Unicorn Holler
The Land Trust didn’t want it; few friends could fathom why I did. Poor house…forlorn and crooked, most every window boarded up. I could almost feel it cringe as trucks whizzed by incessantly on the way-too-close four-lane, 441.
I checked it out alone at first, and as I inched my way over sagging floors, I wondered what the hell I’d come for. I saw walls cobbled together with unmatched lumber. I saw snake skins and mouse turds and things I didn’t want to know from. I glimpsed the bathroom only once: It encouraged me to “hold it.”
But I sensed a house that someone’d scrimped and saved for, who’d used whatever he could find to build. I sensed a house that once had room to breathe, before the widened road encroached, before those speeding trucks swallowed every ounce of air. I sensed too that James could work some magic, but I wasn’t sure what he would think. I should have known that he’d relate to the soul who’d built it, and that he’d make sure it would be saved.
Now that house sits high above a country road with wildlife and a few cars passing by. It still has its endearing quirks, but there’s a new upstairs and a cozy screened porch and a wide, open one to welcome you. Now it’s full of art and books and window sills spilling over with succulents. There’s a happy cat and two people I love, and I am so, so glad that James and I gave that crooked little house a brand new home.