The Crow's Nest Part 3 #1

3-1

            “To wait”.  No professional action do I take more often as an antiques dealer.  I never thought it would be a “this way”.  But it is.

            “To wait” and do… AND THINK… absolutely nothing about …any and all… antiquarian ventures has been a standard default for me professionally and continually for nearly five decades.

            “To wait” is not fun, not pleasant and very… very tedious to accomplish …well …in a professional manor.  In the case of Blood Farm… and Margaret… nothing happened except “To wait”.

            A few days past.  A few weeks past.  A FEW MONTHS PAST.  A year past.  NOTHING HAPPENED.  I did NOTHING and …waited.

            Actually I did do SOMETHING one is NOT suppose to do.  I THOUGHT “about the stuff”.  Do not think about the stuff is the rule.  Do not think about the stuff no matter what even if six years have gone by, two key players have died and a major international museum has sent a helicopter to hover over the estate.  NO:  Never think about the stuff.

            First I thought about the tea table.  I thought about how the real Blood Farm tea table COULD POSSIBLY be in the mother’s house but always returned to the “she sold it” and… chastised myself for breaking the rule of… do not think about the stuff.

            This tea table thought and the rule breaking lead slowly to… the best banister back arm chair I ever owned that I purchased from the mother …decades ago thoughtS.  Starting with a mental “huh” the mind trail of thought lead DIRECTLY to the Blood Farm attic, the old captain clomping about that attic and:  Therefore that the chair was… PROBABLY a “THE OLD SEA CAPTAIN’S CHAIR NOT FOR SALE” hidden in that attic.  That lead to… skullduggery… and the mother.  A quarter of a century ago.

            I thought about that chair. 

            I had bought and sold that chair a quarter of a century ago …after the mother had purloined it using skullduggery a quarter of a century ago… from the attic of Blood Farm.  Actually she probably didn’t… actually… use skullduggery but used, I would guess …that old antiques-dealer-in-the-attic TRICK of “musical chairs” (here LITERALLY a chair) whereby …things of the “old stuff” in an “old attic” are moved around and… moved & moved around… in a slight of hand musical circle… in the attic’s dusty darkness… over time to become, when the music stops… no only where they weren’t before… but sometimes …NOT THERE AT ALL.  IF the tea table could be switched it was highly probable… I thought… that ONE DAY when the music in the attic stopped, that banister back chair sat down in the BACK SEAT of the …Mother’s car.

            After those thoughts and the subsequent chastisement for …breaking the rule… I stopped thinking about ANY OF THIS except:

            “To wait”.

            After well over a year had past, in the late spring, Margaret telephoned me:  “I HAVE SOME MORE OF MOTHER’S RUBBISH I WANT TO SELL TO YOU SO COME UP HERE TOMORROW AND WE WILL DO OUR BUSINESS FIRST THING IN THE MORNING YOU KNOW IT IS GETTING NICE AGAIN I WILL LOOK TO SEE YOU FIRST THING” she said without breathing, obviously using the mother’s telephone and… hung up that telephone right away.

            I went to see Margaret at her mother’s house the next morning.  I arrived promptly and punctually.  I no longer had “to wait”.

The Crow's Nest 2-9

2-9

            The captain went to a window in the cleared area once holding the Mother’s rubbish.  He peered out that window then squinted up the river.  He turned, clomped across the attic to a far corner darkness.  He bent down, rummaged in the darkness for a few seconds then stood up and returned across the attic to the same window extending a long antique brass telescope as he traveled.  At the window he peered through the telescope up river and said “BRIGANTINE! …NO COLORS!  ENGLISH… French… PORTUGUESE!  Too far up to take anyway.  No colors… probably Portuguese.  VERY DANGEROUS the Portuguese.  HATE the Portuguese.  Margaret tells me they cut off your head and put it on a spike.  I don’t want MY head on a spike!”  The captain lowered the telescope and looked toward me.

            I walked to the  window beside him and looked where the telescope had been pointed.  Far up the river along the far shore I could see a small aluminum boat drifting down the current with a single man fishing.  He stood in the boat wearing a hat and a tackle vest.  He steadily cast from his rod inward toward the far shore.  He was not a sailor and did not sail a Brigantine but he did show… “no colors”.  I looked toward the captain.  He had resumed his telescope gaze.  “PORTUGUESE!  Very dangerous.  Margaret says they are a worthless people.  No accounts.  Might as well be cannibals she says.  Lay-abouts.  Pirates.  Feed the whole crew to the sharks.  Cut the captain’s head off and tie it to the bow.  Drunk all the time she says.  Gallons of wine all the time.  Loose all their gold when they’re drunk she says.  Put my head on a spike she says.”

