Found Out

Found Out

            “Inspired”.  That is what one of the other local (antiques) pickers said it is.  But it really has nothing to do with me; my doing.  Or anyone’s inspiration.  No.  The Captain Hawk home; an early Neo-Classical whitewashed wooden box on “the” side street (of the village) with its property running to the edge of the next side street “behind it”:  This property stance; side street to side street, always had the second side street defined as “behind it”.  A “fenced garden” “kept” that “side of the property” (abutting the “behind it” side street).  It is a closed, tall, Neo-Classical whitewashed wooden “square” of “fenced garden” wall-fence.  To my eye, it is a... three sided out of doors wooden wall attached to the rear of the Captain Hawk home.  No one cares about ‘to my eye’.  So that ends that.

            Or does it?

            I did not ever suggest I park on the “behind it” side street... at the closed door admitting access to the “fenced garden”.  Nor was I the one who unlatches this closed door from inside the fenced garden that allows me to open the closed door from the outside on the “behind it” side street and walk through the garden to be “received” at the back door to the Captain Hawk home.  I am always received at exactly eight forty-five on a mid week morning.  This still continues and has been continuing for over twenty years (two decades).

            That is how easy it has become to “go into” the Captain Hawk home.  For me.  At the exact minute I am summoned to be there, I am there, at the back door.  This back door opens in and always opens in just as I arrived at this door.  This ‘behind it’ back door admittance ritual is what created the expression of ‘inspired’ from my antiques picker friend.

            The “inspired” quality is very simple from his vantage.  If the heirs within the Captain Hawk home were not going to sell me a full truck load of antiques from their old home full of family estate antiques, why would they contact me, perpetually receive me through the fenced garden ‘behind it’ (the Captain Hawk home) and ‘to the minute’ greet me at the ‘opens in’ rear door?  By the time I reach the reception doorway, I am already sure that I am “buying” a ‘truck full’ my friend’s tally secures.  Further, the procedure of carrying my purchases out from the home and stacking them at the closed door to the ‘behind it’ side street within the fenced garden until I had “finished” my purchases of that day is, to my friend, even more evidence that this is ‘inspired’.

            I do not feel that way about it.  I feel they allow me to ‘take it (my purchases) out’ “that way” so... “no one (nosey neighbors) can see”.  I don’t say that.  Though.  To anyone.

            At the ‘opens in’ back door, one of the Captain Hawk home’s heirs, always the same heir, greets me in an ‘all business’ fashion.  All... old New England counting house... business... fashion.  Sometimes there is a second heir... there.  Sometimes a third.  No matter:  It is all old New England counting house business fashion no matter how many heirs... are there.  “I (“we”) have FOUND OUT more of the THINGS on the THIRD FLOOR” is a good example of what is stated to me at the open door by the first heir.  What that actually means is that, continuing with the ‘third floor’ example, more ‘things’ up on the ‘third floor’ of the Captain Hawk home, that I may have... or may not have... ‘looked at’ or ‘spoken of’ or ‘spoken for’ (“YOU SPOKE FOR that CHAIR didn’t you.” [not a question]) are expected, by the greeting heir(s), to be sold to me.  Right now. 

            This is old New England counting house... cash... flow.  The old Captain Hawk home is a warehouse.  The heirs are commission brokers... at the back door of their counting house warehouse.  It is very simple.  It is a procedure of getting revenue; a ‘selling off’.  Of “found out”. 

            Three seasons of the year the Captain Hawk heirs seek, from each visit, between eight hundred and one thousand dollars to “cover it”; their counting house “...cash ...flow”.  This is to the exact pinched penny and never mentioned.  No surprise there.  Right?

            The third season; the ‘summer season’, the Captain Hawk home counting house seeks a more modest sum.  Two hundred and fifty dollar is just about “fine” especially if that amount of cash-paid-to-hand “touches” three hundred dollars.  This is purse money... for the heirs to spend on the Town Common:  The art show.  The farm market.  The Strawberry Festival.  The Library book sale.  Etcetera.  I don’t need to give more examples.  Do I.  This money, too, is “raised” by selling “found out” from the... Captain Hawk home warehouse... and  its old New England counting room.

            I am always in the counting room.  I am there on business.  It can be a busy place.  In February when Captain Hawk’s old furnace’s oil tank ‘needs filling’.  It can be ‘sunny and warm today’ when I “come through” in April.  On my visit on the second week in October, I usually step by pumpkins decorating the garden path.  The week before Thanksgiving we (the heirs and I) speak of making cranberry sauce and... the cost of the cranberries.  Too.  In January the garden path is neatly shoveled.  It is always neatly shoveled.  A “boy from down the (front) (side) street does that for us”.  That boy knows what an old change purse looks like and knows too, the short sound of it’s clasp snap.  Although he is “paid”, he actually shovels for free.  “My mother makes me” he’s said of it. 

            The exact amount of money; the amount of money I pay for the “found out”, I ‘figured out’ a long time ago.  And I stick to my ‘figured out’.  I bring a thousand dollars in twenty dollar bills with me each time... in a postal mailing envelope.  In my jacket pocket.  Letting the tip of that envelope be visible is not a poor directive.  It is “assurance”.  “We have assurance” that I “will come” one heir has noticed to me numerous times ‘over the years’.  A simple procedure; a commercial procedure.   At a counting house.  And its warehouse.

            “Let us go up to the THIRD FLOOR and look over what I’ve

            Found out”.

            Cluttered.  Is that the way you like your old sea captain’s mansions?  I do.  And dark.  I like them dark.  Cluttered and dark.  Very cluttered and ...very dark.  When I “rise” to the second floor I want to be fully entranced with darkness and clutter.  UP PAST the family’s old tall clock.  “It doesn’t work anymore” but will be “the last to go”.  It has been “found out” long ago and

            “Was made in the village you know”.

            This; the old Captain Hawk

            House

            “Grandfather’s

            Clock”.

            The second floor landing...

            I hold in good standing...

            Down past closed bedroom doors and “the two front rooms

            Are still used”.

            “Cold”:  I’ve been in them.  Each.  Once.

            Or twice.

            On the second floor I prefer the other rooms ‘further back’ that are

            “CLOSED UP”.

            I have memorized the clutter in those rooms.  I memorized the clutter in the darkness.  “Dingy” did I hear said.  Not in the darkness.  “Loaded” I have seen for myself.  TRUNKS that were never opened.  FULL... locked... and pushed against the walls.  Too heavy to carry to the third floor.

            Isn’t that right?  How will they ever be

            “Found out”.

            “I suppose if we can ever find the keys we may give them a look.  Their keys have been “SET DOWN”.  “We’ll come on them SOME... TIME”.  That is alright.  The third floor has been full for a whole century.  Anyway.  Way up there

            At the top of a stair.

            Little windows... up there.

            Cluttered and dark?  Actually, clutter STACKED in the dark.  There I go again; seeking ‘old’ and ‘density’.  Old clutter densely stacked in dark rooms with closed doors that are “locked in” with their key “leave it in the lock we do not want to loose it”.  Unlocking the door of a room full of “found out”... I don’t want to loose the key

And get locked in.

            Or maybe that will be the best way to die; locked in after they pull the money envelope from my pocket.  Locked in a third floor “CLOSED UP” room full of old family key lost locked trunks.  My dried out skeletal remains would never be

            “Found out”.