In this early segment, Susan and Dave find their remote house and learn the power of remote isolation.


copyright - Richard Gould.


Susan Spencer stopped in her tracks and turned to see her husband, Dave, about ten metres away. “Hey, you! We haven't got all day!”

Dave crunched toward her, his wood and gut snowshoes behaving more like concrete blocks than aids to progress, and stopped a short distance away. He bent forward, placed his hands just above his knees, and breathed deeply. “Maybe we should try to go without these things.”

“Forgot your lesson already?” They were walking along an unplowed country road, and trying to stick to the middle, where the snow had been packed hard by snowmobiles. Dave had tried to walk without his snowshoes, but on every second or third step, he broke through and sank to his knees.

Susan watched Dave pull at his jacket, and felt the heat under her own coat. It was a warm day, even though there was almost a metre of snow on the ground. A dense white mist hung like a blanket in the dead-still air, obscuring vision and muffling sound.

“Give me a sec,” Dave said, glancing up.

Susan thought of walking back to him, but it was difficult to turn around on snowshoes. She was tired, as well, and she used the opportunity to rest. In a crouch, she broke off some of the heavier clumps around her boots. Great packing snow, she thought, as Dave moved toward her. The snow scrunched as he walked.

She stood. “Ready to go?” she asked.

“Hold on a moment.” He pulled off his wool toque, stuffed it in his pocket, and swept a hand across the hair pasted to his forehead.

“You look beat.”

“I’ll be all right . . . give me a minute.” He was trying not to sound winded. “. . . Just dressed too warm. I thought it'd be colder.” He reached over and touched Susan's long, curly red hair. It moved freely. “You're not sweating much.”

She shrugged, and fought the urge to criticize. Dave needed to work out more. Before they were married, they regularly exercised together, but recently they'd been working too hard, drifting apart, not doing much of anything together. The results were the extra pounds around his waist and the thick sweat dripping down his face.

“It's hard work,” she agreed. “The damn snowshoes keep piling up with snow.”

Dave looked at his feet. Large clumps were glued all over the gut lacing. He bent down to scrape them off, but he had trouble breathing again, and had to come up for air a couple of times.

Susan looked around at the still, olive forest. It was dead silent — nothing but the sound of their breathing. The heavy mist made her feel uneasy, and she was about to comment on it when a blue jay cawed. The sound was piercing, unnaturally loud. She shivered. “We should get going. It gets dark early, and I don't want to be on this road at night.” Dave tried to walk beside Susan, but he was off the snowmobile track again, and his snowshoes sank deeply into the soft snow.

Susan walked ahead. She had miscalculated the distance. There were always more curves, or hills, and each stretch of road put them further away from the car. It would be a long walk back. She was fairly sure that they would find a useful structure on this property — she hoped they would, since it was their only chance of escaping the city — but she was concerned about the distance. They didn't have much money, and this meant finding a place that was remote, but could she afford to be so far away from civilisation? The real-estate agent had told her that the road would be plowed when she and Dave moved in — if they moved in — but would the township maintain such a long road regularly in the winter? She was used to a life where she could walk to the store or to an art gallery, or take a taxi. Out here, she and Dave would have the trees, a dog, and each other for company.

Their car was parked about three kilometres back, beside an old farmhouse, where the township saw no reason to plow the road any further. It was a poor, run-down homestead, surrounded by a scrubby field and a congested tangle of maple, birch, aspen, and tag alders.

The area around the farm had disheartened her, but further north, the trees became larger, and here, the road was flanked by giant red pines. The flaky trunks of these majestic trees stood just metres apart. Their dark green canopy filtered out much of the creamy light radiating through the clouds and mist.

The darkness and the towering trees were intimidating, but she felt even more uneasy when she saw, off to the left, a house. It was framed by the dark trees and silhouetted by the bright snow in the clearing around it. It looked eerie, dangerous. She was about ten metres ahead of Dave, and waited for him. “Come on!” she urged, keeping her voice low, so that she would not be overheard — even though there was no one else around.