            I looked back at the river.  The little boat with the fisherman had stopped along the shore and was reversing direction.  The fisherman started a small motor on the back of the boat and slowly moved back up river along the shore.  It seemed to me that he knew to not come further down the river; that the captain might actually take action or that the captain HAD taken action in the past and he …did not come near the house.  “HE’S TOO FAR AWAY TO CATCH.  NO COLORS.  Not English.  PORTUGUESE FOR SURE!” the captain finalized.

            He collapsed the telescope and cradled it in his right arm against his body.  He turned to face me.  He was quite a sight.  He stood a full six and half feet tall including the tri-corner hat, and boots.  He costume was fully that of an 18^th century sea captain.  He had an old rusty flintlock type pistol tucked in a cloth sash tied around his waist and …he lacked only a raised cutlass to assure me that MY head was going to be on a spike.  I stepped back from my window and away from the captain.

            “LET US TALK THE BUSINESS OF THE DAY.  NOW GET TO IT.  YOUR ON BOARD THIS MORNING AND I’M CALLED TO BARTER.  YOU’VE SEEN BELOW DECK SO TELL ME:  HAVE YOU SEEN ENOUGH?  IF WE SELL IT ALL WOULD WE RAISE ENOUGH GOLD TO BUY THE SHIP FROM MARGARET?”

            “Sell the antiques to buy the house?  From Margaret?”

            “EXACTLY.  THE ONLY PLAN I’VE GOT.  CAN IT BE DONE?

            I paused… then carefully stated “Depending on the cost of the house… which could not be that much… the condition you know… there should be enough money raised… I would think… but… how much land is there?”

            “A THOUSAND ACRES.” the captain said.  “MY TIMBER LANDS.  I WILL NOT SELL THOSE LANDS!”  Eventually it was public knowledge that Blood Farm rested on about one hundred acres, “plus or minus”.  At this moment a thousand acre declaration was possible trouble to a valuation except that …what ever the land was… WAS in the middle of the nowhere Maine that is filled with A LOT MORE identical “timber lands” …for sale.  “TELL ME THE TRUTH OR I’LL PUT YOU ASHORE!” bellowed the captain.

            Ashore?  Maroon me on a deserted island.  I was already on a deserted island FILLED WITH ANTIQUES.  “It would seem to me, sir, that the money could be raised sir.” I said.

            “FINE ENOUGH.  NOW GET TO IT SIR!”

            “Yes sir, but now sir?  We, sir, …need to know… first sir, from Margaret, her price sir”.  I said entering into verbiage THAT HE LIKED.

            “FIRST SIR, HER PRICE SIR!  YOU ARE RIGHT SIR.  HER PRICE SIR.  LET US GO BELOW DECK SIR AND SPEAK WITH MY SISTER. WE HAVE A BARGIN SIR.  YES SIR.  AND DAMN THAT CROW SIR.”  This last was said with the captain scanning the attic space in search of, evidently, the crow.

            The captained turned from me and clomped across the attic to the door.  I followed.  At a safe distance.

            Downstairs; “below deck”, Alice was waiting for us.  The caucus was brief.  Alice did “not want to sell anything”.  The captain bellowed his “only plan” again.  I, after two cycles of that stand-off neutralized it by saying no decision was needed about selling “ANYTHING” until “WE” “had a price from Margaret”.  I hammered that home with Alice deciding I was her savior AND the captain deciding he still had “a bargain”.  THEY would speak to Margaret.  Margaret would then contact me.  I didn’t like that.  It seemed to me I was suddenly in the middle of a bargain that included me doing a lot of work and …getting nothing.  I left and began… to wait.

The Crow's Nest 2-8

2-8

            “We didn’t know that either.” said a voice to my rear.  I turned to see a large male standing in the open doorway.  He was back lighted by the windows in the hall so a concise view was impossible but I could see the large form, that this form was a male; a tall. robust, middle aged male dressed in an old Colonial style costume that include a tri-corner hat.  He stepped forward into the attic space and walked toward me.  I had turned to face him.  As he approached he continue speaking.  “THIS IS THE CAPTAIN!” my mind said.

