4

The kitchen counter was covered with groceries and empty paper grocery bags. The collection of heat-and-serve dinners, ready-made salads, and beer was a culinary salute to masculism. But, it was an appalling insult to Jim’s talents in the kitchen. Jim was actually quite a good cook and enjoyed it. Chopping, slicing, sautéing, and preparing food was a relaxing and creative outlet for him. Cooking for one, however, emphasized his aloneness and he therefore spent little time in the kitchen except to open a package and put something into a microwave or the oven. Cooking had always been a creative outlet for him and he sometimes thought of throwing a fete for some friends. Even this happy train of thoughts led him back to the coarser social reality of being a divorcee. Of the friends who he would have normally invited, more than half he had known only through Robin. As the divorce graduated from coffee klatch rumor to reality, Jim couldn’t help but notice that these friends became quite scarce although Robin continued to talk about them as if they were actively involved in her life. It was interesting for him to think about the conversations that were happening in the homes around him. He remembered that over the years, he and Robin had developed the habit of saving their most gossipy conversations for the time when they were getting ready for bed. She had passed on the scandalous rumor that Ty Wheeler had been sleeping with his assistant over his shoulder one night while he brushed his teeth and she removed her earrings. When their good friend Shirley Shaw was arrested for drunk driving and then checked into a rehab facility, Jim and Robin stood for an hour in their walk-in closet, in their underwear, talking about how sad it was for Ed Shaw and how awful it would be for the Shaw kids. Jim broke the news of Ginny’s breast cancer to Robin while she was sitting in front of her mirror, removing her makeup. He imagined that all of their married friends eventually learned to save these discussions for the privacy of their master bedroom suite, safe from the ears of their children when the distractions of the day were fading. What was being said about Robin and Jim in the bathrooms, closets, and bedrooms of their neighbors? Clearly some sort of judgment had been reached. Jim was in some way off-limits and he felt it acutely. Oh, they were polite and friendly during accidental encounters at the store or at work. Often it would be one of them who would offer to get together sometime, but the lie was obvious in the cold eyes floating above the false smile.

Jim put two cans of chili con carne on the open shelf over the 1950’s era gas stove. He thought again about having some sort of gathering that would allow him to cook off some tension, connect with people again, and help him step back into a more social pattern of life. Jim was, contrary to what Robin might say, a social creature. Even thought he was surrounded by people all day at school, they were mostly not his peers. Students were sometimes interesting socially and remembered fondly the few that he and Robin had invited to the house from time to time. Most of the time, students were unreliable as friends, being caught up in the struggle of turning the corner from egomaniacal adolescent to ego-centric young adult. His colleagues were also not the best company. Caught up in the rat race of trying to balance research, class preparation, teaching, grading, and committee work, it was a good day when two or three could find time to share their sandwiches behind a closed office door and catch up.

The young bucks that helped him with the barn would surely show up if just for the free beer. There were a few friends from the college that he’d brought into the Jim and Robin social circle. These remained loyal to Jim, particularly the men who had known Jim when they had all been single. He expected that their wives would be pulled to Robin if not from a sense of sisterhood, at least from the fact that whenever the couples got together the men and women tended to segregate to different parts of the house. The men migrated to grill or the television (if there was a good game on) while the women could be found in the kitchen or living room. It wasn’t PC to stereotype the sexes this way, but it was observably true. Even though they had married his friends, the wives of his friends simply had spent more time with Robin and knew her better. Perhaps he would have a guys-only cookout, he thought as he forced a twelve-pack of cheap beer into the refrigerator, where it pushed a carton of old Chinese food to the back that was unlikely to be noticed again for a very long time.

Jim could not have foreseen the extent to which breaking up with Robin meant cutting himself loose from the familiar social circles he had grown so accustomed to. His isolation from his wife and son was just the beginning. Before his eyes, it expanded to his home and friends. Even some of his friends had distanced themselves, or perhaps he had distanced them through his morose involvement with the unraveling of his life. In any event, they were less casual and less available to him. On his new farm, Jim’s isolation was almost complete. Arms propped on the side of the counter, Jim hung his head over the sink. He could vomit, he thought. Vomiting would purge him of something putrid, although not that which was putrid in his soul. Opening his eyes, he saw a jar of Hellman’s Mayonnaise next to his right hand. Hellman’s. Hell-Man’s. You’re in Hell, man! You ARE the Hell, man! The jar seemed to be in on some joke that Jim wasn’t privy to, but to which he was certainly the butt. Without thinking, Jim grabbed the mocking jar and hurled it at the wall behind him, turning like a pitcher trying to catch a runner on second base. The glass jar shattered on the hard shell old horsehair plaster and mayonnaise and glass shards spread out from the point of impact. The remains of the jar fell to the floor in a lump of goo and glass.

