"Can" B. Worth - Part Twelve

"Can" B. Worth

Part Twelve

            For ten days I had no contact with the Carlton B. Worth estate.  I did not explore my purchased office lot stored in the storage unit and… I had no other contacts.  On that tenth day’s morning TWO contacts occurred.  At 7:00 AM, I, alone, visited the storage unit holding my purchased lot.  An hour and forty-five minutes later Mr. Lawyer telephoned me about the estate.

At the storage unit, I surveyed the tightly packed mass casually.  After very little deliberation I selected ONE old box, taped shut by me, to take with me and “look at”.  The little deliberation was that I knowingly selected a moderately “old” box; one from the 1960’s or 1970’s I calculated, that DEAD CAN himself had packed full and put away so being sure it was not one that I …had packed full and put away.  Being as it was a sort of “test box”, I also made sure it was NOT the “test box” (“tip of the iceberg”) I had initially poked when I was pretending to inspect the office contents.  I already knew THAT box was “good” AND …easily identified it in the piled mass.  Taking this single old box… that was heavy enough that I used a dolly to move it… to the truck, I then closed and locked the storage unit and …drove away.

The telephone call from the Mr. Lawyer was …crackling cell phone brisk and to the point:  “Would you (I) come with me to (Dead Can’s actual private residence that his wife lives in) and tour the estate with us (Mr. Lawyer and Mrs. Dead Can) and tell me (Mr. Lawyer) if you see anything I should know about you will be paid how about ten thirty OK meet me at TEN.”

I did and we; Mr. Lawyer and I, arrived at the Carlton B. Worth …homestead… at ten fifteen “early”.  Mr. Lawyer ignored that and was greeted, with me tagging behind him, by Mrs. Worth who obviously was expecting us and seemed pleased that we actually were there… “early”.  I was introduced and titled as “assisting with the inspection… to help if necessary”.  I never had to say anything else though I did make some light chit-chat about the birds at the bird feeders outside the living room and kitchen windows.

“Neat as a pin”, nasty clean and “un-lived in perfect”, all circa 1950-1963 “with additions” into the 1970’s and… all upon neutral “wall to wall” carpeting… describes in short the …long… end to end one floor ranch house that …rolled away from me as we entered the side door by the attached garage, stepped into and through the kitchen forward to the dining room and… beyond.

We stopped in the dining room.  I scanned with my raking antiques dealer eye “discovering” a… 1950’s dining set AND matching “buffet” AND “cups and saucers; “a collection” displayed in THAT along with the… “good china” “we eat off at Thanksgiving.  Easter.  Christmas day.  And New Years day”.  Mentally clicking to “NEXT” room “PLEASE” did no good for I did have to …nose ALMOST touches the buffet door’s “it’s locked” (thank GOD) glass… “inspect” “the collection”.  “Very nice.” MIGHT have been murmured by me but …I don’t recall specifically.  The living room was next.  And worse.  Sterile, “new stuff” and… never a rare book EVER… including “art work” “by local painters” on the walls (covered bridges and larger long view of “deer” “in the meadow”. 

AND a glass door “locked” bookcase of “spine ends” of …obviously THE collection of “handsome copies”.  “Should I unlock it?”

“Ah, no.  I don’t believe we need to.  These are all YOUR books.” I said while carefully bending down to visually interrogate the spine ends.

“Oh yes.  Can gave them to me.  All of them.  Over the years.  One maybe two a year.  He loved them. (pause).  I love them too.”

I glanced at Mr. Lawyer.  He had made the correct configuration; “not worth making anything about”.  That was conveyed to me by his mute face.  I returned to the interrogation for my OWN intrigue.

            Beginning at the top left with Hawthorne’s TWICE TOLD TALES… (not a first edition but lightly “extra illustrated”) (I DID look at that book) and progressing across the shelves with, at first, similar classic ilk… that slid ever downward in title bite as… the years rolled by… Dead Can had covered birthday and holiday annually, unrelentingly …and progressively with ever less “give a damn” but with NO comprise on the “handsome copy” binding.  Each gilt gold spine end reinforced its neighbors so that the bookcase, as a whole fixture on display… “knock the socks… OFF” any passing-by biblio-curious …eye.  He did the job there and Mrs. Worth did not question the obvious; those old books in that locked bookcase were “very good” and “hers”.

            And not for sale… in the lifetime of.

