by Barry Rachin
******
On Sunday morning an icy chill gripped the air, but the sun quickly rose over the bay nudging the temperature up to a reasonable forty degrees. Crossing the inlet, the Osprey were feasting on the remains of a large fish. The mother held the mangled body in her beak while the fledglings ripped the flesh to pieces.
They cruised south on Route 28 into the center of Hyannis where the harbor was filled with private yachts and sailboats. On the main square that meandered along the wharf, they found a few boutiques still open this late in the season but came away empty handed. But for the cool weather, they could just as easily been on Beverly Hills’ Rodeo Drive. They bought cappuccinos and croissants at a gourmet pastry shop and lounged outside on metal folding chairs with their food. From her handbag, Grace pulled a small brochure she picked up at the visitor’s bureau. “In 1602,” she read, “Captain Bartholomew Gosnold was the first of the Old World explorers to view the area now known as Hyannis. Settlers from England incorporated the Town of Barnstable in 1639."
“Scintillating.” Angie smeared butter on the flaky crust and sipped at her coffee.
“In 1666 Nicholas Davis, first settler and businessman, built his warehouse for pickling oysters in brine on Lewis Bay at the foot of what is now Pleasant Street.” “It says here,” she scanned further down on the pamphlet, “that, from the days of the earliest settlements, the Indian Sachem Yanno, for whom Hyannis is named, sold the area presently known as Hyannis as far as Craigville for 20 English pounds and two small pairs of pants.”
“Now you know why the Mashpee hate us,” her daughter added.
An elderly woman with a wrinkled face and platinum colored hair emerged from a jewelry store with several bags. She was carrying a funny looking dog that resembled a cross between a Shiatsu and a poodle. The dog had a face like an exploded cigar with dark, spiky hairs sprouting in a dozen different directions. The pooch was decked out in an almond-colored sweater and a collar studded with garish stones. The woman hurried past with a preoccupied expression, on her way to some hoity-toity tea party or socialite function. “Such a slave to fashion,” Grace muttered under her breath. A Boston Brahman with a pampered pooch. Not the sort of woman who would ever have to beg the courts for chump change. But still, the weather is delightful and it’s a blessing to get away.
Two doors down was a store with a blue awning. The sign over the door read Cape Cod Collectibles. Grace stepped over the threshold. Metal sculpture and small statuettes in various medium rested on tiered displays; pottery and ceramic vases were washed in a soft sheen from overhead track lighting. From a speaker in the rear, Clifford Brown's limpid jazz trumpet was navigating through the melodic chords to Joy Spring. The smoky horn leaped into the upper register, hammering out a barrage of staccato triplets before settling back into the final chorus of the tune.
A man came out from behind the counter. He was casually dressed in a V-necked sweater and hush puppies. “That sculpture you were admiring is by a local artist.” The fellow had a boyish appearance despite a barren patch on the back of his skull where the hair had thinned away to a mere wisp. “It sold yesterday.”
The piece, which stood four feet high, had been executed entirely in thin-gauged, brass. Using multiple strands of wire to recreate the instrument and performer, the artist had literally drawn the figure of a jazz saxophonist in silhouette. Off to the side was a trumpeter, a skier and a ballerina up on her toes. A five hundred dollar prima ballerina.
Grace budgeted everything. Without that extra twenty-five bucks from Stewart there was no margin for error. And yet, some people could blow five hundred dollars on a brass ballerina and never give the extravagance a second thought. The Kennedy compound was less than a mile down the road. The senator from Massachusetts could, on a whim, buy the jazz saxophonist or an entire sixteen-piece big band without breaking a sweat.
“Clever concept, don’t you think?” The proprietor explained how the artist drew a rough sketch in charcoal in order to visualize each figure. Then, using the drawing as a template, he shaped, rolled and twisted dozens of metal strands to bring the figure to life. “They’re three-dimensional,” he added. “The images have depth despite the thinness of the metal.”