Dave took a few unhurried steps, then stopped to study the structure. Streams of sweat ran down his red cheeks.

“Come on,” she said again. He moved forward, and stopped beside her. “It looks scary, doesn't it?” she asked. The windows of the house were visible, but from this distance, they were black and unrevealing.

Dave nodded, saying nothing for a moment. “Well,” he said finally, “shall we go?”

“We've come this far.” Susan started to walk.

There was no barn, just a house and four small sheds. The sheds were flat-roofed and rough-hewn. Surrounding the buildings was a small clearing, though this was dotted with groups of tangled hazel and alder bushes. It was not dissimilar to the place down the road. The only saving grace was that there were many larger trees surrounding the clearing. Buildings could be repaired or replaced; giant trees could not.

As they forced their way through the brush, the air became cooler, and Susan paused to zip her coat. She felt threatened, somehow, by the tangled mass of brush — she imagined, for a split second, trying to run through it — and looked over her shoulder to make sure Dave was close behind.

A cool breeze, as gentle as soft ice-cream, flowed through the clearing, but the mist hung persistently. The sounds of their movement filled her ears — the rhythmic swish of their clothing, the scrunch of snow under their snowshoes, their raspy breathing — although Susan wanted to listen for sounds from the house.

She stopped about seven or eight full strides away from the entrance and studied the building. It was a simple clapboard structure with light blue shingles and dark, bare windows. Towering behind it, a giant, twisted white pine stretched thirty metres into the air and loomed over the house with branches askew. These branches pointed away from the prevailing winds, towards the south, back down the road.

Susan turned toward the south, and gasped. The view was magnificent. The house was on the top of a hill, and from where she stood, she could see far to the southwest. The mixed forest looked like rough carpet as it rolled across the hills and valleys in the distance. What a perfect find, she thought. The house was no showpiece, but the location was gorgeous. She turned slowly. Other large trees punctuated the area like random exclamation marks, and a group of red pines loomed in the mist on the other side of the road. Behind the house was a large pond, and on the far shore, the grey trunks and branches of a hardwood forest stood like ghostly skeletons.

Susan bent, picked up some snow and rubbed it in her face. “Let's check out the house,” she said.

When Susan started to move, Dave grabbed the crook of her arm. “Let's be careful. There could be animals in there.”

Susan looked around. “Na, it should be okay. There are no tracks around the house.”

“Nevertheless, I should go first.”

Susan shrugged, and let Dave walk in front of her. She followed closely.



The snow had piled up higher than the doorsills and it angled down toward the house because of the reflected heat of the sun. Dave removed his snowshoes, descended through the doorless entrance, and stepped into the hall. Snow covered most of the hardwood surface. “I hope this is going to hold us,” he said, tapping his foot on the floor.

In the floor, just to the right of the doorway, was a small rectangular hole. He grinned. “Looks like the house had a central heating system, but the ducts are gone.” Looking down through the hole, he could see a very wet basement, filled with a mess of bottles, pieces of wood sticking up at random, and other assorted objects. “What a vile subterranean soup,” he said under his breath. “I'm going to have a look around.” He left the entrance foyer, and taking measured steps, skirted through a large empty livingroom. He stopped in the doorway leading to the kitchen.

This room, often a centrepiece in a farmhouse, was uncharacteristically small and dim. Its two narrow windows were shaded by a tangle of bushes. The linoleum floor was littered with refuse and curled at the corners. A chipped and gnarled wooden chair stood in the centre, and the rest of the room was bare. An electric stove and fridge still stood against the walls, and someone, it seemed, had recently tried to start a wood fire on the stove. Blackened sticks were scattered on its top. The fridge door had been left open, and inside was the frozen carcass of some animal — probably a rabbit — in an advanced state of decay.

