Heaven (Casteel 1)

I stared at all those tall thin windows, all those steps there had to be inside, and Grandpa might now be as feeble and lame as Granny had been.

The home was on a treelined street. All the houses looked well kept up. Each had a front lawn, and morning newspapers lay on porch steps, or near the doors. Husbands in morning disarray were out walking dogs on leashes.

Many a night I'd visited Winnerrow in dreams when all the streets were dim, empty, and dogs didn't bark, and birds didn't sing, and not a sound was to be heard. Terrible dreams in which I walked alone, always alone, searching for Our Jane, Keith, and Tom. Never for Grandpa, as if my subconscious had truly believed he'd always be in that hill cabin, somehow surviving, just because I wanted him to.

Logan spoke again. "I've heard that your grandfather helps with the cleaning to pay for his room and board, when your father forgets or is late paying Sally Trench."

The sun, hardly over the horizon, was already blazing-hot, smothering the valley. No refreshing cool breezes blew as they did up in the Willies. And to think all my life I'd believed the valley represented paradise.

"Let's go," Logan said, taking me by the elbow and guiding me across the street and up the brick walk. "I'll wait out here on the porch. Take your time. I've got all day--all my life--to spend with you."

A fat, frowsy-looking woman in her mid-fifties responded to my timid knock, stared at me with intense interest, then swung the screen door wide and admitted me.

"I've been told my grandfather, Mr. Toby Casteel, is staying here with you," I announced.

"Sure, honey, he's here--an ain't ya a pretty thin, though. Really a pretty thin, ya are, ya truly are. Love that color hair, those pretty lips--kissin lips, ya could say." She sighed, glanced in a nearby window, and scowled at her own reflection before she turned back to me. "Dear old man, got a soft spot in my heart fer such as him. Took him in when nobody else would. Put him in a nice room, an fed him betta meals than he's eva had before. Lay ya ten t'one on that, twenty t'one. Bettin fool, I am. Have t'be. Kin't stay in this kinda business if ya don't gamble. People's tricky, real tricky. Younguns come an put their parents in here an say they'll pay, an they don't. They go, neva show up agin, an some old daddy or momma sits all their lives away, awaitin an awaitin fer visitors who neva come, an letters nobody writes. It's a shame, a cryin shame, what kids kin do t'parents once they're too old to do em any good."

"I understood my father sends money every month."

"Oh, he does, he does! A fine man, yer father, a real fine lookin an actin man. Why, I rememba him from way back when he were a kid, an all t'gals were hot t'catch him. Kin't say I blame em none--but he sure turned out a lot different than most folks thought he would--he sure did."

What did she mean? Pa was a rotter through and through, and all of Winnerrow had to know that.

She grinned, showing false teeth so white they appeared chalky. "Nice place, ain't it? Yer Heaven Casteel, ain't ya? Saw yer mom once or twice, a real beauty, really too fine fer this hateful world, an I guess God must've thought t'same thing. Ya got t'same kind of look as she had, tender, like ya kin't take much." She rested her small but friendly eyes on me before she frowned again. "Get ya gone from this place, honey. Ya ain't meant fer t'likes of what we are."

She would have rambled on all day if I hadn't asked to see my grandfather. "I haven't got much time. I'd like to see my grandfather now."

The woman led me through the dim foyer of the house. I glimpsed old-fashioned rooms with beaded lampshades, browning portraits hanging from ceiling moldings on heavy twisted silken ropes, before I was led up the steep stairs. This huge house seemed terribly old now that I was inside. All the glory of new paint and refurbishings was on the outside. There was nothing fresh and clean inside but the scent of Lysol.

Lysol. . .

Take yer bath now, hill scum.

Use plenty of Lysol, stupid.

Gotta rid ya of Casteel filth.

I shivered.

We passed a room on the second floor that seemed a page straight from a thirties Sears catalog.

"Ya kin have five minutes with him," I was informed as the woman became more businesslike. "I've got sixteen people t'feed three meals a day, an yer grandpa has t'do his share of t'work."

Grandpa hadn't ever done his share of the housework!

How abruptly some personalities could change. Up three more flights of steep, twisting stairs. The buttocks under that flimsy cotton dress seemed twin wild animals fighting each other--I had to look away. Oh, how had Grandpa managed to climb these stairs, even once? How did he ever go outside? The higher we went, the older the house appeared. Up here no one cared if the paint was chipped and peeling off, if roaches scuttled all over the floor. Spiders spun webs in dim corners, draped them from chair to table, from lamp to base. What a fright all this would give Kitty! . . .

On the top level, we followed a narrow hall with many closed doors, to reach the door at the very end, and when it was opened, it revealed a pitifully small, shabby room, with a sagging old bed, a small dresser--and there sat Grandpa in a creaky old rocker. He'd aged so much I hardly recognized him. It broke my heart to see the second rocker--both chairs had been taken from our pitiful cabin in the Willies, and Grandpa was talking as if Granny sat in her rocker. "Ya work t'hard on yer knittin," he murmured. "Gotta get ready fer Heaven girl who's comm. ."

It was unbelievably hot up there.

There was no beautiful scenery all around, no dogs, cats, kittens, pigs, hogs, or chickens to keep my grandpa company. Nothing here at all but

a few pieces of beat-up old furniture. He was so lonely he'd turned on his imagination, and put his Annie in that empty rocker.

As I stood in the open doorway hearing that landlady stomp away, an overwhelming pity washed over me. "Grandpa . . . it's me, Heaven Leigh."

His faded blue eyes turned to stare my way, not with interest as much as with surprise at hearing a different voice, seeing a different face. Had he reached a certain kind of miserable plateau where nothing really mattered?