Doing outhouses
News
Posted By Sharon Lynch
Posted 2 months ago
I WONDER WHAT WE HAVE HERE, Sarah thought to herself as an expensively-dressed woman entered the store. One shoulder peeked above a silky top. Smooth tanned legs in tailored walking shorts ended with pedicured toes and sandals like brown butter. Around her neck a generous necklace of freshwater pearls were roped like the Milky Way. She did not look like someone who might don laceless old runners, an ancient t-shirt and ripped shorts to paint the wood shed.
That had been Sarah's attire the day before. Trying to get as much done as possible before working her shift at her grandparents' gift shop, she had chosen practicality over fashion. Besides working in the shop, she was being paid for the many odd jobs her aging relatives struggled to complete. They were giving her free accommodation so she could save for her return to university in the fall.
Now, standing behind the counter she watched the potential customer wander around the shop, picking up an odd item for a closer look and scanning the walls for anything that might catch her eye. Sarah tried to imagine her in the painting clothes and had to stifle a chuckle at the thought. She composed herself just in time as the woman made her way to where Sarah stood.
"Do you have a washroom I could use?" she asked. Was it Sarah's imagination or did the woman seem to be looking down her nose at Sarah? The washroom question was frequently posed and Sarah's reply was always the same.
"No but we have an outhouse, fully equipped just out that door and down a short path."
The woman looked at Sarah for the briefest moment, as though not quite believing what she had heard. "I don't do outhouses," she told Sarah at the same time turning and heading for the door. And then she was gone, in a flash of chrome and shiny black SUV.
Pity she doesn't do outhouses, noted Sarah silently. She's missing out.
Sarah thought the shop's outhouse was one of the best she'd ever seen. Besides receiving a good sweep over all its surfaces every morning, the outhouse boasted a batik canopy covering the old rafters, several large art posters on the walls, and an exotic-looking shelf sporting an arrangement of toilet paper, hand sanitizers and whimsical reading material. A gentle breeze always seemed to find its way through the screens and the only smell was the cedar boughs that hid it from the hot summer sun.
Straightening the tea towels and candles to their former places, Sarah mused philosophically. Outhouses are like anything else in this world, she decided. Treat them with care and thought and they will repay you by making your life more pleasant. True, she had visited some truly horrendous outhouses in her life. But then, she had also seen bathrooms where she had hesitated to set foot and kitchens that hinted at horrors under the sink.
For Sarah, outhouses were places of peaceful contemplation. She remembered her father, son of these grandparents, retiring with his cigarettes and Time magazine to the outhouse almost every morning after breakfast. This was at the cottage where indoor plumbing was a luxury only enjoyed in the last few years. But they kept the outhouse and she was willing to bet her dad still made the odd trip to it still.
The first time her heart was broken by a summer romance, Sarah went to the outhouse and sobbed secretly until the hurt was wrung out. There used to be a stack of ancient comic books, damp from the forest air, that she could pick at while sitting in the outhouse and be immediately transported back to the age she had been when she had bought them.
Away from the sounds of the lake, she had been able to hear red squirrels chattering, crickets squeaking in the tall weeds or a distant hawk circling high above them all. It had been the last place anyone looked when they wanted her to do a chore or run an errand. Cool and shadowy, it had been the final place she visited at night and the first in the morning. She saw the stars scattered above the trees and the pink glow staining the eastern horizon. If she hadn't had an outhouse, she might have missed these sights.
But Sarah did outhouses. Always had and always would.
