"Can" B. Worth - Feeding the Birds - Part Eleven - Hiding Books - Part Two

"Can" B, Worth

Feeding the Birds - Part Eleven

Hiding Books - Part Two

            I stated… that all of the hiding books I have found… so far… are empty.  They have …or did not have… anything in them when I found them.

            I lied.  I found one hiding book with one thing in it.  I tell the truth for it contributes to the whole tale… but in doing so… I qualify my telling truth by saying that I MYSELF am still “working this (the hiding book and the object found inside) through.  I have not reached a conclusion other than to feel that this singular IS “something”; a part of the “Can B. Worth” whole.  And that I do not believe I will ever truly “know”.  This is why I first held truth back and now… devote to it.

            The small “POEMS OF WORDSWORTH” hiding book; a “1910” imprint in blue publisher’s cloth with gilt gold title on the spine… is not consistent with the formula of most of Dead Can’s hiding books.  It is older, smaller and more refined than the bulk of the hiding books.  The bulk tends toward 20^th century “recent” “reader’s” “BOOKS”, about half with dust jackets and all being of selected “not interesting titles”.  Successfully these hiding books attract no attention.  As they should

            The Wordsworth too… attracts no attention.  Small, deep blue and “Wordsworth”, it is a book to be skipped over when the spine ends on a shelf are scanned.  I found it, with its object inside, in one of Dead Can’s boxes… just like I found almost all of his gathering of hiding books.  He had found this hiding book himself… and stored it… as he stored all rare books in his collection… in one of his boxes.  I found it as I rampaged through his boxes.  I found the object too.  At the same time.  As has been a developed sub-theme of this tale, I did not connect the dots on this hiding book, the object or… any and all of the “further significance” for not only “a while” but until, I assure, permanent damage (to configuring the trail and its clues) had been …done:  Lost.

            The hiding book, when I found it… in a box… I opened and… found inside… a gold wedding band.

            Moving right along and being an antiques dealer who is used to “finding gold” literally in “old estates” “all the time”… I took the ring out, rolled it in my fingers to see the 16K mark and …put it in my pocket as “another forty bucks” and… set the hiding book on the “a stack” of “finds” from “this box” and went back to looting the box, finishing the box, tossing the empty box and …getting the next box and …looting that box and… never thinking about that hiding book and the ring in it again for months.

            Eventually lighted bulbs began to pop into my mind about “this” “hiding book” and “the ring inside”.  The big light bulb, of course, IS “that’s Dead Can’s wedding ring”.  A labyrinth forms from this light bulb.  No satisfactory end is reached.

            The whitewash is that DEAD CAN found the book with the ring in it and … “part of the collection”.  That doesn’t float; just NOT probable for he was buying these hiding books out of used book stalls for twenty cents and… THAT explains the “Wordsworth” but NOT the SOLID GOLD ring inside.  “Wouldn’t happen”.

            So …he had a wedding band from someplace like his dad’s grave and… hid it in the Wordsworth hiding book and tucked it into a box and buried that box and …that was that?  I don’t think so …meaning… I do not FEEL so.

            So… let us just get on the highway and ramp up to say “THIS IS DEAD CAN’S WEDDING RING THAT… he took off his finger… one day… and …put in this sort of singular Wordsworth hiding book and… tucked that hiding book with the ring in it into the current-box-being-filled behind him…just like he did WITH EVERYTHING ELSE IN HIS LIFE, ALWAYS, DAILY, COMPLETELY AND FOREVER… and… it (the box filled) was buried WITH THAT HIDING BOOK AND RING… behind him in… what I discovered, demonstrated and personally destroyed… was his COMPLETE COLLECTOR’S archive of his complete collector’s LIFE… “YIKES”.

            So there I was …again… “trying to remember” “what box” “where box” “why box” and… “hey; you destroyed it” concluding AGAIN that “this guy was a lot smarter than you’d think.

            So now I have the ring, the hiding book and a …blasted beyond recovery… trail “to it”.  I CAN’T EVEN prove this is “HIS RING”.  “HA, HA, HA HE’S MOCKING ME”.  I cannot prove he put the ring in that book.  I cannot prove that HE made THAT HIDING BOOK… or DID NOT.  I cannot prove there is significance to THAT hiding book… or that there is not.  I cannot CANNOT myself like peanut butter on bread and STILL cannot… relinquish that:

            This is Dead Can’s wedding ring that he, one day after decades of his marriage “stamina tested” took off his finger and with little ceremony but with intentional personal privacy ALONE …put that ring in THAT particular hiding book and …buried it… “forever”.  “Cool”.

            I mean… we KNOW he hated his wife.  WE KNOW Dead Can did things HIS WAY.  WE KNOW he “was no fool”.  And NO ONES FOOL.  And needed NO outsider’s pat on his back or thumbs up approval.  “Yeah”… “it all makes sense” THAT WAY.  AND… he had the balls to do it.

            This is where I am resting at this time. The evidence to me is that Dead Can one day tidied up his married life and… that was that.  And I cannot prove it.  And do not care.  It is too probable a “FEEL” for me… so I will not let go of that feel.  And… there is other trailing that is neat too.  For example, the Wordsworth book is cut through until the middle of “SIMON LEE, THE OLD HUNTMAN”; the part with “His wife, an aged woman lives with him”.  No, no, no… I KNOW (feel?) Dead Can not only knew the poem BUT KNEW that page… with that part of the poem… “held up the ring”.  Dead Can would never have missed that.  Not the Dead Can I KNOW.  Not the Dead Can with three copies of Dexter’s PICKLE… in his desk drawer (“Can” B. Worth – Part Five)

            Three copies of Timothy Dexter’s “PICKLE FOR THE KNOWING ONES” in the desk drawer … in the office… on day one… of this whole tale.  Rereading those chapters will bring two things “up”.  First is how now, in hindsight, that whole desk drawer sleuth episode IS the “was laid before us” BIG CLUE to what now HAS BEEN SHOWN in the whole tale.  I will get back to that.  The second… specifically Dexter “up” is the …I did not mention at the time (no reason to then)… that not only did Dexter hate his wife but… addresses his hate for her repeatedly in “PICKLE”.  So Dead Can hates his wife too and… just happens to have three copies of “PICKLE” in …the top left drawer of his desk that is his single “seat in the world”? 

Dexter claimed to all ears and readers that the sweet young thing he married had died and he now was, in his home, nagged and beaten by an aged woman “gost” with two “gost” daughters and a “gost” son in law who all also are money grubbing HIS MONEY…:  “take the blows I wodnet for fifty milon Dollars word cant express the bloddey war in my family three gosts all Noys Robing of me I must sell with tears in my Eyes I Cant see to Rite Anay more fare well I say good bye”.  Dead Can would be fully attentive, absorbed, receptive, delighted and …a fellow traveler of Dexter’s singular prose expostulation of the state of his marriage.  Dead Can would never say a word about this either.  He simply had the little stack of Dexter in the drawer for a… discoverer such as my self to “peper and solt it as thay plese”.  I did a fine job of that with THAT drawer “during clean out”.  I took the Dexter stack out and “cab it” in my truck cab and then DUMPED the rest of that drawer with as many other “grazed off” desk drawer contents “into a box”.  I actually have not looted that box “yet”.  It has been preserved because MY mind told ME it was “too boring”.  I am so smart.