CANDLELIT CHRONICLES: HISTORIC HAUNTS

Mar. 25_RIP Robert Culp & free read_ 1653 word count

Robert Culp is dead at age 79, after hitting his head while walking near his home.


http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postmortem/


http://www.popeater.com/2010/03/24/robert-culp-dead-i-spy/





I planned to blog on some of the interesting new features I've been saving up this week and last, but it took me all day today to write my 2500 words. I just could not dredge up the bucket from the Creative well, in great contrast to the usual flow all this month.





Youngest grandchild (nearly 16 months) has been ill with allergies for 11 days and I haven't felt like myself since Monday afternoon: not ill, not in pain, no aches, just not myself. Emotional issues too; probably why the writing did not flow well yesterday but was more like dredging the last drops from the well during a drought: interesting metaphor as I was writing about a drought in 1899.





Today's Free Read:





from The Phantom Logging Operation

Chapter 20

         Clearly Attorney Benton Squires and the Bookseller downstairs were quite a pair: both difficult, arrogant, elitist-both should have been Europeans. I liked neither one and would only be too glad not to have to deal with them. I remembered now how vain and stuck-up Leill's Vegas blackjack dealer was too-always with the “better than me” attitude going. I hadn't liked him either, and not only because he ran off with my wife.





         Wondering how long I would have to sit and wait till Squires decided, like a Pez toy, to dispense some information, one lozenge at a time, I elected to stir the pot.





“Mr. Squires, I really must get on with my day. Would you please tell me all I need to know about my properties?”





         He finally looked at me then, both resignation and pity warring in his gaze.





“Tell you 'all you need to know,' or tell you all?”





         I waved my hand in a wishy-washy motion to indecisiveness.

“I don't know: am I ready to learn 'all'?” I inquired jestingly.

That resignation mixed with pity slowly congealed into pure pity.

“I don't know, Mr. Lewes-are you ready? Why don't we begin with the essentials, as you say you have 'promises to keep and miles to go before you sleep'?”

          I started to demur, till I realized he referred to the Robert Frost poem, “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening.”


So instead I just proferred a smile, and added,

“By all means, please-just the essentials for now.”





“All right then. Very simply put, Mr. Lewes, you are the only surviving son of a very important personage in the Testament Logging Corporation.”

         I just sat, stunned. Surely he didn't refer to Daddy? Mamma had never implied anything like this: yes, she told me often how Daddy was considered a valued employee-as a maintenance manager and jack-of-trades-and thus kept on throughout the Depression when many others had been laid off. But “a very important personage?” Whatever could Attorney Squires be indicating?





         As I pondered his strange words, the man patted his hand in the air, as if pacifying a stirring beast.

“Your father, Mr. Lewes, was an integral component of the expansion and maintenance of the stability of the Testament Logging Corporation. Indeed, it is to his credit that Testament still continues its high status today.”

         This time, instead of his right hand patting the air a half-foot over the desk, his left hand waved a back-and-forth dance at me. From a man who at first could scarcely grant me his attention, Mr. Squires had mutated into a master of gesticulation-all since commencing to discuss the very corporation to whom he was on permanent retainer.

“Mr. Edison Donald Lewes owned a plot of property essential to the continued stability of Testament Logging Corporation. He became owner of this property on the demise of his father-in-law, who had willed it to him knowing that he would use the lease payments from Testament to continue to provide for his wife, Maggethe, and their son-yourself, Mr. Lewes. Mr. Edison Lewes, of course, suffered an early and untimely, although not unexpected, demise” (oh, how I bristled at this) “on the fields of the European Theater of War, in May 1941.”

         By this point I was not really sure how much more I could take. I'm certain I had paled, if not actually lost all color entirely.

“My secretary is away for the day, so I can't offer you coffee, but would you care to take a wee spot of brandy, not too much for the road?”

