The Julius House Page 0,7
toured quickly. I paved the way by telling Mary Anne that the area felt right, but the farmhouse was too small. On our way back to town, I asked her about the road that led from the mailbox over a low hill. Presumably, the farmhouse was not too far from that. "I liked not having the house visible from the road," I commented. "Who owns that property?"
"Oh, that's the Bartell farm," she said instantly. "The man who owns it now is called Jacob - no, Joseph - Flocken, and he's got a reputation for being cranky." But she pulled to the side of the road and tapped her teeth with a pencil thoughtfully.
"We could just drop in and see," Mary Anne said finally. "I've heard he wants to move, so even though he hasn't listed the farm, we can check."
The farmhouse was large and dilapidated. It had been white. Now the paint was peeling and the shutters were falling off. It was two-story, undistinguished, blocky. The barn to the right side and back a hundred yards or so was in much worse shape. It had housed no animals for some time, apparently. A rusted tractor sat lopsidedly in a field of weeds and mud. A tall, spare man came out of the screeching screen door. He didn't have his teeth in, and he was leaning heavily on a cane. But he was shaven and his overalls were clean.
"Good morning, Mr. Flocken!" Mary Anne said. "This lady is in the market for a farm, and she wanted to know if she could take a look at yours." Joseph Flocken didn't speak for a long moment. He looked at me suspiciously.
I looked straight back at him, trying hard to keep my face guileless. "I represent the Workers for the Lord," I said, making it up on the spot. "We want to buy a farm in this area that needs work, a secluded farm that we can renovate. When the work is done, we'll use the dormitories we build as shelter for our members."
"Why this farm?" he said, speaking for the first time.
Mary Anne looked at me. Why indeed?
"Not only does it meet the criteria my church lays down for me," I said staunchly, praying for forgiveness, "but God guided me here." Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Mary Anne looking over the mess of mud and weeds dubiously. Perhaps she was thinking God apparently had it in for me. "Well, then, look around," Joseph Flocken said abruptly. "Then come on in and look at the house."
There wasn't much to look at outside, so we murmured together about acreage and rights-of-way and wells, and then went inside.
Martin's childhood home.
I gave Flocken some credit for trying to keep the kitchen, the downstairs bathroom, and his bedroom clean. Beyond that he had not troubled, and observing the pain it caused him to move, I could not blame him. I tried to imagine Martin as a child running out this kitchen door to play, climbing up the stairs to the second floor to go to bed, but I just could not do it. Despite the immeasurable difference loving parents would have made, I could not see this place as anything but lonely and bleak. So great was my wish to be away that I negotiated for the farm in an abstract way. Flocken obviously relished details of how the church members would have to work their butts off to build their own shelter, so I managed several references to the strict work habits my church required and encouraged. He nodded his gray head in agreement. This man did not want anyone to have a free ride, or even a pleasant one.
He and Mary Anne began to discuss the selling price, and suddenly I realized I had won. All it took was someone asking, someone he was convinced Barby and Martin would not want the farm to go to.
I wanted to leave.
I leaned forward and looked into his mean old eyes.
"I'll give you this much and no more," I said, and told him the sum.
Mary Anne said, "That's a fair price."
He said, "It's worth more."
"No, it's not," I snapped.
He looked taken aback. "You're a tough little thing," he said finally. "All right, then. I don't think I can take another winter here, and my sister in Cleveland has a spare bedroom she says I can have." And just like that, it was accomplished.
I shook his hand with reluctance; but it had to