Houses: one part; the winter hut

home, n.
1. a dwelling place
2. the place where one was born or reared
3. the place where something is or has been founded, developed; the seat
4. the grave; death
9. in some games, the place of beginning and ending

Webster's New 20th Century Dictionary

House, Brian Kershisnik, 1990

When I was little I made houses for myself all over my yard. Huts, to call them by their true name. Our acre and a quarter adjoined my grandfather's lot so there was quite a bit of land to develop. I had a wonderful sailing ship made of the hay derrick. Until my dad rescued the grapes and despoiled my abode, I had a vine house under and within a collapsed grape arbor, sweetly scented by the juice I was pressing with my knees as I played under the vines, grape clusters outlined between me and the sky. I had a sliverous and spidery playhouse in the attic of the granary where the pioneers who first owned our lot lived till they built a proper house. I had labyrinthine hot August rye houses stomped into the tall, dry grasses on our back lot like clumsy, lumpy crop circles. Paramecium. Crop blobs. My lovely summer house under an apple tree in Grandpa's orchard was partially formed by what I later realized was an overturned chicken coop of sorts, face down so the cage doors opened up from the bottom and could be propped up with sticks making unstable but sweet shelving. I spent a lot of the time there setting things back up. My winter home was a straw bale house between the granary and the blacksmith's shop about midway on our backlot and three hundred miles from any other human habitation. I might hear Forrie Paxton calling to his wife from his out buildings west of me, but I couldn't see him or anyone else and no one could see me.

Nine straw bales formed the winter house. I found them sort of tumbled together right where I made them into a house. It was odd, them being there, but not the sort of odd I would have found troubling. Just out of place. No animals around to justify their presence. The stack was old and not really a stack anymore. If you used three of the bales as a wall on the west side, stacked on top of each other and running north to south and three on the east you could stand one on end on the north side, filling half the opening there. Then the last two stacked on each other on the south side, toward the granary, made a wall with an opening perfectly sized for one of the old three-paned drop-down basement windows my parents had taken out of our house (replaced by a brand new aluminum-slider). Piece of sheet metal scavenged from...the...ground with what I guess must be described as a two by two nailed across one end for a perfect roof. The two by two sat across the top of my window and held it upright and in place. Then some plywood, also from...the ground, for a door. Building materials were everywhere. You just had to hunt with an open mind and not give up till you had the perfect thing. It might take some days, but what else were you going to do? Dad almost never came looking for anything, so that was good.

Inside I made a fireplace (stay with me here) out of two by fours that came nailed into the correct shape. It was seeing them in their finished condition that revealed to me my need for a fireplace. Not that I contemplated for a moment lighting a fire. No. Well, I actually contemplated it often, in a wistful way. This was, as I mentioned, my winter house and it's cold in Kanosh in winter. But not contemplated it in the way like get matches off the big house mantle, grab kindling and logs from the woodpile fifteen feet from my hut and build a really burning fire against the wall on the wooden hearth in my house of straw. Burning my dad's stuff would have gotten me in a lot of trouble, but worse, it would have wrecked my hut. Otherwise I would have done it. Fire was pretty much a constant in my life then. Burning the family trash was my daily chore for years and our real house was heated with wood. I wasn't stupid. No, sadly, my winter hut was unheated (like my real bedroom and that's another story). I needed a fireplace so I could have a mantle. I had learned from my mom that display is the essence and heart of homemaking and all my huts were finely put together. Wall art, shelves for ornaments, floor coverings. Like I said, you just had to look around. Straw walls are great, anything will stick into it and stay there.

Another great advantage of having a fireplace is that it gave me a focus when I was in my house. This was not a large abode. I was not a large person, so that was sort of OK, but when I was in the hut, sitting hunched (cold) on the log that was my only furnishing, I sort of exhausted the space. Basically I could turn my head and observe my clever house building or stare in front of me into the fireplace. You do that in a real, big house, in a room with a fireplace, even if there is no fire there. Sort of like people will still look and look at a TV that is turned off. Saves having to figure anything else out. So I spent quite a bit of time staring into the space formed by those two by fours, sometimes thinking about how nice it would be if there were a fire in there because, here's the thing, I was in that hut a lot. And there was not one chore to do.

