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...I pushed one of the antiquated light switches on the hallway's wall panel while simultaneously watching the overhead light fixtures above me but nothing happened, as I'd expected. The porcelain switch had a solid sound and feel to it with an audible clicking sound echoing within the vast space of the house all around us. In a way, the lonely sound of the switch itself was a bit discomforting...
"Even the gold light panel itself; has scrollwork," I said incredulously with a shake of my head.
"I believe it," Kendall said looking at the panel.
The whole house had a surreal feel to it, almost as if a person were exploring Ceasars Palace after the fall of the Roman empire. A person expected to see live people in a house but there were none here, only the faint echoes of ghosts from long, long ago.
...My God" Andrea said in awe, grasping my arm and drinking in the massive size and grandeur of the house as she gazed out onto the foyer once again.
"Where do we even start? The house goes on forever..." Helen marveled in awe.
Helen now had ahold of my other arm as she ran a hand through her hair and just gaped at the long hallway in disbelief.
I turned and looked down into the massive empty foyer again, shafts of early afternoon sunlight were now streaming onto the grand piano and vacant dancefloor, bathing everything within a strange yellow light. The long shadows seemed to present everything with an even more mysterious and haunting look. As before, one could almost see the ghosts of society's elite, dressed in Victorian attire as they danced to music that had been composed before or during the Civil War.
It almost seemed as if they'd only left, hours ago...
For the next hour, the ladies and I just explored this second-floor balcony yet we never strayed too far from the seeming safety of the foyer's rays of sunlight. We discovered a huge chapel that appeared to be Evangelical; with more elaborate stained glasswork. A long-dormant U.S. Post Office was also on this floor along with a telegraph office and barbershop. Along with an ancient dark room, for developing photographs, there were also several large leather chairs for shining shoes and a men's lounge, complete with six huge billiard tables covered with yellowing dusty sheets. There was what appeared to be a board room with around forty chairs, a long table, and a chalkboard at the front of the large room. As with the rest of the house, everything was ship-shape, orderly, and immaculately clean.
Looking out the bank of windows from within the boardroom, I could look down into the driveway and see the yellow pick-up truck, U1693. It didn't take much imagination to envision dozens of black horse-drawn buggies lining both sides of the driveway during some party or function held at the house. Later within the century, the buggies would have been replaced by Duesenbergs, Pierce-Arrows, and Rolls-Royce automobiles.
As opulent as the house was, it also had a sterile and impersonal feeling to it, much like a large office building. There were no personalized novelties or photographs anywhere except for the girl's portraiture above the mantle, downstairs. There was nothing, anywhere within the house, to indicate the actual touch of an individual person. - A grandchild's drawing would never adorne these sterile walls.
"Nothing grows here" suddenly seemed to run through my mind.
Even the wastebaskets were empty...
...Glancing down again at the hearth, it almost appeared as if the girl within the tintype portraiture had followed us up the staircase with her eyes and was now intently staring at us, demanding to know what we were doing inside her house. I could almost feel her angry eyes upon me, it seemed...
"...Holy fuck, this place is spooky," I suddenly said, closing my eyes and taking a deep breath.
"This place is surreal," Helen sighed quietly.
Andrea walked over to an antique hall table and began looking at some old books which had been left on the table within the hallway. The books were covered in dust and seemed to be the only thing in the house, thus far, which hadn't been stowed away neatly, they were just laying on the table at random.
"...I read this book once, 'Little Women' Andrea said to no one in particular.
Andrea set the book down and then picked up someone's hand drawing of a kitty cat on a piece of thick paper and, blowing the dust off of it, examined it carefully.
"Do you think I could have this?" Andrea asked, looking at Kendall and holding up the picture.
Kendall looked at Andrea quizzically for several seconds and then replied "...Are you serious?"
"...Yes, but if we're not supposed to take anything then I'll leave it here" Andrea answered, suddenly a bit uneasy with Kendall's change in demeanor.
"...It's your house, take anything you want." Kendall finally said.
"WHAT!!!???" Helen, Andrea, and I all asked at once in unison.
We were now met with a long moment of silence. Other than Kendall's chirping belt-mounted two-way radio, there was no other sound within the house.
Andrea, Helen, and I just stared at Kendall...
"Wh-wh- what did you say, Kendall?" I asked again, shaking my head with disbelief.
