The clear sky, the sun, and the three-mile walk from the parking lot to the house itself helped clear our dazed and confused minds, putting us all in much better moods. The event drew a healthy attendance, but the numbers weren't overwhelming, and we didn't feel crowded. We reminded Nicholas not to touch anything, and we told Georgia the same, and she agreed, but we wondered how much of our warning she understood, for as soon as we walked up the brick steps to the front porch, Georgia said "Jump!" and bounced from the third step right into the flower bed. "Look Mommy! Flowers!" she said as she ripped a dozen or so buds off the stems, quickly reducing them into colored clumps in her fists. I picked her up, and we entered the house.
Penny and I admired the house. It was spacious, the layout uncluttered, allowing one to flow through the house easily. The designers used just-this-side-of-pastel colors and selected furniture that looked comfortable and unfussy. The house seemed like someone's home, it seemed clean but almost lived-in, and that overall sense of unpretentiousness put us (somewhat) at ease; we didn't feel as if we were walking through an antique store, as if the kids were going to break something with every step and touch.
Our children enjoyed walking through the house as much as we did. They liked the openness of it, the cleanliness. Nicholas remarked, "Dad, why can't our house ever be this clean?" Instead of answering Nicholas verbally, I chose to turn him around and point towards his sister, who had just discovered the childrens' niche and shelves and was now in the midst of emptying her third basket full of toys, strewing them about on the floor, tossing them back over her head, saying, "Whee! Toys!"
She and I cleaned up her mess, and to insure that she wouldnt' create similar havoc again if ever I took a second to blink, I told her of the toy trolls that traveled through the air vents in the ceiling, coming down to carry away little girls who left toys in the floor. She looked at me and said, "Daddy? Georgia have a troll, please?""Dad," Nicholas said, "she doesn't even know what a troll is. She doesn't even know what a troll looks like."
"Do you know what a troll looks like?" I asked him.
"Duh, Dad. A troll's a hairy creature, who stinks, who wears ugly caps, and who has an ugly face." Penny then came by and fussed at Nicholas for talking badly about his father. I asked her if she was ready to go, and she said she was, but she wanted to look at the kitchen one more time.
"Here," she said, handing me the camera, "take a picture of us. I want to be on your Hoddy Toddy, Part IV blog post!' I took the camera, told them to say cheese, but my hair dipped down into my mouth, and my words came out mangled. Nicholas told me he thought I told him to "feign sleep," while Georgia--and who knows how she interpreted what I said--didn't say cheese, either. She said, "Trolllll!"
We went downstairs and paid closer inspection to the kitchen. It was roomy, plenty of counter space, held five hundred and fifty-two cabinets, and had an oven whose door resembled two regular pull-out drawers. This disguise impressed me, and I called Penny over to look at it. "See," I said, " it looks like just a regular drawer, but it's actually the door to the oven!" I then pulled open the drawer/door to show her the ooh-coolness, and...I jerked a bit too hard. The drawer/door came off its hinges and screws to reveal not the inner workings of the oven, but the inner workings of a miniature factory, populated by acorn-topped brownies.
One of the tiny creatures, apparantly the foreman/leader as signified by the flowers adorning his acorns, shouted something harsh to his hundreds of workers, and he stormed over to me. He raised his mushroom stalk, shook it at me, condemning me in a language I didn't understand. Then, he spat at me and walked back to his previous post overlooking the other brownies. He crossed his arms, took one look back at me, exclaimed something profane, and stared. I think I understood the spirit of his speech, if not the word. I quickly put the drawer/door back in place.
I looked around to see if anyone had noticed, and I saw Penny's face right in front of mine. Startled, I slipped down. She told me to get up, that she wanted to walk out back and look at the guest house. I asked her if she had seen what I had seen, and in response, she handed Georgia to me, telling me it was my turn to carry her. She left the kitchen. I followed.
