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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