ROADLESS HOMELANDS
A Collection of Short Stories
by
Baroness Melody Von Smith
Admiral of the Red
Publishing
For Gramma
and
for Gir
Berk
“Pop is dying.”
Olmstead’s sister breathed these three words through the phone in a regret-filled scratch from rainy Pennsylvania, three thousand miles away.
Olmstead stayed quiet, considered this, listened to the ocean a block outside his door. Eleven years in San Diego had spoiled him. Made him well educated, had him surfing on his lunch breaks. The town he’d grown up in had become a winter wonderland to visit every other Christmas. “Home” had forged itself into a construct propped up by happy letters and punctual holiday cards. Olmstead liked it that way. But some calls must be heeded.
“I’ll be there.”
Three days later, his red-eye flight touched down at the Pittsburgh airport, and he drove a red, rented Cavalier two hours east and north, back to Berk—both the man and the town.
Berk, Pennsylvania, offered two places to work: the cemetery and the dump. Only it wasn’t called the dump anymore, it was the Sanitary Landfill now, and it accepted trash from seven states, with two more scribbling out paperwork even as the town slept.
As Olmstead drove toward Berk the town, he thought of his father, Berkshire Burlington. His father had in fact been named after the settlement by Olmstead’s grandfather. Magnus Burlington had brought his wife and little else from Scotland and its abject poverty here to Pennsylvania, where the streets were paved not with gold, but coal. He’d made a happy life for himself and two boys.
Berk Burlington had raised his three kids in the same house he’d been raised. But coal towns wax and wane—in their opportunities, in their wealth, and in their population. Olmstead was one of three, and only his sister had stayed. Waynewright, Olmstead’s older brother, had strayed the hundred-some miles to Pittsburgh, but Olmstead, now twenty-nine, had left for California the day he’d graduated high school, fleeing both Berks.
Olmstead’s memory had preserved the town in a state of paled but charming splendor. When he’d left, flower baskets lined the sidewalks in the spring, now replaced by autumn pumpkins. He recalled all the shops, the rattling door of Trudy’s Hardware, the earthy scent of fresh cut meat at Dean’s Deli, and especially the rows of candy in glass jars on the far side of McPherson’s drugstore counter. On Saturdays, his father took him there for a malted or a sundae—just him; they’d stop and get candy for his brother and sister before they left. The ice cream, that was a little secret he’d shared with Pop.
Trudy’s lay empty, Dean’s had become an insurance office, and McPherson’s held a for-sale-or-lease sign. Olmstead sighed. But too, he admitted to himself, he felt relieved. Berk wasn’t his home. Not anymore. He turned up the car stereo, drove a little faster.
His parents’ house lay nine miles past Main Street, on sixteen acres of never-farmed land. No warning—from his sister or via posted sign, or even a harbinger trail of fugitive refrigerators—nothing alerted him to the state of the house. Later, on the flight home, it would occur to him to wonder why he hadn’t worried for the house, given the tragic fate of the town. But just then, Olmstead drove along Highway 22, singing out of tune, passing farms on the left and forest on the right.
At mile seven, the forest gave way to a spatter of bright rectangles separated by chain-link fences—the trailer park. Olmstead’s one-time best friend had lived in that trailer park, in space 80. Dillon Mohr. He wondered if Dillon lived in the park now or some place in town, if he had a wife and kids.
The park land butted up against his family’s, marked by a line of evergreens. And there it was. On the other side of the pines, stacked sideways and five tall—refrigerators. A wall of refrigerators lined up against the road, like some post-apocalyptic fort. Mostly white, but dotted with the occasional yellow and sometimes sickly green. The house sat on the top of a hill, and all the way up were neat, segregated stacks of metal. Not just fridges, but all types of appliances. Washers, dryers, stoves, dishwashers, cars!
Olmstead heard a horn and realized he’d taken his foot from the gas and now drifted, gaping at the mountain of metal. He waved an apology and brought the rented Chevy back up to speed.
Soon, he spotted the long driveway leading up to his parents’ place. But he didn’t feel ready to face his family yet. So he drove farther, looking for a different, smaller trail. The one that wrapped around the back of the house and led to the drop-off, by the mine spoils.
A stand of maples marked the far edge of the Burlington property. Half a mile before them, a lengthy tangle of blackberry bushes stretched out from the side of the road, thickening to the shrub-crowded field that had always covered the northeastern side of the property.
Olmstead brought the car to the shoulder, got out and stood peering into the thicket. He fumbled his Oakley sunglasses from the pocket of his suede shirt-jacket, squinting against the deceptively bright sun. The maples stretched stark against a gray backdrop. If he stared hard enough, though, he could make out their buds.
Wind shoved the trees around and cut through his thin suede. Shoulders hunched, he strutted toward the denuded berry bushes—just scruffy, curled sticks now, looking sad and mean as a stray dog. The bushes thinned to a clearing, almost in the center, and beyond that small gap, Olmstead could make out what had once been his trail. He shoved the red-purple arches aside and stepped through them.
Years of neglect had altered a path he once could have traversed on a cloudy midnight. But he made his way. He dodged water-filled ruts now scarring the path, glad he’d worn his chukka boots and not loafers. He and his brother used to ride dirt bikes here in the summer and snowmobiles in winter. Their father had graded it every two weeks, and rode a roller over it every six, to keep it safe for his boys.
Blackberry thorns snatched at his khakis, tore his hands, but Olmstead persevered, his childhood flooding back with each yank of fabric, each scratch dredging up a new memory. What hid back here, he wondered, buried or weathered to nothing? Did the tree house still stand? He and his brother had camped in it for three days during the flood. The safe, the first thing ever illegally dumped on the Burlington property, probably still sat mid-way down the ravine where the mining company’s land started.
Olmstead and Dillon had discovered it, and spent the two weeks of eighth grade spring break beating on it with hammers and a pickax. When it finally gave, they found nothing inside. And they hadn’t expected to, really, had made no schemes for spending the treasures. But once it had been cracked, the best friends no longer enjoyed such joint purpose. By summer, they’d both made other friends, only nodding to each other in the hallways once high school started.
The ravine appeared suddenly. Olmstead saw a gash in the landscape where the shrubs and brambles disappeared, and across the gap, only poverty grass grew. The wind coursed again and brought a foul odor from the gully, a stench reminiscent of a restaurant dumpster. When he reached the edge he discovered its source. The ravine, too, was full of junk, like his parents’ front hill. But the white goods on his parents’ lawn were sorted and salvageable. This was a true trash heap: bald
