Read Online The Hawley Book of the Dead by Chrysler Szarlan - Free Book Online
Authors: Chrysler Szarlan
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warm in the oven,” she told him. “Pot roast, potatoes, string beans. And there’s a white cake for dessert.”
“That sure does sound splendid, and we’re all famished.”
“Guess I’ll get along then, leave you to your supper and settling in.” She gave Nathan a smile, which faded as she looked back to me. “I’ll be by tomorrow morning, missus. Nine sharp.” She turned and marched out the door.
“Please call me Reve,” I petitioned her retreating back. She kept walking to her car, a Buick so ancient and decrepit I thought it surely had been abandoned in the forest. But the rusted, piebald car started right up, and Mrs. Pike rattled off, the car’s taillights glowing in the shadows beneath the many trees.
“Not exactly the Welcome Wagon,” Nathan remarked.
“No, but I think I like her. I guess I’m still a Yankee at heart.” And she seemed too taciturn to be much of a gossip. We hoisted our bags again, and the house claimed us.
5
No one in town knew anymore when the original part of the house was built, Carl Streeter had told me. But in 1775, when it was owned by the Sears family, a large extension was added. Urbane and his wife, Bethia (néeDyer: She figured in some of Nan’s stories), lived there for many years, a well-to-do couple with eight children. Urbane was the first merchant of Hawley, and the progenitor of the Sears clan that populated all corners of these Berkshire hill towns. Urbane Sears came from Gloucester to open the Hawley General Store, now home to the hardware store and Pizza by Earl in the village. Then he married Bethia, and nine years later renovated the house at Hawley Five Corners for his growing family. He opened a second store there near the tavern. Neither building—store nor tavern—exists now. Just old cellar holes a quarter mile down Hunt Road. That was the thumbnail historical sketch Carl gave me, unbidden. He probably had no idea the town’s history involved my family. As far as I knew, Nan never made an appearance here, never kept up the houses, just paid the taxes and left them benignly neglected. Carl didn’t seem to know that the Five Corners had been in our family one way or another for more than two hundred years. I didn’t enlighten him. Our family stories stayed in the family.
When I’d seen the photographs Carl e-mailed, I knew instantly which house was the one to restore for my own family. The lines of the Sears house were still true, the barn large and airy. But the widow’s walk was the main draw for me. It was a peculiar addition to a house of that era, a few hundred miles away from the sea. There is no record of why it was there, but since Urbane Sears had come originally from Gloucester, that seemed reason enough. Every other house built in that period in those seaside towns north of Boston had a widow’s walk. It was what Urbane was used to, I guessed. And compelling to me. Now I was a widow, after all. So I ignored the rambling King house, the Warriner house with its broad porch. Because as a young girl I had looked up and wondered so many times about the view from that narrow catwalk on the mansard roof. Although Jolon and I had managed to jig the locks of the church and the other houses, we had never been able to break into the Sears house to see that view. And when I’d asked Nan where the key was, she told me to mind my own beeswax.
I remembered coming upon the houses with Jolon the first time we rode his pinto ponies bareback into the forest. It was the summer I turned eight, the very first summer we were allowed to ride on our own. Eventhen the abandoned village seemed to hold magic, to be a little unearthly, part of another world altogether. Although they’d been deserted for so many years, the houses were not decayed. I’d thought Nan was crazy when she’d urged me to go to Hawley as a place of refuge. When Carl Streeter sent the photos, I expected collapsed roofs and rotting hulls of houses. But they were the same as when I’d
“That sure does sound splendid, and we’re all famished.”
“Guess I’ll get along then, leave you to your supper and settling in.” She gave Nathan a smile, which faded as she looked back to me. “I’ll be by tomorrow morning, missus. Nine sharp.” She turned and marched out the door.
“Please call me Reve,” I petitioned her retreating back. She kept walking to her car, a Buick so ancient and decrepit I thought it surely had been abandoned in the forest. But the rusted, piebald car started right up, and Mrs. Pike rattled off, the car’s taillights glowing in the shadows beneath the many trees.
“Not exactly the Welcome Wagon,” Nathan remarked.
“No, but I think I like her. I guess I’m still a Yankee at heart.” And she seemed too taciturn to be much of a gossip. We hoisted our bags again, and the house claimed us.
5
No one in town knew anymore when the original part of the house was built, Carl Streeter had told me. But in 1775, when it was owned by the Sears family, a large extension was added. Urbane and his wife, Bethia (néeDyer: She figured in some of Nan’s stories), lived there for many years, a well-to-do couple with eight children. Urbane was the first merchant of Hawley, and the progenitor of the Sears clan that populated all corners of these Berkshire hill towns. Urbane Sears came from Gloucester to open the Hawley General Store, now home to the hardware store and Pizza by Earl in the village. Then he married Bethia, and nine years later renovated the house at Hawley Five Corners for his growing family. He opened a second store there near the tavern. Neither building—store nor tavern—exists now. Just old cellar holes a quarter mile down Hunt Road. That was the thumbnail historical sketch Carl gave me, unbidden. He probably had no idea the town’s history involved my family. As far as I knew, Nan never made an appearance here, never kept up the houses, just paid the taxes and left them benignly neglected. Carl didn’t seem to know that the Five Corners had been in our family one way or another for more than two hundred years. I didn’t enlighten him. Our family stories stayed in the family.
When I’d seen the photographs Carl e-mailed, I knew instantly which house was the one to restore for my own family. The lines of the Sears house were still true, the barn large and airy. But the widow’s walk was the main draw for me. It was a peculiar addition to a house of that era, a few hundred miles away from the sea. There is no record of why it was there, but since Urbane Sears had come originally from Gloucester, that seemed reason enough. Every other house built in that period in those seaside towns north of Boston had a widow’s walk. It was what Urbane was used to, I guessed. And compelling to me. Now I was a widow, after all. So I ignored the rambling King house, the Warriner house with its broad porch. Because as a young girl I had looked up and wondered so many times about the view from that narrow catwalk on the mansard roof. Although Jolon and I had managed to jig the locks of the church and the other houses, we had never been able to break into the Sears house to see that view. And when I’d asked Nan where the key was, she told me to mind my own beeswax.
I remembered coming upon the houses with Jolon the first time we rode his pinto ponies bareback into the forest. It was the summer I turned eight, the very first summer we were allowed to ride on our own. Eventhen the abandoned village seemed to hold magic, to be a little unearthly, part of another world altogether. Although they’d been deserted for so many years, the houses were not decayed. I’d thought Nan was crazy when she’d urged me to go to Hawley as a place of refuge. When Carl Streeter sent the photos, I expected collapsed roofs and rotting hulls of houses. But they were the same as when I’d
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