Dave crouched and let his finger play over a large hole in the door frame. It appeared to be a bullet hole. He retraced the bullet's course to the foyer where he found two neat holes, one in the hall and one in the outside wall of the house. Susan saw him in the hall. “Is something wrong?” she asked, her red hair hanging in her face as she bent down toward the door.

“No, just checking on something.” It's remarkable, he thought. In the movies, people often hid behind a desk or a sofa to avoid getting shot during a gun fight, yet this bullet had gone through the outside wall, through the foyer, through six or seven wall studs, and then exited the kitchen door frame. Must be a lot of armour-plated sofas and desks around, he thought.

“What's it look like in there?”

“Well,” he said hesitantly, “it's not too bad . . . looks like hunters used it once or twice.” They had looked at many properties and he wanted this one to work out, but it certainly had its drawbacks. He looked at a small rectangular hole in the wall. Even the light switch, worth no more than a couple of dollars, had been neatly removed. He stepped back and surveyed the bottom of the wall. The wall plugs had been removed as well.

“Is it safe to come in?”

“I think so, but watch the holes in the floor. You can see right into the basement.” He walked back to the kitchen.

Susan removed her snowshoes and slid down into the house. When she reached Dave, she sighed. “Kitchen's pretty bad. We'd have to gut it.” She ran her fingers down the dirt-flecked wall. “Let's have a look at the rest of the house.”

Next to the kitchen was a large empty room with warped hardwood flooring and busted drywall. Gritty dirt covered everything and small round animal droppings littered the floor.

“It looks like not only hunters have been using the place,” said Susan, kicking some of the droppings. She chuckled as they rolled away like marbles on a concrete floor.

“It's not too bad though.” Dave looked up at the plastered ceiling, looking for cracks. “Structurally it seems okay. It hasn't shifted much.”

Susan did not reply. She moved into a large pool of soft light by the front window and looked out. “Great view.”

Dave shrugged and walked down the hall. He found the bathroom, a small, but serviceable room that needed some modernizing. The fixtures were worn and old, but not old enough to be considered antiques.

Susan looked at the room, put her hand over her eyes and shook her head. “Small enough,” she said, unable to find other words. She walked out and had her hand on a banister, ready to ascend a worn pine staircase to the second floor, when she heard a noise. She gasped.

Dave sprang out of the room and stood beside her. “What is it?”

Susan did not answer. She peered up the stairs. The outside light made the upstairs rooms glow in relation to the dark hall and she felt the skin at the back of her neck crawl. She stood frozen, listening, not willing to break the silence with a breath.

The sound came again — a scratching sound, like fingernails on plaster — and it was followed by a rapid, almost mechanical clicking. The tingling in Susan's scalp intensified and she motioned with her hand. Dave pointed at himself, and then up the stairs. He motioned for Susan to remain still. This time, she was happy to let him lead the way.

“Hello, is anybody there?” Dave called. His voice was deliberately brave. The clicking sound returned. He began a slow ascent, stopping three-quarters of the way up. The pine stair squeaked with his weight. “Hello!” There was the sound of something being dragged across the floor. “Who's there?” Then, again, that clicking sound.

“Be careful,” Susan said. The stairs groaned and squeaked.

Dave reached the top, and slowly looked into a room on the right. He backed out of the doorway and motioned with his finger to Susan. “Come up here,” he whispered.

“What is it?”

“Come and see. It's all right.”

Susan tucked in behind Dave. A large porcupine was in the centre. The animal was obviously disturbed by the humans, and was clicking its teeth together as a warning.

Susan stopped Dave from going into the room. The porcupine clicked its teeth again, cautiously eyeing the humans. “Let's get out of here,” she said.

“It won't hurt you; it's only a porcupine.” Dave stepped toward the animal.

“It's scared. Let's leave it alone.”

“They can't shoot their quills, you know. Unless you grab it, it can't hurt you.”

“What would happen if Bobby found it?”