         I acceded, and he opened a door in the left side of the mahogany credenza which stood on the remainder of the wall not taken up by his desk. A crystal decanter-perhaps Baccarat-and two shot glasses (not brandy snifters, I noted-oh the education of those old films!) rested on the top shelf inside, and in a moment, one appeared in my hand. I didn't hesitate, didn't pause to sniff the bouquet, but tossed it off and set the shot glass on his desk. Of course he immediately whisked it up and replaced it in the credenza, after wrapping a linen napkin inside-I assume to indicate it needed to be cleaned-then shut the credenza door and returned to his seat, where he gently sniffed and lapped at his own brandy.

“The particular plot of property to which I refer, Mr. Lewes, is known in County Assessment records as Lot 1313-91, in the township of Knox, County of Collingham. This is not the lot on which you currently reside, noted as Lot 2417-09, nor the property deeded to your parents at the time of their wedding by her father, Mr. Calhoun-Lot 1317-01. This Plot is not adjacent to the land on which your mother lived until her wedding, on which your maternal grandparents resided until their mutual demise; but, as with that particular plot, this plot in question-so essential to Testament Corporation-also had been held in the Calhoun lineage since time immemorial (or at least since the onset of European immigration into the Northern Woods Territories). Its boundaries begin just beyond the Calhoun family cemetery, and extend quite some distance beyond. This Plot is located-”


{the pause that followed became so lengthy that I broke out in a sweat, beads popping out on my forehead, because I feared the outcome of it)





“-in the Heart of The Big Forest.”

Chapter 21

         If I had thought the pause before that clause lengthy, it was naught in duration compared to the caesura which followed.


I was astonished to learn that my own sainted mother had apparently grown up in The Big Forest; I knew that she and Dad, and later I also, lived on a small plot just outside the Forest, between it and Knox. Yes, we had a small copse of pines on our lot, and a few scattered oak, beech, and maple, but the region referred to as The Big Forest is a dense, primeval, almost impassable area, where the firs are so closely packed as to obscure the sunlight, and where the only ground cover is not grass, but a thick and scritching layer of pine needles. How do I know this, you ask; well, I did not know at this time, but I did have the unfortunate opportunity to discover all this much later.











                   From what I had overheard Daddy say to Mamma as a child, and the little Mamma mentioned very infrequently later on, Testament Logging operated a logging component far to the eastern edge of The Big Forest, where the pines thinned out and plenty of other hardwood was both available and accessible. None was harvested on the west side, toward Knox-none. Or, once again, so I thought.





         Attorney Squires seemed disinclined to continue, so I glanced at my right wrist-where I no longer wore a watchband-and made as if to stand. He looked up then, and asked me to give him a moment. Acquiescing, I settled back into the seat and crossed one leg over the other while I continued to wait. Finally he recommenced.





“While I do know a great deal about your lineage, history, and current property ownership, Mr. Lewes, there is still much I do not know about your own level of knowledge. Do you, for example, know about the deaths of your maternal grandparents?”





         I looked at him askance.

“What I know is what my mother told me, when we left this area and moved down to Champaign-Illinois-after Daddy was killed in action on the European Front. She said that since both her parents were gone, without Daddy, we no longer had any ties to this region. But now that I think on it-that was odd, because she apparently bequeathed to me not just one, but three lots of property here-or rather, Daddy did, and they came to me upon her own death. Isn't that right, sir?”





“You are correct in that assumption. Your father, Edison Lewes, had been employed by Testament Logging Corporation for quite some time before marrying Maggethe Calhoun. He was born in 1910, and began work with Testament at age fourteen, in 1924, so he had been with them six years before your birth. If he had continued with Testament, instead of going to the War in Europe-well, enough of that. If's and if only's solve nothing and no one.”





“At any event-your maternal grandparents died together, on the same date-in May of 1932, three years after their daughter-your mother-married your father-to-be.”

         My face fell, I am certain. I was distraught, dismayed, and grieving for an event now a full twenty-eight years in the past, an event that occurred two years and three months past  my birth in February 1930; but I intuited that worse news was waiting to be delivered-and of course, in this I was right.





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