The Crow's Nest 2-5

2-5

            The trucks left.  Margaret left.  First.  She blocked the trucks.  I left last.  I arrived first.  Before I left Alice beckoned me with her craggily arm from the shadow of the doorway.  “When you come back tomorrow the old captain will speak with you”.  I wasn’t in the mood for that.

            “I’m not coming back tomorrow.  I’m done here”.

            “No please: you must comeback.  There’s so much more up there and Mrs.

Ardsley always said you would.”  Mrs. Ardsley was the mother… by married name.

            “Come back tomorrow?” I said.

            “YES.  Please do.  The captain will speak with you”.

            “Captain WHAT? is gonna speak with me” my mind said.  I said “First thing in the morning?

            “Perfect” said Alice and she grinned… at me… with all her brown teeth.

            The next morning I was there.

            Since I didn’t see Margaret again I didn’t have to talk with her.  I didn’t want to tell her I was going to …Blood Farm.  That attic space was serious.  Starting with the tea table with the wooden tankard upon it and moving off into the mounded darkness, a siren’s song of New England sea captain antiquarian gold WAS THERE; in that house.  I know an “old estate”; a generations old and intact New England family’s accumulations packed into a still-in-the-family preferably large undisturbed by renovation homestead… when I come upon it.  This one was an outstanding example.  I arrived in the yard fully intending to …get it all.

            Alice greeted me at the doorway.  She gestured slightly to enter by following her.  She said nothing.  She said nothing for the next twenty minutes.  I followed her into the house.

            She did not turn to the right and start off toward the front hall and stairway as we had constantly and only done with my previous visits.  She stepped to the center of this first room, stopped, raised and spread both arms, made a slightly upward “here” gesture with her hands and turned partially around toward me while looking over her left shoulder at me.  After a moment she dropped her arms and headed left toward the doorway to the next room.  During the previous moment I quickly surveyed this whole room.  Then followed Alice.

            The next room received the morning sun through its windows and showed a darker, densely packed dining room having a large Civil War era dining table fully extended to seat at least eight dominating the center.  This table was set with an old dinner service “soup to nuts” that was partially buried under additional accumulation placed on top.  These last looked like these placings had been going on for one hundred years.  The old yellowed candles, in the eight matching brass candlesticks scattered on the table top, bowed due to prolonged placement and summer heat.  Past the table and against the side wall was a modest sized dark hardwood Federal sideboard.  The old surface was a dry and blackened.  One top drawer was partially open.  The top was covered with dust drenched clutter.  A banjo clock hung on the wall between two windows.  It was not ticking and I could not see it well for it hid in the darkness between the glare of the sun drenched windows.  Alice, saying nothing, repeated the same gestures and moved to the next room.

            I followed into the kitchen of the home.  She repeated her performance; centering in the room and not speaking.  “Neat as a pin” described what was otherwise a time capsule Civil War era fully equipped farm kitchen.  Breathtaking actually, the walls were lined with shelves full of neatly arranged old china, iron cookware, kitchen gadgets, kitchen textiles, kerosene lamps and potted plants on iron brackets.  A small kitchen table, with both drop leaves raised, sat prepared to serve two against a side wall of the room.  Again I note that this room was “neat as a pin” although packed full.  It was clear to me that Alice “lived here”; in this room.  A single 1880’s rocking chair was to the side of  the old iron kitchen cook stove.  THAT was Alice’s chair.

            Moving right along we visited three more rooms.  Alice continued the exact performance in each room and said nothing.  These rooms, particularly the middle room of the three, were dark and packed full …YET NEATLY ARRANGED… in an older Civil War to World War I style.  This had generations of dust-settled-upon accumulation tucked, stacked, fitted and piled on to this original household arrangement.  All of this room filling was… neat in placement although dense and abundant.  It was not the work of a crazy woman hoarding.  It was the work of a woman who had a lot of stuff she wanted and only so much space to store it.  All of it was clearly “family things”;  all old and antique but nothing a collector had purchased.  This was Alice’s own crafting of her family’s …collection.  She had kept the whole house just the way it had come to her.  The interior was left just as it was after the Civil War and she had piled the later generation’s good things upon this and… tried to keep it neat and clean.  She had been, including the density of the packing, successful.  She had made her home a Blood family time capsule.

            Once in the final front room and when Alice’s arms dropped, we stepped through the front hall into the original room that greeted the side door.  Alice went to this room’s center and said  “This was my mother’s room”.