Excerpts from
In the Old House
Jack Lindsay | Fiction, Summer 2024
Water dripped from somewhere above Noah onto the quarter in the palm of his hand. He did not move. He did not look at the payphone beside him. Everything around him was gray, damp, and secondhand. The bench he sat on was wet. Weeds burst through the cracks in the pavement. Crows lined the electric cables, slowly swaying. The sounds of cars whooshed distantly from the freeway. A man stood on a stoop across the street, in old trousers and boots and a torn coat with the collar flipped up. He swayed, looking to his left, then to his right, then left again. A headshop glowed down the street. Neon letters in the window read: Dirtbag SmokeShop. The Dirtbag flashed slowly. A poster on a phone pole said LOST DOG. Everything moved in place.
The man on the stoop was looking in Noah’s direction now. He stopped swaying and began to walk. He was staring at Noah. Noah quickly looked down at the quarter still in his hand. The drops landed on Washington's nose. He could hear the man’s footsteps, uneasily slow. The drops that landed on Washington’s nose slid down his lips, dropped off his chin, off the quarter. Down the crease of his palm, a little creek. Slid off his wrist onto a puddle below him. He did not look at the man but heard how close he was. He flipped the quarter over. The drops landed on the eagle's right wing. E Pluribus Unum. He could see the man's feet now. Old timberlands. Paint splattered on them. The feet walked like they were unsure of where they were, how to carry the weight they held. The man was beside him now. Noah did not look up.
There was a mechanical clunk as a quarter fell into the payphone. Noah kept his eyes on the boots. The phone dialed.
“Hey. Yeah. Strait schwag man. Dirt. Like smoking a car tire.” Noah slowly looked up. The guy was even younger than him by the looks of it. He had a shaved head and some strange almost-unibrow. One long, mutant black hair protruded grotesquely from his chin. It wiggled when he spoke.
“Yeah, waste of my time. But hey, listen, the place had this old wood burning stove for heating you know, and when I showed up it was like eleven o’clock or something and it was freezing, lemme tell ya, my ass could have fallen straight off because I forgot to wear my long johns you know, so you know I stripped down and put my ass right in front of the stove, yeah I mean my actual ass man, my cheeks, right up to that stove to warm em right up, but that stove is like, cast iron so when I put my cheeks up I was so soothed, so soothed I relaxed and fell back a bit right onto the metal edge of that stove and it was crazy hot man, you could fry eggs on that, but yeah dude I burnt my whole ass on that thing, I have, like, this burn line right across both cheeks dude, and it still hurts, like, a week later now, so I was wondering if you had maybe, like, some Neosporin or something I could like, lather on there…”
Noah leaned back. He withdrew a cigarette from his pocket, and as he lit it, something caught his eye down the street. Something fluttering above the sidewalk, caught by the breeze. A used tissue. Piece of the newspaper. A note. Someone's number, scrawled for another night. Some trash. Bit of a to-go bag. A gum wrapper. A drawing, something by her.
It continued to bob toward him, and as it neared, he saw it land lightly next to him. The butterfly. Its wings opening, then closing, then opening again. Black, and then, as it opened, blue, a bright, beautiful blue. It began to drink from the stream that flowed down his arm.
“Hey, ‘scuse me, can I bum one of those?” Noah looked up. The kid was now looking at him, the phone call evidently done.
“Oh. Yeah. Sure.” Noah retrieved another cigarette from his pocket and handed it over to the boy. The butterfly had disappeared.
“Got a light?” The kid leaned over as Noah flicked on the lighter. The hair on his chin waved lightly in the air.
“Thanks, take it easy,” the boy said, standing. He took a draw and started down the street, in the same unsure way. Noah put out his cigarette and looked at the phone booth. A dog barked from somewhere. What choice did he have. He rose to his feet, slung his bag over his shoulder, and walked to the booth. He slipped the wet quarter into the slot, and dialed the number.
The line picked up. His mother's voice.
“Now what did I tell you about calling me so often? And while you’re on the clock? Ooh, you’re bad. What is it now? This is the fourth time you’ve rung me in two days. Do tell. Do…” She trailed off. Noah cleared his throat.
“Mom?” He found the word strange. It caught in his throat, sounded wrong in his voice. The line was quiet. He could hear her breath faintly.
“Mom?”
“Who is this?” she said softly, almost in a whisper.
“It's me.” She was silent. “Noah.” All he heard was white noise, a soft hush, like waves washing ashore.
