Salamander in the Basement, part 2
Once or twice we would get hints of the basement's
malevolence. A cat would disappear for hours, only to be
discovered at meal time meowing at the inside of the locked door.
And I would dream about the basement sometimes, about the walk down the
hill outside the house to the raised doorway, so hard to lift a lawn
mower through. In my dream I'd go down the hill and step off the
stone as I've done a thousand times...and not hit bottom. Falling,
I'd wake. But everyone dreams of falling sometimes.
"I can't come down for Easter," I told my mother,
standing at an open window and eying a phoebe newly flown north from
Florida. It bobbed its tail on the branch just outside my window
and I strengthened my resolve. "The wildflowers will be at their
peak, the frogs are already calling. Bird migration..." my voice
trailed off. I thought of the basement—Mom's mysterious domain—and
I breathed out gently through my nose. "Can I come earlier?
Next week before spring gets too far along?"
Five days later I was home. "I can only stay
until Monday," I told her. Only four days. I wouldn't be
able to clean the entire basement in that time, but at least I could
make a start at it, shift a few boxes to make room for more, throw out
this and that.
I descended that first afternoon, but the piles were
daunting and precarious to my tired hands' touch. After a bag of
winter clothes fell on me from behind, I gave it up and spent the
evening frogging instead. We drove to a nearby pond and shone my
flashlight on wood frogs, their neck pouches ballooning as they floated
and called from the pond's center. The basement was forgotten.
I hope
you enjoyed this second segment of Salamander in the Basement.
Stay tuned for the next installment tomorrow, or splurge 99 cents on the
whole story here.
| This post is part of our Aimee Easterling Short Stories lunchtime series.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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