The talkative owner knew Grace and her daughter had no intention of buying anything but didn’t seem to care and Grace appreciated that. To meet someone without an agenda or ulterior motive was refreshing. “My name’s Donald. Donald Carrington.” He handed Grace a business card. “Feel free to stop in any time.”
******
On Monday after classes, Grace went to the Brandenburg town library and searched for books by Pushkin. She found nothing. A volume by the author was available at a neighboring branch. Grace had the librarian order the book. When it arrived, she read the introduction and a half dozen short stories written in a simple but straightforward style. The prose was lean and muscular with a sharp, realistic edge. In one of the stories, a Mongol chieftain from an eastern province staged an uprising against the local ruler and was put to death. Was the tale meant to be taken literally or was there something more - a childish parable masking a deeper, hidden truth? In the biographical postscript that followed the stories, the editor wrote:
‘Alexander Pushkin’s highly unique style
laid the foundation for modern Russian literature.’
******
When she arrived home later in the afternoon, the light in the living room was burnt out. Grace replaced the bulb but that didn’t fix the problem. “It’s gotta be the switch,” Angie said.
Grace removed the plastic plate and stared at a jumble of wires. “Maybe you ought to shut of the electricity at the main box,” Angie cautioned, “before pulling things apart.”
“Stupid me,” Grace thought, easing her hands away from the bare wires. There were different voltages in different parts of the house. Two-twenty and one-ten. She wasn’t sure what she was dealing with. But replacing a wall switch wasn’t brain surgery. How difficult could it be to change a stupid switch? “Let’s go for a ride.”
At Home Depot the electrical aisle was thirty feet long with offerings on both sides. Fourteen-gauge wire in fifty-foot coils, junction boxes, wall outlets in a huge metal bin, black electrical tape, shiny metal conduit, wire strippers, needle-nose pliers and plastic splicing nuts in various color-coded sizes. With Angie bringing up the rear, Grace cornered a salesman.
“New or old installation?” The man had a walrus moustache and grumpy disposition.
“I just need a light switch.”
Everyone else seemed to know perfectly well what they were doing. There were contractors loading up shopping carts with every conceivable electrical offering. An older black man was rummaging in a bin of 20-amp circuit breakers. None of the other customers needed any help. The salesman hooked a thumb on either side of the buckle of his leather belt and scowled. His gut hung precariously out over the inverted buckle. “Two-way or three-way switch?”
Grace felt her brain grow numbed. “I don’t understand the question.”
The salesman made a sound that was a cross between a belch and a death rattle. “You don’t know the first thing about electricity, do you?” He ran a crooked forefinger over the salt and pepper moustache. “Lot of people come in here. Do-it-yourselfers. They can manage a regular switch without too much trouble, but when there’s an extra hot wire thrown into the mix, that always sends them to the nuthouse.”
A fellow snaked passed them pushing a steel flatbed loaded with framing lumber and sheets of particle board. The metal wheels on the bottom of the cart made an unholy ruckus. “All I asked …”
“We’re not in business to teach novices complicated installations.” The salesman’s cell phone rang and he answered it. “Be back in a minute.” He strode off down the aisle as though escaping from the plague.
“Idiot!” Angie fumed.
Grace put her hands over both eyes and bent over as though someone had sucker punched her in the gut. She wept quietly
and with infinite self-loathing. She had come to Home Depot tabula rasa, intent on facing down her demons, and what did she get? The electrical salesman from hell, a misogynistic son of a bitch!
“Gees,” Angie hissed, “get a grip!” Twenty feet away, the older black man sorting through circuit breakers was staring at Grace with a blank expression. The hardware department was no place for strong emotions. A young man with thick glasses was restocking a bin with yellow extension cords. Angie slithered in front of him. The man dodged to one side, but she blocked his path. “My mother needs help with a switch. Really really bad!”
“Two way or three way?” the geeky fellow asked. Angie’s mouth fell open. “How many switches,” he rephrased the question, “control the light that won’t work?”