            “We know the history NOW but it took us a decade to discover it was fake and another decade to figure out what happened” said the approaching male.  The attic window light took over his form and I saw full bodied late middle-aged male in 18^th costume coming straight at me.  He was no ghost and his tall leather boots clomped on the old board floor.  He stopped his approach when he reached the distance a gentleman would cease his approach.  “It was Margaret’s mother who did it.  Mrs. Ardsley.  We found the label and knew something was wrong because our table never had a label that we could remember.  Our table had always been up here; right there.  It couldn’t possibly have moved and it was our great, great, great, GREAT grandfather’s gift to his wife.  The whole family always knew this.  That was that.  So when we discovered the label; I actually found it, Alice and I knew something was wrong.  We talked about it for years.  Then one evening just before Christmas, it struck us both in a flash.  Years and years before, just before Christmas, Mrs. Ardsley had begged to borrow the table for a holiday pageant at the Tea House Society.  Of course we loaned the table.  She took it off and then back it came right after the pageant.  She brought the table right back up to the attic and put it right back there where it’s always been.  We never gave it a thought.  Years later I discovered the label.  Mrs. Ardsley had switched the table.  She took our real table and brought back this fake. HOW would we know the difference.  We never thought of such a thing being done, never looked or never ever even considered such a thing.  Even now to this day we cannot fathom it and only conclude that this happened this way because there can be no other way”.

            “Did you tell her?” I heard myself say as my mind rushed through decades of transaction with the Mother that …came to the same conclusion as this captain:  That the mother would and could have done this but I too would never have thought of such a thing.

            “Of course I brought it to her.  RIGHT HERE we stood and I showed her the label.  She said the label was there when she took the table.  OF COURSE the label was there on THIS table but THIS TABLE is NOT OUR TABLE I reasoned back.  She couldn’t; WOULDN’T, understand me.  YOU SWITCHED THE TABLES I said to her.  She said no she did not.  What were we going to do?  Even then it was YEARS ago.”

            “What happened to the table?” I again heard myself say as again my mind roared through my history of transactions with the mother.  “She sold it” my mind said.

            “HOW WOULD WE KNOW what that woman would do with it.  It was years and years ago.  We always have hoped she still has it hidden away in that house of hers.  You know it’s full of her plunder.  She’s a PIRATE you know.  WAS a pirate.  DEAD just five days she is.  Might as well still be alive with Margaret already here trying to take everything and sell the house.  BURN IT you know is what she wants.  The fire chief told us.  Says she came right to him and talked all about it.  The mother owns the house you know.  Bought it years ago.  Years and years BEFORE she switched the table.  Alice says she did that to get her money back.  The table is very valuable.  We’ve always been told that.  THAT table is of NO value” he said pointing at the one I stood beside.

            I looked down at the table with the tankard sitting on it.

            “WHERE’S THAT DAMN CROW!” he continued.  “GONE I HOPE.  BACK OUT THE WINDOW I HOPE!  I came in here after you left yesterday and A CROW was hopping around in here.  CAME IN through that window.  WHO OPENED THAT I said and Alice said Margaret did.  I chased that damn crow around in here.  Wouldn’t LEAVE.  Just hopped around where ever I chased it.  THE HELL WITH THAT I SAID and left.  Locked the door with the crow still in here.  Figured it would find its way out.”

            I wasn’t listening.  I was still looking down on the table.  “The table COULD BE in the mother’s house.  She COULD still have it” my mind reasoned.  I looked at the captain.  His back was to me and he faced the window he’d just closed.

The Crow's Nest 2-7

2-7

            Alice turned her fierce yet wispy stance away from me, vanquished her assertive glower and walked to the front hall with its stairway to the attic.  I followed.  At the base of the stairs she said politely “Go on up.  The captain will be there to speak to you”.

            I did as told.  I went up the stairs alone, confronted the closed doors alone, opened the proper not blocked doorway alone, stepped into the attic world alone and… stood there alone.  The dusty blank space that yesterday held the mother’s rubbish glowed as emptiness in the window light.  The remaining mounds of …rubbish… surrounding this empty space stood undisturbed.  The one window was still open.  The tea table was still there.  The tankard was still on top of it.  Quickly looking around to confirm that no one, including a “captain”, was there, I walked over to the tea table.

            After touring the antiquarian gold of the first floor this jewel of classic New England Colonial furniture… hidden in the attic… elevated in fact to the probable supreme inclusion in the estate.  Sure, for example, the… flat topped… highboy on the first floor, with its old surface and dangling original hardware… but long… long, long separated into two pieces of furniture… in two different rooms… with the bottom in the sun by a window and the top in the back of the front hallway darkness… was a “good” but… not a “great”.  The tea table was a perfect antiquarian gold nugget to my eye; a singular career discovery of perfection… in an attic… “untouched”.  I walked over to it.