"...You mean you didn't know?...That guy, Danny Wickersham, willed the entire house and land to the three of you..." Kendall replied quietly.
"I don't fuckin' believe this!" Andrea said as she grabbed her forehead and quickly walked to the hand railing of the foyer as she closed her eyes and firmly grasped the railing with her other hand.
"DANNY WICKERSHAM!!!" Andrea now bellowed into the open foyer at the top of her lungs, followed by an angry echo.
It almost sounded as if Andrea were yelling at a seven-year-old boy who'd broken a window and then gone into hiding for fear of his mother's wrath...
...I'd never seen my wife so genuinely angry before.
Andrea now did two things, she seemed to go into a kind of melt-down, and at the same time begin a litany of profanity that would have far surpassed that of any United States Marine with ease. Danny Wickersham was not my wife's favorite person during this intense litany, that much was very apparent. I'd never known Andrea was capable of such horrific language and it was, to be honest, a bit shocking to me.
She then abruptly hung her head over the hand railing and threw up.
I walked over to my wife and placed my hand on her back, Andrea was leaning on the rail now with her head drooped and eyes closed.
"I should have seen this coming, knowing Danny the way I did, but we walked right into this whole mess just like a bunch of dupes. Now it makes sense why Earl Billingsly was so interested in talking with us, the oil company must want us to sell this parcel of land to them..." Andrea murmured.
"I'm sorry, Andrea, I thought the three of you knew this place had been willed to you," Kendall said quietly, looking at Helen.
Neither Helen nor Anndrea appeared to hear Kendall.
"Tim, I'm not going to be able to make it on the plane tonight, you go, and I'll sort out this fuckin' mess, however long it takes me... I'm so sorry I drug you into all this, honey" Andrea said, clutching her forehead with her eyes still closed.
I gently took my wife's hand and brought her toward me in an embrace. She smelled of vomit now and holding her felt like holding a limp doll. She was also physically shaking with anger and emotion. This scenario was exactly the opposite of just a day ago; when we'd discovered that we were on the front page of The International Monitor and I'd been the one to lose my subway sandwich while my wife had comforted me.
Andrea leaned her head into my chest and began to weep quietly.
"Baby, we'll get through this too, you and I, and Helen. -Hell, there must be four or five hundred thousand dollars worth of gold doorknobs in this fuckin' place. Just think how many issues of The International Monitor we could buy with that!" I laughed with feigned bravado.
Andrea didn't laugh at my childish analogy, nor did Kendall or Helen either.
...There probably was four or five hundred thousand dollars worth of gold-plated doorknobs in the place.
Now, with my wife's tears, the aura of the house suddenly seemed to transition from a day's epic adventure of opulent Victorian grandeur to that of an extreme example of someone's over self-indulgence of blatant arrogance. The mansion had now become extremely mentally taxing, overbearing, and emotionally draining. The place was so over-the-top in every imaginable way that it was difficult to comprehend its massive size and extreme excesses in every detail. The house was completely overwhelming and we'd probably only seen one-fifteenth of it so far.
Even the mansion's name "Prominent House" seemed to scream arrogance at us.
It almost felt as though we'd spent too much time in some cheap traveling carnival's funhouse to the point of adnausium, like some warped episode of the Twilight Zone where clowns suddenly became haunting gargoyles of mental fatigue and fear.
It wasn't fun anymore.
I picked up the kitty cat picture off of the floor and slid it into Andrea's purse.
"Kendall, we're ready to go now, we'll need a day or two to sort things out between ourselves, we'll be in touch," I said definitively.
With my arm around Andrea, we led the other two ladies back down the staircase.
"I totally understand, Tim" Kendall replied.
...
I pulled down the passenger's sun visor and squinted into the setting sun.
"...I've been thinking, I would calculate that the price of constructing that mansion would have equaled the cost of building Olympic and Titanic both," I said as I looked out the passenger's window at all the pumping oil wells in the setting Texas sun.
I was now in the front seat of the yellow pick-up truck with Kendall, while Andrea and Helen sat in the rear seat, wearily leaning against each other.
"With the money spent to construct that house, you could have built Olympic, Titanic, and half of their sister ship, Britannic, Tim. I'm not joking" Andrea responded with a tired yet serious expression on her face.
"Unbelievable," I said, in reference to the house.
