The Tilting House (12 page)
Authors: Tom Llewellyn
W
E’D LOOKED EVERYWHERE
for our bikes. The longer we looked for them, the more convinced we became that the Purple Door Man had stashed them in his house.
The sky was clear and blue, but Aaron and I sat in the living room flipping from TV channel to TV channel. Finally, after watching one lousy show after another for about two hours, we grew desperate enough to shut off the TV. We were arguing on the porch about what to do when Lola walked over and stood at the bottom of our front steps. “Who the heck is Tilton anyway?”
“Huh?” I said.
“Tilton,” said Lola, gesturing at the sign next to our front door. “Your sign says ‘Tilton House.’ And Aaron said Tilton taught the Dagas how to speak all those languages. Who is Tilton?”
“I don’t know. I guess he’s the guy who built this house.”
Lola sat next to me. “He must be the one that stayed inside all those years. I wonder if there’s some way we could find out more about him,” she said.
We’d never found anything that mentioned Tilton other than the sign on the porch.
“Maybe we could look in the attic,” Aaron said.
“No way!” I said. “I’m not going back up there.”
“I know where we need to look,” said Lola, “and so do you. We need to open up that metal box.”
“But we’ve tried a million times,” Aaron said.
“What we need is an expert,” said Lola. “Someone sneaky.”
“We need Mr. Daga,” I said suddenly. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it before.
“The rat?” asked Lola. “Can I meet him?”
“You
want
to?”
“Yes, Josh Peshik, I want to meet him.”
We took Lola with us over to the Dagas’ house. We had a routine we went through when we visited them. We’d usually bring a gift of food with us, like a hotdog or a cup of Cheerios. We would knock on the door and then announce ourselves. If they wanted to see us, they would open the door.
This time the door opened and Mr. Daga waved up at us with one paw, absently rubbing his hairless belly with the other. His house smelled so bad, it was hard to breathe. “What’s up, little Peshik?” he said. “Is that a hotdog I smell?” I set the hot dog on the floor.
“Who’s your lady friend?” asked Mr. Daga.
“This is Lola,” I said. “She’s our neighbor. She’s okay.”
“Why’s she plugging her nose like that?”
I slapped Lola’s hand down and frowned at her. She forced a close-lipped smile and cautiously followed Aaron and me inside.
Since the Dagas had moved in, they’d done a lot of decorating, rat-style. That meant piles: piles of chewed-up toilet paper, piles of chewed-up newspaper, piles of rat poop, and squirming piles of baby rats, all tumbling over one another, looking for something to chew on.
“You sure have a lot of kids, Mr. Daga,” said Aaron.
“Tell me about it. Heck, these days I’ve even got a lot of grandkids. Maybe even some great-grandkids. Who knows? I can barely keep up with all of ’em. Sometimes I think your dad had the right idea, with just the two of you. But Mrs. Daga—she always wanted a big family.”
We told Mr. Daga about our problem with the metal box. “Sounds like something I could help you with,” he said. His tiny eyes grew bright and his whiskers twitched from side to side. “Let’s have a look-see.”
We set the box down on the floor. Mr. Daga’s little shoulders slumped when he saw it. “Awww, that old thing? Nothing’s in there but an old picture and some scribbling.”
“You mean you’ve looked in this box before?”
“Course I have, kid. If it was in your house, I’ve seen it. That box was up in the attic, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve opened it a bunch of times. Every so often, one of my kids would come across it and think they found something new. They’d always bug me to open it for them. I can unlock it with my eyes closed.”
“Could you unlock it for us, Mr. Daga?” asked Lola.
“Sure, but like I said, there’s not much in it.”
Mr. Daga walked up to the metal box and stuck one of his paws into the keyhole. He reached in all the way to his shoulder, then strained and grunted and grimaced as he pushed and pulled on some unseen gear. Suddenly, we heard a click. Mr. Daga smiled and withdrew his arm.
“There you go, kids. Knock yourselves out. Now if you all will excuse me, I think I hear the wife calling. For all I know, she’s busting out a few more babies.”
The thought of Mrs. Daga busting out babies chased us out the door and down the stairs. We took the box up to our room and set it on the bottom bunk.