The gooey mess was a pile of undeniable evidence that Jim was in trouble. Old Jimbo is pretty messed up, he thought to himself with a wry smile that only lifted half of his face. His anger subsiding, shame returned as he put away the rest of the groceries in silence. The demons danced on his soul. He needed a cure for sure, but right now he would be satisfied with a little relief albeit temporary, from his pain. He needed a distraction. The barn had been his retreat, his salvation and it was time to see the doctor again. This doctor was always in and he had a standing appointment. Leaving the mayonnaise mess in the kitchen, Jim walked out into the cool fall afternoon and crossed the farmyard to the barn. There was a half-wall made of old planks that had once formed a horse stall. Not needing so many horse stalls, he had decided to remove the wall and re-used the planks to enlarge the workbench where he planned to work on his car projects. With something like pleasure, he hefted the sledge hammer that was leaning against the door frame without even looking down or breaking his stride.

Jim’s inner voice, the one that always spoke truth said with impish satisfaction, Yes old boy, a little demolition will do you good.

“Agreed,” Jim said out loud.

You did a great number on your marriage, now you can get to work. Demolition is your thing, man. Did a nice job on the old marriage.

Ignoring his own taunting, his strides lengthened and his jaw tightened with purpose.

The barn was still splendid in its bright red coat. It was getting frosty this late in the day, so Jim closed the huge barn doors, satisfied as each slid cleanly along its track until they met in the middle. It was dark inside with late daylight filtering in through the high dormers and a few seams in the west-facing wall. Not only did it get dark early in New England, it got dark fast. There was just enough light to guide Jim to the first support column where the light switch was. Flipping the switch caused a relay at the other end of the barn to make a loud chunk noise and the six hooded lamps hanging from the ceiling to glow dimly and buzz. The huge emptiness of the barn lit up with pools of amber light.

Jim saw movement in his peripheral vision. Cutting his eyes in direction of the movement, he spied two redbelly snakes mating in the sawdust. Their bodies were stretched out to their fullest length and wrapped tightly together. The contrasting red bellies and grey backs gave them a writhing candy-cane appearance. Strange to be mating in the fall, Jim thought. He’d seen plenty of garter snakes and black racers on the farm, but these were his first redbellies. He stood for several minutes to watch them. Either from habit or his voyeuristic sudden intrusion, the snakes had become nearly motionless. Don’t let me bother you, go for it, Jim breathed. At least love was working out for someone.

Carefully, he sidled by the snakes to get the coffee can on a shelf behind them. The can was half-full of flat cut nails. Each project in the barn and around the house had produced handfuls of these old nails. Not that they had much value, but they were kind of like wheat pennies to Jim… interesting novelties from a time gone by, but not so lost as long as these little artifacts were still around. He quietly lifted the can and tip-toed back around the snakes. They seemed to notice him, turning their heads towards him in unison and flicking out their forked tongues, but they had no intention of interrupting their coital bliss on his account.

His anger was subsiding again. It seemed always so near the surface. But the barn was the place where he centered himself. He had last come out to spread sawdust over the dirt floor when he had become disgusted with some student papers he had been grading. Like most professors and all of his colleagues, he was alarmed and discouraged by the decline in students’ writing abilities. He longed for the good old days when high schools taught children how to write. Now, it had to be done in college and Jim resented his impressed role as remedial writing coach. After one long and frustrating evening of grading, the pile of cruddy papers had sailed off of his lap when he abruptly stood up, stomped to the refrigerator for a beer and stalked out into the night to his barn retreat. The sweat, the musty smell of the barn, and the spicy scent of pine sawdust had revived him then. The same smells and the little wonder of his serpent friends was doing much the same for him now.

