Jeremiah had never been to Western North Carolina. A substantial portion of my childhood mythology surrounds the hills and streams of Granddad's land, the loft and closets of his house, and Tryon Peak watching over it all in the distance. So when we were looking for a first anniversary adventure to take, we decided all on a sudden Sunday afternoon to pack up and drive there the next morning for a two-day holiday.

This is how we found ourselves, bewildered (I because I couldn't recall the roads after five to seven years, Jeremiah because he'd never been there) and sleepy at 10 pm driving south from dinner in Asheville, wandering off the interstate and looking for a place to buy water. I'd entered the only road name I could remember into my iPhone, and we'd been able to find the correct exit and a gas station where we bought the water. But "Howard Gap Road" had a vintage of about fifteen years. I must have been visualizing it from some mail I'd seen delivered to my granddad when I was in elementary school. Fifteen years ago, I think, my grandparents had opted to name their particular little gravel road "Skyland Acres." But that important detail had completely escaped my memory. To make matters worse, we couldn't call anyone because, a) it was too late at night and I didn't feel like dragging my dad or my grandmom out of bed to rescue me, and b) neither of us go t consistent phone service anyway.

I was frustrated. "I keep losing my signal and I can't see the rest of this stupid map," I said as we faced the heavy darkness around the gas station.

"Well, just put the phone down and see what you can remember without it," Jeremiah cooed from the driver's seat.

And so I did. I put the useless phone away, looked hard at the unfamiliar bluffs and valleys we were passing, and realized we'd taken a wrong turn. So we went back to the interstate and I was able to navigate correctly from there.

So I was giddy with the sense that I'd explored my own memories and tested my abilities, and that Jeremiah was finally getting to see the road leading to my granddad's house. And then we pulled up to the gate at the bottom of the driveway. It was locked, and my aunt had told me the key was on the porch of the house. We could barely see the road and had somehow forgotten to bring a flashlight, but fearlessly we climbed out of the car and began marching up the overgrown road toward a house we couldn't see yet--which Jeremiah had never seen and which I hadn't seen in 5 or more years. Away from the car, the darkness and night sounds closed in around us. Grass brushed our shins. All I could think about was snakes and bears, so I held tight to Jeremiah's arm and alternated between bending to light our way with my phone, and suddenly standing up to see if anything was approaching from the woods. Jeremiah kept us steady on course.

But we made it to the porch. We found the key, we cleared away spiderwebs and we walked inside. It was dark. When we found the lights, I recognized it as the gathering place of my childhood, though a little dirty and with blood-colored water in the toilets. We didn't find any snakes or bears or corpses or robbers, and after making a little nest on the living room floor, we fell asleep.

At some point in this adventure I realized that I was then about the same age my parents were when they first started bringing me and my siblings to Saluda. And suddenly I felt the weight of adulthood, of inhabiting my parents' roles without them there to help me. We didn't have children along with us, but we had brought our terrified cat in a misguided attempt to hunt down some of the mice that taken up residence in the house. Instead of embracing the role of mighty huntress, Bleu just wandered from room to room, whining loudly and getting lost in closets. At one point she even got out of the house somehow and, had she not come meowing back, we would have had to leave our poor bedraggled completely overwhelmed cat in the Saluda wilds. My granddad's house became another reflection of the ways I see my life not really working yet. I'm still a kid trying to be functional, but I'm scared of snakes and I don't know how to turn the water on in the house and I need my parents.

Of course, seeing a place you remember as bright, clean and safe become dark and less clean and less safe is a hard thing to deal with even as an adult. But it wouldn't have been bad if that somewhat dirty and scary place was filled with people that I love. And in a way, it was. Jeremiah and I happened upon a new small chapter in the life of the Saluda house, in which for two days it harbored two lovers and a cat, trying to figure out how to live well and love each other.