AHW: In Memoriam

The trunk is marked with block letters, A. H. W.  My sister and I try to pull it from under the eaves.  It grabs at the rough board floor as we tug, as though it resists the interruption of its slumber there. 

"What the heck do you think is in this thing?  Bones?"

"Oh, my God! Don't even say that!" 

"What if there was a dead body-or-a skeleton in there?  Maybe a baby no one wanted!"

"Stop!" I hiss!  Madeline is lit by shafts of dusty yellow light coming through the attic windows.  There is a web in her hair, but I hold onto that tidbit or she'll freak out before we get this mystery solved.  "C'mon, you freak!  Mom will hear us and we'll catch hell for being up here.  Just pull, damn it!"

Like stevedores, we each grab an end and give a mighty tug-this time in sync.  The trunk groans and shifts and gives way-so much that we nearly fall ass over tea kettle.  "WHOA!  All right!  Hope Mom didn't hear all that!  She'll kill us!"

I dust my hands on my jeans and run my hand over the dome top.  "A H W", I breathe aloud.

"A Haggard Widow!  Aunt Helen's Womb!" Madeline cries.  "It's too creepy!  Let's push it back!  This house is two hundred years old, ya know.  There might be something gross in there!"

"Well, hang onto yer hat, Pandora.  I'm about to unleash hell's fury!" 

There is a brass latch neatly clamping the lid, as big as a baby's arm. The trunk is greenish brown, with golden oak strips, perfectly joined, all around its sides and top.  There are brittle leather handles- one on each end- fixed with heavy brass studs.  The latch isn't locked and I lift it gently and flap it upward on its hinge. 

"Here goes nothing!"  We both hold our breath as we each grab a corner and heave the trunk top open.  There is a squeaking sound as we do that nearly makes us drop lid and run!  But our anticipation steadies us, and we flip the lid back. 

A face stares back at us from within the deep trunk's depths!  A handsome face, with liquid eyes, high cheekbones and a squared off jaw.  His hair is wavy and thick.  His sleeves are rolled to the elbow, his tie is loosened.  He wears a half smile.  Not quite letting the world know how he feels. 

"Wow!  Who's that hunk of man?" I wonder aloud, as I gently lift the photo from its perch atop the trunk's contents.  We dig deeper.  There are leather bound books- tucked in a neat stack-along one wall of the trunk.  I lift one from the stack and smell it-I don't quite understand what stirs me to do this.  It smells like shoe polish and wood-and it is soft to the touch-with blackened corners-maybe from the oil on the AHW's hand- one hundred years ago. "What do ya think?  Love poems in here?  Maybe a sonnet?"  I tease, my eyebrows lifting.

"Open it, you creep!" Madeline says as she grabs her own tome disturbing the   pile- so neatly stowed.

There on the yellowed pages within, I see the neatest handwriting I have ever seen.  Numbers and symbols inscribed with such order and precision, in such a careful hand.  Page after page, the equations march along like lines of soldiers, marching to some conclusion that eludes my non-math kind of mind.  I flip to the front of the book and there, written in a gorgeous, flowing script: Aaron Harvey Wilson. 

The initial letters are large and loopy.  My sister Mary says that means you're sexy and confident-she ought to know-she took a handwriting analysis course and the guy said that large and loopy was a dead giveaway for sex appeal.  The rest of his name is fluid and sure, like a brook tumbling across the page.  "This sexy Aaron guy must have had a brain, too, look at all this stuff!"

Madeline doesn't hear me.  She's locked in on a book filled with antique valentines.  Each card, a  little work of art, strewn with flowers and lacy paper cutwork.  Each bears more formal flowing script begging, "Be My Valentine",

"I Am Yours" "Please Be Mine".  Madeline holds one dramatically aloft and reads it aloud in a husky, southern drawl, straight out of Gone With The Wind. 

"Hahvey, I long to see you again under the moonlight at the lake.  Yours, Priscilla. Wooo!  This Harvey-or Aaron-he's a looker and a lover!"  I gently snitch a few of my own and hold one up in the beam of light blazing across our laps. 