The bottom drawer now slid open easily. Inside, we found an old black-and-white photograph of a woman’s face. The corners of the photo were rounded off with tiny bite marks. Mr. Daga and his kids had clearly looked at the photo more than once. The woman in the picture had round, dark eyes, long lashes, and pursed, shiny lips. Her black hair was tied back with a scarf. The photo was signed in a flowing, girlish hand. It said, “Take a piece of my heart” and was signed only with a single letter:
M
.
“She’s beautiful,” said Lola, her hand going to her hair. “I wonder who she is.”
Under the photo lay a thin notebook. When we pulled it out of the drawer, tiny crumbs of paper fell out of it. Its old cover was brown cardboard, colored and textured to give it the look and feel of leather. The word
Journal
was printed across the front. Like the photo, the corners of the book were rounded by tiny teeth marks, and the bottom third of the cover was missing completely. I opened the journal carefully and examined the contents.
The first ten pages were covered with a shakier version of the same slanting, spidery script on the walls of our house. The rest of the book was blank.
“What does it say?” asked Aaron, trying to get a look.
I held the journal away from him.
“Why don’t you read it aloud, Peshik?” said Lola.
“Okay, okay. No need to get impatient.”
With that, I began to read the following aloud:
I am dying. If not today, then soon. I have no heirs. If you find this book, try to think upon my remains with mercy
.
I, Francis Theodore Tilton, was born in 1909, to Henry and Charlene Tilton in Brooklyn, New York. I was a healthy child but for one thing: My left leg was three inches shorter than my right
.
My father was a kind and good-natured man and a watchmaker of some renown. I spent many hours at his side, playing with the tiny gears. I made my first working clock when I was seven. My father expressed his pride in my achievement and encouraged my natural abilities
.
When I was a boy, Father would create elaborate treasure hunts for me, using the hands of a clock as directional clues. The treasure was always something small—a tool, a carved bit of wood—but the game was a favorite of mine. If you’ve found this letter, you may be familiar with the game, too
.
My mother, a beautiful dark-haired woman with a fiery temper, was my protector and defender. She refused to acknowledge that my uneven legs were a weakness. Thanks to her constant pushing, I excelled in school. I joined the track team and won first place ribbons in the discus and shot put, sports where my shorter leg made it easier to spin my body quickly and powerfully
.
Mother taught me to think of my defect as a strength. If my unbalanced gait forced me to watch my step to keep from falling, it also led me to find things on the ground—coins, buttons, old keys. Mother helped me start an extensive coin collection and encouraged my collecting by purchasing rare coins for me
.
Do I deny that I was bright? Of course not! I was a genius! I was smarter than any of my classmates and all of my teachers. School was a silly pastime. My childhood friend? Science. I spent my days happily—or at least enthusiastically—in my home, performing electrical and chemical experiments and designing elaborate machinery. Our home was known around our corner of Brooklyn for the mysterious smells that often emanated from it, as well as the occasional explosion. Once I turned our old house cat, Matilda, bright blue with a mixture of oxides. On another occasion I made her disappear entirely by—oh, but that is a tale I have told elsewhere
.
All in all, I had a satisfactory childhood. The only trouble I experienced was my own doing, for I had little control
over my wicked temper. All my life, it’s been the cause of my grief
.
I recall one incident in particular, when a young ruffian named Snark made a comment about my crooked posture in front of a young lady I admired. I waited for Snark after school and called him out and when he approached
The rest of this section was missing. The page was badly chewed by the Dagas. We found a few stray bits that mentioned something about “broke his nose” and “the local constable.” The story started in again abruptly at the top of the next page.
and while my mother defended my actions, my father feared that my fighting at school would come to no good. He was convinced I’d be better off with an early entry into adulthood. So in 1926, at the age of seventeen, I entered into an apprenticeship with Hammersly Shipyards in New York City. I had little interest in the work. I’d always pictured myself as a captain of industry or a renowned scientist. But because of my mechanical aptitude, I reached the grade of journeyman machinist in less than a year and then, at eighteen, quit Hammersly to move west, where opportunity was said to abound. I packed up my coin collection, my tools, and my few other belongings and ended up in Tacoma, Washington. It was a bustling port town and the perfect spot to start my small boat-building company, Tilton Boats, with a bit of money from my parents
.
