The Hauptmann Residence

The sun has set behind the big old Hauptmann residence, giving it an eery red-pink glow. It's lit with a distinctive collection of blues, pinks, and reds. The oak trees around look slightly bare in the dim light. The house is old, and the paths and surroundings are overgrown and unkempt.

         It is just a house, just another old house in Virginia, Noah told himself. Shining a sunset through the back of it and dressing it in neon blue lights changes nothing. Old houses have mildew, fungus, smells, leaks, and drafts that often make them unlivable. He tried to persuade himself that this house didn't matter, but it had hypnotized him. He knew it contained no ghosts, nor was it the scene of dreadful deeds from bygone years. Nor was it the site of buried treasures beneath its floorboards. Nor did it contain libraries with secrets in old books that would change everything or skeletons in closets that have been hidden for centuries.

         Noah had different reasons for his fascination. He was born in the house and then spiritually born-again, listening to the preaching of the local pastor a decade ago.

         He remembered the grand room inside this house that was used for big parties in another age for the rich and well-connected. While the whites danced the night away, black slaves would serve them. Then came the civil war, and the black slaves became servants, then disappeared, and the house fell into disrepair because the lands around it could no longer be farmed so cheaply as before.

         Ebenezer Hauptmann, an immigrant from Silesia, Germany, bought the house and fixed it up. He had a large family of over ten children, which filled the house with laughter and life for a time. Grandchildren multiplied, and not all of them moved away to other places. Because he had the largest house in his community and they had not yet built a church, his house was where the religious people met on Sunday. The ballroom became a church with a big wooden cross and an altar installed in it. A decade later, the community finally built the Lutheran church down the road, and the hall was no longer needed.

         In the 21st century, the Hauptmann family sold the house and moved on. Noah's own father, Geoffrey Hauptmann, moved out to another place in town as his family grew. Later, a house church bought the place and competed with the liberal Lutherans for the soul of the community. Both churches accused the other of heresies and claimed to be the only safe haven in town for the true believers.

         Noah remembered getting saved in the grand hall of this house in 2012, a decade before. It was the middle of summer then. He remembered the sunlight in Susie Rivers' blonde hair and that radiant smile of hers. She was dressed in a pretty summer dress covered with yellow flowers. She was showing a lot of leg, but buttoned to the neck on top. She led him by the hand into his old home, into that ballroom within, with its fine oak paneling, its big windows, and its great big wooden cross. They sat down for the service on fold-up chairs. The pastor preached a sermon from the book of Romans about how nothing could separate them from the love of God. Noah figured that if God was about love, then since he was a man in love with Susie, he could find no reason to be separated from that. So it was at that service that he walked to the front of the church when the call came to give his life to Christ. She wanted to marry him there and then, so he proposed and even gave her a ring.

         He had joined the military before he met Susie; he went on tour shortly after they got engaged, and the wedding plans were put on hold. He saw action in Afghanistan and was in the special forces for a long time over there and in other places afterward. He became a captain, which is funny if you understand how Hauptmann translates. Effectively his name was Captain Captain. Well, he always found that funny.

         Susie moved on from him to another man, and they lost contact. Then came the worst firefight of his army career, in a place he could not talk about because his unit was not officially there. This brought him back to his senses. He was the only survivor of the twelve-man squad. He got away with just a flesh wound on his left arm. The men in his unit were the best of friends, they had seen too much action together to be anything less, and Noah trusted them with his life. But he saw them die and was powerless to prevent that. Their death moments were deeply imprinted on his mind, and after that battle, his head was no longer in the game.

         He received an honorable discharge and made his way home, and his first thought was Susie. What had become of her now that it was twelve years later? She and Noah were thirty now. He asked around town and found out all sorts of troubling things. She had married the pastor of the church. But later, he went off with the church secretary, and the church and her marriage fell apart. She fell on hard times and was unable to find a job in the town. A nightclub bought the house and turned it into a bar and a brothel. The upstairs floors shone with their own red lights, and it was they that had placed the garish blue neon light over the door. He reflected that it appeared cheap and neglected, like a used-up whore wearing cosmetics. The garden had grown wild; after all, their customers came at night, and darkness hides details and sins like nothing else.

