The House on the Plains by Cecil Bethea

Out east of Denver, off the Interstate and about twenty miles south on state road 95 stands the house.  Being two storied sets it apart from most houses of its era, about World War I.  The others were usual one storied with some Victorian trappings: a tower, a bit of stained glass in the front door, fancifully turned spindles in the the porch’s bannisters.  This house, facing east, stands off the highway about a hundred yards amid three thirst stunted cottonwoods and some desiccated shrubs unwatered for years.  Off to the left runs a rutted road that leads to the back.  Recent tire marks suggest a rendevous for teen age frolics in illicit drinking or couplings.  The yard was naked except for weeds dead from the December cold. 

No mailbox stood out front -- not even a tilted post remained although the ground was still compressed by the wheels of the R.F.D. drivers making their daily stops.  Steps leading up to porch are rickety at best even without the three missing treads.  Also gone is part of the porch bannister.  An empty space is agape where a door and sidelights had once stood possibly the result of a midnight raid of a homebuilder with not quite enough money.  The two story porch is supported by square columns made of six inch planks still showing a few splotches of white, perhaps the remains of plantation pretensions.  Boards long gone from the porch floor make like miniature moats to the trespasser.  Probably this area had been furnished with caned-back rockers, benches, a glider, a porch swing, maybe even a hammock.

Inside the dust driven by the winds has accumulated in whirls.  Of course the kids years ago had come for miles to pleasure themselves breaking out the windows .  Each of the four downstairs rooms has a fireplace that had been sealed up with holes for the pipes of the heating stoves.  Even though every room has two windows, at least the occupants had some heat.  A dozen or so recent Coors cans attest to a rustic bacchanal.  Evidently once there had been a built in sideboard because its alcove is an ugly void.  Attached to the dining room is the kitchen which juts out west toward the mountains.  The sink is long gone with only a hole in the floor which had held the drain pipe.  Probably pried out for scrap and sold by some desperate soul to feed his family during hard times or to slake his thirst with a six pack of Coors or maybe even two.

The northwest room downstairs has a built-in closet added later.  This was probably the bedroom of the parents or maybe the grandparents so that they could avoid the stairs.  Upstairs would be the sleeping quarters for the rest of the family.  Four rooms seems a bit excessive even for the fecund families who lived on the plains but were also frugal.  Even if the parents did sleep upstairs with the grandparents down below, two rooms could have easily held eight children with two to the bed.  Maybe the spare room was for a spinster sister or aunt who had no where else to go.  It could have belonged to a bachelor brother who owned a piece of the farm.  We’ll never know.

No doubt at least four generations had once called this place home, a place to cherish or escape.  Today we can only imagine the love and hate that strutted through the rooms, crises that waxed and waned, problems that bubbled and boiled.  Love of a parent for an unworthy child. Brothers vying for anything.  Sisters comparing boy friends.   Fighting amongst the kin over an inheritance.  A wedding for love or necessity.  The death of a grandchild from whooping cough or the death of a grandparent from old age.  The parties on a summer Saturday.  Christmas dinners.  The prayers for rain.  The worries about making mortgage payments.  If we knew such tales as these, we could embody the ghosts that drift about the place.

The house is blasted by the winter winds and broiled by the summer suns. the boards are warped with protruding nail heads. Each year it weakens.  Finally one winter worse than those of past decades will pile snow upon the roof.  A blast will descend from the ice caked banks of the Yukon and blow the house down.  An alternative is that on a hot summer’s day a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand will grow into one that’s as black as a mother-in-law’s heart and stretches from here to yonder.  Darts of lightening will spark down to earth.  A funnel will form and metastasize hitting the house with one wild eddy of wind and scattering the shards all over the plains. A more realistic expectation is that some liquored up teenagers, seeking new thrills, will set it afire to see a really big fire.  They will dance to rhythms unconceived and the sparks will soar into the purple night of the plains.

As yet, the house still stands moldering away out on the emptiness of the plains, a mute Wurthering Heights waiting for a Bronte to tell its tale.

About the Author


My Biography in 264 Words

          Although I have done other things, my fame now rests upon the durability of my partnership with Carl Shepherd; we have been together for forty-two years and nine months as of today, August 18th, 2012.

          Although I was born in Macon, Georgia in 1928, I was raised in Birmingham during the Great Depression.  No doubt I still carry invisible scars caused by that era.  No matter we survived.  I am talking about my sister, brother, and I .  There are two things that set me apart from people.  From about the third grade I was a voracious reader of books on almost any subject.  Had I concentrated, I would have been an authority by now; but I didn’t with no regrets.

          After the University of Alabama and the Air Force, I came to Denver.  Here I met Carl, who picked me up in Mary’s Bar.  Through our early life we traveled extensively in the mountain West.  Carl is from Helena, Montana, and is a Blackfoot Indian.  Our being from nearly opposite ends of the country made “going to see the folks” a broadening experience.  We went so many times that we finally had “must see” places on each route like the Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky and the polo games in Sheridan, Wyoming.  Now those happy travels are only memories.

          I was amongst the first members of the memoire writing class.  While it doesn’t offer criticism, it does offer feed back.  Also just trying to improve your writing helps no end.

          Carl is now in a nursing home, I don’t drive any more.  We totter on.