Jacob's Wish, Part 2
[Copyright 2009 Vinita Hampton Wright]
That Christmas of 1992 was ordinary except that our grief for Grandpa Burke was still fresh. The weekend after Thanksgiving, Jonathan helped Dad pull out the artificial Christmas tree and the lights, which was our custom. But then college basketball came on the T.V., and the boxes lay in the living room floor for the rest of the weekend. Mom just looked at them and sighed. She didn’t begin her Christmas baking until more than a week later, unheard of for a woman who planned her confections down to the day and pound of sugar.
Then Marci, of all people, put the ceramic nativity on the mantle, and the atmosphere changed. The nativity had belonged to Grandpa Burke, had set on his coffee table every year for decades. Two weeks after his death, and shortly before Thanksgiving, we had all gone out to the farmhouse to sort its contents. Mom felt it was too soon, but Dad didn’t want to leave anything in the house, which would be uninhabited through the winter and vulnerable to thieves and vandals. So we spent a weekend, even Dan and Allie and David, emptying closets and chests, throwing away anything not worth keeping or selling, and hauling two pick-up loads to our garage and basement, much of it to be sold for rummage in the spring.
An old man doesn’t keep the kinds of things an old woman keeps. I know this now, years later, having helped Mom go through her Aunt Beth’s home after that funeral. Women keep things that have any meaning, and most things have meaning. If a dish or picture or scarf wasn’t handed down from some family member, then it was a gift from a loved one, or if it wasn’t a gift then it was bought on a trip somewhere and therefore now part of a memory. Aunt Beth lived in a fairly small house, but I thought Mom and I would never get to the bottom of the woman’s closets.
Grandpa Burke, on the other hand, had one drawer full of what appeared to be keepsakes: a letter or two, a very old watch on a chain, some photos, a knife he’d had in the army, coins from various countries, and some nice cufflinks, probably a gift from Grandma that he wore to funerals and weddings. His dishes were an assortment, the furniture was worn, he hadn’t bought new clothes for some time, except that he had a collection of fur hats, the kind with a feather in the band. Dad kept two of them, and Dan took one. Most of the stuff we threw away or packed up for the St. Vincent de Paul collection box at the church. Mom claimed one antique dressing table, and Allie thought she might refinish the hutch in the dining room.
We thought we were finished, but then Dad looked out the kitchen window and made a sound, I’m not sure what kind. “Better see what’s still in the barn,” he said.
“I thought he sold the barn,” said Dan.
“No. He kept the barn and house until his death. Then all of this goes to Bernard McAlister. Their families were good neighbors for years, and old man McAlister’s son bought the acreage but told Dad the buildings were his as long as he was alive.”
At this point, we were approaching the barn, an old-fashioned version with stalls and a loft. My brothers had played out here when they were little and before the adults decided the loft floor might not be safe anymore.
“They’ll probably just tear this down,” said Dad, opening one side of the double door. If a place could smell like passing time, then that’s what the barn smelled like. Mold and dirt and breezes from across the country, and pigeon droppings, and aging tools, softening wood. Our eyes got used to the darkness, and Dan found a window shutter that still worked, opening it to let in more light.
The place was already cleared out for the most part. A few old tools on a work bench, some garden implements. Nothing up in the loft but some old straw, bird droppings, and siftings of dust. But at one end of the ground level, covered by a cracked-open tarp, was a rowboat, its oars lying across the seats. Dad gave a little gasp.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph—would you look at that.” He reached out to touch it, leaving a print in the layer of oily grime that covered it. Dad laughed then.
“If I had a dollar for every time we went fishing in this thing . . .”
“I thought you never had time to go fishing,” Marci commented, in her fashion of no tact whatsoever. “You said Grandpa always made you work.”
“Oh, we worked all right. But there was always time to haul this in the truck down to the river, usually early on Saturday, and fish till we had enough for a good supper.” He was smiling and walking around the boat, to see it from every angle. He laughed again. “If anyone ever asked Dad what he wanted, the first thing he’d say was, ‘My only wish is to go fishin’ tomorrow morning.’ This thing’s probably full of holes now.” Then he turned abruptly toward the back entrance of the barn. “Well, I’ll tell McAlister to junk whatever’s out here.” We followed him out the door, to the back side of the barn, where we found a little graveyard of tractor parts. Dad didn’t say anything, but he had the same look on his face as he’d had in front of the rowboat. I think he was remembering what it was like to drive those tractors when he was a kid.
“Dad, can I have this?” David, who had quietly worked beside us all day, held up what looked like one of those square lanterns used on cars and carriages in movies set at the turn of the nineteenth century.
“Sure. That might even be worth something if it’s not too damaged.” Dad examined the lantern closer. “Dad may have saved this from one of my grandpa’s cars. Who knows? For awhile he collected stuff like this.”
We ate supper together in the closest town, at a steakhouse. Then David drove off to his home, and Dan and Allie to theirs. The three of us younger kids collapsed in the back seat as Dad drove us through the black spaces of the country at night. He and Mom didn’t talk much. That was a strange day, blending stories and discovery and weariness and grief. That was the last time I saw the farm of Grandpa Jacob Burke.
{Visit tomorrow for part 3!}