by Donna Ball
Noah slouched over his worktable, working algebra problems with a chewed-up pencil, and glancing a little too often at the clock—which was shaped like a color wheel with paint-brushes for hands—on the wall behind Lindsay. He had learned the rules the first day and, after one or two false starts, had learned to abide by them: The art materials did not come out until all of the day’s assigned schoolwork had been completed to his teacher’s satisfaction. At last he tore the sheet of math problems out of his notebook and stretched across the table to hand it to her, waiting impatiently until Lindsay checked it.
“Very nice,” she said, after what seemed like a very long time. “You transposed your variables here on number six. Try it again.”
He erased, recalculated, and handed it back to her before she had resumed her seat. Lindsay lifted an eyebrow. “Learning comes easily for you, doesn’t it?”
He shrugged. “Jonesie down at the Hardware says I can have a job when I get my GED. Pays nine dollars an hour.”
“Good for you.”
“Why can’t I take that GED test now?”
“One, because you’re not old enough. Two, because you don’t know enough. You wouldn’t pass.” She handed the paper back to him with a 100%-Perfect scrawled across the top.
He stuffed the paper in his notebook without looking at it and began to stack his schoolbooks out of the way to make room for the tabletop easel and paints.
“Hold it, hotshot,” Lindsay said. She reached behind her to her own worktable and took up another stack of papers. “I read your report on the French Revolution.” She turned up the first page, which was a sketch of a man in eighteenth-century costume with the caption “Robespierre was a jerk ” and the second, which depicted a woman in jewels and powdered wig jumping out of a cake—“let them eat cake”—and the third, a drawing of the guillotine and the single line “Off with their heads.”
“Very amusing,” Lindsay said.
He grinned. “I thought you’d like it.”
Lindsay gave him a stern look. “I should make you do the whole thing over.”
His grin vanished. “Ah, come on—”
“Except for the fact that you’ve obviously read the material.” She shook the papers at him. “Otherwise you couldn’t have made such a joke of it.”
“It is a joke,” he returned, scowling. “Who cares about a bunch of dudes who’ve been dead three hundred years already?”
“The French Revolution was a pivotal point in world history,” she insisted. “It changed a nation’s destiny and overthrew an entire tradition of government. It was important!”
“It’s over,” he replied, sounding bored. “Why do I have to study history anyhow? They’re not going to ask me about Frenchies on the GED.”
As always, Lindsay chose her battles. “We study history,” she explained patiently, “because it tells us who we are. Because it gives us continuity from one point in time to the next. Because if we didn’t know what the people who went before us had been through, we would have to do everything in the world all over again with each new generation. And because when we study history, we understand that we are all part of something much bigger than ourselves—a story that goes on and on.”
“Are we gonna have a drawing lesson today or what?”
She hesitated, then said, “Come up in the loft with me.”
Noah followed her up the ladder, and she dragged forward the box of photographic plates she and Cici had discovered earlier. Holding one up to the light, she said, “This is history.”
He squinted at it, trying to make out the faded shapes. “Looks like this house.”
“It is. It’s this house, the way it used to be a long time ago, and the people who lived here. They’re dead now, too, but without them we wouldn’t be living in this place, having this conversation. Do you understand?”
He was rummaging through the box. “What are these things anyhow?”
“They’re photographic plates from an old camera. I’m going to try to have them developed.”
“They worth anything?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised. People pay a lot of money for pieces of history. Why do you suppose that is?”
“Because they’re dumb?”
She smiled patiently. “Your homework assignment is to answer that question with a five-hundred-word essay.”
He groaned out loud.
“And, because I know how much you like to illustrate your work,” she added, “we’re going to start your art lesson by choosing one of these plates for inspiration. You’ll be interpreting it in charcoal, monochrome oil, and multimedia using an acrylic base, so choose one you like.”
Now he looked interested. “What’s monochrome oil?”
She smiled and dusted off her hands as she stood. “And while you’re choosing, you can wrap each one of those plates in newspaper so they don’t break, and bring the box downstairs.”
He was deeply absorbed in the task when she left him, pulling out the plates, holding them up to the light, wrapping them in newsprint, putting them back in the box. He kept out a few that he liked for drawing practice. And he kept out a few more, hiding them under his shirt, because she’d never miss them.
And who knew? They might be worth something.
When Bridget walked into the Blue Valley Public Library, with its speckled linoleum floors and dark-paneled walls and curved oak circulation desk, she paused for a moment to breathe in the smell of old books and printer’s ink. It smelled like home to her. Lori, on the other hand, headed straight for the Internet station.
Bridget’s childhood had been spent in libraries like this one, and in such places she had discovered the world had no limits. She always liked to take the time to examine whatever was on display behind the glass case as she came in the door; this month it was a collection of artwork entitled “My Favorite Place” by fifth graders at the local school.