How natural it was for their friends to be confused and nervous about approaching him. Her friends, and those who he knew primarily through her, got a free pass in his book. He really couldn’t condemn them. But what about the others? Hefting the sledgehammer and moving the weight to his other hand, he admitted to himself that he had been in their shoes any number of times and had also given wide social berth to the marital wreck. When Cybil and Mike Lynn had divorced, it took him and Robin nearly a year before they would approach either of them. It wasn’t that they were afraid, but it seemed like things were in the air and needed to settle before they inflicted themselves on their suffering friends. That’s probably what’s going on now, he thought. As Jim turned to the wall of narrow oak boards nailed across two heavy 6x6 beams, the voice inside his head ridiculed him. That’s bullshit Jim and you know it. Robin’s social life is just fine because she has Him. They are a couple. They’re safe for polite couple circles. Yours is a desert because you are a wandering Bedouin. Couples prefer the safety of other couples, not lone wolves. Especially sick ones. Sick? Where had that come from? Was Jim sick? Homesick maybe, but ill? Diseased? His blood rising in his face, Jim lifted the sledgehammer over his right shoulder and positioned it for a mighty sideways blow against the chest-high top board. WHAM! The blow, too hard and aimed poorly at the center of the board, broke the plank into two pieces which dangled from their ancient flat nails on each end. He wasn’t sick. He was unclean. There you go. You’re unclean like the adolescent wolf that is cast out of the pack when he becomes old enough to poach on the leader’s females. The lone wolf isn’t predictable. He’s a wanderer. He can come for your family. WHAM! The hammer struck home closer to the column and one of the broken ends flew off into the shadows, the nails driven in to hold it a hundred years ago were bent but still stubbornly clinging to the column. You’re unfit for civilized circles, son. Get ready to hang out with the other bachelor outcasts. The bachelor pack plays cards, smokes cigars, and leaves their crumbs on the carpet. WHAM! They pretend this is the life. Is this the life Jim? WHAM! It took two strokes before the other end of the board flew off across the barn, bounced once and landed nearly on top of the copulating snakes. They recoiled from the bombardment and partially untwined. As if half-asleep one slowly uncoiled and slipped away into the shadows while the other remained. The remaining redbelly quickly fled when Jim stomped his boot on the sawdust-covered floor.

The next boards came down easily under the influence of Jim’s angry sledgehammer and soon the wall was gone. Using a small pry-bar to remove the flat nails, his anger subsided again. It was always near the surface and he recognized that the proximity of anger made him needlessly short with his students and uncontrollably sarcastic with his colleagues. Unclean. That was a good word for it. Yes, he was certainly behaving differently; he could see that. In many ways, he thought he might be fulfilling the common expectations of the Divorced Man. The alpha male pushed farther back into the alphabet. The cuckolded man. It occurred to him that perhaps he had outcast himself from his happy social rhythms and not the other way around. Feeling uncomfortable in this new role that had been thrust upon him, he avoided social opportunities to avoid having to share his pain and to avoid experiencing anything that could be experienced as pity or condescension. It was a sneaky trap, but gradually he had to admit that he had built it and stepped right into it. This is the bitch of it, he realized. Losing his wife wasn’t the worst part. Losing his self as husband and having to learn a new father self was infinitely worse. Robin had not simply taken away their relationship and half the assets. She had taken away the parts of him that he most cherished. Having stacked the boards he had just taken down, fine old pine boards that would find another life in a future project, he looked around for something else to demolish. He had a few kinks yet to work out.

Looking down the row of three remaining horse stalls, he thought the next wall in line would do just fine. The first wall had been an outside wall and the boards had been nailed to the inside of the large timber columns. Taking it down had simply been a matter of hitting the boards from behind. The new wall was between two stalls and had boards nailed neatly into both sides of the support columns. Before Jim could swing his mighty sledgehammer again, he’d need to pry one side of the boards loose. Retrieving his pry-bar from the workbench, he set to work on the nearest boards. Each time he leaned on the pry-bar to leverage one end of a board away from its column, the old wood stubbornly released its grip with a loud groan. Some of the flat nails came out and some pulled through the plank to remain in the column. Jim carefully extracted each nail and dropped it with a clink into his coffee can.

As the forth board peeled away from its centuries-old home, Jim noticed something quite odd. Inside the wall was a plank running its length form a sort of floor. He stared at for awhile and tried to imagine why someone might put a plank right there. Certainly, it gave no structural support to the wall. It was just strange. Removing two more planks revealed the strange board completely. Dust, sawdust, and mouse droppings from many decades was thick upon its nearly black surface. He brushed it off and considered for awhile. Nothing he thought of made any sense. Could this have been the height of an original wall? Not unless the builder intended to keep small animals like pigs. But this wasn’t the kind of stall one would build for pigs. Besides, the sides of the plank fit inside the wall boards. If this had long ago been the top of the wall, the sides of the plank would have been laid on top of the wall boards and nailed in from the top. This plank was toe-nailed into the columns at each end and then secured along its length with nails into its sides through the wall boards. The mystery occupied Jim for a few minutes before he gave up and plied away the next wall board. Having been attached to the mystery plank it was full of nails along its length and he set to removing them judiciously, each nail dropping into the coffee can at his feet with that satisfying chink. His mind was drifting again. The endless cycle of angry, frustrating thoughts were seeping out of the front of his mind to be replaced by a different, easier retinue of considerations. The anticipation of a looked-forward-to party at the faculty club. Thoughts about research into his recent foray into the shifting economic power among new European Union member countries. That 1972 Stingray he’d seen rumbling through the town commons with a for sale sign in the small back window. He’d written the phone number down. It was just the kind of boy-toy he could appreciate now and it would make a nice first tenant for his new barn-come-auto shop. In his mind, he was muscling that Stingray along Route 9 in Vermont, thrilling to the acceleration that would power him through turns that would otherwise emphasize the big front end’s mushy feel in turns. The window was down and the T-tops were stowed in the trunk. Jim would have to call the number that was now on his dresser when he got back into the house.