The guest house was fully equipped with cot, sink, tollet, curtains, carpet, and an artist's easel. A canvas sat atop the easel, and someone--maybe even from the Taylor community--had drawn in pencil & ink a sketch of Ole Miss's mascot Colonel Reb, in his traditional stance, with a catfish head in the place of the Colonel's head. Supposedly a mish-mash of the nearby university and the seafood catch du jour of Taylor, the piece, I'm sure, was designed to be kind of cute, kitschy, ginchy; it didn't have that effect on me, though. To me, it looked like equal parts Hieronymus Bosch and Norman Rockwell, maybe something designed by a Southern Gothic Lewis Carroll. It unnerved me, and I had to get out.
Georgia and I left Satan's little back-deck cottage, and we noticed a cute little doghouse (must have cost two grand, easy). Georgia let her mother know what she saw, so Penny and Nicholas (finally) came out of the cabin to coo over the dog house. Penny then said she wanted to go stand under the gazebo, that in this light and on this day, it would make for a perfect Canon XL-250 GPS moment. We then heard a cat meow from somewhere within the doghouse, and this tickled Nicholas, who noted the irony. As I tried to explain what the term irony meant, giving cogent examples of the three types from both literature and foreign film, Georgia wandered to the opening of the doghouse. She peered inside and said, "No, troll, no! Let Kit-Cat go! Let Kit-Cat go!" I ran over and jerked her up, not wanting to think about to whom she was talking. I told Penny it was time to go. She grumbled, but we left.
By that time, it was nearing noon, and the early pleasant atmosphere gave way to Southern heat & humidity. After the five-mile trek back to the parking lot, I was drenched with sweat, and we were all thirsty. Luckily, the fine folks of Taylor seemed to be holding some type of flea/farmer's market, and the shading tents and mason jugs of lemonade there sure looked inviting. As we approached the culinary market, we heard music, and we saw three musicians atop the bed of an old pickup. They were playing Bob Dylan's "You Ain't Going Nowhere," and the woman singing was fantastic, using her drawl to great effect.
We all perked up, but as we approached the tents, I noticed a strange smell. I asked Penny if she smelled it; she did. "Pee-you," Georgia said. We then noticed a two-story house to the left. The bottom floor's windows showed what looked like some time of diner or bar or restaurant inside, so Penny told me to walk over there and get us all something to drink, that she'd just wait with the kids, as she needed to stop walking for a little while.
I walked up to the door and was about to open it, but I looked inside the door's window first. I'm glad I did. The room was filled with people, all dressed in the same khaki pants, all wearing the same style of Polo shirt, some white, some black, some grey, some maroon. They moved and mingled about robotically, from table to table, none of them ever sitting, mouths open and closing, but--and I knelt down (so as not to be noticed), and I pressed my ear against the crack in the door to be sure--only talking gibberish. Their eyes were all glazed over, and their skins all pale. Something evil this way had come...and stayed. I didn't want to stay with it.
I non-chalantly walked back to my family, and I told them that a private party was being held in the house, and that we just needed to go, that we'd be okay once we got the air-conditioner going in the Jeep, that the Congo was just ten minutes away, and that we could get something to drink there, that we could wait that long. We started walking to the Jeep, and Nicholas asked me about asking those people over there [by the tents] for some lemonade. I told him that he wouldn't like it, that there was something in the water here.
"Dad," he said, "I don't want water; I want lemonade." I told him that he'd have to wait, and then I noticed that the band was still playing the same song, that they'd apparantly started over, as I heard the first verse again, the woman singing, "Clouds so swift/Rain won't lift/Gates won't close/Railings froze." I told Penny to keep going to the Jeep, and I stopped to turn and look at the band. Now, my eyesight's not the best, and I was straining, but I saw that the band not only had the same pale, glazed look as the people inside the two-story house, but also that they sat completely still. The guitarists strummed, and the singer moved her mouth to sing, but that was it--no other movement. I looked around at the tent people, and they, too, were not moving; in fact--and I'm now almost sure of this--they hadn't moved an inch since the moment we first saw them.
I quickly caught up with my family. Penny and I loaded Georgia in the Jeep, Nicholas hopped in, and we drove away. I asked Penny what she thought about the house, the neighborhood. She said, "Nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there."
"My sentiments exactly," I said.
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