How Elizabeth Barrett Browning Saved My Life (19 page)

I touch his elbow. “It’s okay,” I whisper. “We don’t want any of these. Elizabeth’s is one in a million. What are the odds of getting lucky a second time?” I nudge him forward. “Let’s see what’s inside the barn.”

He relents. “I’m just trying to make sure you get what you want, Abby,” he says. “I’d hate you to miss out on anything because you’re too polite to stand up for yourself.”

“Believe me, I don’t feel I’m missing out on anything.” I stop. “When it’s something I really want, I’m perfectly capable of going after it,” I stress. What I don’t tell him—because I’m leaving the realm of antiques here—is that I don’t always know what I really want. I don’t always know what I
should
want either. Or what’s worth fighting for.

But in the realm of antiques, inside the barn, I hit pay dirt. Within ten minutes, I have filled a New Hampshire discount liquor store box—kindly provided to customers—with a creamware platter, coin silver spoons, candy molds, crocheted place mats, a corncob doll, old postcards of New England factories, a gravy boat, and three corkscrews, their handles made from twisted olive wood.

Todd himself has picked up a cribbage set, a distinguished service medal from the Korean War, a penknife initialed
T,
a silver loving cup awarded to the winner of a country club croquet tournament, and a copy of Longfellow’s
Evangeline
. Heady with success, Todd goes to the corner of the barn to interview a specialist in mechanical banks.

I rummage through a table marked—lowercase—
ODDS AND ENDS
. I check out a carton of small farm implements. $15
FOR THR LOT
is scribbled across its dangling tag. I turn over a weeder, a small shovel, a horse shoe (good luck!), a branding iron, a wrench, three bolts, a copper whistle, and a mysterious gadget in blackened metal shaped like a coffee grinder. I pick it up.
Nebraska
in raised letters runs down one side. Numbers stamp the bottom, then, scratched underneath, I read:
WC-EL
. I turn the crank; a spiked disk on the top moves. While farm implements are hardly my area of expertise, I’m intrigued. Their rustic quality. The reasonable price. The good omen of a horse shoe.

Though the objects aren’t beautiful, I decide to take my own first-appearances-don’t-matter advice. Besides, there’s a bit of American history in the box. Maybe the man who deals in old tools and farm implements and blacksmith memorabilia at Objects of Desire might be persuaded to fork over fifty dollars for such an assortment. I bought a print from him of a spreading chestnut tree for my father and Kiki’s wedding present.
One of a kind,
he promised. Gus said I overpaid.
Wildly
overpaid. Kiki didn’t get the Longfellow reference. In her thank-you note, she admitted she was partial to palms but hoped to branch out (haha!) and see a lot of spreading chestnuts when she came East. If she could tear my father away from his backyard swimming pool.

I turn the coffee grinder wheel again. Perhaps I can recoup a little of that spreading chestnut money. The day after I bought the print, an identical one was hanging back on the same wall. Identical down to its distressed, worm-holed frame and spotted mat. I run a finger along the raised
Nebraska
.

“That’s a corn sheller,” a man’s voice edifies.

I look up. He’s standing across the table straightening out a row of hammers. A large man with a gray beard and hair caught into a ponytail. He’s wearing a plaid shirt and denim overalls. He’s the spitting image of a farmer. But you never know, considering these days of Ivy Leaguers in camouflage pants and Army/Navy-store dog tags, couch potatoes in running gear, holders of academic chairs in Hawaiian shirts. “Herbert Morgan. This here’s my barn.”

“Then you’re a dealer?”

He shakes his head. “Insurance. Retired. The wife inherited the property. We lend it out. This is the last year, though. Bought ourselves an RV and are heading down to Florida.” He stops to pump the hand of a six-foot-five man he calls Tiny. “Though I learned plenty of lessons from all these swindlers and junk pickers over the years.”

This prompts laughs from Tiny and a cluster of his equally untiny friends. Who move away in a single file, each slapping Herbert on the back like the losing team in a football match.

I hold up the utensil. “What is a corn sheller?” I ask.

“Take a guess, kid.”

I shake my head.

“Give it a stab. You don’t need a college degree.”

I blush. I’m tempted to boast of three and a half semesters at Harvard, but I stem the urge. “I don’t mean what
is
it,” I defend myself. “I mean how does it work?”

