The House Near Ausable River

Inside Grand Central Terminal people shuffled past one another until they could split from the pack and enter the causeway. In the food court, John found a croissant that looked like it had been left on a table for days. He poked it, picked it up, smelled it, then took a bite. It was hard as a rock, the leathery dough dented like a baseball glove on the first day of practice.

We sat down at a table that had just been vacated by a group of high school boys. Each one had their last name and a number printed on the back of their shirt—Saurez 65; Hudson 09; Beverly 54; Bradley 35. A round-chested boy named Ryan, number 83, got up from his seat and left a chocolate milkshake and a slice of pepperoni pizza on a paper plate. I took the milkshake and stirred it with a paper straw. John tore the pizza in two and we each took a bite.

In the Adirondacks, north of New York City, there is a small number of abandoned homes with the power still switched on. Our aim was to find one to live in until the first winter blizzard came and forced us out. John had been given the address of a house near the Ausable River, two miles south of a diner in the Keene Valley. He was told it had power, running water and a pantry stocked with canned fruit from a nearby canning plant. The cans had been left there by a factory worker who had died last summer in a motorcycle accident.

For the past fortnight we’d been living in a house in Patterson, New Jersey, but the situation had recently become untenable. The water had been switched off and we’d been unable to wash or properly bathe. John’s jacket had a squirrel-colored stain on the collar and he’d developed a nervous twitch trying to get it out. This morning he spent ten minutes in the Grand Central bathroom scrubbing it with a pair of moist underpants from his pack.

We rode the train from Grand Central to Poughkeepsie. Now we needed to hitch a ride from the station to our destination in the Keene Valley. From there we could walk to the house near the Ausable River. Several dozen cars drove by before two girls stopped and offered us a ride. They were driving to Lake Placid and had their water skiing equipment stowed in a cargo box on the roof of their white Honda CR-V. Elizabeth, the driver, was hoping to represent her college at the outdoor aquatic games that happen in the Fall. She had plans to be out on the lake every day, ahead of a qualifying tournament in the first week of June. We settled into the back seat and rode with the girls until we reached the junction of Adirondack Street and Country Club Way. Elizabeth then pulled over outside a hardware store and we politely waved goodbye. We were grateful that her and her friend hadn’t simply written us off as two runaways fresh out of Rikers. That’s how most people treat us north of New York City.

A short, hollow-chested man popped his head out from the hardware store and yelled, “Can I help you men?” His back was arched like a question mark; his belly flopped over his belt like a chubby kangaroo. Unlike the two young women, the man seemed to be anticipating some kind of trouble. “No sir,” I replied. John tipped the brim of his hat and the man stepped back inside. John doesn’t usually say too much—ever since the death of his wife Cathleen in an apartment fire last Spring he’s been uncharacteristically quiet. He was likely suffering some form of post-traumatic stress. After the fire the authorities offered counselling and provided him with two weeks of emergency shelter, but John had been unable to find an apartment that matched the price of the one that he and Cathleen had lived in for the past sixteen years. She’d been paying most of the rent using money she earned from a job at a nearby nail salon. He used to make his share of the rent by distributing The Village Voice.

I met John one night in Tompkins Square Park. He’d come across on the L train and was standing outside the toilet block washing his face in a water fountain. He had a large backpack and a sleeping bag, and was wearing a denim jacket with a Misfits patch sewn on the right sleeve. I hadn’t seen him in the park before, but I liked the jacket. It reminded me of one I’d decorated with logos and band patches when I was a teenager in the mid-90s. Mine was probably on sale for an exorbitant price in a vintage shop in San Francisco. Some friends of mine once lived above a liquor shop on Haight Street; I left the jacket there when I came East.

We were told that the house was off Route 73 in Essex County, about two miles south of the Noon Mark Diner. Elizabeth had driven us too far; now we had to backtrack to get to our destination. We left the hardware store and made our way down a partially mowed track next to the highway. Route 73 was primarily used as a bypass road to get to Keene and Upper Jay; hikers used it to get to Mt Marcy.