“Just one.”
The man sauntered halfway down the aisle and removed a small switch from a bin. “There you go.” Grace stood beside her daughter now, dabbing her eyes with a Kleenex. “Something wrong, miss?” He seemed genuinely concerned.
“Allergies.”, She cleared her throat and spoke a bit more forcefully. “How do you install the damn thing?”
He turned the switch over. “There’re only three wires. Two black and a bare copper ground. Just hook the blacks - that’s your hot wires - to the bronze screws and the bare ground wire to the smaller green nut here at the bottom.” He pointed to each place as he spoke.”
“It doesn’t sound that difficult,” Angie said.
The young man wagged his head up and down. “Easy as snapping a circuit breaker into a junction box.”
“This is all I need?”
“That’s it, lady.” He pushed the glasses up on the bridge of his nose. “Three-way switches are just a tad more complicated, but if you ever need to change one, come back and see me.” He handed Grace one of his business cards and hurried off down the aisle.
Angie studied the layout of the switch. “Cripes, I could do this!”
In the parking lot Grace hesitated. Turning to her daughter she said, “There's one more thing I want to do before we head home. It will just take a moment.”
The museum was open late due to the fall art show. The Brandenburg Gazette devoted considerable advertising to the event and several dozen visitors were still milling about the foyer with only half an hour to closing.
They found the standard fare of water color paintings—still lifes, floral arrangements and nature scenes. A potter with an unusual glazing technique had three bowls set out on a lighted display. Not all the offerings were conventional or even attractive. One offbeat artist had worked facial features into an odd-shaped gourd along with a bulbous nose and formidable set of teeth. A vegetative rodent. The work reminded Grace of the satanic creatures in a Hieronymus Bosch painting.
“A bit too avant-garde for my tastes,” a woman sporting an Etienne handbag directly in front of them murmured to a friend.
Close by the back wall was a bust of Abraham Lincoln cast in bronze. The emancipator of the slaves looked rather melancholy. Grace could picture such a piece in a government building, but couldn’t imagine a morosely depressed former president sharing her personal living space.
“Here’s Carl’s box.” In the far corner was a diminutive box no more than four inches square. Unlike the amboyna burl masterpiece, it offered no fancy curves or daring swirls. The surfaces had been planed perfectly flat, the edges gently eased.
The sides of the box were fashioned from a light, cream-colored wood, but this was clearly just a pleasant detail and nothing more. The viewer’s eye was immediately drawn to the lid which was done in three, exotic contrasting woods—a mottled, golden outside layer which exuded an irresistible glow as though it contained its own, inner light source. Nearer the middle was a band of quilted, reddish wood and, at the center, a coffee-colored burl with numerous swirls and intricate patterns.
A tall blonde woman, the museum director, came up behind them. She had a pleasant, sensible face. “You like the box?” Grace nodded. “The lemony gold wood is avodire and the red is sapelé. Both come from Africa. The medallion in the center is walnut taken near the root of the tree. The tremendous pressure the wood is under creates the unusual, paisley pattern.”
"I know the artist,” Grace said. “He works at our school.”
The director smiled. Though it was late, she didn’t seem in any great hurry to close the museum. “Perhaps you could tell me something about the man. I haven’t actually met Carl personally.”
“But I thought -”
“When he made his application,” the director continued, “he simply filled out the form and clipped it to a brown paper bag. The box was in the bag.”
“Wierrrrd!” Angie held out the ‘r’ for dramatic effect.
The director reached out and waved an index finger over the lid. “Everybody ogles this little box but never bothers to look inside.” The director winked at Angie - a conspiratorial gesture - then motioned with a flick of her head. “Go ahead, open it.” Angie placed her thumb in an indentation on the front and raised the lid to reveal a poem which had been recessed beneath the lid.
Paradise is there, behind that door,
In the next room;
But I have lost the key.