         He knew Susie worked there now, as a barmaid and maybe something more. Well, tonight he will change that. Standing here before this great, big house, he was more scared than at any time in his life. This was not exactly a planned operation, he thought. His plan was simply to march in and then play it by ear. His main objective was to bring her out with him.

         Noah started walking towards the door. He could hear the sounds of laughter, women giggling, and drunken men talking too loudly. The steps on the old wooden staircase creaked as he climbed to the top and the main entrance. The old brass door knocker was still in place, with the face of a dragon, whose jaws snapped shut when you made the knock. The heavy oak door opened, and a big man stood there. He had a shaved head and tattoos on his muscly arms. But his belly was big, and Noah quickly calculated that if it came to a fight, he needed to take out the man's legs first as he would struggle to get back on his feet after that. In practice, he did not betray his martial analysis and smiled at the man, asking,

         "Have you space for one more customer?"

         The man studied the special forces ring that Noah wore and nodded respectfully, letting him in. The main hall was now a coat room, but the night was warm and Noah was in a long-sleeved shirt. He followed the sounds into the main hall. How different it looks now from the days of his childhood and later as a church. Red lights lit the vast hall; tables and chairs were laid out across the expanse of the floor, and there were two bars at either end. Pretty young women in skimpy clothing danced for or sat on the laps of fat older men. Noah could see all sorts of illegal drugs on display, as well as the tattoos of various well-known local gangs. These people were the scum responsible for most of the local crime.

         Noah walked over to the bar and saw Susie. She still had her figure, but she looked drained of life. Now she was a waitress in a tight black outfit that showed too much cleavage and leg and had an excessive amount of black mascara around her eyes. She saw him at around the same time and went red.

         "Hi Susie, I have come to take you home," he said.

         She looked at him with some despair and for a moment he doubted coming. Then behind him as the big doorman approached. The doorman laid a firm hand on Noah's shoulder.

         "She is not going anywhere," the big man said.

         Noah swung violently, sweeping the man's hand away, and then stamped the man's ankle as he twirled around. He followed that with an elbow in the man's face. The man was knocked out cold and fell heavily to the ground. The two men with him drew knives. Noah grabbed the knife arm of the first man and swung the man between himself and the second man, who lunged his knife into his colleague by accident. Noah then let the first man fall, hitting his head against the oak bar, and turned just in time to see a gun being drawn. Noah moved at lightning speed to take the gun. The other gang members were now on their feet, and the girls with them fled in terror. Noah discharged a bullet into the air toward one of the outside walls to avoid killing anyone upstairs. The men backed off as he pointed the weapon at the nearest of them.

         "I've come for my fiance," he said, nodding to Susie, who was now smiling at him, "and I'm leaving with her now; if you try to stop me, I'll shoot you."

         He reached for Susie's hand, which she extended. She looked at him with a glimmer of what looked like hope and a faint smile. There was an exit at the back of the bar that was locked. Noah knocked the door down with a strong kick.

         They ran across the garden. Men came out of the house behind them but lost them in the dark. Noah guided Susie into the dense undergrowth, following hidden pathways he had known since childhood to a gap in the fence, then through the neighboring forest. They emerged from the woods to where his car was parked, having lost their pursuers, and he turned to hug Susie. She clung to him, shaking with fear, and could not look him in the face.

         "Noah, I have done some really bad stuff, why did you come back for me?" She turned her face upward toward him. He could see her tears were already cleaning away the heavy black mascara that gave her eyes such a hollow look, in rivulets down her face. He caught a glimpse of the young Susie from so many years ago.

         "Because I still dream of a beautiful woman in a flowery dress."

         "That woman has gone, I have been through too much since then. I am carrying baggage." Susie looked down at the ground again, as if ashamed of the years she carried.

         He raised her chin, wiping the mascara away with his sleeve. He kissed her on the lips. She tasted good, like a favorite drink from a distant past. "We are all a little broken by the years and the darkness we have been through. But our connection is as real now as it was back then, and that is all we need moving forward. It's time for a new beginning. After all, nothing can separate us from God's love," he said, recalling that church service from years ago. They resumed their kiss. Her whole body shook as she pushed it against him. As they cried and kissed, the years melted away, their faces wet with each other's tears.


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