Bobby was their six-year-old Terrier. “A lot of dogs are hurt by these things, sometimes killed,” Dave said. “Dog gets too close, and old Porky here slaps him with her tail. Drives a couple dozen quills into the flesh.” Dave had read up on this. Porcupines did not attack and could not shoot their quills, but they were still deadly. The quills, barbed and inflated with air, worked their way into the animal, sometimes causing fatal injury. “Well, let's hope Bobby's smart enough not to get too close. Good thing we didn't bring him.”

Susan touched his arm. “Come on, let's go.”

They descended to the main floor and Dave said, “I'm going down.” He pointed through one of the holes in the floor.

“Are you sure you'll fit?” Susan laughed.

Dave nodded, smiling wryly. “I think Ill use the stairs. I want to check out the basement. The foundation's the really important thing.”

“You go ahead.” Susan looked through the hole and shook her head. “Just be careful. There may be a crocodile down there.” She laughed again and walked to the front window.

The basement staircase disappeared into a block of ice that was covered with water, and Dave stopped to sit on the last dry step. The wooden substructure was made with rough-cut lumber, and although it looked solid, Dave did not know if it would meet current building codes. The cement block walls had some cracks, but they too, seemed sound enough to support the house. “Looks okay down here,” he shouted.

“You've got to be kidding! I had a look through one of those holes.” Susan's footsteps echoed on the wood floor.

Dave looked down at the ice. “There's almost a metre of ice down here,” his voice sounded metallic as it bounced off the water. “And about ten centimetres of water.” He pushed a floating hunk of wood away from him. The oily film on the surface of the water danced and swirled. Streaks of purple, green and red wound around broken bottles, rusty pieces of metal and other items embedded in the ice. “When I said it looked okay, I was talking about the structure.” He picked up a rusty bolt from the stair and threw it in the water. It plopped loudly. “Actually, it is pretty disgusting down here. I don't know . . . maybe we should pass on it. We'd need a bulldozer to clean this basement, and that's just for starters.”



Susan looked out the window. A breeze played with the mist wreathing about the large pines across the road. Even from this distance, she could feel their magnificence, their power.

She picked up a blue plastic milk-carton that had been left in the corner and used it as a seat. She rested her elbows on her legs and cradled her head in her hands.

She had to get Dave away from his job, but finding a place they could afford was proving very difficult. If they bought something that involved a big mortgage, both Dave and she would be forced to stay at their jobs. Only if they bought something like this — she looked around the room and then back outside — something that needed some work, but was inexpensive, would they be able to pursue their dreams. She wanted to paint, and to have a couple of children, but she didn't want to tie Dave to a job he didn't like and to the city. Sure, she'd love to own a newer, modern house that didn't need repair, but then, with a large mortgage and the increased financial burden, she and Dave would probably keep on drifting apart.

“I love the location,” she said loudly, looking out the window, “and the house is in better condition than most places we've looked at.”

Dave's voice was muffled. “I guess. But there's so much work . . . the clean up would break our backs.”

Susan stood and kicked more porcupine droppings. These ones bounced off the baseboard and rolled back to her. “Well, you've never been afraid of work, have you? I mean, it's not as if you haven't worked long hours in the past.” This was a bit of a reproach. She often complained about Dave's long hours. He was at work for sixty hours a week, making their social life practically nonexistent. She believed that if he applied this same effort to something for them, they'd be happier, and he'd be more successful.

Last year they had looked at buying a vacant property and building their own house, but all the estimates for labour and material were high. Even the cost of preparing the building site was phenomenal — surveying the lot, grading it, getting the wires in, the whole nine yards. Susan wanted a country life, far from the pollution of the city, a life that was in tune with the environment — but when they explored the cost of putting in a septic service, drilling a well, and bringing in electricity and telephone, they realised that they could not buy virgin property. The cost of bringing in the utilities was often greater than the cost of building a new house.

They agreed that their best option was to rebuild an existing house. The reconstruction might prove as difficult as building a new home, but the road, hydro, telephone, water system, and septic system would all be in place.