"Hahvey, will we meet again under the lovely pear tree at dawn? I long to see you and to hear your voice again.  Best, Abigail?.WHAT?  Priscilla? Abigail? He's a lady killer!"  We both laugh out loud and then look back at his face, smiling at us through the ages, that half smile.  "Hahvey!  YOU SEXY DOG, YOU!"  

We hungrily reach further back in time, deeper into this trunk trove.  There is a book of poetry-Whittier's Snowbound.  And a book about bridges, of all things,  dated 1802.  Aaron Harvey has sketched his own fantasy bridges- in pen and ink-with that same sure hand-bridges with great arches- suspended from cables, galloping over rivers.  "I wonder what Aaron H. did with his life, after all.  Do ya think he married Abby or Priss?"  Just then, the sliding door to the attic rumbles below. 

"Pat! Madeline!  Is that you two fools I hear up there?"  It's Nana!  We register in horror; a fate worse than Mom.  Maybe she'll go away- we freeze and we pray. 

"Pat!  Madeline!  I know you're up there, now come DOWN here!"

"We'll be right there, Nana!"  I pipe cheerily, then "GET UP, SISTER! YOU AIN'T MAKIN' ME TAKE ALL THE HEAT!"   

"Oh, alright. Coming Nana!" she hollers down the frail attic steps, thin and knife edged like old bones.  "She can't make it up those steps!  Quick!  Close the trunk!"

"No.  Wait!  I'm coming up!"  Our heads jerk to face one another-eyes ablaze.  "OH SHIT!  THE TRUNK!"  It's too late. Nana isn't as frail as she looks.  Her snowy head rises up from the stairwell- like the moon climbing the night sky.  Her gnarled and spotted hands grasp the wooden handrail as she hauls herself to the top and lays her eyes on us-crossed legged-there before the open trunk.  We cringe.

She heaves a breath or two- before sitting down on an old leather hassock- and pushes back some fuzzy strands of hair-apparently dislodged in the exertion of the climb.  "Well, goodness.  I see that you girls have discovered good old Harvey's trunk.  Your Mom will have your heads!" 

I study my hands.   Madeline not so casually looks out the window-anything to avoid the scolding to come. 

"She thinks I'll get mad if you fuss with all my old stuff.  Well, relax.  It's good old stuff-it needs to be explored after all these years!  Oh, Harvey.  He was a good old batch," she says, her eyes looking off somewhere where we can't go.  "He lived here- with Clarence and me-our whole married life.  Well, he was born here, of course.  He was Clarence's older brother.  Had a right to be here, after all."  Her face gets softer with each word.  "He stayed in the room right here, at the bottom of these stairs.  He was so very quiet and studious.  Top of his class at Pinkerton! And oh!  So handsome!  Do you know that the ladies would come up from Boston to court him, not the other way around?" Nana laughed-and so did we- at this twist of romancing. 

"By the looks of him, I can see why!"  I offer, but she's still far off, trying to bring him home to us. 

"He always planned to go off to college.  In Chicago."  Then she raises her voice and her eyebrows, "to be a ci-vil en-gin-eer", each syllable articulated slowly, to exaggerate the import of his calling. We sit -dead quiet-listening to this soliloquy unfold. 

"He had packed his trunk and was leaving one wintry day, as I recall.  His mother, Mary, well-she took a poor spell.  Said it was her heart failing, I think.  Begged him to stay.  Well, he put the trunk right back up in the attic here, and he never left home again.  He never said a word.  Just took over the farming, with his Dad and with Clarence, of course.  I don't imagine that cleaning cow poop out of stalls was what he had in mind!  But he never complained.  Never married, either.  I think that it kind of killed his whole spirit. You know?" she asks, not really expecting or even wanting us to answer. 

"Well, now.  Which one of you two snoops is going to help your old Nana down these steps- before I go and break my neck?" We scramble to our feet.  I go first, so she can steady her hand on my shoulder.  Madeline steadies her from behind.