Friday, May 25, 2012

The Horse's Grave - Part Two



The Horse's Grave
Part Two

            Like any who thinks he’s a young man, it was not long before I felt I no longer needed to be protected at or guided to The Horse’s Grave.  I don’t recall the specific day of my first private visit but I do recall that it was within a very short time and at a still young age when I, in pantomime of my grandmother, became the one to choose the stepping places in the parted grasses and to know, precisely, when to take the last step.  At this moment, counting frogs ceased, throwing things at them became precision and nobody... knew or cared.
            From this elementary beginning, my travels along the footpath escalated.  The Horse’s Grave became a mere landmark to be bypassed while in pursuit of other schemes.  The range of the abandoned Victorian garden gone wild did not falter to my mind’s eye.  Its system of footpaths was so sure that it became a supreme crossroads for me and my accelerating cross village travels.
            The footpath to The Horse’s Grave led from the main street of the village through the front yard of the Victorian mansion to the far corner of its rose garden.  Here, behind an attached carriage house belonging to the tenement building and beneath a very large old maple tree, one opened a gate to this rose garden.  One then followed a straight path through the roses and past, on one’s left against the far edge of this garden, a circle of carved grave stones marking the burial sites (“Tortee, July 7th, 1868, At six years. By an arrow.”) of one hundred years of ...buried cats... that had “lived in the house” (the Victorian Mansion).  Originally identified by my grandmother, they were invariably of great fascination to me (particularly the one recording death by arrow) but even these diminished in intrigue as I grew older and... bolder.
            At the far corner of the rose garden, through another gate and beneath another large old maple tree, one entered “the field” (the former Victorian garden gone wild) hiding The Horse’s Grave.  This had once been the garden to the dilapidated Federal home that lay ahead on the path in the distance.  As this maple tree was out in the open between the buildings, a vigorous leaf canopy of shade beautified and sequestered this corner of the garden in addition to acting to mark the junction of the three properties.  Closing the gate behind me, I crossed the footpath through the wild weeds to The Horse’s Grave and then... beyond.
            Thirty feet past The Horse’s Grave the footpath divided in a Y shape, with one having come up the base of the Y’s stem.  To the left, the footpath twisted away in a slow arch to approach the kitchen door of the Federal home and continue on up it’s now viperously overgrown driveway (“from the barn”) to a... “the street”.  To the right, another footpath configured through the tall weeds and grass along the side of this large barn attached to the Federal home straight toward the rear of another barn and carriage house of... another Victorian mansion that lay past the first, “cat graves” Victorian mansion.  As one sped down this path, the rear of the barn attached to this first mansion lay, at a modest weed ensnared distance, to one’s right.  Here grew another, yet younger, large maple tree shading the rear of this barn.
            Just when one was sure that this path lead only to rear of these mansions another intersection appeared with the two right side alternatives leading, respectively, to the rear kitchen doors of each mansion while… with blind suddenness… the main path turned a full left to cross behind the Federal home’s barn.  This path, after crossing the trickle that was becoming the stream from The Horse’s Grave …on a single, thick and old wooden plank… continued, just out of the shade of this barn and within the dense growth of head high fiddlehead ferns running along the path’s moist right side, well past the rear of the Federal barn onward and behind the barn… of another Federal home neighboring this first derelict.
            Again a junction appeared and this was at the opening upon a larger field that began past the corner of the second Federal home’s barn.  The stream and a footpath turned right and... ran off down hill... “to the street” where, after much research, I affirmed that this stream DID go under the street “there” and WAS “the water from The Horse’s Grave”.  The path’s left alternative rose behind the barn of the other Federal home to a fence row of more large and ancient maple trees that acted as the upper boundary of this field  This field was called “The Academy Field” to distinguish it from all others although it was, in fact, simply a lost hay field behind the homes and at a considerable distance from “the academy” but the name remains succinct to this day:  “I saw a Bluebird in the Academy Field this morning”  “Oh.  I haven’t been there this year”.



