A short story by Rick Van Noy

Rick Van Noy is the author of four books, including Borne by the River: Canoeing the Delaware from Headwaters to Home (Cornell 2024) and Sudden Spring: Stories of Adaptation in a Climate-Changed South (Georgia 2019). He is a professor of English at Radford University. 

(Photos, by Rick Van Noy, show abandoned homes in rural areas of Virginia.)

Trespassing

It started by driving around, wanting to see the area. I have lived here for 26 years, but there are corners and hollows I had yet to explore. Then, as the road turned more rugged and gravely, dust kicking up in the rearview mirror, I’d see an old one, faded clapboards, in various states of leaning and decay. 

The double-hung windows are dusty or broken and it’s just the frames, mortise hanging on to tenon. Sash weights lie heavy on the floor. The porch sags, or the roof does, if it’s still there. Paint peels, or the siding has weathered to rot. Half a length of gutter hangs off. How is the chimney? Leaning, the points tucked? And the foundation. Is it solid or was the structure built on loose field stone — try some of that.  

Other questions abound. Mainly, who lived here, and why did they leave? Why especially did they leave something that at one time, and even now, seemed so good. 

I’m an instructor of history at the local community college, so I can dig around in archives, old deeds and plat maps. But often these records provide nothing other than a name, no other background or details.

Then I started to take pictures, because there is a strange beauty in this decay. A way to honor what was there. I learned about photography for the project I wrote about local grist mills. They are all over this area. When it came out, my friends joked that stock in sleeping pill medication plummeted.

I wanted to place photos in the book and asked a colleague who teaches photography at the college, Jessie, for help. She told me about composing the shot into thirds, about the principles of contrast, rhythm, and balance. How an object, like a water wheel, will direct you through the frame. I bought books on photography, but then I was reading the books rather than taking pictures. One quoted a Nabokov story to say that a photograph could be among “kindly mirrors of future times,” where “every trifle of our plain everyday life will become exquisite.”

I don’t know if I am preserving something exquisite, but I do want to capture them as they are. I’ve re-visited some a year later and their condition has worsened greatly. I wish I had started this years ago and could document the changes. 

Pretty soon, it wasn’t enough to take only pictures of the outside, I had to go in. I test creaky floorboards, not wanting to disturb anything, or fall through. Sometimes, a bird will fly out and I duck. Barn swallows I think, blue and tawny. I have yet to find bats, but I think there are probably bats. For sure there are pebbled turds.  

Once I found a couch, mostly springs and no ticking. Maybe it was too heavy to take when they left. There was a blanket on it too, but a strange odor of mustiness and rot. That could have come from somewhere else in the house, but I had to see — what was under the blanket? I pulled it slowly away with a piece of lathe I pulled from the wall. Nothing but more dust and dirt.

I’m not the only one with this fascination. Someone brought in candles and burned them on the floor. Or they set them up in the chimney if less careless — wouldn’t want to burn these places down. It looks like they might have come in and had a picnic of sorts, taking the glasses but leaving the bottle behind. I picture a newer blanket laid out on the floor, lovers sharing the evening.

I drive and go where the roads take me, liking their names: Goldenrod, Big Branch, Scagg’s Ford, Higgs Bottom, which reminds me of Higgs boson, and it can feel like stepping into some quark or black hole. The old schools interest me too, like the one on Kelley’s School Road. Who was Kelley, or the Higgses for that matter, the Scaggses, who overlooked the shallow crossing in the river?  

Being a historian, I could probably find out more, but I’m on the downslope of a career. I loved getting into the tiny details of history, the public records and old letters, but too many people seemed more interested the facts they wanted to see rather than the ones right in front of us. Once when reading the letters from a woman during the Civil War, writing about some flickering at the edges perception, her mystical visions, a student said that sounded like schizophrenia.

I said that seemed anachronistic, and that not everything needs to be pathologized or labeled — some things are just inexplicable. The student complained to my chair that I was playing “devil’s advocate,” but I thought that was my job.

I don’t like trespassing if someone lives nearby. I don’t want to get shot after all. So sometimes I just ask. Often, you see something like a temporary house set down near the old home. I saw a group sitting out, drinking beer after a day in the fields.

“What’s with that place up there? Is it yours? Was it in your family?”   

“It’s just an old farmhouse,” they said. Nothing more.

I’ve used my bike to sneak up on places, as if they are resting quietly. Then I slink inside, look around. Does anything shine or glint or is it all dust? A piece of tin roofing will flap, startle me. It sounds like someone is on the roof. I think of tucking it in somehow. There are other fixes I would like to make before it’s too late. Something to prop up that porch, before it tilts forward, falls over. Straighten the window frame so the glass doesn’t break. Sweep out the fallen plaster. Nail down this tread and you could use these stairs. 

The stairs are next level, and I can sometimes tell if I’ll tempt them before I even go inside. What condition is the roof in? If not whole, the second floor is not either. But several times, I have climbed the stairs slowly. I take each tread carefully, so as not to make a sound, like sneaking home after curfew.

I like to photograph them after I’ve gone in. I feel like I know them better after I do, and then they can sit for their portrait.

Some are very historical, especially the old ones cut from timbers, dovetailed at the corner. Sometimes, the rocks they used for chinking are still there. These might deserve some kind of roadside plaque — the Morrow Family lived here from 1820 until . . . Like the one about the stockcar driver who ran moonshine on these roads before getting paid to drive. When caught with bags of sugar, he would say he was making apple butter.