Perhaps I have only mislaid it.
Kahlil Gibran
Paradise is there, behind that door,… A poem hidden away, like a precious gem, in a box. A gift within a gift. What did it mean?
“The paper is archival, acid neutralized so it will never fade or yellow. Come back in a hundred years and it will look just as crisp and clean as it does today.” The director glanced at her watch. “We’ll be closing in five minutes.” She lowered the lid hiding the enigmatic verse and went off to tell the other patrons. Grace grabbed a pen from her purse and, reopening the lid, jotted the poem on the back of a slip of paper.
******
Monday night they got home too late from the museum to tackle the light switch. The following evening after supper, Grace assembled what few tools Stewart left behind when he drove off in the U-haul. “So this is it.” She began unscrewing the light plate.”
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Angie cautioned. Her mother stared at her with a blank expression. “The power. You have to shut the electricity off at the main box.”
“Silly me.” They went down into the basement and tripped the circuit breaker that controlled the hall lighting.
Back upstairs, all the lights in the entryway were dead. Grace used the Phillips screwdriver to remove the two screws securing the switch to the wall. Just as the pleasant salesman with the horn-rimmed glasses had assured her, the black wires were fastened to the brass nuts; the neutral ground tucked under beneath the switch. All she had to do was remove each wire, one at a time, from the broken switch and shift it over to the new one.
And to think the obnoxious salesman with the bowling ball gut had tried to break her spirit - make her feel like the only thing women were good for was cleaning house and fornicating, not necessarily in that order. Boorish swine! He probably sat home all day Sunday watching WWF wrestling matches on his flat screen TV and smashing empty beer cans on the side of his primordial skull.
All the wires were replaced and Grace tossed the broken switch into the trash. “Moment of truth.” Angie went downstairs and threw the circuit breaker. The other lights went on but the hallway was still dark. A fleeting image of the salesman with the walrus moustache floated back to her. He was wagging a finger in front of Grace’s nose, his lips curled in a dismissive sneer.
This wasn’t rocket science. For God’s sakes, how difficult could it be? Grace peered into the metal receptacle box. “Wait a minute. I see the problem.” The topmost wire had wiggled loose from the fastener, when she folded the wires repositioning them in the wall. She poked at the loose wire with the tip of her screwdriver. Big mistake! The second the metal blade made contact with the bare wire, there was a loud hissing sound and a bright arc of white light shot through the
air.
“Mom!”
Grace tumbled backward, collapsing in a heap on the floor, and the room went totally dark again. Dead silence. “I think,” Grace gingerly lifted herself up on her elbows, “we were suppose to shut the power down.”
Angie held a flashlight over the box while her mother attached the errant wire. When they flipped the power back on, all the lights worked. “On. Off.” Grace flipped the switch and watched the light alternately glow then fade to darkness. “On. Off. On. Off. This is fun.”
“You’re a regular card-carrying electrician.” Angie stared up at the ceiling as her mother played with the new switch. Suddenly her daughter’s face clouded over. “Damn!”
“What’s wrong?”
Angie gestured toward the picture window. “We’ve got company.”
Grace peered out the window, but the street was empty. It was after nine o’clock. For the past hour, a light rain had been falling in a steady drizzle. “I don’t see anyone.”
“Over there by the shrubs.” Diagonally across the street and partially concealed behind an outgrowth of lilacs stood Dwight Goober, the Village Idiot.
Grace snuffed the lights, climbed the stairs and drifted noiselessly into the bedroom. She lifted the curtain and peered into the street.
“What’s he doing now?” Angie whispered anxiously. Dwight had shifted away from the lilacs and was standing in the middle of the street. All six feet of him. At nine o’clock on a school night in the pouring rain. Even when the boy stood rooted in one place, all his limbs were in perpetual motion, elbows stabbing the moist air, hips jerking about fitfully.
“He’s like a wild animal,” Grace mused. “A dangerous one at that.”