            Escaping was easy.  I stood up, turned, faced the picture window overlooking Casco Bay (Maine) in the distance.  I walked to the window and contemplated the view.  It was NOT a “money” view.  It was a “safe and sure” view of the classic sort found in these 1950’s subdivisions; just enough “glimpse” to always assure that one “lives on the coast” but without the cost of “living on the water”.  Dead Carl never owned a boat.  Or ever thought of owning one.  Or ever thought of this view.  Or ever LOOKED OUT THIS WINDOW.  It; the window, was one of those windows that NOBODY looks out of… except to “look at the bird feeder”.  And that I did.

            We went to the next room; “THE DEN” or “TV room” “your choice”.  The TV was on.  The sound was very low.  She; Mrs. Worth, sat in THAT chair… I determined.  Dead Can had sat in THAT CHAIR… over there by the small table before a window with the little stacks of old… mostly 19^th century publisher’s cloth bound books (!!!!) WITH, on top of one stack, a …matching… 19^th century but faux and cast in plaster green with gilt gold publisher’s cloth book PAPERWEIGHT… with a little faux bronze angelic cherub attached to its top.  I actually touched that.  I did not touch the actual books.  I did eye them enough to “I’m ok” and “walk from them”.  I thought.

            Mrs. Worth did not think so.  SHE watched ME.  Mr. Lawyer watched HER.  I, after glancing at the Mrs. Worth profile being watched by Mr. Lawyer… proceeded more energetically to… be about to touch that damn books… WHEN… Mrs. Worth says

            “THOSE books are CARL’S BOOKS from the COLLEGE.  I forgot about them.  They have to go BACK.  To the college.  To his office”.  This was, at the utterance beginning, directed toward me but was turned upon Mr. Lawyer.  This left ME not touching the books and looking toward Mr. Lawyer too.  “I’ll get you a BOX to put them in.” Mrs. Worth said and… walked out of the room.

            Observing Mr. Lawyer… do nothing, glance at me, resume doing nothing and ignore me… I did move to the ‘do something – inspect the books” animation mode... and was exonerated from this by …Mrs. Worth returning with a … doubled brown paper grocery shopping bag (“TRADER JOES”), walking right over to me with this, handing it to me without word so forcing my acceptance of it… as I glanced again at Mr. Lawyer.

            He scowled a silent omen to “just pack up the books” that I understood and …did.

            The books passed through my hands; twenty-one books in three little stacks with the cherub paperweight… on top… after my eyeball danced on the spine ends as I “largest on the bottom to smallest on top” packed them into the bag… to see …very imprecisely… not rare but READER copies of… Thoreau, Whitman, Dickenson, Jewett and Alcott, 19^th century English and American literature survey (?), Wadsworth, Shelly, American Colonial Living (?), and SIX small Maine 19^th century town histories; Saco-Biddeford, Belfast, West Sumner (!), Peaks Island (Casco Bay), Gilead and “The Kennebec Valley.

            They fit.  The cherub was on top.  The bag full… on the floor… by the little table… with its lamp… by the window… with me looking toward Mr. Lawyer who was looking toward Mrs. Worth who was… leaving the room into the … it turned out… “bedrooms” off of the “HALLWAY” along the whole back side of the house.  “SWIFTLY” describes our review of these rooms, including the barren master bedroom and “never use these” “guest” (former… though one would never know it… “the children’s” “rooms”.  We ended up at the hallway’s end with this being the back entrance to “the kitchen” beside “the basement door”.

            This was opened, we descended the stairs …to a PERFECTION of “well lighted” bone dry supper vacuumed clean “basement with a …nasty, NASTY neat laundry area and… way off across the emptiness past the oil furnace, water tank and bulkhead “door to the outside”… a stand alone older 1960’s  Sears / Craftsman style workbench with a few tools and a, possibly but not inspected, small “tool box” on its top.  Mrs. Worth surveyed this cement walled desolation with, in my words; “utmost satisfaction”.

            We left.  I carried the bag of books… NOT by the handles but with my arms around it.  I put it on the floor of the back seat of Mr. Lawyer’s car.  It was not mentioned.  He didn’t mention anything nor queried me to “did you SEE anything?” as he usually did.  There was NOT anything anyway… except the bag of books.  This was resolved by him when he parked next to my truck and we got out.  “Don’t forget your bag of books” he said.

            “My bag?” I said.

            “I don’t want ‘em”. he said.  “You LIKE old books don’t you?  They’re yours anyway; from that office.”

            Including a very SHORTEST glance at him, I didn’t question that, plucked the bag promptly out of his car and… put it into the passenger’s side of the cab next to the …carefully selected test box… I chosen that morning.  And left… AFTER Mr. Lawyer thanked me and said the “I think that is it for THIS one” meaning my work for him on this estate was done by HIS view. 

            MY view should have been that it was going to just begin… but I was TOO STUPID to recognize this … “Can B. Worth” wholeness “yet”.