He takes it out of my hands. His hands are huge, the skin red and coarse, farmer’s hands even if they’re used for filling out actuarial reports. He turns the wheel. “See, you put the cob in this here gizmo, the kernels fall to the bottom—you’d stick a container under here to catch them—and then”—he points to another opening—“the cob comes out sideways through this hole.”

“Pretty ingenious,” I marvel.

He nods. “These New Hampshire folks knew a thing or two.”

“But this one says ‘Nebraska.’”

“I’ll be…” He examines it. “Funny,” he says. “Wonder how it got all the way up here?”

I point to the letters.
WC-EL
. “Do you know what they stand for?”

“Can’t say that I do. They don’t look like they’ve been etched into the metal by any machine. Got to be homemade. Somebody scratched them on.” He winks. “Maybe a couple of lovebirds, is what I’d guess.”

I spin the disk. “It’s hard to believe someone would give a loved one a gift of this.”

“For you and me maybe. But for a couple of farmers this might be more appreciated than your average say-it-with-flowers boo-kay.”

“Perhaps,” I concede, still skeptical.
Lovebirds. Nebraska. WC. EL. Lovebirds. Nebraska. WC. EL.
These reel through my head like the revolving disk now in my hand. Somewhere in my not-fully-educated brain, a lightbulb starts to pop. The wattage increasing with every spin of the disk, with every repetition of
WC-EL
. Could it possibly be? I wonder. Is there a chance? I ask myself. My excitement is mounting so fast it takes every bit of my will not to let it show. The evidence is irrefutable. All the pieces add up. “Well, maybe I’ll buy this lot.” I sigh, assuming my most casual, can’t-be-bothered voice. “The horse shoe’s the big selling point.”

“A pretty girl like you must have plenty of luck.”

“Who couldn’t use more?”

He nods. His ponytail flaps. “That’s the truth.” He sifts through the box. He studies the wrench. He clangs a couple of bolts. “You won’t be sorry. Take a gander at the ton of good stuff in here.”

All I want to do is grab the box, throw money at Mr. Morgan, and hightail it out of there. But I’m a professional. I speak slowly. As if I have all the time in the world. As if I’m doing Mr. Morgan a favor by clearing out his barn, by hauling away some of his trash. As if my philanthropy alone will get his actuarial hide all the more quickly into his RV and onto the beaches of Florida. I swallow hard. “Will you take ten?”

His face suffuses into a theatrical mask of disbelief. His eyebrows arch. His mouth drops open. “Come on, the wrench itself is worth more than such a piddling amount.”

I point. I scowl. “This old thing.”

“It’s got real age.”

“That’s rust.”

“
Patina
. Patina is what the professionals call it.”

“Look, Mr. Morgan…”

“Herbert.”

“Look, Herbert.” My tongue trips dulcetly over the syllables of his name. “Just between you and me, this is an impulse buy.” I sigh. I shake my head. “This kind of junk isn’t anything I personally collect.” I pretend to walk away, though my hands clench the box, glue themselves to its corners. You’d need more than a rusted, aged wrench to ply each finger from its inch of claimed cardboard, its squatters-rights stake.

“Ten bucks won’t put the gas in my RV.”

I shrug. “Then forget it.”

He throws up his hands. “Just because I like you. And I’m feeling softhearted today, let’s split the difference.”

But Abigail Elizabeth Randolph takes no prisoners. “Eleven-fifty,” I order.

Herbert Morgan pulls at his ear. “Split the difference and I won’t charge you tax.”

I flash a gotcha! grin. “This is New Hampshire. Live Free or Die. No tax!” I click my tongue. “Besides, I have a dealer’s number.”

“Okay. Okay. You drive a hard bargain. Twelve. It’s my final price.”

I hand over the twelve with the kind of reluctance that implies I’ve given away the money that would buy me my last supper here on earth. “I’ll probably regret this,” I gripe.

Mr. Morgan—Herbert—shoves a green garbage bag at me. I stick my box inside. “What’s done is done. Put those regrets behind you,” he advises.

“Good luck in Florida. Slather on the sunscreen,” I call over my shoulder as I rush outside the barn.

Across the field, I can just make out Todd, his straw hat askew, at the end of a long line of people waiting for the Porta Potti. Just as well, I decide. I’m not going to tell him of my suspicions, my second strike of lightning, until I have the curatorial proof. Then and only then will I award him the gift of a spectacular, she’s-done-it-again ending for his feature article on Abigail Elizabeth Randolph, ace detective, treasure hunter extraordinaire.