"My God, you could move the whole neighborhood into that place and not see anyone for a freakin' week, it's so big" Helen exaggerated slightly.
...The four of us became silent for several minutes as we rode along the dusty dirt road. The house had literally drained us, it'd been so overwhelming.
Kendall now pointed toward a row of pumpjacks that were motionless.
"That wellhead, with the row of pumps, is called 'Prominence.' We still run those pumps several days out of each month and that well is still producing oil. The old man that built the house, sunk that well in eighteen-eighty-nine" Kendall said evenly.
"...My God," I said aloud in awe, trying to mentally calculate the wealth which had come from the one single wellhead alone.
"I don't think the old man ever once batted an eyelid at the cost of that house, back yonder," Kendall said as we turned back onto the main dirt road leading toward the office building, which was still several miles away.
...We met another one of the yellow pick-up trucks now, heading in the opposite direction. Kendall and the other driver waved to each other.
"Kendall, I've worked in real estate for years and I helped build several of the massive casinos in Vegas, during the boom years, but even that pales in comparison to this" Andrea said tiredly.
"Mister Billingsly said that I could talk openly with you all, and what you're saying doesn't surprise me, Andrea. A normal person can't even begin to comprehend that house or the enormous amount of wealth involved with this field. Mister Billingsly, himself, may not even know the full extent of it, he simply runs the oil field itself." Kendall explained.
"I think I can understand the reason for all the rules and regulations associated with this place now. Mister Billingsly certainly has a huge responsibility" Andrea commented.
"He deals with all the politics, which I don't envy. And yes, the enforcement of rules and regulations are taken very seriously out here and this field is actually considered as part of our National Security," Kendall replied.
"I don't doubt that; Kendall" I affirmed.
All of us were silent again for a few minutes.
"...Danny, you little asshole" Andrea murmured to herself; while looking out her passenger's window.
"We're not legally obligated to that house, Andrea, we can just walk away," Helen said calmly.
"I know that; Helen" Andrea replied.
"I'll call Herb tonight," Helen said confidently.
"...Danny Wickersham" Andrea repeated distastefully.
"You know what Danny's doing, up there right now, don't you, Andrea?" Helen asked, looking over at my wife.
"Looking down and laughing at us, I'd imagine" Andrea answered disgustedly.
"Laughing his ass off at us - this is all a game, remember?" Helen replied knowingly.
"Why would Danny have bought this place, to begin with, Helen? HOW in the world could he have purchased it at all? It's in an oil field, leased on Federal land, for God's sake! - You don't just go buy land on Federal oil reserves for the fun of it, Howard Hughes wouldn't even have been allowed to do that....Danny probably made twelve or fourteen million dollars, in total, during his whole lifetime and he partied most of that away, you remember how he was with money. I'd bet there's four million dollars worth of green rug carpet in that damn place" Andrea now exaggerated with an incredulous shake of her head.
"He may have won it in a poker game, like, thirty years ago or something, Andrea, seriously. If he did win it in a poker game, then he probably never even set foot in the fuckin' place" Helen answered quietly.
"You knew Danny as well as I did, Helen. He probably got it for a wink and a smile, somehow. It was probably all just another outrageous lark to him" Andrea sighed.
"Everything else was, I guess that's why we all loved the idiot" Helen reasoned.
"Yes," Andrea answered.
"Danny Wickersham was in a famous band or something at one time, wasn't he?" Kendall now asked.
"Danny founded a band called Duxford Airfield, but that was a little before time, I'm afraid, Kendall" Andrea replied, on the verge of exhaustion.
"I've heard their songs, before," Kendall said nodding her head. "...Oh, sorry, I meant to offer these a few minutes ago, Andrea. I hope you're feeling better now" Kendall said holding up a tall water bottle which she took from within a plastic cooler that sat between her and me on the front seat.
"I'm better, thanks, Kendall. Yes, I'd like one, please" Andrea said reaching for the water bottle.
"I've got a few more up here," Kendall said in reply.
I silently took two bottles of water from Kendall and handed one back to Helen.
"Thank you, Kendall," I said, opening the bottle's cap.
Andrea's phone pinged with a text message.
"...Ricky's in Seattle, staying with Harland Wyckoff right now," Andrea said matter of factly.
Obviously, the text message was from Brenda...
"Maybe Harland can talk some sense into that idiot," I said roughly.