But that would require documentation, an application to the Historical Resources board, landowner approval. Again, I’m on the downslope of a career, no longer seeking plaques or awards myself. I got one for 25 years — hollow recognition. Congrats, you hung on for that long.

If there is furniture, I have a developed a rule to test it, no matter how rickety. I sit on dusty, wobbly chairs. Why were they left behind? No need to sit in the new place? Once I sat on an old sofa and something scurried out from underneath. I have no idea what. It looked like a marten, bigger than a squirrel.

When they’re in rough shape, I leave them go, maybe not even worth a picture — too advanced in the decaying process. They need some privacy to live out their days among the cedars and saplings. 

If in good shape, I have to decide. Are there any cars in the yard? I might edge up to a window, or knock softly or say hello. What would I say if they responded? That I’m a historian doing research. I won’t go in if they’re locked, rule #2. Or if there is evidence of people. 

Once I went inside one where the door was unlocked but the place was in decent if weathered condition, and I poked around for a good while. The people left behind a collection of old soda bottles and mason jars. I was turning them over, watching them catch the afternoon light, when I heard wheels crunch the gravel driveway. 

Now I wanted to be that animal scurrying away. My gut dropped, bringing up a tangy taste in my throat. I peered out and saw a pick-up truck, an old powder blue Ford. The owner must have already made it to the back, where I was also headed. Should I go up? Hide? I had that locked-in feeling when I was younger, certain to be punished.

“Hey man, you can’t be in here,” the voice said. 

I hesitated. How did he know I was in here? Was there still time to run?

“Hello,” I said. “Sorry, do you live here?” I walked around from what must have been the living room to the kitchen in the back. I try to draw on my years of living in rural places to lilt just so, sounding native. I kicked some of that aw-shucks golly into gear. “I was driving past and was just so curious of this here place. Yours?” I hit a higher note. 

His graying beard grew thick around the mouth, tobacco stained. He wore loose jeans and a dirty, oily T-shirt under an unbuttoned flannel. The mouth opened while the eyes narrowed.

“No I don’t live here but neither do you. What the hell are you doing here?”  

I had my camera around my head. So I gestured to it.

“We didn’t ask for no pictures. You might want to get going.”

“Whose place is this?” I had to ask.

“It was my mother’s. Maybe someday mine. But it sure as hell ain’t yours. Nor does it need to be in a photograph.” His eyes glared under a hat brim. “I could have you arrested for trespassing.” 

I had seen signs in town, smile you’re on camera, or If you can read this, you’re in range. I was pretty sure there had to be warning before I could be arrested, but I never actually looked this up. He leaned against the door frame, blocking the obvious way out. Nice wood trim there, though it needed paint. “I heard you pullin’ up. We don’t get much traffic through here.” Where was he when he heard? Rule #3: Never park in front of the house.

He wanted me out but also wanted me to stay and talk. Derek Foltz had taken mostly odd jobs as a carpenter until he fell off ladder, damaged his hip, which explained the limp. He couldn’t get hired by anyone else because he did time back in the 80s for possession, back when the penalties were stiffer. He seemed to appreciate my project, but didn’t want to foster it either. He lived in town and took care of his mother. When I said I’d be on my way, he grew hostile again as I motioned to go, stepping out of the door frame. “You can’t be in here, man.” And I let myself out as if a Sunday visitor.

In those that look bad, I half expect either to collapse into the crawlspace or be crushed by a ceiling. But the risk is worth it. Like drugs or gambling, photographing old buildings leads to harder and harder stuff.

I only court the old ones, the forgotten beauties with gables and dormers. The single-floor ranches are too plain. Give me style. A second-floor porch. A hip roof. Occasionally, a bungalow will grab me. The ones with ponds are special, but the ponds, they are filling in. I had wanted a pond on our place, but here again bought books to learn how rather than dig the hole.

If there’s a disconnected wire panel, a sure sign the place has been left. I could always ask permission, but I better capture the soul of the structure if if I sneak in on my own.

I skip the old farms, where there just are too many parts and rusted farm equipment. Tractors go there to die. Probably the dreams of farming and making a life do too. At one, there’s an old silo-like feeder that looks like a grounded rocket. People made a living here, or tried to. If the houses are occupied, it is hard to say what they do. New people seem to have moved here for the quiet. Some are retired and probably just look out on the dewy blue ridges.

I’m heading that way myself, but this keeps me busy. You might even say it consumes me. Sometimes, when I’m leaving a place, after I’ve turned around to take my pictures, I have a brief sensation that I’m in the time when the place thrived. Happier days when the people strolled the grounds, planted daffodils.

In the fall, I taste gnarled apples and I almost get a glimpse of a picnic on the lawn, a tablecloth linen spread out. They are posing for their portraits by the tree, dressed in white dresses. Cleaned sheets sail in the wind. Or those visions are crossed with my own memories, blurred like grainy photographs, as with stuff tossed into an old building, stored yet readily recalled. Those once precious days are a bow in the tread whose creak I can still hear.

So much let go, with little thought that it might be someday sag in the evening sun. Sometimes I step away and the house is staring back at me. With vines spilling out the windows, the farmhouse looks like it is weeping. 

Rick Van Noy is the author of four books, including Borne by the River: Canoeing the Delaware from Headwaters to Home (Cornell 2024) and Sudden Spring: Stories of Adaptation in a Climate-Changed South (Georgia 2019). He is a professor of English at Radford University.