I find an unpopulated tree. I plop down with not the slightest concern about the immaculateness of my clothes. I look around. I hug my bundle, a miser guarding his gold. No one’s watching me. A few yards away, a whole family has laid out a picnic. The mother is nursing a baby; her shirt discreetly curtains the infant’s face. Fat dimpled legs kick the air. The father is squirting squiggles of mustard on a row of hot dogs for two older boys. Just behind them, in a patch of sun, three gray-haired ladies chat on folding chairs. They wear floppy hats and clutch straw pocketbooks appliquéd with hot pink flowers. No muggers, thieves, or plunderers seem to be haunting this farmer’s field in Kerry, New Hampshire.

I lean back against the trunk. It’s an ordinary maple, though for storytelling purposes and to close yet another circle in my amazingly circular world, I wish I could christen it a spreading chestnut. I pull up a dandelion puff. I blow on it. It vanishes.
I want my work to resonate,
Ned used to tell me after a morning of struggling with what he called nonresonating paragraphs. Right now, my own work, my own life, is resonating so much I’m vibrating like a tuning fork.

Funny how bits of your past show up in future surprising places. How what you once interpreted as self-indulgence or irrelevance or avoidance or rebellion turns out to hold an entirely different meaning years later. I think of that sophomore course I took on the Writers of the Plains.
Your choice of study seems arbitrary at best,
my father would complain.
Not to mention the lack of focus on a career.

If only I could tell you that this urban Inman Square dweller had a passion for agrarian themes, vanished America, pioneer life. But—full disclosure—Writers of the Plains met at eleven in the morning Tuesdays and Thursdays—promising long weekends and indolent hours of extra beauty sleep. And it was a gut, according to the
Harvard Confidential Guide,
which noted the limited reading, few papers, and an absentminded professor about to become emeritus.

Now I pull out the corn sheller. The horse shoe is wrapped around the handle of its crank. I detach this example of the smithy’s art. I lay it on the grass next to a tangle of unruly dandelions. I turn the corn sheller upside down. I look at the initials. I examine the
Nebraska
.

And I know. Thanks to my sleep-craving, it’s-a-gut-seeking academic choices, I am so certain I’d bet my chamber pot on it. Eureka! I want to scream. Because what I am holding in my hand is a tool Willa Cather herself clasped in her own presumably callused farmer’s hand. Yes, Willa Cather, journalist, essayist, short story writer, poet, critic, novelist, winner of the Pulitzer Prize.

I set out my case. The corn sheller is from Nebraska. Willa Cather grew up on a farm there. Her longtime companion was EL, Edith Lewis. Cather was also a great friend of Sarah Orne Jewett. From New Hampshire, where Cather is buried. This explains the location of a corn sheller from Nebraska in a farmer’s field in New Hampshire. Evidence piled upon evidence. Irrefutable evidence, even Mary Agnes Finch would agree. I have come across another literary artifact.
Agricolae poetae sunt
.

There’s more. Connections that might not carry much weight in the marketplace but have personal meaning for me. Willa Cather and Edith Lewis were lovers. Like my mother and Henrietta. Wheels within wheels. Signs and more signs. I tap the horse shoe now on the grass next to my hip. I am grateful to my mother for taking me to flea markets; I am grateful to my education for bringing me to the literature of the plains. I am grateful to my character flaws that made possible the study of Willa Cather. I am grateful to my mother’s lesbian relationship for leading me to an appreciation of alternative lifestyles and, as a result, perhaps a subconscious interest in Cather herself. I am grateful to the chamber pot, which opened the door. To Clyde who shut it. To Todd whose interest brought me here. To Ned…

Ned
. I stop. What about Ned? His name has popped up in this trio of men as automatic as a breath. But he doesn’t enter into this particular equation. He’s history. I’ve put him behind me. I clutch my corn sheller to my heart. I run my hands over its blackened, well-used surfaces. I crank its wheel; I watch its little disk spin. Has there ever been an object more beautiful? And valuable? If I could tape it inside my bra, I would. If I could helicopter it to Mary Agnes’s vault, I would. If I could hire an armed Brinks van, I would. I look around again. I plant a kiss on the initials
WC-EL
. I put it back inside the box surrounded by its less worthy companions. I add the horse shoe. I knot the bag. I bend my knees, and tuck it under them.