"Can" B. Worth - Part One

“Can” B. Worth

Part One

            “He lived in there at least a century.” said the fifty-eight year old history professor whose office was seven doors down the hall from the… just unlocked by the lawyer in front of me… office door to the old and now dead professor emeritus’ own office.  We; the lawyer and I, had accidentally roused the history professor whose office door was open when we stepped by it on route to office number “nine; at the far end just across from ten”.  Our slowed “up this hallway (?) to the end (?)” movement, our unidentified persons and our “way off out here in this way off out here” college offices corridor was too much of a “something’s happening!” for THAT lonely professor to NOT take action.  Out he came to follow right behind me who was following the lawyer.  I had seen the sign “HISTORY” below a name on the open door to his office.

            The lawyer had said “Doctor Carlton Worth’s office please” in response to the up out of chair and following professor’s query of “what, who, why” as an opening verbal bombardment. 

“CAN’S?”  “OFFICE?” he said.

“Doctor Carlton Worth’s office.” restated the lawyer stopping and turning from the door of office number nine to face the historian.  Then he turned back from the historian to the door and inserted a key held in his hand into the lock, turned it and then turned the door knob.  “Excuse us.” he said toward the historian.  The door opened inward and the historian did not move.

I could see that the office was jammed floor to ceiling full.  I looked in past the lawyer’s head on to a chair back to a chair before a mounded with clutter desk top to another used but vacant chair behind this desk top.  All else beyond these foreground pinnacle objects was dense, piled, boxed, bagged, tipping, mounded, sliding, cascading, buried and to my trained rare bookman’s eye… mummified “old books and paper”.  I said nothing.  I did not move.  That is when the history professor said “he lived in there at least a century.

The lawyer stepped in one step to the chair back and began to look around by moving only his head.  He clutched the key and some papers.  The historian said “Can went around that side” and gestured to our right by the open door to an eight inch slip between the door and the desk’s corner.  This eight inch slip continued along desk and around its corner to the far empty chair.  It was dark; the window shades long ago drawn and never touched again.  Their closure was assured by the shades’ bottom edges fixed beneath piled books upon old paper used as …burial material.  A rack of pipes sat at the front center of the desk top.  It held seven pipes.  An eighth pipe, obviously corresponding to the eighth slot in the pipe rack, rested in a small open space on the desk top behind the pipe rack.

            The lawyer did not move.  I did not move.  The historian fidgeted behind me.  “Give it your best.” the lawyer said to me without moving.  “I’ll wait outside”.  He turned and stepped by me and then, after a confrontational face forward hesitation, stepped around the historian and walked back up the hall.  He had handed me the key to the office and said “Lock it when your done”.

            I did that when I was done but I had to “pretend” for nearly an hour.  I should have pretended longer but I knew the lawyer didn’t care, wasn’t timing me and just wanted to “Get out of here.  You keep the key.  Leave it at the office when your done.  Be sure to lock it.  Actually I guess it won’t really matter.” This he said AFTER I finished pretending and had locked the office “when” I was “done”.

            When the lawyer left, I started pretending and the historian didn’t leave.  He looked at me, said nothing and waited at the door.  I pretended to look at the wall of stacked boxes to my left of the desk.  Then I looked at the stacked boxes next to those by the far corner at the rear of the desk.  The historian didn’t leave.  I slipped around to the desk to the empty chair and faced the door.  The Historian stepped into the office.  I looked at him, then to the stacked boxes piled to my left.

The front stack of these boxes was only about five feet high.  I opened the top box.  Income tax returns from 1974 were stacked on top.  I lifted those.  A cardboard mailer was below.  I picked it up.  The mail label was from a once well known Boston rare book store.  I opened it.  Inside was an old 1850’s pamphlet titled “Chronicles of Casco Bay”.  An old receipt was attached; “$20.00”.  I closed the mailer back up and peered into the box.  Two more old 1850’s pamphlets were in sight.  I picked them up.

 Both were by the same author; “A. C. Morton”.  One was for the “EUROPEAN AND N. AMERICAN RAILWAY” and the other was for the “YORK AND CUMBERLAND RAIL ROAD”, 1851 and 1849 respectfully.  Both had folding maps; the former a large one at the rear while the latter had a smaller one opposite the title page.  Both were printed in Portland, Maine.  I glanced at the two pamphlets, put them back in the box, put the Boston mailer back on top of them and put the tax returns back on top of that and then… closed the box.

I glanced at the historian who had stood watching my every move.  We had eye contact.  “What was that?” he said to me.

I looked straight at him, paused and then said “The tip of an iceberg”.