THE GRISSOM HOUSE

By Joe E. Gutierrez

I turned nine in 1887, and the old mansion in Ypsilanti stood long before I came along. It blew up in 1893 and the blast killed everyone inside. Everyone except Mrs. Grissom. She left for San Francisco one day before the explosion. The story around town said she had something to do with it. That’s what most of the old-timers said, anyway.

The old man who ran the livery stable in town said that house took over ten years to build, and no time at all to level it to the ground. He said it took so long to build, people in three counties bet money it’d never be finished. He said Mr.Grissom bought most of the building material from Europe. And the workers came from there, too. The workers around here weren’t too happy about that, but he didn’t care. He not only hired artisans from Italy and carpenters from Germany, he even imported the wood for every inch of floor from Italy. Mr. Grissom didn’t care who got angry. He said he wanted only the best. And as far as he could tell, the best didn’t exist around here.... and that statement didn’t sit too well with the local folks either.

Mr. Kinkle, the delivery man for Arthur’s Food and Supply Store, said he delivered groceries and food stuffs up to that old house from the first day the Grissoms moved in. Before those foreigners finished the place, he delivered everything to the front door. Sometimes he helped carry the supplies all the way through the house into the kitchen. But that didn’t happen too often, and it stopped once they completed the front of the house. One day the butler told him to leave the boxes on the front porch. It seemed as if they didn’t want folks to see their French bought goodies and German handiwork. Mr.Kinkle said he didn’t care one way or the other, but he did say he never seen anything like the inside of that house. It was so beautiful.... too pretty to touch. Said it would be kind of hard to live there. He tried to describe the double circular staircase.... said it rose right out of that marble floor past the two front doors and climbed up in two directions for three stories like angels flying to heaven. The steps were cut from Virginia cherry wood and the banisters were carved out of wood from the Black Forest in Germany. That’s what the workers told him, anyway.

The dispatcher at the railroad station got drunk one day and told everyone in the local saloon who was inclined to listen that he opened some crates for the Grissoms that came all the way from Paris, France and Florence, Italy. Said he got an eyeful of crystal chandeliers and silver wash basins and doodads he never thought existed. He told Mrs. Grissom he had to inspect the contents for government reasons. She didn’t argue with him, he said. She just looked at him hard, then turned away. Someone else said that mansion even had indoor plumbing and the faucets were gold plated. I don’t know if that was true or not. Someone else said ten years after the house was completed, one of the servants hung himself in the attic, and he hung there for a week before anyone found him. I don’t know if that was true either.

I walked past that big house a thousand times, and whenever I did, I always had a feeling someone or something was watching me. And for some reason, I was never afraid... I was just curious. I know houses can’t talk and they can’t hurt you either. But it seemed as if that house had something to say. My brother, who was a year older than me, thought I was crazy.... especially when I told him I thought the Grissom house was alive. Well, not alive the way we were alive, but alive in a different way, like a tree or a flower. He still thought I was crazy. Well, it made no difference how he felt. Whenever I had the chance to go there, I went.... and he went with me. He said that he only went with because he was worried about me. The truth was that he was just as curious about that old house as I was. I always believed that old mansion was strange just like the people who lived there and that included the servants. Mr. & Mrs. Grissom were strange enough, but most everybody expected them to be a little other than normal with all the money that passed through their fingers. But the butler and maids and most everybody associated with that old house? They seemed as strange as the house. They never talked to anyone. Never were seen in church. If they had business in town, they did what they had to do, then scampered on back home. There was none of the “How you doing? or “You have a nice day” sort of small talk that goes on between social minded folks.

You hardly ever saw anyone inside or outside the house. If you did see movement inside the house, it was a shadow that moved quickly away from one window, then passed in front of another, or a curtain might flutter back and forth. And you might see someone’s nose slowly emerge into the open, then stop quickly enough so that the person whose face that particular nose attached itself to would not be recognized.

If someone exited the house, it didn’t matter who, they were always in a hurry. And friendly? Never! I was on my way home one day when I saw a man walking down the front steps (learned later he was the head man who did the hiring and firing). Even though he walked with a limp, he moved at a fast pace. I waited for him to walk my way, but when he saw me, he cut across the street. When I saw him do that, I was determined to make him talk to me. I ran straight up to him and asked if I could do some lawn work for him. He didn’t say anything and kept walking. I never expected an answer anyway, so I really didn’t get upset. But all of a sudden, he turned and in a matter of fact tone of voice told me to come to the house the very next morning. I couldn’t believe my ears. I stood there with my mouth open, nodded my head and finally said, “Okay, I’ll be there.” I know he didn’t hear me, because he reached the other side of the street before “Okay” came out of my mouth.

I didn’t walk home - I flew home and told my brother we had a job. When I told him where, he called me a liar. Well, he went with me the next morning. And we showed up bright and early. I knocked on the door before I saw the rope for the doorbell. Just as soon as I reached for it, the door opened and the man I talked with yesterday stood in the doorway looking down at me. It seemed as if he had forgotten who I was. I didn’t give him a chance to change his mind. I just pointed towards my brother who waited back on the sidewalk and told him, “My brother always works with me.”

He nodded his head and that was it. We had a job. He told us the tools were in a shed on the side of the house. We had to cut the grass, trim the bushes, rake up the rotten apples and just clean up the yard and make sure not a broken branch remained in eyesight. And then he stared at us long and hard. Finally he pointed toward the back of the house and told us in a hard whisper, “Never, ever, go back there! You are not allowed! You work only in front of the house. Do you understand?”