Summer, spring and fall huts have myriad important tasks that require daily vigilance if you are going to run them properly. Cleaning, repair, harvesting, storage, warfare, expansion, the list is endless. But a winter hut is different. No planting, no harvest. No visitors, no invaders. You can gather wood for your fire, but only once unless you return it to the woodpile every time you leave and that would be mind numbingly tedious. Or unless you make real fires which, as I've said, I didn't. I began building the hut too late in the year to lay in stores other than a few token rose hips, black walnuts and pecans from the four ancient pecan trees at the very northern end of the lot. Everything else was covered in snow. In my experience, necessary hut repair consumes most of a day's available playing time but this straw hut was really stable. I can see why people decided to live in houses made of bales. They just don't fall apart or get blown over or knocked down by dogs or grow up to be something else by season's end. You have lots of time for contemplation in a house of straw.

I spent a great deal of time that winter bunched up on my log looking into the fire. Place. I chatter and shiver in the cold, so I did that, too. And I thought. I thought about being cold and being alone. I thought about how no one else was anywhere around (and, man, no one was. I really don't know who was taking care of the neighbors' outside chores that winter because it was empty out there). I wondered why, then wondered why I was sitting out there and why I didn't go into the house, the real, big house. I know that part of what held me was that absolutely not anyone knew where I was or would think to look for me there. I could (and about twice, did) just not answer when called and hold my breath, courting terror and disaster, but pretty sure that I would not be found or later held to account. Being out of hearing happened, for real, all the time. Sitting in frozen stillness, listening to my dad occasionally messing around in the granary or doing brief tasks in the yard, close enough to hear me if I even thought too hard but I didn't and he went away without knowing. Staring at straw, pondering. Toying, in my child's mind, with questions of irrevocable separation and isolation, of permanence and even of death. Not of suicide, nothing morbid or self-indulgent, but of endurance for the queer sake of itself. How...long...till...they...notice...I'm...not...anywhere. How long do I wait if they never notice? I don't know that I've ever felt a tug on my heart more powerful than the pull to stay, to watch, to wait. To see. A winter of most afternoons spent silently freezing in a straw hut, watching darkness grow and wondering why I was waiting for someone to notice. To find me.

One early spring day, one warming day after the crocuses came out and when I had not been to my winter hut for a few weeks of my childlife and had therefore nearly forgotten I had ever been at all, my dad came and got me. He was looking at me oddly, but not so oddly that it set off alarms. He said, put on your boots for a minute and come look at something. I did and he took me to the winter hut between the granary and the blacksmith's shop. Oh yeah, I thought. Look at this, he said, do you know what it is? Yes, I said. Did you make it, he asked. Yes, I said, getting nervous. No reason, just a reaction to too much adult attention. He stood, looking at me oddly. He opened the door. Did you do it all yourself, he asked. Yes, I said, confused and therefore more nervous. It's kind of amazing, he said. I was complimented and offended. Thank you and of course it is. It's a hut.
Have you been using it, he asked.
(Being careful now.) Used it. Yes.
Have you been in here all winter?
On and off, yes.
Is this a fireplace?
(Ah ha, that's where I thought this was going and don't play dumb, Dad. You know a mantle when you see one.) Yes, but I wouldn't burn up my hut.
No. Looking at me oddly. I know that. Were you in there a lot and no one knew?
(what? what?) Yeah? (It's a question and an answer. What gives?)
Silence. Nervous. Cold. (What the heck?)
Don't you remember what these bales are used for? Why I have them here?
(Quick look to be sure I haven't ruined anything...no...looks fine...I can't possibly have harmed the straw. It's straw.) No.
Strange, strange looks.
Target practice, he says.

He's an archer.
I shoot, too, with him. Got my own bow for Christmas when I was about five. But it's too cold to shoot much in winter.
Ever seen an arrow go through a stack of straw, between the bales, and come out the other side? We shoot along side of the granary, but that's in summer, usually. A thousand years ago. Sometimes arrows would get stuck in the wall of the blacksmith's shop. We hated that.

homing, a.
2. having to do with guidance homeward or to a goal, target, etc.

Find me.
White Boat, Brian Kershisnik, 1995