“It’s been a while. How… are you?”
“Why Noah, I’ve been… well I’ve been–”
“Hey, so, I was wondering…” He took a long drag on his cigarette. He held it in and his lungs ached. “If I could come, and,” He coughed out the smoke. “stay for a while. You know, I'm kind of, in between… and it’s been a while since I’ve seen you, and… yeah.” And there was the black butterfly, landing on the hook switch softly, revealing brilliant blue when its wings opened.
“What?” she said, quietly and muted. He tried to imagine her face.
“...I was wondering if I could come and stay with you for a while.”
“Oh. Yes. That would be good… I think that would be good… I’d like to see you.” Then there was a thunk from her end. Noah heard the signature squeak, then slap of the screen door.
“Mom?” Only hush of the line. He stood there and listened for a long time. The butterfly rhythmically opening, and closing, then opening again.
He threw the cigarette into the gutter. Faint smoke rose from its end. He left the white hush of that house. He left the butterfly on the hook, the phone hanging and swaying from its chord. He left the drip and the bench, and passed the headshop’s flashing sign. He turned the corner and now, at the freeway, the cars sliding by, the sound of their wheels on the wet pavement, he stood. He adjusted the bag on his back, looked toward the oncoming traffic and raised his arm, thumb pointing out toward the whitewashed sky.
____________
The door opened and there was his mother, wincing in the sunlight, one hand beckoning impatiently, the other plugging her nose.
“Hey-” Noah started.
“Quickly, come in, come in, fast, fast.” She slammed the door shut behind him as he entered, plunging them in darkness. She stuffed something under the door, then leaned with her back against it, chest heaving as if she had been holding her breath.
“Mom…?” Noah said unsurley. His eyes were slow to adjust to the dim, flickering light that slunk into the hall from the living room. The windows shutters were closed tightly, daylight peeking through cracks in the wood. Shoes scattered the hallway. Her slippers, clogs, sandals, all mismatched and strewn about. Some of his fathers boots sat in the corner behind the door, where he had always kept them. Rags were stuck under the doors, old shirts and sheets, jammed tightly. A bed sheet draped over the hall mirror. He turned to look at her. She remained leaning on the door, hunched, hand over her chest, breathing heavily. Her hair sat in a matted ponytail that looked like it had been made long ago. Her clothes were heavily wrinkled. Her eyes darted over him suspiciously, occasionally glancing somewhere behind him. Something awful lurked at the back of his every inhale, sick and sour and sweet. He shuddered.
“What… happened?” She sagged against the door when he said this, turning her chin to the side and staring at him out of the corner of her pitted eyes. Her lip quivered.
All of the sudden she took off shuffling through the house, leaving Noah to follow along behind her. The kitchen was much the same. Dishes piled in the sink. Fruit flies on overripe bananas. Pots and pans stacked high on the stove. Drawers left open. Trash can heaping. Paper covered the refrigerator, notes, illustrations he couldn't make out, some entire sheets taped together, tacked by old magnets.
The living room felt tight and cramped without the light from outside and the view of the marsh. A candle sat on the table, flickering away on its last inch of life. His mother stood next to it now, face shrouded, her hunched form casting a twisted shadow across the floor onto the wall. The picture frames turned face down on the mantle. The couch looked like it was being slept in. The smell was worse here. It caught in Noah’s throat, reminding him of something.
“Do you smell it?” his mother asked.
Noah looked at her. She didn’t look back. Her hair was ashen. No red remained. The skin on her face hung from her skull, cheekbones protruding, eyes sunken into the sockets. The thin line of her mouth twitched.
“They’re dead. Out there. I can't stand the smell… Did you see my Azalea? That poor thing.” Her eyes stared into the flame, but reflected no light. Noah was afraid. He backed slowly into the room, away from her. Toward the fireplace. The smell grew stronger.
“They want me to know but I know already, I know…”
He knew that awful smell. In his stomach was a pit that grew with every word, with every step. He kneeled down to the fireplace, examining the doors his grandfather carved. The woman and the horse.
“I tried to take good care of them, and I did, for a long, long time didn't I? Didn’t I?” She was looking toward the corner of the room, at the stool by the windows where she never let Noah sit, back then.
“What… what can I do? I can't stand the smell.”
Noah slowly reached out to the doors. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her head snap toward him.
“Don't open that.”
“Why?” He turned to look at her. He couldn’t see her face.
