"Finder's Keepers

"Hello."

It was her son calling. He was always buying something he found for some great deal and she thought this was no different, because in the most matter-of-fact voice, he told her that he had just bought a hoarder's house to flip.

"A real horader's house?" She asked, laughing a little and then just grossed out at the prospect of cleaning out endless mounds of debris. A long time ago she watched one episode of "Hoarders" on television and was so grossed out- and so profoundly sad- she never again watched another episode.

"Yeah," he continued, '''want to check it out for the experience?" He laughed a little, "that might happen to you with your book collecting." He laughed again and added, "you might find something valuable there." He gave her the address.

"You can go there anytime, we're bringing the dumpster next week."

That evening, as she was brushing her teeth, she glanced at herself in the mirror.

"Yep," she told her reflection, "that's just what a seventy year old woman who collects old books needs for excitement. What else is there? No man, no pets, no more young body, just gray hair and a horribly wrinkled old face." She inspected her face and muttered to the reflection,"even the damn ear lobes are wrinkled, ugh!'

Frances- Fran- what she had been called all her life, woke early as usual the next morning. She didn't bother to put on make-up or comb her hair. She put a cap over her short, straight, graying hair and sat the kitchen table in the small house that smelled of moth balls and Ben Gay because sometime her shoulder hurt and the moth balls kept away exotic moths that might eat her exotic wool clothes that she didn't own, and the Ben Gay kept the men away, of which there were none. No man would be interested in an old woman who smelled of Ben Gay and maybe moth balls, she acknowledged to herself many times. Fran picked up the paper with the scribbled address.

"So what else is an old woman to do on this day except go dig in the graveyard of some person's neurotic tendencies," she thought to herself, or maybe she said it out-loud, as lately she had been prone to do.

The house was across town. The bulging garage doors held back monstrous mounds of things, some colorful things creeping into the open spaces, straining like a caged animal to escape into the freedom of the tall grass in the yard. The windows were shuttered, as if their eyes were squeezed tight to not allow the light of day to shine on the hidden-and discarded.

Her son told her the house would be unlocked, but now she hesitated at the door.

"I don't know," she thought, or maybe she said it out-loud. She glanced back at her car, as if seeking assurance it was still there in case she needed to quickly escape. She took a deep breath and opened the front door.

It was worse than she expected and almost turned to leave, but unexpectedly she felt drawn to the chaos, to perhaps three feet of junk, of stuff, that covered what was once the living room floor. It was one huge monster. The monster had overtaken the floor and had grown fatter and fatter and it filled up all the corners of the room.

Standing there, almost dazed at the monstrosity, Fran's eyes tried to pull apart the piences, to make sense of it... an empty Cracker Jack box, discarded Dairy Queen Blizzard cups, wrapping tissue from hamburgers, empty plastic tubs, endless pieces of paper that once had meaning, now held together in the grip of a monster trash pile. The only useful object there was a box filled with locks, very much out of place in the junk. This monster had no gender, she surmised as she surveyed it, instead it craved discarded food containers.

Fran stepped into the next level, up to the back of the monster. It moved ever so slightly, and it startled her. A smell, which she couldn't discern, but not terrribly repulsive, drifted to her nose. She wished she had covered her mouth and nose. She took another step. In the distance, she saw doorways that maybe led to a kitchen or a bedroom but the sheer volume of stuff seemed to be endless. Another step. The smell assulted her senses and crawled into her nostrils. She covered her nose with the shirt she was wearing and took another step. The monster beneath her quivered slightly.

She looked back, the front door was still open and a sudden gust of wind blew loose papers around her.

"Damn!" She thought, and didn't say it out-loud because she didn't want her voice to wake the monster under her tennis shoes, but she didn't think of that until later.

Fran glanced down to her feet. Under her left foot was a black notebook, perhaps six inches wide and five inches long. It was as if someone had recently tossed it there for her to find, but she didn't think of that until later.

She bent down to pick up the notebook and a roach sped across it. "Ugh," she thought as she picked up the notebook, "there must be something really dirty inside," and despite it all, she smiled a little at her own joke and turned to leave.