He dropped another nail but this one missed the can. The subconsciously expected chink did not ring out. Instead, Jim’s mind registered a soft thud as the nail bounced off of his boot into the sawdust. He grunted loudly as he leaned over and sifted through the sawdust feeling for the nail. He worried now as he always did about the unknown child who might one day step on that nail (glass, bottle cap, screw). His fingers brushed against it soon enough and he plucked it from its hiding place. Standing upright, something caught Jim’s eye that caused him to stoop down again. Having removed the first wall board under the mystery plank, Jim could see under it. He’d expected that space to be dark and empty. Instead, some sort of large object could be seen in the barn’s amber light. Brown and dusty, he could only make out the flat top of what looked to be a box hidden underneath the mystery plank. A grin slowly emerged as the meaning of the plank became clear. It formed the top of a secret hiding place. A secret!! Jim smiled to himself. He reached in to touch the object and brushed away the dust and sawdust that had seeped through the wall boards over the last century or so. The object was harder than it looked and he realized that it was made of time-hardened leather. It was nearly two feet long and four or so inches thick with rounded corners running its length. Jim peered into the hole to see how deep it went but there was only blackness. With renewed interest, he went to work on the remaining wall boards with his trusty pry-bar.

Each board removed revealed another five inches of the object. Its sides were plain with the exception of some stitching that ran around its edges. There were also small scalloped markings irregularly spaced around the edges. After Jim had pried away three boards, he could easily see that his prize was resting on a plank identical to the original mystery plank. Together with the wall boards, they made a very effective compartment to hide something that must have been quite important to its owner. Jim’s curiosity was peaking. What could it be? He imagined that it was a satchel stuffed with centuries old currency. Perhaps it was gold. His mind spun with possibilities.

Trembling hands carefully felt the sides of the leather. It was still pretty sturdy, but the weather had hardened the leather and he was sure it would be brittle. He slowly grasped each side and lifted the object a little. It came off of its shelf easily and he estimated it weighed about six or seven pounds. Too bad… it is too light to be a precious metal. What could it be? Tilting the top of the leather object outwards, it cleared the top plank and he removed it from its ancient home and carried it to his work bench. There, he set it upright on a clean spot while he spread newspaper over the grimy surface to protect his new find. Laying it carefully on the newspaper, he searched the surface for writings or other clues to what might be inside. There was nothing.

Peering all around it, he realized that it was indeed some sort of satchel that hinged like a book binding on the side that had been on top. It has been sitting on its buckles. The metal in the buckles had long since corroded away and left only stains on the stiff, brittle leather straps. Jim thought of just opening it, but he was afraid of destroying the leather case. It was so old and brittle that he was sure bending the straps or opening one side would do irreparable damage to it. And yet, he was dying to know what was inside. With a flash of inspiration, he thought of the department in the college’s library that restores old books. Quite likely, they would know what to do with this. A jealous voice rose in him and nixed that idea. This case, and whatever was in it was his. Perhaps it would be marvelous and he would want to share it with the world, but for now it was his and he wanted to enjoy and explore it alone. He shelved the librarian. Perhaps some sort of oil or liniment would loosen things up. Just rip it open! His impetuous voice screamed. He was excited about his find. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to hide this, so it had been valuable to someone. Would it be valuable to him? Jim stood in front of the workbench with his feet apart and his chin resting on the palm of his hand, his elbow firmly planted in the middle of his chest. It was the same pose he often adopted during classroom discussions. It was his thinking pose and while his students would recognize it as one of his signature characteristics, he was never conscious that he did it at all. For several minutes he maintained the thinking pose, considering what might be in the case and what he should to protect it and its contents. The chill air penetrated his sweat-moistened clothes as he stood still and silent in front of his find. Eventually, the descending cold intruded upon his thoughts and he wrapped the object in the newspaper carefully, tucked it under his arm, and left the barn for the warmth of the house. The yard was dark now, with only a hint of pink lingering in the western sky. There were no lights on in the house and it was silhouetted black against the late twilight sky. A white hot spotlight suddenly assaulted him and lit up the ground around him. The motion detector had spotted him and kindly lit the way up the steps to the porch. Stomping the dust from his boots on the wide wooden planks, he breezed through the screen door and closed and locked the main door behind him. As lights came on one by one, the house lit up like a ceramic Christmas ornament casting warm yellow light onto the ground around the house. Every light was on before the screen door, pulled by its tired spring, quietly banged shut against the door frame.