            I took the tankard off of its top and set it on the floor.  I picked up the table and bent the top in toward my lap as I stood holding it.  I peered at the underside of the table.  Darkened patina and age toned wood with matching glue blocks showed an undisturbed old realm of “as it should be” antiquarian surface perfection.  A small rectangular slip of old paper was pasted to this surface.  I saw the old paper’s edges.  I saw the printing on the paper.  It was a label.  An old label.  An old maker’s label.  I twisted the underside of the table toward the window light and bent further to see the label.  I could read it.  The printing said “This piece was HAND MADE in the workshop of Charak Furniture Co., Boston, Mass.  It is numbered 266.  Made in Year 1931”.

            The tea table was a FAKE.  It was a high quality hand made REPRODUCTION now darkened, age toned, dust covered, soiled and attic hidden away… that I was holding in my hands.  I peered at the label again.  I read the label again.  I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, holding, thinking and:  I set the table back down.  I stood there looking at the top with its dust ring where the tankard had sat.  I picked up the tankard, looked at it quickly.  The tankard was real.  No question.  I set it back on the table.  I stood looking down on them both.  THE TABLE WAS A FAKE.  IN THIS ATTIC!  I couldn’t believe this.  I looked around the whole attic.  “It’s fake.” I heard myself say.

The Crow's Nest 2-6

2-6

            “She died in her chair right there.” she continued gesturing to another 1880’s oak rocking chair that was a near match to her own in the kitchen.  “I spoke with her and went to the kitchen.  When I came back I thought she was asleep; just sitting there.  An hour later I realized SHE’S DEAD!”

            I was looking at the chair at the side of the room beside the window where a sitter could …look out.  “How old was she?” I heard myself say while still wondering WHAT to say.

            “Ninety-three.” said Alice softly.

            WELL NOW WHAT DO I SAY?  I didn’t have to say for Alice continued after the silent pause.

            “YOU’VE SEEN IT NOW and it’s NOT FOR SALE!”

            “Seen what?”

            “BLOOD FARM.  MY FAMILY.  IT’S NOT FOR SALE!”

            I didn’t dispute that.  I didn’t do anything.  I just stood there.  The house was full of antiques.  And they were not for sale.  That didn’t surprise me.  In fact I didn’t care.

            Alice, she had demonstrated, obviously was fully aware of ALL the antiques in the house.  She obviously knew they were “good” and “valuable”.  She knew ALL of the things in her home very personally and had for a very long time.  Sure she didn’t know the exact collector super facts about each iota of every object.  She didn’t know the detailed detail that probably the finial on the top of the banjo clock was replaced by a family member in 1889 to suit their personal taste, that the old tall clock (grandfather clock) lurking in the dark behind the door of the far front room had an English brass movement in a coastal Maine or New Hampshire cabinetmaker’s Federal style case or that the china service on the dining table had an age disparity of the plates being gold trimmed porcelain from the 1870’s while most of the serving pieces were Chinese Canton probably purchased by a family sea captain for his still highly regarded by Alice wife…  And ever more USELESS antiquarian IOTA of NO sense to the … WHAT DID I JUST WALKED THROUGH?

            I got it.

            ALICE GOT IT.  And evidently she had got the got it for a long, long time.  She got it from her mother… who died in her chair.  The MOTHER got it and SHE got it from HER mother… who died somewhere in this house.  Two mothers before that THAT mother died in the house giving birth.

            After that they redecorated?

            NO!

            They didn’t touch a thing and just put more of that generation’s “my things” ON TOP of the past generation’s “MY THINGS” and… kept on going until… the farm ran out, the money ran out and THE FAMILY RAN OUT.

            I STOOD IN THE END MOMENT OF Blood Farm.  Or did I?

            “Nothing is for sale” Alice said again.  “All of this: NO.  Margaret says she will sell the house and move us out.  No.  I will not leave.  No one can make me”.

            I understood the direction now.  I had been brought in to be shown Blood Farm because Alice knew from watching me… and from Mrs. Ardsley… that I WOULD KNOW.

            Know what?