"That's enough," she said, as if she had found her purpose for coming and had no desire to search for more.

Sitting in the driver's seat of her car and feeling as if everything now was very much normal, Fran picked up the black notebook from the passengers' seat where she had tossed it, suddenly and intensively curious what was written inside. She cleaned the black cover with a sanitizer wipe. The notebook looked old, but not worn. The padded cover reminded her of the family Bible. The first page was blank, so was the second page. She expected to see a notebook filled with names and phone numbers, contact logs of friends and lovers and was a little disappointed at the blank pages.

The third page had a single single word centered in the middle of the page.

Exist

Fran turn the page, another single word.

Side

Intrigued, she quickly thumbed through the notebook. The pages were randomly filled with single words, and in the most interesting page locations. The black notebook became a challenge.

Fran drove back to her house, hardly noticing the traffic or that it had turned cooler. She left her purse in the car, as sometimes she was known to do, and brought in the black notebook. At her door, she remembered the purse and strugged her shoulders, "Nothing in there anyway," and walked into the house.

She made a cup of hot Earl Gray tea and sat at the kitchen talbe, perplexed as she thumbed through the pages again and again. Some words were written vertically, horizontally, some diagonally, and yet others were backwards. She flipped through the pages again and again.

Suddenly it dawned on her and she yelled to herself, as she was known to do, "A PUZZLE!"

Invigorated by the challenge, Fran tore off a clean page from her yellow notebook pad and wrote the series of words:

Exist

Of

Under

nights

into

evil

Until

days

light

open

x

Good

side

Side

the (three times)

cover

Release

Dark

pried

and (twice)

days

light.

to

The sun was already setting and Fran realized she had only coffee that morning and the hot tea, yet she couldn't pull herself away from the jumble of words in the black notebook, like the jumble of stuff, of things, of logic, in the hoarder's house.

Finally, her head pounding from a major headache, she made herself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and another cup of hot tea. She returned to the table again, and felt the words were glaring at her , mocking her, and even daring her to solve the meaning of the words. She took another sip of tea, which had grown cold, and reached for her sandwich. It was gone. She had already eaten it.

"Well, damn!" Fran said to herself and then laughed at the absurdly of it all.

By midnight, even the eye drops didn't soothe the burning in her eyes.

"Well, forget it! " she said aloud, and crawled into bed without putting on her pajamas or brushing her teeth, which she would never do.

Suddenly,as if she had been struck by a lightning bolt, she jumped out of bed and looked again at the list of random words. Capital letters! Some words began with a capital letter, others began with a lower case letter. She grabbed another sheet of paper and began writing again:

Exist

Until

Under

Side

Into

Release

Dark

Good

Then using the list, she wrote again:

Exist

Until (what?) pried open

Side x side

Under (what?) cover of ?

Into (what? ) light?

Release (what?) the good? the bad?

Dark (what?) days? nights?

Good (and evil?)

By midnight, the pile of papers on the kitchen table had grown, the tablecloth buried under the discarded papers.

"Glory Hallelujah!" Fran threw up her hands and then read the words under her breath, almost reverently:

Under the cover of

Dark days and nights

Good and evil

Exist

Side x side

Until pried open to

Release the good

Into the light.

Fran held the book to her chest, jubilant at solving the puzzle, but now the black notebook felt heavier and she looked closely at the cover. She noticed tiny stitching on one side, and a loose thread on one end. She tugged on it, and like a feed sack from her childhood memories, the sides came open to reveal money. Lots of it. She counted it. Twenty thousand dollars. She showered, brushed her teeth, put on her pajamas and went to bed.

Fran phoned her son in the morning and told him about finding the black notebook and the money and told him she would bring it to him so he could return it to the owner.

"It's yours", he said. The past owner, who was not the hoarder, said he know something valuable was there and it belonged to the house- and the new owner.

By the time summer came around, Fran had a complete make-over with a new hairstyle, a new wardrobe, and seven bottles of very expensive perfume, one for each day of the cruise with her son and his wife.