“Please, don’t.”
That god awful stench.
He recoiled when he pulled open the doors, the brass scraping on the brick. The smell was overpowering. He squeezed his eyes shut as he gagged. He remembered the woods and his father and the wallet, the doe he hit. He looked into the fireplace with watering eyes.
There, in the corner, laid a squirrel, dead, rotten, its face sunken, skin clinging to bone, teeth jutting out from rotted flesh, appendages splayed. It looked as if it had tried chewing off its broken leg. And the bugs, flies, gnats, fleas, crawling through every hole, out of mouth and into empty eye sockets, crawling through fur, moving under skin. This ugly dead thing stuck to the floor in a brown oozing heap, death's malaise leaking from its orifices and tumbling out onto the floor, into the room, throughout the house, and laying in their lungs, sick and black and not going anywhere, leaving nothing but a bad taste and a dark stain that can’t be forgotten no matter how hard one may try.
___________________________________________
Why is this piece your Trace Fossil?
“First and foremost, my writing is driven by memory–both the erasure and preservation of it. I write to record, to put my experiences on paper. I write to transfer feelings and memories from their temporary place in my brain to the page—there I can relive them, share them with others, have proof of my existence, proof that I felt, proof that I lived. I am more afraid of forgetting than being forgotten. Because of this, I’m drawn to fiction, to capturing the details of life, some monumental, others seemingly inconsequential. The happiness, the sadness, the awe, the scale, the love. I write to form myself. I also want my reader to have to work. Reading my pieces I hope the reader comes to a realization: a soft “Ohhhh,” the prickle down your neck, the goosebumps down your arm. I am influenced by the chills down my spine. I write stories that carry the details of my own life: summers on the marsh, losing a rubber eye in the dirt. Therefore, ultimately, my trace lies within storytelling, my life hidden within the lines.”
Jack Lindsay is a student and writer from South Carolina. His fiction is a place where his experiences can rest, fit in the files of the story and make it real: a tie hanging from a street sign, the look of a conch shell after it cuts your foot, a blue heron taking flight. He is the author of the novel In the Old House. At any given time, he can be found writing in about eight different notebooks, talking to strangers, and perusing his grandfather’s old books on his remote barrier island home near the ocean.
Excerpts from In the Old House
Jack Lindsay | Fiction, Summer 2024
Water dripped from somewhere above Noah onto the quarter in the palm of his hand. He did not move. He did not look at the payphone beside him. Everything around him was gray, damp, and secondhand. The bench he sat on was wet. Weeds burst through the cracks in the pavement. Crows lined the electric cables, slowly swaying. The sounds of cars whooshed distantly from the freeway. A man stood on a stoop across the street, in old trousers and boots and a torn coat with the collar flipped up. He swayed, looking to his left, then to his right, then left again. A headshop glowed down the street. Neon letters in the window read: Dirtbag SmokeShop. The Dirtbag flashed slowly. A poster on a phone pole said LOST DOG. Everything moved in place.
The man on the stoop was looking in Noah’s direction now. He stopped swaying and began to walk. He was staring at Noah. Noah quickly looked down at the quarter still in his hand. The drops landed on Washington's nose. He could hear the man’s footsteps, uneasily slow. The drops that landed on Washington’s nose slid down his lips, dropped off his chin, off the quarter. Down the crease of his palm, a little creek. Slid off his wrist onto a puddle below him. He did not look at the man but heard how close he was. He flipped the quarter over. The drops landed on the eagle's right wing. E Pluribus Unum. He could see the man's feet now. Old timberlands. Paint splattered on them. The feet walked like they were unsure of where they were, how to carry the weight they held. The man was beside him now. Noah did not look up.
There was a mechanical clunk as a quarter fell into the payphone. Noah kept his eyes on the boots. The phone dialed.
“Hey. Yeah. Strait schwag man. Dirt. Like smoking a car tire.” Noah slowly looked up. The guy was even younger than him by the looks of it. He had a shaved head and some strange almost-unibrow. One long, mutant black hair protruded grotesquely from his chin. It wiggled when he spoke.
