It was a little like digging out a splinter and Lela had had plenty of practice with that. Over the years, this worn and naked kitchen floor had pricked her bare feet more than once; she figured it was more like a hundred times. But this time she wasn't gently prodding, with needle and tweezers, working to remove a tiny wooden spike from her tender flesh, or her husband's, or her children's. No, she now worked screw driver and pliers to dig into the floor itself, probing the joint between two ancient oak boards. Her quarry was a splinter, for sure, but this little spike was clearly made of iron.

              It'd been a few weeks since the little nub had appeared. It hadn't been there before or at least they hadn't noticed it until it started catching the sock-clad feet of lunchtime sandwich makers, stubbing the clumsy toes of midnight bathroom seekers. Still, with all the many strangenesses that were this crooked little house, no one had stopped to investigate what, exactly, it was that was working its way out of the floor.

              And it was definitely working its way out. What had started as a sharp little bump was now a troublesome snag and, on that day, Lela had had enough.

              Connor, was making his famous red chile, a thing he did sometimes late in the evening so that his concoction could lend its delicious spiciness to their morning eggs; it was best when the flavors had a chance to marry overnight.

She loved to see her husband cooking, blending his innate talents with his family’s history and, moved, she'd leaned in to give him a kiss. When she'd stepped away, him laughing and waving her off for the sake of his bubbling brew, her foot had come down directly on the offending point.

              “Aaaaaa!”

              Her scream had been part pain but mostly frustration, and that had been when she'd gone for the tool box.

              “What do you see?” Connor asked as Lela crouched over her project.

              “I'm not sure.”

              She spoke down into the oak, intent on the little iron dot, and she had to repeat herself for him to hear, raising her voice as if she were addressing his elderly mother.

              “IT'S DEFINITELY METAL. IT'S KIND OF RECTANGULAR.” 

Using the screwdriver's blade, she flaked away bits of floor-wood from around the barb's edges, so she could get a better look. “IT'S LONG. I THINK IT GOES DOWN QUITE A WAYS.” 

              Trading tools, she squeezed the pliers' jaws around the offending nub and pulled. Nothing happened. Lela loved her quirky little house but life here was hard enough, she wanted to at least walk across her kitchen in relative safety, giving up wasn't an option. She shifted position and reached for a hammer.

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              With no flare at the iron thing's top for the claw to grab, she set about as if she were a wood carver with a chisel, screw driver's blade against the spike's side, hammer poised just above the yellow resin handle.

              Lela tapped, careful and focused. Still, the snag wouldn't budge so she tapped harder and harder, occasionally aiming her blows at the opposite side to start the point wiggling. Finally, under Connor's dubious gaze, she felt it give, just a little, and as it did, she thought she heard a small sigh.

              If she'd leant the sound any importance, she might have thought it was a sigh of relief. But metal bits poking up out of floors did not sigh and, ignoring the sound, she grabbed up the pliers again. This time, she pulled but also twisted back and forth, straining and grunting. She was soon rewarded with another tiny movement and, with it, came the sound again, that small escaping of air tinged with a low undertone of voice… a sigh.

              She pulled harder, using her whole weight for leverage. The pliers slipped a little making her nearly over balance and she heard Connor chuckle somewhere above her. Ignoring him, as she had the sound from the floor, she readjusted, squeezed, and pulled with all her might. She was suddenly rewarded for her efforts and, as the iron thing abruptly let go its tenacious hold, the odd sighing repeated itself, coming louder and more forcefully, fairly bursting from under the floor like pressure released from the twist of a soda bottle's top. This time, it was undeniable and, sitting where she'd landed, butt-first on the boards behind her, holding the sharply pointed tine skyward like Excalibur pulled the from the stone, Lela couldn't ignore the unmistakable sound of something relieved to be free.

              Connor couldn't either and, puzzled, they both looked from the small hole in their floor, so recently vacated, to each other.

              “That was weird. Did you hear that?” Lela asked.

              “Yeah,” Connor said, reaching to lift the tiny dagger away from Lela's grip. From its flat head, it tapered along a three-inch shaft, the point making a slight indentation as he held it between thumb and forefinger.

              Lela held out her hand and he surrendered the thing back to her. It was an old square nail, the kind they found when they were scavenging the neglected and abandoned homes of their valley. But, where those mundane spikes were rusted and bent within the decay, this one was shiny, straight, and unscarred as if it had been pounded into place only the day before.

              She rolled it thoughtfully back and forth in her palm as she looked cautiously around. Outside of the illuminated pool cast by the stove’s hood, light from the quarter moon slanted in through the dusty window pane, bathing the table scrubbed clean after dinner, the sinkful of dirty dishes, the cutting board piled high with onion and garlic skins and chile seed pods, in a sort of diffuse glow. As she took in this comfortingly familiar scene, she was replaying in her mind the relieved sigh, uncertain whether she should be alarmed.

              There had been no other sound since the nail's sudden excavation, and even now, as they both looked again to the hole, they seemed to both come to the silent conclusion that it was easier to question whether they'd heard it at all.

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              She knew that under the floorboards was a crawl space, not more than two feet at its tallest and less in some places, defined by the thick, stubby poles upon which the house was built. This kitchen-part, along with the adjacent front room, had been constructed eighty years ago or so by Connor's uncle and grandfather with other rooms added helter-skelter through the years. Connor's elders had been clever and resourceful men for certain and, taught by their own fathers to survive, they'd been practiced experts in coaxing food from the land, but builders, they were not.

              Often, Lela had tried not to grumble about the building's lack of square corners or right angles, nor about the walls whose studs had been placed faithfully four feet on center rather than the current code of sixteen inches, making it nearly impossible to hang a picture or anchor a shelf. She reminded herself now, as she had in years passed, not to criticize the construction skills of men whose motivation had been solely to shelter their wives and children. She'd mostly made peace with the now cracked wallboards scrounged from buildings that had been old even as this 'new' house had taken shape. These very tongue-and-groove flooring planks had been pulled by that grandfather out of another old house, cannibalized in favor of making a home for newlyweds, Connor's Uncle Karl and his new bride Vonnie.

              Lela looked to the photo that sat always on the refrigerator's dusty top. Gone brown with age, it pictured a lanky but earnest man in an ill-fitting, borrowed suit; a woman festooned in unaccustomed lace finery; the hopeful pair starting out so long ago. Lela wondered if that young aunt had spent her own winters here trying to block the breezes that blew up through the floor on cold, stormy nights…

              …and that must be it!

              “I'll bet it was the wind under the house,” she declared triumphantly even as she overlooked the fact that this warm summer evening had been calm.

              “Yeah, I was thinking the same thing,” replied Connor, his dark look clearing. “Yeah, that's gotta be it.”

              But they were silent a moment longer, some small part of them still unconvinced…

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              …until the pan, left unattended on the gas flame, began to smoke.

              “Damn!” shouted Connor, turning back to the stove. He cursed louder as he poured water from the kettle into his burning chile, the resulting steam billowing caustic capsicum fumes into the air.

              Lela quickly dropped the square nail into her jeans pocket, it would keep company with her collection of small rocks there, the odd sighing would have to be a conversation for another day.

              Holding her breath, she grabbed up the toolbox tray and scurried from the room, leaving her coughing husband to his culinary crisis.

‘No huevos rancheros for us tomorrow, after all,’ she pouted to herself as she replaced the tools in the pantry and went to make ready for bed.

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