Summer Place - Part Twenty-Six

Summer Place

Part Twenty-Six

            Other people… the large ‘other people’ group; those ‘outside’… the dream world feel and wander of the ‘within’ of …MY… antiquarian intrigue… have a very abrasive and self positioned view of my wander.  It is a what THEY think of it and HOW… therefore… I should… act.  This, in the most active vision-turned-to-action affront, is a short ‘turn over the cash to us shut-up about whatever attic you were just in and go back somewhere and get more cash and turn that over to us and, again, shut-up’.  This, as I’ve aged to become an old worn out owl… sitting on a low branch… has bred resentment.

            One sided resentment; the ‘other people’ do not see that either.  That ‘see that either’ is fine with me:  I’m hiding from them… in there… somewhere.  Is that why I’m writing this tale down?  Or is there just ‘summer people’ in their ‘summer place’ …with an old antiques filled attic space …they didn’t know they had.  With the old colonial couple’s punch bowls shelved, I slipped between them into my ‘in there’ while the pedantic ‘other people’ captured and managed my time to a… rather short sighted sense of addenda of THEIR ‘should be doing’ I.  “Busy work” it be compared to old Compass Parker’s pirate ship slipping along the Maine coast in the very trace of a dawn’s light.

            Returning their favor… I… who… generously for them; the ‘outside people’, become THEM by putting sunglasses in MY hair and taking them out as power gesture to defy their gate ramming, Trojan Horse boxing, package food type arrogances and… deer fly buzzing of ‘scheduling’.  They think I’m there-for-them-100% when MY sunglasses are ‘on’ or ‘in my hair’.  They are completely satisfied… and have no notion that I am… ‘watching them’.

            What that means (yes; it’s still active) is ‘shut-up’ and ‘nobody cares’.  I accept the terms.  With a “Do you realize you live in Hell?” query with sunglasses on or waved in hand… I proceed within the their labyrinth.  I am busy… all day… everyday… ‘with incoming’.  WHEN would I have time to chat with my grandmother’s ghost?

            After looting the …last virgin ‘attic’ chamber of a local sea captain’s mansion… as fast as I could… that space was forever empty.  I assumed the space was quickly ‘wired’ and then ‘closed up’ with that old door ‘shut’ and ‘behind’ the new …shower stall’s ‘wall’.  Why bother contemplating a trapped space that only …ghosts… can access.  Instead I just drove around in the truck looking at ‘peoples’ ‘stuff’.  No ghosts.  Only a few summer places.  At those they wore sunglasses so I did too.  Most of the summer places were already ‘closed up’ but some were ‘closing up’ or ‘would be’ ‘after Thanksgiving’.  During the day the sun was getting lower in the sky.  It was late fall of 2012.  Thanksgiving ‘for everyone’ ‘was coming’.

            In town and about to get back in the truck I was spoken out to by ‘a family member’ of the “Charles” estate who moved close and said that “something is going to be done at Thanksgiving” “about the (Charles’) house” and “would I” “look”.

            “Yes” and I turned to leave and …was apprehended then and there to an appointment “NEXT TUESDAY MORNING” “OK NINE”.  Charles and his home and the estate and the ‘assisted living’ (all Part Twenty-One) were suddenly “deer fly buzzing scheduling” up to ‘outside people’ code as I tried AGAIN to turn to leave and I … “Did I just feel (FEEL) something?  A FEEL a breeze whisper something?  A… cold clear attic dark FEEL something?”.

“No; couldn’t have”.

“Or did I?”

“OR… DO I

FEEL SOMETHING?”.

For the next five days my grandmother’s ghost kept rattling thoughts in my mind and visions of Charles’ cryptic old leaning-on-rake form kept appearing as haze to my back-of-eye vision.  “That’s what he looked like when I was eight” years old.  That was fifty years ago …in November of 1962.