The Crow's Nest Epilogue Blood Farm

Epilogue: Blood Farm

            “IS GONE. Then.  Then it IS gone”.  At the end of chapter 2-6 I wrote that about Blood Farm.  That’s what happened.  Just like that whole last paragraph says.  Blood Farm, now, “IS GONE”.

            To reach that moment took a half decade past the clean out of the mother’s estate.  I never went to Blood Farm.  I only heard about “it”; the going, going and gone of Blood Farm AFTER the “it”.

            First came the auction.  I noted a listing for an auction from Mr. Lawyer’s auctioneer that read like …something is more to this… than what was a concise, good and old estate contents listing.  I’d watched auctioneer’s listings closely ever after the mother’s estate sale… with foolish hope of discovering an old tea table …or such plunder… listed.  That never happened and I made numerous auction preview visits that turned up nothing from that estate.  I had concluded that the mother’s estate was, in the end, a what I saw was what I got.

            Reading this new listing to myself set off a mental blinking red light for it was a true old estate and… where does one find those on the loose these days… and THAT gut message followed with another gut message saying “something is going on here get to that preview”.  I did.

            Right after entering the door I saw the highboy from Blood Farm.  It was easy to denote for the original brasses were just as I remembered them and so was the miss matched surface condition due to the prolonged separated storage of the two sections.  Alice’s desk was next.  There it was… empty.  When I saw it Alice guarded it and it was full of her gatherings of family history:  Jammed full of every iota of old paper Alice “found”.  Once the minute of panic, shock and fluster passed over me, I calmed myself down, told myself I was the only one who “KNEW” and “got to work” meaning I did an exhaustive examination of everything at the auction preview to… WHAT?

            Figure out a personal special “mine”?

            Figure out what had happened?

            Figure out something to buy and keep as a personal memento?

            Figure out… WHAT?

            Pleasingly the going through all the stuff quelled any inner questions and I, puppy dog like, went around the auction hall eagerly lapping and jumping up on…everything.  “Giddy” is the full grip word I use for my behavior.  In the end, THAT came up short for I discovered, by deductive logic, that A LOT of the estate was NOT THERE.  What happened to that?

            This preview was the “day before the auction” preview. The following morning there was another preview for two hours before the actual auction began.  I would go to that too AND attend the auction.  I had not concluded to “buy” “anything”.

            Before leaving the hall, I went back to Alice’s desk.  It was a classic and traditional New England Chippendale bracket base thirty-six inch wide slant front desk with a late Victorian thick, dark and dry varnished surface.  It retained the original key hole brass escutcheons but had wooden Empire style replacement drawer knobs.  It was estate found dusty, dirty and EMPTY.  It sat in a line of furniture against a side wall.  No one was looking at it.

            I opened the lid after extending one lid rest to support it.  It had a plain… but not plainest…  standard cubbyhole interior with small drawers flanking a square center drawer.  On a finer desk this center drawer is the one with a shell carved on it.  This draw had no carving on it.  I pulled out the drawer completely removing it from the desk.  I looked down into the empty drawer.  I turned the drawer up side down, looked at the bottom, looked at the rear, shock it and then… carefully pulled on the drawer’s bottom board that protruded ½ inch past the rear of the drawer.  It easily pulled out revealing a small hidden space within the draw bottom.  There was a slip of paper with writing on it in this secret space.  I took the paper slip out and read it.

            It was a very old 18^th century rag paper slip, lightly age toned and with brown ink writing on it.  At the top was a small yet precise drawing of a schooner.  Below that was written:  “Captain Blood.  This is wrote with my own blood and if you do not scratch this out your old master will come after you”.  I read it.  I stared at it.  I turned the slip over.  I read it again.  I stared at it again.  I put it back in the hidden space.  I closed that.  I put the drawer back in the desk.  I closed the lid of the desk.  I pushed the desk slide back in.  I looked around the crowded preview room with its garish lighting.  I felt like I was in a cloud.  I wandered outside and left.  Before I drove off, another dealer spoke to me.  “OH I’LL BE BACK TOMORROW” I heard myself say.