            That I WOULD KNOW that… the antiquarian all of “all of this” was NOT the single select objects here and there within the family homestead.  Certainly selected objects were selectively valuable to the antiquarian market but in fact even those were not absolute stand alone finery.  No, even those were a part of a larger wholeness; a hallow ringed box of an old and decrepit HOMESTEAD on a river in the middle of nowhere Maine.  And:

            THAT I WOULD KNOW TOO that …this was NOT a museum, never would be a museum and WOULD DIE TOO when the LAST BLOOD DIED and…. THAT did not matter TOO for… then …and only then would the “THIS” I was standing in END and that then IT DID NOT MATTER… and never would… even if each antique collector had each object they “rescued” from Blood Farm in climate controlled protection, digital photographic on site identification and scholarly enunciation and dissertation.  AND THAT IS BECAUSE BLOOD FARM as I stood in it now… IS GONE. Then.  Then it IS gone.

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”.

The Crow's Nest 2-4

4

            Not much came of all this.  There was …not much… in the mother’s rubbish; no valuable antiques.  I was asked by Margaret how much would I pay:  “Not much” I said.  She didn’t care, sold it to me, demanded I get this purchased lot out of there the next day and made me leave with her right away.  Alice watched and listened to everything.  I returned the next day bringing three young men purloined from a landscaper’s crew with two of the young men’s pickup trucks in addition to my own truck.  I paid the young men for their work and for the use of their trucks.  They liked that and performed perfectly.  We, as a motorized throng, arrived in the yard before Margaret.  I did not need directions for I had memorized the route.  Alice greeted us with a scowl, escorted us to the mother’s rubbish and stood guard.  I clearly directed the start of the removal of the …carefully defined… mother’s rubbish.  Alice said nothing at all once work began.  I stayed with the mother’s rubbish.  The young men loaded their trucks.  The only deviation was the instruction on selected objects …that I chose… to be put in “my truck” or even… “in the cab”.  They understood that these were better objects and did as they were told.  Alice didn’t seem to notice.  Quickly the mother’s rubbish was removed starting from the dark region to the right and … foot by foot… traveling toward the boundary of the tea table and its wooden tankard.  Window by window was fully exposed.  Alice stood guard and said nothing.

            Margaret arrived after we had what she titled “A good start”.  She… did not stand guard but …attended.  “I AM PAYING ATTENTION” she told me but went over to the first exposed window and stood staring out of it.  After a while she opened the window… lifting the bottom up.  It stayed open.  I noted to myself that the window had probably not been opened in at least a century.  I said nothing.  Alice watched Margaret do this and scowled.  After a while Margaret said “THERE’S A CROW DOWN THERE BY MOTHER’S CAR IN THE YARD.  FUNNY ABOUT MOTHER AND CROWS.  SHE WAS ALWAYS VERY FUNNY ABOUT THEM.  SEEMED TO CARE ABOUT CROWS.  THERE’S A CROW DOWN THERE PECKING THE GROUND JUST BEHIND HER CAR.  VERY FUNNY CROWS ARE YOU KNOW.  VERY SENSIBLE SHE’D SAY.  MORE SENIBLE THAN PEOPLE SHE’D SAY.  VERY FOND OF CROWS SHE WAS.  HAD ONE AS A PET YOU KNOW.  WHEN SHE WAS YOUNG.  SIMON SHE CALLED HIM.

            Both Alice and I walked over to the window, stood beside Margaret and looked out.  There was a crow on the ground behind the mother’s car.  It walked around and occasionally peck the ground.  Then it flew up into a large maple tree, one of a dozen bordering the yard.  The crow perched on a branch exactly even with the window and looked… at us.

            Or, at least, looked at the open window.  For us to see the crow we looked through the glass above the open window.  Beneath these window panes, the open window let in a rush of fresh air.  I could feel the air but my view through the opening was toward the yard below.  The crow sat on the branch with it’s head cocked so as to allow a direct gaze of one eye at the open window.  The distance was about twelve feet.  I could see the crow clearly through the window panes.  It was looking at the window. 

            After a minute both Alice and I left the window and returned to the rubbish removal.  Margaret stayed by the window.  She muttered to herself.  We… Alice and I didn’t pay attention for … WE… were working on the rubbish removal.  Of a sudden distraction, I heard Margaret say “SIMON?”.  I looked toward Margaret.  Alice was looking too.  We exchanged glances…. and got back to work.  Forty minutes later we were done: The mother’s rubbish was removed, the trucks were loaded, Margaret was in the yard by the mother’s car, Alice was in the doorway shadow and… the crow was gone.