John had packed a loaf of bread, a stick of butter and two Cliff Bars that he’d shoplifted from a deli in lower Manhattan. He said we could use the butter like cooking oil or spread it on bread and eat it like a sandwich. I had a jar of Kosher pickles, a bag of oats and a block of cheese—protein and probiotics.

Just past the diner we crept into the bush and found a tree stump to rest on while we ate our lunch. We had to be mindful not to stray onto private property; New York’s not an open carry state, but people can still be awfully protective in these parts. I started explaining to John how to remain inconspicuous, but he interrupted and reminded me that he’d lived on the streets in New York City. He didn’t need a lecture on how to stay safe out here. I took a slice of bread and spread butter across it using a plastic knife I’d picked up back inside the terminal. We sat together eating and when we stopped chewing we could hear the gentle flow of the Ausable River, tip-tapping across the river bed like fuel flowing from a petrol pump. To get to the house we needed to make our way upstream, amid a maze of Christmas Ferns, Balsam Firs and Eastern Hemlock trees.

John was aware we’d have to get our feet wet crossing to avoid deeper sections of the river, but he wasn’t too enthused about it. It was also impossible to get to the house without stepping onto private land, however New York law dictates that every person has the right to use a waterway. We’d be OK as long as we stayed in or near the river bed.

We managed to get to the river from our lunch spot, though the bush was dense and John’s sleeping bag kept getting caught on low hanging branches. I instructed him to tuck the bag under his arm and to use his other hand to keep the branches away from his face. Still, he looked uncomfortable. I worried that when we reached the slippery river bed he’d have trouble staying upright.

The Ausable River was a beautiful golden brown; the water flickered like a disco ball under the mid-afternoon sun. Suddenly, John stopped and called out from behind me.

“Hey! I need a minute.”

“What?” I replied, thinking he just needed a minute to retrieve something from his pack.

“I need a minute to meditate”

“Are you kidding me, man? You wanna do that now?”

John wasn’t kidding, he found a dry patch of shingle and sat down. I quickly decided it was best not to question his self-care routine. He obviously had a schedule and wanted to stick to it. While John mediated I looked over the map his friend had drawn for us by hand. It wasn’t easy to follow, but based on some landmarks he’d noted down, I calculated that we were still about a mile and a half from the house. According to the map, the river ran against the right bank for the next half mile, though I knew that seasonal weather could easily have changed that. After fifteen minutes John stood up, sighed deeply, and stretched his arms above his head like a grizzly bear. He was done meditating. We now had to cross the river, but before we moved on John stopped me again and suggested that it might be easier if he removed his shoes. He only had one pair of sneakers and he was nervous about getting them wet. He took them off and fastened them to his pack using their laces. As we crossed the river the smooth, shiny pebbles massaged his feet. Even though they were sweaty and sore he seemed to cherish the sensation.

Finally, we arrived at a clearing that had been marked on the hand drawn map. From here the Ausable River took a right turn and ran alongside the highway. The house was now about a hundred feet away. John was pleased when I told him that we wouldn’t have to wade through the river again. I led him into the woods and before long we could see the rear wall of the house. It was painted pale blue and a trumpet vine, with dazzling orange buds, was slowly crawling up the weatherboard. Ice dams had caused the spouting to collapse and there was some discoloration where vines had climbed the year before. As we got closer I could see two windows, a kayak, and the remains of a rusty fridge buried in tall grass beside the house.

