Nobody Knows Your Secret

15

After gloving up, Hadley had a thought.

"Let's start in the old tool shed, Beanie." 

They walked over to a tilting structure that looked like it had never seen a paintbrush in its life. Hadley grabbed the crooked door's handle and pulled. The door protested, squealing open on corroded hinges.

"Bingo, Beanie! Just what I hoped we would find. We'll grab that old garden wheelbarrow and use it to carry stuff to the dumpster. And luck's on our side! The wheel's not flat!"

With the wheelbarrow in hand, they made their way back to the house.

"Okay, let's get this show on the road," Hadley said, bending over to pick up empty beer cans that marked a path from the shed to the house. "Looks like hoarding is thirsty work. Eustian would have likely died of a pickled liver if that poisoned honey hadn't gotten him first.

"Hey, Bean! I think we have every brand of beer Pixies sells represented in these cans. My guess is Eustian needed a can path to find his way from the shed and back to the house, like following bread crumbs in that fairy tale," she said, tossing more cans into the wheelbarrow.

"Go to the back seat of the car, Beanie, and get that box of big black garbage bags. We can bag up these aluminum cans for the recycle center instead of throwing them in the landfill."

"I pick up cans all the time, Hadley," Beanie said.

"Anything we can keep out of the dump helps Mother Nature," said Hadley.

"Yeah," Beanie said. "But Mother Nature gets awful mad at me, sometimes."

"How so?"

"Well, sometimes Mother Nature sends bees after me. You know, especially in dope cans."

"Beanie," Hadley said, "be careful when you're picking up those sweet soda pop cans."

"I like a dope, now and then. But the empties sure do pack a wallop if they're full of bees 'n waspers."

"Beanie," Hadley said, suddenly thinking of Kyle, "I know the old-timers call soda pop 'dope.' When soda pop first came out, it had real dope in it. But maybe you should try to call soda pop just plain old soda pop. Folks might get the wrong idea when you say you like dope."

"I don't know what you're trying to tell me, Hadley," Beanie said. "You talk over my head, most times. But for you, I'll call dope a sodie pop."

"Good, Bean," Hadley said. "You do that for me."

"You got any dope," Beanie said, "I mean sodie in your cooler?"

"Yeah, boy," Hadley said. "We'll get us one in a little while."

"Okay," Beanie said.

With many huge bags full of beer cans tied up and ready to recycle, they turned their attention to the rest of the yard. A stained, old winged-back chair stood on a bare patch of ground. 

Its springs were sticking out of the ragged cushion. The arms were weathered black. The battered material on the back was split and worn thin. 

It became the first item they tossed into the dumpster. Hadley grabbed one side and Beanie grabbed the other. Together they began walking it toward the waiting bin.

"This thing's weathered a lot of storms," Hadley said. "It's been sitting out here for a coon's age. The grass is dead under it."

"Old Mr. Singlepenny got the goodie out of this chair, Hadley," Beanie said.

"Yeah," Hadley said. "This was probably his throne where he looked out and surveyed his kingdom."

Beanie dropped his half of the chair immediately.

"What's wrong?" Hadley asked.

"When I sit on my throne at home, Hadley," Beanie said, "I do real bad things in it. So bad, I have to flush it right away."

"Oh, Beanie. This isn't a toilet. It's Eustian's roost."

"His settin' chair."

"Yes. His settin' chair. Not his toilet chair. Figure of speech, Beanie. Just a figure of speech. Now, pick up your end, and let's give her the old heave-ho into the dumpster."

A vintage telephone booth, minus the phone, stood guard beside an old toilet – the real deal, a throne, abandoned on the spot where Eustian had tossed it. 

Empty crates, buckets, flower pots, a dented tuba, old car fenders, and stacks and piles of debris were scattered about the yard. Twenty-five black bowling balls were lined up on the ground like discarded cannonballs. Hadley was amazed at the variety of junk Eustian had collected and dumped here and there and everywhere.

They worked steadily until lunch. After devouring their baloney sandwiches, they rested for a while.

"Your lunch have time to settle?" Hadley asked.

"I don't think I'll get a cramp if I go in swimmin', if that's what you mean," Beanie said.

Hadley looked confused.

"Figure of speech," said Beanie. "Just a figure of speech."

Hadley laughed.

"Come on, then," Hadley said. "Let's dive in!"

They hauled wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of junk and dumped them into the dumpster.

"You know Bean," Hadley said, "I think Eustian must have been trying to create his own dump way out here."

"Yeah, I wonder where he got his stuff from," Beanie said.

"Some of this looks kinda old and then some of it looks sorta new," said Hadley, picking up a keyboard and putting it into the wheelbarrow. "I think I heard rumors about somebody going to the lot behind the Thrift Store at night and helping themselves to the donations people dropped off for the needy. 

But most of this stuff just looks like somebody took a truck and helped themselves at the dump. I guess Eustian was just a collector of all things without specializing in any specific theme. Unless landfill qualifies."

Together, they cleared a large swath to the porch. They sat down on the top step to drink a bottle of water. The porch wrapped around the front of the house and was a repository for all kinds of useless things.

A surfboard rested against a headless department store manikin. Nineteen plastic pink flamingos were entangled in an orgy of disarray. An old cast iron cook stove sprouted mops, golf clubs, and a rusty scythe from its eye holes. 

A huge rocking horse balanced on top of an ironing board. Every crack and cranny of the porch was filled with books, boots, and automobile parts.

"Well, Beanie, it looks like we got plenty more stuff to feed the dumpster," Hadley said as she got up and stretched.

Beanie positioned the wheelbarrow next to the porch and loaded it with junk. They worked and worked until, at last, the floorboards were exposed.

"That's probably the first time this porch flooring has seen the light of day in decades. How are you holding out, Bean?" Hadley asked.

"Okay. I guess. This is kind of like a treasure hunt, but I ain't seen no treasure worth keeping."

Hadley and Beanie decided to call it a day. Tomorrow, they would tackle the inside of the house.

As Beanie got into the car, he looked over his shoulder and said "Do you think anything has messed with the string we wove through the house when we were here last time? If I see a ghost, I wanna make sure I can get out of there as fast as possible."

"Don't worry Bean," Hadley replied. "We got the rattlesnake out of there on our last visit, and I've never heard of such a thing as a venomous ghost."