This story takes place in Homeville, Virginia where my new book Gone on Sunday takes place. It is a story from my childhood, but recently, when I got together with family, I found out more details about this fiery adventure. Ghosts were often rumored to haunt the house, and now a friend tells me that bees are a sure sign of haunting spirits. After this story, you'll conclude the house in Homeville needs an exorcism!
We lived in an old two story plantation house built in 1830. There were fireplaces on each side of the house, on the first and second floor. Bees (spirits?) made a nest in the unused fireplace on the second floor of my parents room. My mother was deadly allergic to bees, so the hive had to be eliminated. Now, I don't know too much about exterminators in the 1960's except that my grandmother, who lived with us, was dead set against these professionals. Her comments on pesky critters usually addressed by exterminators went as follows.
"In my day, we never paid to get rid of bees or roaches or whatever. We lived with them, or we used borax or lemon oil or we burned them out."
My opinion is, mostly they lived with them. But, in this case, it was resolved that, since the bees were in a fireplace, they could be burned out. My mother was super committed because of her fear of dying from a bee sting (reasonable, but, then so is an exterminator).
So, all I remember is the fire, that it got out of control, and that I thought it was the fire that burned up the original Tower Lowe (Eiffel Tower Lowe, my writer namesake.) I learned, however, that the fire was fueled by my brother's favorite comic books (burned up money, he moans today). Every time he complained, my mother apparently shouted the irrelevance of comics and said, "We'll burn everything we can get out hands on." To which I say:
e-x-t-e-r-m-i-n-a-t-o-r
Not surprisingly, as my mother got more desperate, the fire got more out of control. Both my brothers were sent outside to make sure the house didn't catch on fire. As I recall, I was being kept out of the bedroom in the hallway, listening to the panic and hearing the roar of the fire.
What happened.? Well, the bees were driven away and the house didn't burn down. Next, the fireplace was blocked and is still blocked to this day.
Everyone involved had the incident burned into their memory, pardon the pun. Maybe a few of the spirits took off, but I'll tell you, the last time I slept in that bedroom, with my two little children, my daughter woke up and said,
"Momma, there are other people here in this room. I can hear them."
And that, folks, is more mysterious than New Mexico.