John made his way towards the front porch; then walked up the steps and stomped loudly on the wooden deck. The house appeared to be empty, but we were aware that we may not have been the first set of squatters to have been given a hand drawn map by a man in Manhattan. The most obvious way into the house seemed to be through a steel framed door that opened onto a glass conservatory; somehow, all the windows were still intact. But John had a different idea, he thought it would be best to circumvent the house and look for another way in—through a door that might have come loose in a snowstorm. Around the right side of the house we rightfully found another door. John gave it a tug and the door knob came off; now the only thing holding it shut was a strip of rubber suction tape. He nudged it again, this time with his right foot, and it opened onto a laundry room. Inside were bags of ice-melt, a snow shovel, two life vests, and a set of ratchet straps that had been used to transport the kayak down to the river.

Once we were inside, we discovered some significant deterioration in the house's interior. The walls had all turned a sour yellow color; the ceiling was stained with rusty water marks that looked like pit-stains on a business man's shirt. In the bathroom a roll of wrinkled toilet paper hung from a hook that the old man had manufactured from a coat hanger. His toothbrush was still sitting in a cup on the basin next to his razor. I could hear John in the kitchen gasping at the damage. When I came out of the bathroom he was in the corridor with his hand up to his mouth like a gas mask. The smell in the kitchen was immense; there was a deathly odor as if wild geese had laid a thousand rotten eggs. The whole room had been ransacked by rats, and roaches had moved in to complete the job. Cereal and sugar sachets were scattered across the kitchen bench; jars of pickles and preserves were smashed to smithereens on the floor. Their contents had dissolved and formed a sticky tar-like substance that was now covered in a layer of black mold. The rats had even managed to knock over a box of porcelain plates that the old man had stored away in a cupboard. On the side of the box he had written in a black ballpoint pen, “plates to donate.”

 I looked at John. He was still standing with his hand up to his face.

“Did you look in the fridge?” I asked

He nodded, then groaned and grimaced as I leaned in and opened the door.

“Hey, there’s nothing in it,” he yelled. John had a more immediate view of what was inside; there was no way I was sticking my head in.

“What?”

I swung around and sure enough, the fridge was empty. Someone had obviously come in after the old man had died and cleared it out. All of a sudden John became more animated. For the first time he seemed excited to be here.

“Where are the cans?” he shouted. He took off his backpack and began furiously opening cupboards and shouting out their contents.

“Plates!”

“Pots! Pans!”

“Nothing!”

“Nothing!”

“Fuck!”

“Towels!

“Fuck, man. Nothing!”

“Jars! Empty jars!”

“Fuuuck, where’s the fruit, man?”

“Hold on, is there a basement?”

“They must be somewhere”, I said gritting my teeth. So far the house looked exactly how it’d been described by the man in Manhattan.

John rushed ahead and found a stairwell leading down into the basement. It was here that we discovered that the house had no power. We now had to find the main power board and try and switch it back on. Like in most houses, it was probably located in the basement. I had a tiny hand-held torch attached to a keyring in the top pocket of my backpack. John dug around in his bag for a cigarette lighter.

The flame from the lighter lit tiny patches of light around the upper halves of our bodies. Beneath us, the basement floor was covered in a foot of water, likely the result of heavy rain or from ice that had thawed with the warmer weather. As we crept slowly across the wet floor I rested my hand on John’s shoulder. Except for the sound of sizzling lighter fluid, there was complete silence. John used his spare hand to brush away cobwebs and to ensure no sharp objects stabbed him in the face. With all the water lying around I wasn’t even sure if it was safe to turn the power on. What if the fuse box exploded and we both ended up trapped in a basement inside an abandoned house? There wasn’t a person on earth that would come looking for us here.

“I think we should at least try and find the cans,” I whispered quietly in John’s ear. “Do you think they’re down here? It’s a pretty weird place to keep food,” he whispered back. Neither of us knew why we were talking quietly. Perhaps it was out of fear, strange things happen in the dark. “Well, they weren’t in the house, so if they ain’t here, where else could they be?”

“Maybe the person who cleared the fridge took ‘em?”

“Hmm, I think you might be right, John.”

