The Roof came down, and he was angry.
There were more powerful gods in the house, MAAA chief among them. But MAAA rarely took enough form to interact with the other house gods. MAAA liked the basement and dark places, the pipes and vents and places you could pass through unseen. And had any of the other gods ever ‘seen’ him, really? They’d all heard his breathy announcement of his name, MAAAAAAAAA, that low thick rumble that made the floorboards quiver. They all knew MAAA could bring the whole place down if he wanted to. But MAAA didn’t want to, and he kept his motivations and his doings to himself. The other gods were happy to stay out of MAAA’s way.
So, back to The Roof. The Roof was plainly the leader of the house gods. The Roof looked down on everything on all three floors beneath him. And when one of the house gods stepped out of line, he let them know. It didn’t happen often. The house gods of this particular house had been together a long time, and they were used to each other, and got on pretty well. But not Furnace Boy. He was new, and he stepped out of line a lot.
The Roof didn’t like to move, and of course, no one would see him moving except the other house gods. On the street everything looked fine.
But the house gods saw him move, though he did it quite slowly. The peak of the Roof pressed himself down in the middle, his guttered edges rising up like the wings of a bird. The Roof would descend, passing down through the three floors of the house till he got to Furnace Boy, in the basement. It would take some time to get there; he’d be sinking down for more than a week. The slow trip downward to reprimand Furnace Boy would make The Roof even angrier by the time he got there.
The Roof sank midway through the house’s highest floor. The great descending bird of him was now spread over the guest room, the upstairs bath, and four storage closets. The upstairs windows were excited by The Roof’s arrival. They chattered at him, curious about what he’d seen from ‘the top.’ Small and rather ornamental, the upstairs windows were not quite house gods. They were just spirits. The Roof didn’t dislike them, but they were of more superficial character than the windows further down. He’d have to endure their endless talking and nosy questions as he passed through their floor. But it had to be done. He had to deal with Furnace Boy.
Days passed. The Roof reached the second floor. It had been hot on the third floor, but it was even hotter on the second floor. The second floor was where the bedrooms were. Each bedroom had a row of tall windows. But they’d been shut tight and locked when the last owners moved out.
The house god of windows was Madame Glass; and she was a house god, not a silly spirit like the windows on the third floor.
As soon as The Roof arrived, Madame Glass burst into a passionate string of complaints about Furnace Boy. “You have to do something! He’s not even supposed to be awake now. It’s summer and the windows are shut, and … you see how hot it is!”
Madame Glass was the oldest of the house gods, except for MAAA of course, who was ancient. At one time, Madame Glass would have simply ordered the windows to open, and alleviate the oppressive heat. Her panes had been broken and her windows replaced many times in the last hundred years. Old age had given her the fragility of glass. She could not move the tall windows by herself anymore.
But The Roof respected Madame Glass. She was completely unlike the small upper windows — not a spirit, but a proper house god. She was tall, intelligent and informed, and her witness to the many trysts and couplings in the upstairs bedrooms leant her a sensual, worldly demeanor, despite her age.
She’d modeled herself on the stately matronly French woman who was the original the original owner of the house. She’d expatriated from France and had lived her last two decades there. She’d died in the east second floor bedroom surrounded by the tall bright rectangles of windows overseen by Madame Glass.
“We are suffocating because of that boy!” Madame Glass told the Roof. “Suffocating!” she repeated, for emphasis.
The house god of doors was next. Chief Hinge was a robust and much more solid presence than Madame Glass. He was strong and sturdy and not afraid to make noise when it was called for. He was strict with the doors, but he let The Roof manage any troubles with the other house gods. “Does he not know this is a wooden house?” Chief Hinge demanded. “Does he not know what can happen?” Chief Hinge and Madame Glass were a natural pair, and there were salacious rumors among the house gods as to what the pair got up to while the others were asleep.
The Roof assured Chief Hinge he was on his way down to speak to Furnace Boy. The Roof pressed himself deeper into the floor. Bill Carlisle was there.
William “Bill” Carlisle was the god of floors. The house god had taken the name from a former resident that had lived in the house in the late Sixties. Bill Carlisle had been an engineer for Ford Motor Company. Floor gods are all about measurements and precisions and structural integrity and that was Bill Carlisle to a T. The house god had borrowed Bill’s whole persona, and as the Roof passed through the floors, Carlisle spoke to him, listing the problems that Furnace Boy was causing, in a typically dry, analytical manner. “We’ve already got significant warping in the boards on the first floor,” Bill Carlisle warned.
Hurrying now, the Roof passed through the second story floor and through the first floor ceiling. He spread out into the first floor of the shuttered house. Here the air was even hotter. The Roof didn’t like it! Even in summer, the Roof could count on breezes to cool his burning shingles, and nightfall could be counted on to bring the temperature down a bit. But the first floor was hot, unbearably so, and there was no escape from it. It would take him another day to get to the basement, and there it would be hotter still.
