Sagadahoc Stories #91:

And Then It Rained

Tuesday morning was lowry and smelled wet, but the progs were calling for sun til Friday. Then a short sprinkle went through, and I got the message. Went up to Mr. Mann's barn where we stored Bill's old tarps, and we dug out a big blue beauty. Threw it aboard Ebba and rumbled for home. I had just pulled the covers over this boat skeleton when the skies opened.

And Rained. Steady for two days, then on and off through Sunday. You could hear the green stuff sighing and slurping it up. Leaves exploding. Grass jumping. Roots wriggling. Through the mist, vistas blushed, as pale bronzes and burgundys blurred into the yellow-greens and carmines. Oaks and ashes chasing the birches and maples into leaf. Deciduous inflorescence.

The tender freshness of early May, when dark woods are dappled with new colors, lasts just a moment. Already there are lush passages along the roads, where the canopy has covered over, and the tinkered manscapes are full of flowers. Orioles are eating oranges, and a woodpecker rattles the air all day.

I didn't get much rattling done on the ark, what with the downpours, and had a chance to catch up on paperwork and hanging projects. This oversized floating sculpture tends to expand to fill every conscious minute, and it takes a week of rain to bring you to your senses.

Not These


This Kind
More or less. What with the veg going wild, I figured it was probably a good chance to be fiddling. Wednesday I put on my yellow boots and black rainpants, and went for a gully wander with CC. Sure enough, ferns uncurling everywhere and the watercourses agurgle. I don't get much woods rambling in the Spring, when the dooryard is full of doings, and the transformation from stark solitude to glistening fronds is abrupt. Fast foliage, hold the flies.

I'd only intended to essay a few photos of the fiddles, and hadn't brought a bucket, but the sight of those morsels made my mouth water. Pretty soon I was munching on raw greens. CC ran round furiously searching for the snack. She could see I was crunching on something toothsome, but all she could smell was young bracken. Dripping and content we sloshed home, full of Spring tonic.

Fiddler's Green

I'd given up hope for a spell of dry, so when Brent asked if I'd ride shotgun on an installation I jumped aboard. It was the driftwood bannister he's been confabulating since last Fall. Some summerpeople in Georgetown had contacted him with the notion, and provided a handful of flotsam for the job. About a twentieth of the necessary pieces.

One rainy afternoon in November Brent, Jo, Dr. Bob and I went down along the Kennebec shore below the doc's digs, and scavenged driftwood. We loaded Ebba high with artwood, and offloaded it at the bannister factory. Brent's been fussing with it on and off ever since, and now it was ready to install. A forty foot driftwood sculpture to grace an interior balcony in one of those modest $300,000 summer places.

He loaded up Tuesday afternoon, when it looked to be clearing, but as soon as we set sail it deluged. By the time we got downcountry the whole works was soaked. Worse yet, when we got to the "cottage" the key had disappeared. We hunted high and low as rollers tossed onto the shore and the driving drip plumed past. Nope. In the end we piled the pieces on the porch and gave over for another day. Never did get a picture of the finished work. You'll have to imagine it.

In fact it's hard to capture this transient moment, wet or dry. I spent a good part of the week cruising round in Ebba looking for the telling view. I got a call from the Maine Times, which is going back into publication under new owners, asking for some timely artwork. Searching through my paintings, I find that Spring takes are scarce as straight-talk in Augusta. Maybe it's the scent of hyacinths, or the brush of sunlight on skin, or the bumbling of a bee, which colors the season. Maybe there is no picture to tally the tale. That instant when yearning is realized. And passes.


After the Fire
Mitch stopped in the yard Thursday AM, to return a favor, and said I ought to come up to Brinley's to see the renovations. Ever since the fire last year Tom has had a crew recreating the original building under Brinley's critical eye. Tom and Terry and Mitch and Bruce and the subs have labored steady, using salvaged timbers and clever craftsmanship to reproduce 18th century proportions. Brinley and his life-long companion, Stephanie, have been doing the finish painting, and the result is so much like the original that the effect is eerie.
Tom and Mitch and I were alone upstairs under the eaves discussing diagonal bracing, and Tom glanced over his shoulder and whispered, "Brinley really doesn't like these braces."