Eventually we gave up looking and went back upstairs into the house. No food, no power; there was plenty of water, it just wasn’t running through the pipes, they’d frozen during the winter and cracked to smithereens. So far, our trip was a disaster.

John’s enthusiasm suddenly dissolved; he was feeling miserable again. He dragged his pack into the living room and lay down on a dusty leather sofa. Thankfully, the room was located at the front of the house and was shielded somewhat from the filthy odor coming from the kitchen. There were three bedrooms. The old man’s one was closest to the living room and had a TV, a clock radio and a pile of old New Yorkers stacked next to the bed. His nightstand was full of old batteries and useless knick knacks, like nail clippers, loose keys and a spare pair of reading glasses. His dresser was full of trousers, undershirts and sweaters—we would definitely go through them before abandoning our mission. I liked the look of the middle bedroom. It’s bed had a scarlet red duvet and a couple of plush feather pillows. They smelled like stale milk, but I could live with that. John seemed content sleeping in the living room, though he was up and about again. I could hear him flicking through the old man’s DVD collection and reading the names of the movies aloud like he might have done with Cathleen. “Wild At Heart.” “Midnight Cowboy.” “Coming to America.” There were books—mostly biographies—and CDs, too. One had a note stuck to it that read, “saw this guy play a few weeks ago in Baton Rouge and thought you might like him Grandpa. Love, Lisa xo.” It was by a Texas folk singer named Kevin Morby.

John had separated the DVDs into two piles. “I might take a few of these,” he said, pointing to the smaller pile. “I’m so sorry this place didn't work out. I shouldn’t have believed that guy. This house probably gets buried in ten feet of snow every winter, of course the pipes are broken and the powers off.”

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” I replied, trying to console him. “Let’s just stay here tonight. We’ll figure something out tomorrow. Do you have any more of that bread? I’ll go get a knife and slice us some cheese.”

The kitchen drawers were full of dead roaches; they’d contaminated all of the utensils. I went back to the bedroom and fetched the plastic knife from my backpack. When I returned to the living room, John was snuggled up inside his sleeping bag. He’d left the loaf of bread next to a gorgeous porcelain swan in the middle of a handcrafted coffee table. It would probably fetch a good price at an antique store, but we didn’t come here to steal the old man’s furniture, we came here to escape New York.

The sun had just dipped below the trees at the rear of the house. We now only had twenty minutes of daylight left before everything would be pitch black. John could fall asleep just about anywhere. He’d learned to block out noise while sleeping in subway cars; every few minutes the operator would announce over the loudspeaker, “stand clear, closing doors.” The sound was more obnoxious to the homeless than it was helpful. Before it was even dark, John had fallen asleep in the old man’s arm chair. I took some bread and went and lay down on the mattress in the middle bedroom. Unlike John, I can’t just fall asleep whenever I want to. In the silent room my mind began to wander and suddenly I remembered a piece of advice my father had given me. I don’t remember his exact words, but it was something like, “Son, you should become an electrician or a plumber. Learn a trade, something you can do with your hands.” But I wasn’t good with my hands; instead of becoming an engineer, I became a customer service supervisor at Con Ed. It was a good job; I kept it until the company started outsourcing for cheaper labor. After that I worked taking taxi orders at a call center in Jamaica, Queens, but that eventually went by the wayside, too.

In the morning, we sorted through the old man's clothes and took what we needed. John gifted himself a new Armani coat, some undershirts, and took the stack of DVDs from the living room. I took a pair of size eleven boots, a couple of well-worn leather vests and a grand old Stetson hat.

Nick Fulton is a New Zealand-born music and culture writer based in Brooklyn, NY. His reviews, artist profiles and essays have been published by i-D, Billboard, Grammy.com, and The FADER, among others. His creative writing has been published in The Ghost City Review. Before the COVID-19 pandemic he could be found in one of the many music venues throughout New York City. Now you'll find him stomping his way across the state in his hiking boots.