            The point of all of this path delineation is to prove that if one was a young boy going in this direction, one, by traveling these paths, could appear at a spot in the village well ahead of anyone who chose to travel along the streets to that same spot.  I became so familiar with these paths that before long... rapid travel even in the dark of a summer evening was normal for me[1].  Understandably, I was not the only user of these footpaths but... it was very rare that one actually encountered anyone on them and when one did, each party usually was aware well in advance of this oncoming encounter so could, should one wish to, step off up a side path to avoid this.  Usually most travelers moved so rapidly and silently along the paths that the actual travel time on them was momentary to their missions.  It was I that was probably the most idle of travelers for not only did I know the secret of The Horse’s Grave but I liked the seclusion of the network of footpaths and their various partitions of assured privacy.
            The darkest passage was behind the barn of the dilapidated Federal home and this space becomes the feature of my tale.  Here the rogue garden changes it’s growth formula as it transitions toward the larger Academy Field for it is altered by the shade of the barns and the tall dense fern covered wetness along the stream.  This area was also the borderlands of the two Victorian mansion’s properties and they, to protect the rear of their yards, had let each of their “line” “grow up” meaning that a snarl of young trees and plump bushes enveloped tiny gates into each yard and kept the Victorian garden gone wild “out”.  The footpath went right down the middle of an “open area” behind the old barn.
            I always looked at the back of this barn.  My grandmother had told me that “They kept sheep under there” meaning that the old and tightly closed doorway to the “under the barn” had been the entrance to the sheep’s home.  I paid little attention to this timeless utterance until after I’d ...grown up and was... traveling alone... for then, without my notice, all of the former utterances of my grandmother became my utterances and were... to be depended on as fact.  To get to this barn door was not agreeable for it was “entirely overgrown back there” so to reach it required “going into that”.  The spot on the path opposite the closed door was the exact center of the footpath between the fields and each Victorian mansion’s “line” “grown up”.  It was further enclosed by the fern lined stream that formed a dark and centered backdrop right there.  This darkness traveled into a similar forested extension that rushed as overgrowth from between the two Federal barns ahead on the path.  Looking back up the path to The Horse’s Grave, one saw, if one knew to see it, the guardian Lilac bush clump in the distance.  Over powering that on this uphill horizon line was the corner-of-the-properties maple tree and the roof line of the tenement building. These were visible just before they were blocked from view by the upper end of the “cat’s graves” Victorian Mansion’s barn.  Standing on the path before the sheep’s barn door one stood at the center of the most obscure point of all the footpaths through the field.
            It was not long before I picked my way to this door and tried to open it.  It did not open.  I did nothing more... except to, for no particular reason, return occasionally and “try it again”... for years.  Nothing changed; the door never moved and I soon moved on.



            One day, something changed.  With my visits to the closed door being perpetually stopped at it’s closure, my confidence in testing this barrier had grown so that to think logically and “try” different assessments derived from these thinkings was ...normal.  One day I was concentrating my deductive reasoning on the left side, the “where it is locked on the inside” side of the door, pushing in and pulling to the right with no particular plan except endeavoring “to see”[2] when, to support my efforts, I grabbed a short stick that was nailed to the boards next to the edge of the door.  Pushing on this stick I pulled on the door.  The door held but the stick turned on it’s single nail to a straight vertical position.  When it did that, the board on the barn’s side that it was nailed to suddenly open inward.  An eight inch wide black hole from the ground upward open to my startled stance offering a darkness that contrasted greatly from the shaded head high weeds (“pucker-brush”) in which I stood.  It was... the door... to get under the barn and there be able to... open the big door.  “Logical” was not my assessment at the time, nor the word “obvious”.  I would have been lucky to have proffered “Cool” but, frankly, I was too enthralled even for that.  HERE had opened a darkness I had sought to enter “for years” in a most magical and accidental way!  I ...closed the door and twisted the stick.  The blackness disappeared and all was as before.  I opened the... board... again.  It swung softly and easily “in”.  I stepped inside.  I closed the door behind me.  It would not stay shut.  I spied a large eye hook on the rear of the board at my eye level.  It fit neatly into a catch between the board door and the sheep’s door.  The door remained closed.  I stood in inky blackness sensing moist silence around me and quickly denoting starlights of the outside sun shooting through cracks scattered here & there about the boards and stones of the barn’s walls.
            Without moving I stood looking at these rays until they became secondary to the dimmer illuminated shapes that surrounded them.  As I stood motionless, the former blackness became alarmingly “light”.  I could see everything; way to the back of the barn; even to the farthest corner where no light came from any crack.  In fact, no light came at all from the far side of the barn and from most of the side that was known to me to be “the front” of the barn.  Enough light came from the field side cracks to light the whole “under the barn” space and this space, I quickly discovered, was “full of stuff”.  This moment; the entering of the “under the barn” and the observation of it “being full” was a crossroads in my life on the footpaths to “The Horse’s Grave” forever past through.  No motion or thought of The Horse’s Grave would ever be the same although at the time I was too enthralled by my discovery to realize this.







[2]:  This grand and vague utterance forms the pleasing laboratory term I developed (perhaps the reader did... too) as the raison d’être for many (any?) youthful experiments.  Perhaps one has been as fortunate as I and retained this explanation for many actions taken... well into adulthood?




[1]:  I add here that these footpaths were... NOT cleared during the winter so were used for only three seasons of a year unless... a young boy “went on an adventure” “to see” “if The Horse’s Grave was frozen”.  It... never froze solid for it always had a little hole and soft spot to the left center “even in the coldest weather”.




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