It was minor house gods on the first floor. First floors were place of comings and goings, and weren’t really interesting to the stronger, more rooted gods like the Roof, Madame Glass and Chief Hinge. The kitchen was there, though, and the kitchen had at least a hundred minor house gods in it. It was like a house unto itself. The kitchen’s nature changed with each owner. Its smells were the owners’ smells, their tastes, their thirsts, and their appetites. The kitchen house god was a nameless creature made of sinewy meat and vegetables, crushed fruit and noodles. When it manifested, it was a twisted ever-changing thing, as if constantly stirred and chopped and diced and blended by invisible utensils. The kitchen house god made the roof uncomfortable, it was too primal and corporeal for his tastes.
The noise on the first floor was unbearably loud. The pipes and wiring were shouting from inside the walls as soon as the Roof descended. “Make him turn it down! ” they implored. The pipes rattled, steaming. The wires hissed, fuming. The Roof could hardly think straight with all the racket. He had heard it, of course, on the second floor. But here … it made the walls tremble, and the furniture skitter about on the floor.
It wasn’t just loud music. It was all kinds of loud music, played all at once, a grating, booming jumble of sound. Furnace Boy had pulled interminable drum solos from the jazz musician that lived there in the Fifties, and booming hip hop from the teenager that last family had. Every radio that had ever played in the house was echoed in it, every record that had spun on a turntable within its walls was blasting, a sonic madness of horns and drums and guitars and voices.
Pressing himself downward with his great, shingled wings, the Roof breached the floorboards and sank into the basement that was the domain of Furnace Boy. It was madness. Phantoms of past inhabitants of the house danced madly in swirling clouds of limbs and excited faces — the young ones, the hard to handle ones, that had lived there during the last hundred years or so. And Furnace Boy danced with them. Half naked, sweaty, eyes ablaze with excitement. The heat in the basement was almost too much for the Roof. He wanted to force the edges of his wings downward in a desperate push, and lift himself back to the merciful cooling air of the warm sky again. But he had to deal with Furnace Boy first.
“Furnace Boy! You must stop this at once!”
“Why should I?” Furnace Boy shouted back, defiant.
“It’s too hot! It’s too loud! All the house gods are angry –“
“There’s nothing to do here! Nothing ever happens!” Furnace Boy shouted back.
“We’re uninhabited right now,” The Roof shouted over the din. “Nothing’s supposed to happen! Now listen to me — –“
“It’s fucking boring here! You’re all old here –“
“Furnace Boy, I am speaking! You will burn the house down if you do not stop!”
But Furnace Boy only danced harder with the phantoms, limbs flailing. The basement got hotter, and the noise got louder.
From the upper floors, the other house gods joined in the Roof’s protest. Chief Hinge began opening and slamming all the doors at once, creating a tremendous din. Madame Glass was demanding Furnace Boy listen in a high, imperious voice. Even Bill Carlisle got emotional and pointed out statistics about structural collapse in a much louder voice than he usually spoke with. Floorboards moaned as they warped in the heat. The walls themselves were bubbling and threatening to burst into flames.
It was MAAA that finally but a stop to it. Apparently, the elusive house god had had enough, too. A great crushing weight oozed backwards from out of the heat-choked vents that fed Furnace Boy’s emissions to the rest of the house. And suddenly the strongest of the house gods was there in the basement. MAAA exhaled a massive charcoal breath on the phantom dancers and they disappeared. MAAA smothered the music in dark, cloud-like arms and silenced it. Finally, he immersed Furnace Boy in a thick gray fog and calmed him.
Furnace Boy stood, head hung, his sweat-drenched tank top hanging clammily from his skinny frame. MAAA disappeared back into the vents, which were already cooling.
The Roof gratefully took in the silence and the cooling air. The Roof regarded the chastised Furnace Boy. “We know you are young, Furnace Boy. We know it’s hard when there is no family here. But you can’t let yourself get carried away.”
Furnace Boy acknowledged the rebuke in the manner of all teenagers. He scowled and said nothing and disappeared, feeling very abused.
The Roof, exhausted, began his slow ascent to the top of the house. The other house gods were already immersed in their private duties. They barely acknowledge The Roof as he rose.
They only looked to the Roof when there was trouble. It was the Roof that looked after the house as a whole: if he hadn’t decided that something needed to be done, nothing would have.
But it was MAAA that had fixed things and quieted Furnace Boy down. Unlike The Roof and the others, MAAA had existed long before the house was built — before any of the houses were built. MAAA had always been fond of the children in the house, much more fond than he’d been with any of the house gods. In his vague way, he was their protector and friend, till they became too old to believe in him.
He had a way with the young, and he had used that affinity to calm Furnace Boy down.
Breathing a sigh of relief, The Roof rose past the silly chatter of the third floor windows and spread his shingled wings out, under the crisp bright light of the sun.