The Door to Dawn

As I approach the house, the woods quiet to a hush. Towering pine trees rain down brown needles that carpet the ground. Each step I take muffled by a soft cushion, layer upon layer. If I were to speak, I would whisper. The trees seem to whisper back. I’m entering a special place. It’s a shrine, a museum, a cemetery. I think of Hansel & Gretel discovering the witch’s house. How it must have looked with all that candy.

A gust of wind skirts across the tops of the pines and drops down into the opening surrounding the house. Here the forest is a blood red scar of exposed clay. There is the faint indentation of a road, where the ruts of tires have left their marks, patches of grass and weeds. Trees have attempted to grow but their growth is arthritic.

The path I follow to the house is littered with car parts covered by pine needles. My mother would call this a redneck graveyard. There are the tombstones of rotten tires. A car door with a tree growing through a broken window. The bodies of multicolored rusting cars sit on cinder blocks. Their tires removed to prevent escape. Oversized shark fins of cars that once jetted down the interstate of an abandoned age cut through the high grasses searching for a kill. The twisted chrome grills of smashed pickups and sedans snarl with sharp teeth or smile like the twisted grin of a toothless boxer. Rust that resembles tears drip from the round empty eye sockets of missing headlights. Next to the house a collapsing tin shed covers a row of cars, like horses in a stable waiting for a race that has passed them by.

Cutting through a wall of weeds, I see the path opens to a lush green yard. The house reveals itself to me in its death. I can see that it was once a home. The air sweet with the smell of freshly cut grass. A push mower rests under a tree. A red bicycle leans up against a white picket fence racing around the house. From a deck of cards, the Ace of Hearts is clipped to the back spokes with a wooden clothes pen. I wonder where the rest of the deck rested. I can see the cards in my mind scattered. No one will ever find them and neither will I. A laundry of crisp white sheets and pastel shirts dance in the wind from a clothesline. Empty swings on an A-framed swing-set creaks back and forth enticing children to play. The house has a fresh coat of canary yellow paint on its wooden frame. Red roses bloom on a trellis set against a chimney on the side of the house. Green shutters and petunias cascading from planter boxes frame each window. A gallery porch stretches down the side of the house. Wicker rockers invite you to sit down. Ice floats in a pitcher of lemonade. Sweetest of all, a tree covered with red apples.

It’s all an illusion.

The house is surrounded by a violent sea of twisting weeds and thorn-covered vines. Wave after wave they flow across the yard—crash with boiling anger against the shore that is the house. On the crest of a wave, under the black branches of a now dead tree, the handle of the push lawnmower reaches up with the desperation of a drowning person’s hand grasping for help—the last finger of a sinker. The picket fence no longer races: it is broken and twisted. Its pickets scorched gray by the sun. The bike is rusted and the rims are tireless. Tree roots grow between the spokes tethering it to the ground. Silhouetted by the afternoon sun the metal crosses of the clothesline stand as a testament to the death of the house. Bricks litter the ground from the crumbling chimney. There are a few red apples on the tree, but most are spoiled or diseased. They hang black and unpicked. Out of fear we do not eat what we think are poisoned apples.

This house is a book, but the words on the pages have faded away. The roof is warped; the weight of time has broken its spine.

That I will never forget this house is the only clear thought in my head.