My first commission was for a trawler by a fisherman named
The rest of this page was completely missing, falling under the teeth of the Dagas. We skipped to the top of the next page.
only employee was a skilled carpenter named Lennis. The boat we delivered so far exceeded the expectations of the fisherman that at first the man refused the delivery. He complained that the boat went too fast and that the engine was so quiet that he could not tell when it was running. As far as I know, he never did gain any true appreciation for the craft and for the innovations that filled every square inch of it. When he paid me less than the full amount, I threw the money back in his face and then threw him off the dock into Commencement Bay
.
I worked tirelessly, but the rapid success I had imagined eluded me until one day in 1928 when I went into partnership with a tall, thin Swede named Hanson. He had yellow hair and a reputation for good manners and fine clothes. What he lacked in brilliance, he made up for in charm. In our partnership, he smoothed the way for me with our customers, and I created genius work for him. We joined forces because of a shared frustration with a poorly designed bridge that crossed the Thea Foss Waterway in downtown Tacoma. This rigid, street-level railroad bridge kept all ship traffic blocked from the harbor on the seaward side. Hanson and I took it upon ourselves to design a replacement—a
kind of drawbridge, which we called the Tilton Tilt-Up. The bridge would tilt up on one side and allow nearly all ships to pass through. This opened the waterway to ship traffic and instantly transformed the Thea Foss Waterway into a bustling center of trade
.
On the strength of our bridge design, commissions began to roll in. Despite our youth, Hanson and I became the engineers on numerous projects, from the paving of Pacific Avenue to the Yelm irrigation flume to the installation of the famous totem pole at Fireman’s Park. In a matter of four years, Tilton Engineering, as we called our firm, grew into the leading design firm on all of Puget Sound. I had become the captain of industry that had I always imagined
.
I confess that at the time, I credited my own genius for our success. Looking back, I can see that Hanson was equally responsible. He was a master administrator, and his firm belief in my abilities pushed us forward. I would never have achieved the level of success on my own that the two of us achieved together. I was abrasive. I know it. Few people liked me. Few ever have. And I’ve liked even fewer of them
.
It was Hanson who taught me how to act like a gentleman. It was he who assisted me in the design of my home, Tilton House, which, for a short time, became something of a landmark in our neighborhood. All the floors slope three degrees toward the center to adjust for the shortness of my left leg. As long as I always travel through the house in a
clockwise direction, this slope makes my beloved home the one place where I walk level and where others struggle, unbalanced. Hanson even hired my old employee, Lennis the carpenter, to help with the finishing of the home. Lennis crafted a beautiful porch swing and a dining room set as my first pieces of furniture. I am sitting at the dining room table even now, as I record these facts
.
In spite of my abrasive nature, Hanson and I became local celebrities. The two of us were often called upon to meet visiting dignitaries—politicians, movie stars, singers, and the like. We filled that role for a number of years. That was how we met Mary. She was touring the country to promote what was her final film
, The Primrose Path,
which ran for two weeks at the Pantages Movie Palace. Hanson and I met her train at Union Station, posed for the local newspaper photographers, and then accompanied her to the Alt Heidelberg, a fine restaurant that had just opened
.
At dinner that night, Mary put forth all of her famous charms. Before we were halfway through the appetizers, she had me wrapped around her little finger. Hanson wasn’t far behind. While we were sipping brandy and waiting for dessert, she confessed she was done with Hollywood and had traveled to Tacoma not only to promote her picture, but to find what she called “real love.” It may have been the brandy, but I felt as if Mary were speaking to me when she said this
.
At the end of the evening, I pulled Mary aside and asked her to dinner the following night. She said no, as she had plans, but that she would love to dine with me the evening after that. She did. It was glorious. I drove her back to her room and, on the steps of the Hotel Winthrop, I told her I was in love with her. “Of course you are,” she said, and kissed me on my lips
.
Mary left the next morning to continue her promotional tour. While she was away, she wrote to tell me that