Secretly, I was relieved at hearing Ricky was now with Harland Wyckoff and I think Andrea sensed this...
"I've got a little brother that likes to hop freight trains," I said to Kendall, tipping my water bottle.
Kendall said nothing, only nodded her head.
"You have no idea who the girl in the tintype is?" I asked, looking at Kendall.
"The girl in the what?" Kendall asked.
"Old photographs were called tintypes, Kendall. I'm referring to the girl in the oval-shaped photo above the fireplace." I explained.
"I've heard a lot of wild rumors, surrounding that place, long before I even got a job here. Supposedly there was a really old cowboy that lived there alone and looked after the place after everyone else had died. I guess he passed in nineteen eighty, or so. I've never heard anything about any girl living there, or really anyone else either, other than the old man that built the place. I don't even know what his name had been but he was supposedly murdered or vanished or something like that, way back in the nineteen twenties or something, I guess." Kendall said.
"REALLY? Any idea why or who may have killed him?" I asked incredulously, looking over at Kendall.
"Nothing really, it was such a long time ago, Tim," Kendall answered, waving her hand in dismissal.
I silently nodded my head and took another drink of water.
"You hear a lot of rumors, working around oil field trash, Tim. Most of those conversations are just guff and fodder centered around pool playing and beer drinking during off-hours" Kendall said, shrugging her shoulder.
She seemed to use the term "Oil filed trash" with a degree of pride, I noticed.
Kendall now quickly pulled to the edge of the road and abruptly stopped as an ancient B-70 roared by us, heading in the opposite direction and kicking up a huge amount of dust. Kendall and the other driver waved at each other.
A B-70 was an oversize off-road tractor-trailer used to move huge amounts of earth.
Kendall slowly started the truck down the dusty road again.
"The water truck could probably make another pass, here on North Wellhead road, when someone has a minute" Kendall spoke into her radio.
"Roger that, I'll be there in five minutes, Kendall" a man's voice quickly answered.
"Thanks, Budd, I figured you were either loading or enroute" Kendall replied.
The radio chirped twice in reply via a double-tap of the mic's key from the other vehicle.
...The oilfield execs probably didn't allow for a lot of senseless chatter over the two-way radios here, I now speculated. I'd worked on a lot of jobs like that myself.
"Ever drive one of those?" I asked Kendall, sipping my water.
"Not yet but I do have a CDL" Kendall replied.
"What's a CDL?" Helen asked from the rear seat.
"License to drive big trucks" I answered.
"Do you have one, Tim?" Kendall asked doubtfully.
"Yeah, got an eighty-four, long-hood Pete that your uncle wants to drive," I said.
"Really, Allen wants to drive it?" Kendall asked, looking over at me.
"He said he did; when we flew Alice Mae down here" I answered.
"When was that? They fly here all the time with Alice Mae." Kendall asked.
"A few months ago, wasn't it, honey?" I asked, looking back at Andrea.
"Yes," Andrea acknowledged.
"The ride in Alice Mae was my fortieth birthday present," I said evenly.
"You can go to hell for lying, you know that, Tim. It was his fifty-eighth birthday, Kendall" Andrea said, sticking her tongue out at me.
Kendall and Helen laughed at Andrea's reproach to me.
"So I've been forty, for eighteen years, what of it? Now be nice, because I like it when you're sweet, pet" I said, looking back at Andrea.
There was more laughter and then all of us fell into another brief silence for a minute, just looking out at the dusty sun-baked oil field and rows of cricket pumps, otherwise known as Nodding Donkies.
I now noticed Kendall intently studying the rearview mirror which was mounted on the windshield.
"...Oh my God, Andrea! You're her, you're The Mysterious Woman, Allen told me all about you!" Kendall said, looking at Andrea in the rearview mirror again.
"Yes, she's The Mysterious Woman" I quickly answered.
"Ha ha, very funny, Tim," Andrea answered.
"It wasn't The Mysterious Woman, it was The Mystery Girl, Kendall. Andrea was The Mystery Girl on the inside jacket of Duxford Airfield's, Angels album, in nineteen eighty-nine," Helen explained.
"Oh my God! Now I know who you are, Andrea, Allen showed me that photo!...So, like, you actually knew that guy Danny, right? He was that guy!" Kendall said, as the pieces suddenly fell together in her mind.
"Yes, it was a long time ago, Kendall," Andrea said tiredly.