They looked at many properties, but there was something wrong with all of them. Once or twice Susan got angry and argued that it was possible to find a fatal flaw with anything. However, nothing was resolved and they continued to stumble from place to place.

The land surrounding this particular property was attractive. In fact, it was everything they wanted — a large pond, a small clearing, a good stand of pine, some hardwood trees. Even the soil would be good because of the years it had lain fallow. It was perfect.

“I suppose it's not as bad as it looks,” said Dave, almost reading Susan's thoughts, “Perhaps with some cleaning . . . but you know the thing that bothers me the most? That bullet hole!” Dave took another look at the kitchen doorframe. Susan walked over and touched the ragged hole. “I was ill at ease when we walked up to this place,” Dave said. “It kind of gave me the creeps — and when I think of the kind of people who must have used it, I don't feel any better. I don't know if Id be too happy about leaving you alone here and going off to work.”

“You'll be working at home.” She poked him in the chest.

“Well, yes, but it'll take some time to get established. I can't quit my job right away.”

“As soon as people know we're here, they'll leave the place alone.”

Dave crossed the dung-littered floor and looked out the large window. He ran his fingers through his hair. It was still damp with sweat.

“This road,” Susan continued, pointing to the barely distinguishable path in front of the house, “goes past the house, continues for kilometres into the bush and then turns into a trail leading to Brully Lake. Some hunters probably stopped here when the house was vacant. It's not as if the door was locked.” She turned and looked at the empty door frame. “It's no big deal.”

Dave poked his finger in another hole where a wall switch had been removed. “I guess some people also came out to grab what they could. It's a shame really.” Dave still had a few hopes for this place, but he was starting to think he ought to provide something nicer for his wife.

Susan walked to a small room at the rear of the house, probably a bedroom, and looked out the window. From here, she could see the frozen pond surrounded by leafless hardwood trees. “Imagine how pretty this will be in the fall.” She heard Dave walk into the room behind her. “It's a gorgeous location,” she continued, “and, as far as people taking things — I guess they figured if they didn't take the stuff, someone else would.”

“But the people who came here must have known the owner. Why would they destroy the property of someone they knew?”

“Who knows? Maybe they didn't live in the area. . . .” Susan knew Dave wanted this to work as well, and suspected he was playing the devil's advocate. “Dave, stop making excuses not to do this! This is the best place we've seen!”

“And, if they shoot at the house after we've moved in?”

“And, if we get killed in a car accident driving to work?”

Dave shrugged. “Point taken.”



Outside the house, they walked to a shed and looked in through the windows. None of the sheds were great, but they were assets. Susan felt excited and she wondered if anyone else knew about this place. Dave seemed more interested in the buildings, but her eyes kept wandering to the fields and forests. As Dave poked around in one shed, she plodded toward the forest to the north.

A few chickadees danced from tree to tree whistling their names over and over — Chick-a-dee-dee-dee, Chick-a-dee-dee-dee. Susan looked up to see these tiny birds watching her as she struggled through the deep snow. A patch of raspberry canes stood between her and the dark forest of mixed spruce, balsam and hardwoods, and she decided to turn back. Without the snowshoes, still planted at the front of the house, walking was too difficult.

She caught up with Dave plowing through the snow toward the house and gave him an excited hug: “Let's go for it,” she said. Dave continued to raise objections, but they were half-hearted.

It was decided. If the price was low enough, they would offer to purchase this place — all one hundred acres of it.

Susan buckled her snowshoes in a couple of seconds, and did a few stretches while Dave fiddled with his straps. She drank in the colour and soft textures of the area, and breathed deeply. The sun had moved closer to the horizon and was just visible through the foggy air. It would be dark by the time they reached the car; the air was cooling quickly. Something just out of Susan's field of vision caught her attention. She turned towards it — it was a fox, a furtive little red fox. Susan's sudden movement had caused it to look directly at her. She and the fox locked eyes, and then the fox darted off into the bush.



 

Last modified: 09/01/02