We both nodded our heads - yes, we understood, and then we shook our heads - no, we will never go back there. I think he understood that we understood, because he didn’t say another word. I don’t know what lingered back there that he didn’t want us to see, but he surely aroused our curiosity. And as many times I worked around that old house, I never went inside but one time. And that lasted only for a few minutes. I did see that long staircase everyone talked about, though. And the steps were marble, not wood. Anyway, it happened during the winter. The job fell on me to shovel their long walkway before I went to school. Well, the butler had told me to wait on the front steps after I finished. He said that he would watch for me, and if my work appeared satisfactory, he would pay me 25 cents. Well, I did what he said and waited for the longest time, but he never came out, so, I marched up to the door and pulled the door bell. It wasn’t too much longer an old woman came to the door. She looked me up and down, then looked behind her, then whispered for me to come in out of the cold. I wasn’t sure if I should or not, until she smiled and waved me in. I shook the snow off my shoes and stepped into the most beautiful room I’d ever seen in my life up to that time. It was all everyone said it was.... and more. She told me to stand there and she’d be right back. Well, she didn’t come back, but the butler did and he didn’t seem too happy to see me standing there. He didn’t say a word. Just gave me twenty-five pennies and opened the door. I said, “thank you,” and left. That was the first and last time I was ever in the house.

I don’t know what Mr. Grissom did for a living. They said he sold cattle, or hogs.... I’m not sure which. He did a lot of traveling. Mostly to Chicago, so I heard. But he had a lot of money. And he knew how to spend it. The women in town said it was his wife who did all the spending. She was younger than he was, and I don’t think they had any kids. Even though that house was big enough for a whole army, but I never did see any kids running around or playing. I think my brother and I were the only kids around that old mansion.

The day the place blew up, my brother and I were home in bed. It was around three in the morning. We lived on the other side of town and the explosion was so loud and fierce, we both landed on the floor. I thought our house blew up. Glass and knickknacks fell off the shelves and the whole house shook for the longest time, it seemed. Our whole family ran outside to see what happened. Stars were out and bats were flying, just like on any regular August morning. We saw other neighbors running outside. They stood for a while, then went back inside. We did the same thing after about five minutes, then three minutes later, it happened again. We heard another explosion. And that one knocked us out of bed too. That’s when our dad grabbed his clothes and shoes and ran out. He screamed at us to get back in the house as he ran down the road getting dressed. We did, but we didn’t want to. We stayed up most of the night until we got sleepy. I don’t know what time my dad came home, but I know it was already daylight. And I thought I heard him tell our mother that it was the Grissom House that blew up. I didn’t hear him say anything about people dying. As soon as I woke up, I shagged my brother awake and told ‘em, “Let’s go see what happened!”

We were a block away when we smelled smoke and burnt wood. It was almost a sweet smell that made you think good thoughts. We ran and didn’t slow down until we saw snips of smoke rising from the Grissom house. Then we ran faster. Once we turned the corner, the town square looked like market day. And everybody was headed toward what remained of the Grissom house. We ran ahead of the older folks and got there just as Doctor Hought covered the last of the four bodies with a canvas tarp. He was black with smoke and looked exhausted. Someone said he had been there most of the morning. We tried to move up closer, but the sheriff wouldn’t let us. We never saw dead bodies before. It was good we didn’t see ‘em. The word was that they were burned beyond recognition. Said it looked just like a pig roast. I don’t think I’ll ever eat pork again. It wasn’t too long afterwards, the undertaker pulled up with his wagon and loaded the bodies just like kindling wood. We held our nose when he moved ‘em, because they smelled like some kind of burnt animal. It was a sickening sweet smell that hung in the air like those turkey buzzards with their wings spread wide and ugly. I made a mistake by holding my breath, because when I finally took a breath, I got a taste of death. It turned my stomach and I threw up. I’ll never forget that smell.

We stood around for the longest time. All that remained of the high picket fence that began at the middle of the house and extended around the back property was smoking ashes and a dark shadow burnt into the ground. For the briefest moment we felt some elation that the secret of the back of the house finally would be revealed. We thought that now we could see the mystery hidden from our prying eyes for such a long time. Then just as quickly as that thought emerged, we remembered the dead bodies and what seemed so important was no longer relevant. However.... curiosity still prevailed. We stood on our tip toes, then squatted and whatever it took to peer around the many pairs of crowded legs and through the raising smoke. We finally found an opening. And we saw.... nothing! We couldn’t see anything. I looked at my brother, and we both spoke at the same time: “We’ll never know, will we?” What was once the servants’ quarters was nothing but a pile of burning wood. Clothing and bits of clothing hung from the trees. Burned and broken furniture lay scattered all over the property. I think I saw a hand. My brother said he thought he saw a leg, but I don’t think so. Everybody talked about the cause of the explosion. Someone said it was dynamite. Someone else said that those barrels of lamp oil caught on fire and ignited the kegs of gunpowder Mr. Grissom stored in the back room of his house. One of the ladies said that it was awfully funny that Mrs. Grissom just happened to be away when this terrible event took place. Mr. Kinkle said it looked like he wouldn’t be making any more deliveries up to that old house anymore. Someone else said, “Good Riddance!” I think it was the saloon keeper who said that Mr. Grissom had enough enemies among the workers. Anyone of them would have blown the place up just for spite. They never forgot how he refused to let them work on his house. People don’t forget. That’s what they say.

My brother and I just stood there and took it all in. I don’t think I heard one person say anything about the poor people who died right along with Mr. Grissom. They weren’t nobody while they were alive. I guess nothing changes after you’re dead. Well, maybe that’s what they think, but that’s not what I think. I can still see the butler walking fast with his limp. You know.... I never knew his name. And the old maid who let me in out of the cold. I remember she smiled. I didn’t know her name either. That’s when I started to cry. Then I looked at the burned out building and it seemed as if it were crying too. We turned and walked away.

End