She had some books to return, and the librarian greeted her by name. She was a frequent patron, and besides, everyone knew the women who had bought the old Blackwell farm. “I found something for you the other day,” the librarian said, looking pleased with herself. She was a plump, ponytailed woman in her forties who, Bridget was given to understand, had already been working in the library for twenty years. “It’s a guide to landmarks and historic places from the 1960s.” She pulled it out from under the desk. “Blackwell Farms is listed in it. I thought you might get a kick out of it.”
Bridget’s face lit up. “Really? Thanks!”
“And the new Stephen King book came in. I’ve been saving it for you.”
“Terrific,” Bridget said. Then she added, “Say, Katherine . . . I don’t suppose you’d know anything about sheep fleece, would you?”
“I don’t personally, but Ann Marie Lucas is an expert. She wrote an article for the paper one or two years ago . . .” As she spoke, she was tapping on the computer. “Here it is. Do you want me to pull it for you?”
“Thanks, that would be great. And anything else you can find.”
By the time Bridget had finished browsing the latest bestsell ers and making her selections, Katherine had a stack of periodicals waiting for her. Bridget settled down at a table to make notes, was referred to the “agriculture and husbandry” section of the shelves, and made several selections. She had just finished checking out her stack of books when Lori joined her, fairly bursting with self-satisfaction, and declared, “Our problems are solved.” She brandished a collection of printed pages. “I found out everything we need to know.”
“Did you now?” Bridget slid her books into a canvas tote bag. “And in a library, of all places!”
On the way to the car, Lori regaled her with all she had learned about sheep ranching, the most valuable fleece and the best time to harvest it, the amount of sheep an acre could support, sorted by breed, and the current market price in Australia for high-quality Cotswold wool.
“But we’re not in Australia, and we don’t have Cotswold sheep,” B
ridget pointed out.
“Well, that’s just an example. But listen to this . . .” She continued to read from her notes as they stopped by the Dollar Store for paper towels and a new broom, and Family Hardware for the stain Cici had ordered for the floors—where Bridget assured Jonesie they hadn’t had a bit of trouble with the sander, not at all, and expected the job to be finished by suppertime—and was distracted only when she spotted a cute vintage hat in the thrift store where Bridget stopped to donate a bag of clothes the ladies had put together over the winter. Lori paid a quarter for the purple felt fedora with the gold ribbon rose, plopped it atop her head—where of course it made her look as though she had just stepped off the cover of a fashion forward, funky-chic magazine—and continued her narrative where she had left off.
“The point is, there is money to be made, and we already have everything we need to get started. First we sell the wool, then we invest in some good breeders, let nature take its course, and voilà! Before you know it we’re a certified member of the wool producing industry. All we need now,” she added, sliding into the passenger seat of Bridget’s SUV, “is the name of that woman Farley was talking about who buys fleece.”
“Her name is Ann Marie Lucas,” Bridget informed her, starting the engine, “and she’s a local hand spinner. She weaves the yarn into shawls and capes and sweaters that sell for hundreds and hundreds of dollars—like wearable art.”
Lori gave her an admiring look. “Wow, good work. How did you find that out?”
“The old-fashioned way.” Bridget couldn’t prevent a smirk. “I read it in a newspaper.”
“Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s call her.”
“There’s a problem,” Bridget said. “She only buys the finest quality wool, and our sheep are—well, they’re a mess. They’ve been wandering around in the pasture for two years. They’re filthy and matted . . .”
“We can wash them,” Lori insisted.
Bridget shot her a look. “Wash sheep?”
“How else are you going to get their wool clean?”
Bridget thought about that. “Well, I guess I’ve done crazier things. But before they can be washed, they have to be dipped to get rid of parasites . . .”
“You can buy sheep dip at the hardware store.”
“And there’s no point in doing any of it until right before we have them sheared, because they’ll just get dirty again. And the sheepshearer doesn’t come until April.”
Lori shook her head adamantly. “No, no, no, don’t you see? If we wait until then—until everyone else has fleece—we’ve lost our home field advantage! We have a flock of sheep with two years’ growth of wool on them in a market where no one else has any wool at all. We have to strike while the iron is hot.”
Bridget cast her a puzzled look. “I don’t know how we’re going to get them sheared any sooner.”
Lori sat back and folded her arms across her chest with a self-satisfied smile as she pronounced, “By doing it ourselves.”
Some people might have put a temporary patch over the hole in the wall, and proceeded with sanding the floors. But Cici believed in doing things right, and since the floor molding had to be taken off before the stain could be applied to the floors, anyway, and since repairing the hole in the wall was bound to make a mess, she put the sander away and gathered her tools for the repair job.
By the time Ida Mae came in from the kitchen to ask if she wanted lunch, Cici had the floor molding off and had trimmed away the broken edges of the cracked wall to a six by eight rectangle. She had also made a rather intriguing discovery.
“Ida Mae,” she said, turning away from her examination of the inside of the hole, “this wall is hollow! Did you know that?”
Ida Mae returned a scowl. “How do you suppose I’d know that? I wasn’t born here, you know. You want soup or what?”