“Yeah, waste of my time. But hey, listen, the place had this old wood burning stove for heating you know, and when I showed up it was like eleven o’clock or something and it was freezing, lemme tell ya, my ass could have fallen straight off because I forgot to wear my long johns you know, so you know I stripped down and put my ass right in front of the stove, yeah I mean my actual ass man, my cheeks, right up to that stove to warm em right up, but that stove is like, cast iron so when I put my cheeks up I was so soothed, so soothed I relaxed and fell back a bit right onto the metal edge of that stove and it was crazy hot man, you could fry eggs on that, but yeah dude I burnt my whole ass on that thing, I have, like, this burn line right across both cheeks dude, and it still hurts, like, a week later now, so I was wondering if you had maybe, like, some Neosporin or something I could like, lather on there…”
Noah leaned back. He withdrew a cigarette from his pocket, and as he lit it, something caught his eye down the street. Something fluttering above the sidewalk, caught by the breeze. A used tissue. Piece of the newspaper. A note. Someone's number, scrawled for another night. Some trash. Bit of a to-go bag. A gum wrapper. A drawing, something by her.
It continued to bob toward him, and as it neared, he saw it land lightly next to him. The butterfly. Its wings opening, then closing, then opening again. Black, and then, as it opened, blue, a bright, beautiful blue. It began to drink from the stream that flowed down his arm.
“Hey, ‘scuse me, can I bum one of those?” Noah looked up. The kid was now looking at him, the phone call evidently done.
“Oh. Yeah. Sure.” Noah retrieved another cigarette from his pocket and handed it over to the boy. The butterfly had disappeared.
“Got a light?” The kid leaned over as Noah flicked on the lighter. The hair on his chin waved lightly in the air.
“Thanks, take it easy,” the boy said, standing. He took a draw and started down the street, in the same unsure way. Noah put out his cigarette and looked at the phone booth. A dog barked from somewhere. What choice did he have. He rose to his feet, slung his bag over his shoulder, and walked to the booth. He slipped the wet quarter into the slot, and dialed the number.
The line picked up. His mother's voice.
“Now what did I tell you about calling me so often? And while you’re on the clock? Ooh, you’re bad. What is it now? This is the fourth time you’ve rung me in two days. Do tell. Do…” She trailed off. Noah cleared his throat.
“Mom?” He found the word strange. It caught in his throat, sounded wrong in his voice. The line was quiet. He could hear her breath faintly.
“Mom?”
“Who is this?” she said softly, almost in a whisper.
“It's me.” She was silent. “Noah.” All he heard was white noise, a soft hush, like waves washing ashore.
“It’s been a while. How… are you?”
“Why Noah, I’ve been… well I’ve been–”
“Hey, so, I was wondering…” He took a long drag on his cigarette. He held it in and his lungs ached. “If I could come, and,” He coughed out the smoke. “stay for a while. You know, I'm kind of, in between… and it’s been a while since I’ve seen you, and… yeah.” And there was the black butterfly, landing on the hook switch softly, revealing brilliant blue when its wings opened.
“What?” she said, quietly and muted. He tried to imagine her face.
“...I was wondering if I could come and stay with you for a while.”
“Oh. Yes. That would be good… I think that would be good… I’d like to see you.” Then there was a thunk from her end. Noah heard the signature squeak, then slap of the screen door.
“Mom?” Only hush of the line. He stood there and listened for a long time. The butterfly rhythmically opening, and closing, then opening again.
He threw the cigarette into the gutter. Faint smoke rose from its end. He left the white hush of that house. He left the butterfly on the hook, the phone hanging and swaying from its chord. He left the drip and the bench, and passed the headshop’s flashing sign. He turned the corner and now, at the freeway, the cars sliding by, the sound of their wheels on the wet pavement, he stood. He adjusted the bag on his back, looked toward the oncoming traffic and raised his arm, thumb pointing out toward the whitewashed sky.
____________
The door opened and there was his mother, wincing in the sunlight, one hand beckoning impatiently, the other plugging her nose.
“Hey-” Noah started.
“Quickly, come in, come in, fast, fast.” She slammed the door shut behind him as he entered, plunging them in darkness. She stuffed something under the door, then leaned with her back against it, chest heaving as if she had been holding her breath.
“Mom…?” Noah said unsurley. His eyes were slow to adjust to the dim, flickering light that slunk into the hall from the living room. The windows shutters were closed tightly, daylight peeking through cracks in the wood. Shoes scattered the hallway. Her slippers, clogs, sandals, all mismatched and strewn about. Some of his fathers boots sat in the corner behind the door, where he had always kept them. Rags were stuck under the doors, old shirts and sheets, jammed tightly. A bed sheet draped over the hall mirror. He turned to look at her. She remained leaning on the door, hunched, hand over her chest, breathing heavily. Her hair sat in a matted ponytail that looked like it had been made long ago. Her clothes were heavily wrinkled. Her eyes darted over him suspiciously, occasionally glancing somewhere behind him. Something awful lurked at the back of his every inhale, sick and sour and sweet. He shuddered.
