Number 17 was on the first block off Livermore, in the same position as our house, the fifth building up from the corner on the west side of the street. The dark green paint left long scabs where it had peeled off, and a network of cracks split the remaining paint. All the shades had been drawn. I left the car unlocked and went up the steps while the old couple sitting outside on the neighboring porch watched me over their newspapers.
I pushed the bell. Rusting mesh hung in the frame of the screen door. No sound came from inside the house. I tried the bell again and then knocked on the screen door. Then I opened the screen door and hit my fist against the wooden door. Nothing. "Hello, is anybody home?" I hit the door a few more times.
"Nobody's at home in there," a voice called.
The old man on the neighboring porch had folded his newspaper across his lap, and both he and his wife were eyeing me expressionlessly. "Do you know when they'll be back?"
"You got the wrong house," he said. His wife nodded.
"This is the right address," I said. "Do you know the people who live here?"
"Well, if you say it's the right house, keep on pounding."
I walked to the end of the porch. The old man and his wife were no more than fifteen feet away from me. He was wearing a faded old plaid shirt buttoned up tight against the cords in his neck. "What are you saying, no one lives here?"
"You could say that." His wife nodded again.
"Is it empty?"
"Nope. Don't think it's empty."
"Nobody's home, mister," his wife said. "Nobody's ever home."
I looked from husband to wife and back again. It was a riddle: the house wasn't empty, but nobody was ever home. "Could I come over and talk to you?"
He looked at his wife. "Depends on who you are and what you want to talk about."
I told them my name and saw a trace of recognition in the man's face. "I grew up right around the corner, on South Sixth. Al Underhill was my father."
"You're Al Underhill's boy?" He checked with his wife. "Come on up here."
When I got up onto their porch, the old man stood and held out his hand. "Frank Belknap. This is the wife, Hannah. I knew your father a little bit. I was at Glax thirty-one years, welding. Sorry we can't give you a chair."
I said that was fine and leaned against the railing.
"How about a glass of lemonade? We got August in the middle of June, now that the politicians poisoned the weather."
I thanked him, and Hannah got up and moved heavily through the door.
"If your father's still alive and kicking, tell him to drop in sometime, chew the fat. I was never one of the old Idle Hour gang, but I'd like to see Al again." Frank Belknap had worked thirty-one years in the purposeful, noisy roughhouse of the factory, and now he spent all day on the porch with his wife.
I told him that my father had died a few years ago. He looked resigned.
"Most of that bunch died," he said. "What brings you to the place next door?"
"I'm looking for a man that used to live there."
Hannah came back through the door, carrying a green plastic tray with three tall glasses filled with ice and lemonade. I had the feeling that she had been waiting to hear what I was after. I took a glass and sipped. The lemonade was cold and sweet.
"Dumkys lived there," she said, and held the tray out to her husband.
"Them, all their kids, and a couple of brothers."
"Dumkys rented." Hannah took her seat again. "You like the lemonade?"
"It's very good."
"Make up a fresh jug every morning, stays cold all day long."
"It was one of the Dumkys you wanted?"
"I was looking for the man that used to own the house, Bob Bandolier. Do you remember him?"
Frank cocked his head and regarded me. He took a slow sip of the lemonade and held it in his mouth before swallowing. He was not going to say anything until I told him more.
"Bandolier was the manager at the St. Alwyn for a long time."
"That right?"
I wasn't telling him anything he didn't know.
"My father worked there, too, for a while."
He turned his head to look at his wife. "Al Underhill worked at the hotel for a while. Knew Mr. Bandolier."
"Well, well. Guess he would have."
"That would have been before Al came to the plant," Frank said to me.
"Yes. Do you know where I could find Bandolier?"
"Couldn't tell you," Frank said. "Mr. Bandolier wasn't much for conversation."
"Dumkys rented furnished," Hannah said.
"So Mr. Bandolier moved out and left his furniture behind?"
"That's what the man did," said Frank. "Happened when Hannah and me were up at our cottage. Long time ago. Nineteen seventy-two, Hannah?"
Hannah nodded.
"We came back from vacation, there were the Dumkys, every one of them. Dumkys weren't very neighborly, but they were a lot more neighborly than Mr. Bandolier. Mr. Bandolier didn't encourage conversation. That man would look right through you."
"Mr. Bandolier dressed like a proper gentleman, though. A suit and tie, whenever you saw him. When he did work in his garden, the man put on an apron. Kept his sorrows inside himself, and you can't fault him for that."
"Mr. Bandolier was a widower," Frank said. "We heard that from old George Milton, the man I bought this house from. Had a wife who died two-three years before we moved in. I suppose she used to keep things quiet for him."
"The man liked quiet. He'd be firm, but not rude."
"And his upstairs tenants, the Sunchanas, were nice folks, foreigners, but nice. We didn't really know them either, of course, no more than to say hello to. Sunchanas stuck to themselves."
"Talked a little bit funny," Frank said. "Foreign. She was one pretty woman, though."
"Would they know how I could get in touch with Mr. Bandolier?"
The Belknaps smiled at each other. "Sunchanas didn't get on with Mr. Bandolier," Hannah said. "There was bad blood there. The day they moved out, they were packing boxes into a trailer. I came out to say good-bye. Theresa said she hoped she'd never have to see Mr. Bandolier again in all her life. She said they had a tiny little nest egg saved up, and they put a downpayment on a house way on the west side. When Dumkys left, one of the girls told me a young man in a military uniform came around and told them they'd have to pack up and leave. I told her the army didn't act like that in the United States of America, but she wasn't a real intelligent child."
"She didn't know who the soldier was?"
"He just turned up and made them skedaddle."
"There's no sense to it, except that Mr. Bandolier could do things that way," Frank said. "What I thought was, Mr. Bandolier wanted to live there by himself, and he got some fellow to come along and scare off his tenants. So I reckoned we'd be seeing Mr. Bandolier back here. Instead, the place stayed empty ever since. Mr. Bandolier still owns it, I believe—never saw a FOR SALE sign on the place."
I thought about it for a moment while I finished my lemonade. "So the house has been empty all this time? Who cuts the grass?"
"We all do, taking turns."
"You've never seen that soldier the Sunchanas told you about?"
"No," Frank said.
"Well," Hannah said.
"Oh, that old foolishness."
"You have seen him?"
"Hannah didn't see anything."
"It might not have been a soldier," Hannah said. "But it isn't just foolishness, either."
I asked her what she had seen, and Frank made a disgusted noise.
Hannah pointed at him. "He doesn't believe me because he never saw him. He goes to sleep at nine every night, doesn't he? But it doesn't matter if he believes me, because I know. I get up in the middle of the night, and I saw him."