“You don’t remember there being a closet or anything here?”
Ida Mae gave her a look that suggested there were no words to express the stupidity of that question. “There ain’t no closets in this house except the ones you built.”
“That’s right,” murmured Cici thoughtfully, “there aren’t. I’m going to get a flashlight.”
“You’re eating soup for lunch.”
By the time Lindsay came in, Cici had widened the hole enough to insert her hand, with the flashlight, and part of her head. “There’s a whole big space back here!” she exclaimed. “Lindsay, come look at this!”
Lindsay hung back. “Um, spiders?”
Cici scooted back out of the hole, brushing the plaster dust off her cheeks. “Seriously, it’s like someone walled over a whole room. Why would anyone do that?”
Lindsay looked uneasy. “I read a story once about a nun who was walled up inside a convent. Some questions are better left unasked.”
But by the time Bridget and Lori returned, Cici had enlarged the hole with her reciprocating saw to a two foot square, and Lindsay, who was smaller about the shoulders and torso than Cici, was halfway in, halfway out of the wall.
“Well?” demanded Cici anxiously, hovering over her.
“There’s something in here,” came Lindsay’s muffled voice in reply.
Bridget came forward hesitantly, tugging Lori with her. “A body?” she suggested.
Cici glanced at her. “Do you and Lindsay read the same books?”
Lindsay wriggled out, the flashlight in one hand, and a length of lavender ribbon, dull with grime, in the other. Her hair was mussed and her cheeks were smudged and she sneezed, twice, from the dust. Proudly she held up her find.
“Wow,” said Cici, taking it. “Look at that. How do you suppose it got there? “
Bridget examined it curiously. “Grosgrain,” she pronounced.
“Mom,” Lori said, “you cut a hole in our wall for a ribbon?”
“There’s some more junk back there,” Lindsay said, “but this was all I could reach. It looks like it’s been closed up forever. There must be six inches of dust on the floor.”
“What kind of junk?” Cici wanted to know.
“I couldn’t tell.”
“Did anything look like it might be a chest full of money?” prompted Bridget.
“How far back does it go?” Cici asked.
“Not as big as a room. Maybe a foot. But it’s long.”
Cici looked around thoughtfully. “Lori,” she decided, “wiggle in there and take a look.”
Lori’s eyes flew wide. “Me? Are you kidding?”
Cici plucked the new purple hat off Lori’s head and pushed her gently toward the opening. “That’s what you get for being a size two. You’re the only one who can fit.”
“But—there could be mice!”
Cici turned to Lindsay. “Did you see any mice?”
Lindsay shook her head.
“Go,” she told Lori.
Five minutes later a very disgruntled Lori wriggled back out of the hole, covered with grime, and with nothing to show for her effort but a rusty tool of some sort, a wooden block, and a broken iron chain. “These jeans will never be clean again,” she declared, brushing at them furiously, “and all for an ice pick, a chain, and a piece of wood!”
“It’s not an ice pick,” Cici replied, disappointed, “It’s an awl. You use them for punching holes in things.”
“I guess whoever built the wall dropped it while he was working,” suggested Bridget.
“I guess,” Cici agreed. “I wonder why they built the wall in the first place.”
“And what about the ribbon?” wondered Lori.
Cici looked at the space thoughtfully. “You know what?” she said. “I’m going to open it back up.”
“The wall?” Bridget sounded alarmed. “That’s an awfully big job.”
“Not really. It will be easier than fixing the hole, actually. And I’m thinking some built-in bookshelves would be perfect there.”
“But what about the floors?”
Cici shook her head. “No point in starting
the floors until we get the wall torn down.”
“We?” Lori said. “Did you say we?”
“I’ll get the sledgehammer,” Lindsay said.
“I’ll get the wheelbarrow,” Bridget volunteered.
As they departed, Cici looked at her daughter. “Didn’t you say something about wanting to learn how to restore old houses?”
Lori looked at her fingernails, which she had painstakingly French-manicured herself only last night. “I kind of pictured myself on the management end.”
“I kind of pictured you learning from the ground up.”
Lori looked at her mother’s determined expression, spared a last regretful look at her manicure, and said, “Guess I’d better go find my work gloves.”
Four hours and twelve wheelbarrows of debris later, Lori couldn’t stop saying, “Oh my God. Oh my God.”
What they had uncovered was a tall arched alcove, framed in white decorative trim, of the kind often found in the grand old houses of Europe. Inside the alcove was a painted mural that depicted a pastoral scene. The more they scrubbed away the accumulated dust and grime, the more they came to recognize the scene as a portrayal of their own sheep meadow, with the mountains behind.
“Durndest thing I ever did see,” commented Noah, who had been recruited to do the sledgehammer work after their arms grew tired. “Why’d anybody want to paint a picture on a wall?”
“Murals have been very popular at various times in history,” replied Lindsay absently, studying the painting. “Like the Sistine Chapel, remember?”