"Is he in the building," I asked. And we laughed.

Then the phone rang. It was Stephanie calling from their rental house. Brinley had just dropped dead.

Grief

Sometimes there's a rent in the fabric, and time is torn. The world is disordered. Nothing makes sense. Half the carpenters in town have been collaborating on resurrecting an old house for a dear and amiable eccentric. Suddenly he's gone.


Supplication
Austin "Brinley" Maury was one of our elder statesmen. A shambling erratic who spent his days volunteering at the homeless center or doing research in the stacks of the college library. He and Stephanie lived quiet lives under the elms, in that old brick house up the Ridge Road, surrounded by his troves of found treasure. Tales were told that he'd been a costume designer on Broadway, run a store on Haight in its heyday, was still a bit dizzy as a result. A sweet and gentle man who could turn the least occurrence into a witty quip. Folks might shake their heads when he lugged past in fourth gear in his old Volvo, but they always smiled.

Now it appears Brinley was supervising the creation of a monument to his sensibility. A brand new 200-year-old house, full of chosen details and outmoded crotchets. Beautiful in its simplicity, with a grand view out back. He IS in the building.

It's been a hard Spring in the mortality department. George Delira, Big Mike's dad, died of a heart attack last month, and now Brinley does the same. It's almost as though people wait until the air softens to let down their guard. Maybe it's in the between times, when the doors are open, that our spirits find it easy to cross over.

George was another local artist, who specialized in portrait commissions. He worked for many years as a paint chemist, and I wanted to sit down and have him explain pigmentation to me from an artist's angle. Look through the local sketchbooks he kept. But he's gone over, with the first blush of Spring color.

Mossy Tree


SpringPlowing
I managed to take a few snaps of the passing season, and learned how to tease a semblance of new leaves out of the paintbox, sort of. When I heard that Max and Mitch were going to help Cornish hitch up his plow to three horses to cut old sod, I trotted down to Harpswell for a gander. Pretty slick. That troika tromping along the furrows, peeling up the sod. Across the field spring birches paled against the coastal spruce and fir. Just enough breeze to keep the flies down.

I did get to toss off the covers and fasten some of the long timbers in the scow, as the drench turned to showers this weekend. Scarfed the bilge stringers and screwed then in. Got a hunk of 2-inch oak from Max and laminated it into the stem-box I've sawn out. The bottom is now ready for fairing and planking. When the sky clears I can move on to the side framing.

Violets

While I was mucking with epoxy, Christopher came over to ask if I had any paying work. He wants to buy a dirt bike, for which he has $500, but needs a couple hundred more for what he's eying. Always delighted to encourage that misguided Protestant Ethic, I said I'd pay him 5 bucks an hour to spread gravel on our driveway. I've had a pile of the good stuff waiting for an excuse all Spring. I figured it was maybe an hour's work for me, say two for a 10-year-old. It took him four, but he kept right at it. Dawdling a bit at first, and grousing, but then swinging into the rhythm. Shovel the barrow full, huff it down the drive, dump it, rake, and return. Did a great job, too, spreading it out nice and level, burying the ruts. When I handed over the twenty, I don't know who was more tickled, him or me. Chris asked if I had a job for him "all summer." How old fashioned.


Spring Scene
A while back I was up to Max's cabinet shop, admiring some wide-board pine he had in a corner. A clear 19 inches. Back when he had a Wood-Miser bandsaw mill, Max felled a big pine on his land, and milled it on the spot. This was the last of that tree, and he was waiting for a suitable project for it. I asked if he'd be interested in making a blanket chest to go in our front room. Two foot by three foot by a board-width high. Last week he wondered if I still wanted it, and I jumped at the chance.

Yesterday I picked it up. A simple box with lovely proportions and staggered dovetails. An elegant piece for Mother's Day, taken from stump to finish by the same hands. Another bit of the old fashion. There's a gratifying closure in such a chest.

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