“What… happened?” She sagged against the door when he said this, turning her chin to the side and staring at him out of the corner of her pitted eyes. Her lip quivered.
All of the sudden she took off shuffling through the house, leaving Noah to follow along behind her. The kitchen was much the same. Dishes piled in the sink. Fruit flies on overripe bananas. Pots and pans stacked high on the stove. Drawers left open. Trash can heaping. Paper covered the refrigerator, notes, illustrations he couldn't make out, some entire sheets taped together, tacked by old magnets.
The living room felt tight and cramped without the light from outside and the view of the marsh. A candle sat on the table, flickering away on its last inch of life. His mother stood next to it now, face shrouded, her hunched form casting a twisted shadow across the floor onto the wall. The picture frames turned face down on the mantle. The couch looked like it was being slept in. The smell was worse here. It caught in Noah’s throat, reminding him of something.
“Do you smell it?” his mother asked.
Noah looked at her. She didn’t look back. Her hair was ashen. No red remained. The skin on her face hung from her skull, cheekbones protruding, eyes sunken into the sockets. The thin line of her mouth twitched.
“They’re dead. Out there. I can't stand the smell… Did you see my Azalea? That poor thing.” Her eyes stared into the flame, but reflected no light. Noah was afraid. He backed slowly into the room, away from her. Toward the fireplace. The smell grew stronger.
“They want me to know but I know already, I know…”
He knew that awful smell. In his stomach was a pit that grew with every word, with every step. He kneeled down to the fireplace, examining the doors his grandfather carved. The woman and the horse.
“I tried to take good care of them, and I did, for a long, long time didn't I? Didn’t I?” She was looking toward the corner of the room, at the stool by the windows where she never let Noah sit, back then.
“What… what can I do? I can't stand the smell.”
Noah slowly reached out to the doors. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her head snap toward him.
“Don't open that.”
“Why?” He turned to look at her. He couldn’t see her face.
“Please, don’t.”
That god awful stench.
He recoiled when he pulled open the doors, the brass scraping on the brick. The smell was overpowering. He squeezed his eyes shut as he gagged. He remembered the woods and his father and the wallet, the doe he hit. He looked into the fireplace with watering eyes.
There, in the corner, laid a squirrel, dead, rotten, its face sunken, skin clinging to bone, teeth jutting out from rotted flesh, appendages splayed. It looked as if it had tried chewing off its broken leg. And the bugs, flies, gnats, fleas, crawling through every hole, out of mouth and into empty eye sockets, crawling through fur, moving under skin. This ugly dead thing stuck to the floor in a brown oozing heap, death's malaise leaking from its orifices and tumbling out onto the floor, into the room, throughout the house, and laying in their lungs, sick and black and not going anywhere, leaving nothing but a bad taste and a dark stain that can’t be forgotten no matter how hard one may try.
________________________________________________________________________
Why is this piece your Trace Fossil?
“First and foremost, my writing is driven by memory–both the erasure and preservation of it. I write to record, to put my experiences on paper. I write to transfer feelings and memories from their temporary place in my brain to the page—there I can relive them, share them with others, have proof of my existence, proof that I felt, proof that I lived. I am more afraid of forgetting than being forgotten. Because of this, I’m drawn to fiction, to capturing the details of life, some monumental, others seemingly inconsequential. The happiness, the sadness, the awe, the scale, the love. I write to form myself. I also want my reader to have to work. Reading my pieces I hope the reader comes to a realization: a soft “Ohhhh,” the prickle down your neck, the goosebumps down your arm. I am influenced by the chills down my spine. I write stories that carry the details of my own life: summers on the marsh, losing a rubber eye in the dirt. Therefore, ultimately, my trace lies within storytelling, my life hidden within the lines.”
Jack Lindsay is a student and writer from South Carolina. His fiction is a place where his experiences can rest, fit in the files of the story and make it real: a tie hanging from a street sign, the look of a conch shell after it cuts your foot, a blue heron taking flight. He is the author of the novel In the Old House. At any given time, he can be found writing in about eight different notebooks, talking to strangers, and perusing his grandfather’s old books on his remote barrier island home near the ocean.