The Crow's Nest 3-10

3-10

            As the clomp, clomp, clomp of the law team reached the attic stairs bottom, I’d adjusted my estate walk through inspection plan to accommodate the progress I was making of… purchasing the whole estate contents… cheap.  It only took a few seconds and I did not need to consult my partner for I knew “he’d be there”.  The law team stepped onto the …protection… of the upstairs landing.  Day lighted, clean, spacious and having no clutter or rubbish mounds, they had reached safety from their dirty dim lighted attic journey. 

            I KNEW that the NEXT area we were going to inspect was a KEY area of the home that I had never seen but could …hope… was jammed full of rubbish.  This was the upstairs of the ell of the home; the five plus small rooms including the bedrooms of Margaret and her mother; the old section of the whole estate, the once upon a time original homestead that was ALSO the mother’s original “good things” plunder trove.  I knew this before we started the tour.

            Knowing this I had planned the tour to be JUST AS IT WAS right now.  The purpose of MY choreographed tour to NOW was to (1) find out how Mr. Lawyer was going to act about the estate contents.  They did not appear to like it or care.  (2) To tour the safe “lived in” regions first (like the kitchen) to further feel out Mr. Lawyer’s interest and because they were “easy to do”.  (3) To end up in the attic to more further feel out Mr. Lawyer’s interest in dirty dark regions of clutter.  The law team appeared to be less interested in the attic due to it’s dirty darkness.  (4) To allow my partner and I to establish a ritual of the inspection and provide enough time and spaces to have any questions asked about what we were doing.  NOTHING had happened at all.  The law team actually was acting in a very timid manor, showing no interest in the rubbish AND seemed sort of pleased that we were moving right along without …wasting time.  FINALLY… never to be forgotten and always properly tactically deployed… was setting up the TIME to… be…. “getting close to lunch”.  As I stood on the landing with the stair clomping behind me… the LUNCH tactic of estate walk through inspection was ready to be deployed.

            LUNCH:  I am hungry and do not want to miss lunch AND do not want to …have lunch with the law team.  Therefore THEY are hungry, don’t want to miss lunch and do not want to have lunch WITH US.  Therefore we are in complete not spoken of agreement of GETTING THIS DONE…. BEFORE LUNCH.  I was with the program.  I knew that the bulk of the estate’s rubbish; the ell, the summer kitchen, the shed, the shed chamber and the WHOLE BARN “needed” to be walked through STILL and that ….LUNCH TIME… was coming to mind for EVERYONE so… I acted.

            I was looking at my watch WHEN Mr. Lawyer stepped onto the landing.  He saw me.  “We will be done before lunch time” I said to him.  He said nothing, looked at his watch and …confirmed my plan by doing this.  I stepped to the far door off of the landing that would lead, logically, to the upstairs of the ell.  I entered the ell, the law team followed, my partner came last closing the door behind us.  The spectacle of dim lighted dirty piles of rubbish in small cramped spaces IMMEDIATELY stunned all as I walked the full length of the… piled everywhere and under foot… hall …with blocked windows at ankle level on my left and room doorways blocked with clutter on my right.  I walked to the end of this hall… to the cluttered stair head and before the far room BLOCKED WITH RUBBISH… doorway.  I stopped… and stepped forward to peer around that doorway into the “OH MY GOD”  legal assistant’s utterance from behind me… packed full nightmare grade …rubbish room full mound. 

            Mr. Lawyer stopped beside the stair head.  “He was ready to leave NOW” I concluded.  I took out my paper, made a few marks and started past him back to the next doorway.  I heard my partner up the hallway kicking something at a room entry.  He walked down to the next doorway towards us.  I was looking into the room before me and made some pencil marks on my paper.  I heard my partner kick something again.  The two women heard this too and turned to face back up the hall as he going to the next doorway.  I waited at my doorway and watched him.  He looked around in that room and then vigorously kicked two boxes at the doorway.  “What are you kicking?” said the legal woman nearest him.

            “Mice” he replied.

            The two women stepped past Mr. Lawyer to the stair head promptly and did not say anything.  Mr. Lawyer looked at my partner as he left that doorway.  I stepped to that doorway, looked inside, kicked a box, made a few pencil marks and walked back up the hall to inspect… for mere seconds… the other rooms.  These were Margaret’s and her mother’s actual bedrooms.  Only the mother’s had been filled up with rubbish… by Margaret.  Margaret’s room was actually very orderly and simple.  I walked back to Mr. Lawyer and team, slipped past them without saying anything and… went down the back stairs opening the door at the bottom and stepping out into the center of the …living room.  Everyone followed promptly without a word.  WE, my partner and I, had just inspected the WORSE TO GET AT section of plundered rubbish in the whole estate.  We knew this.  We wanted it.  CHEAP.  My original admonition to my partner of “at least twenty” pickup truck loads had just gone in the dumper… and that was fine by him.  “No mice down here” I said.  The two legal women didn’t seem sure that was true.