In fall 2023, my first fiction book, A Yellow Wood and Other Stories, was published. Below is the first chapter of the title story. At the end is a link to chapter 2 if you’d like to keep reading. Enjoy!
Maggie rinsed off the last of the breakfast dishes and placed them in the drying rack. “All right, Gram. I think I’m ready.”
“To the attic we go, then.” Gram grabbed a large cardboard box and handed it to Maggie. Inside the box were a dozen other flattened boxes along with a roll of black garbage bags and another of white garbage bags. She picked up another almost identical box and led the way up the stairs. At the top of the second flight, she paused at a white door whose paint was chipped and peeling and looked over her shoulder. “I don’t know when this place was last cleaned. I don’t think Helen came upstairs in this house for the last dozen years or so.”
Maggie nodded. “I am prepared for the worst.”
But she wasn’t.
Tables, desks, chairs—some broken, some not—wooden chests, crates, boxes, and paper bags were stacked several feet high the whole length and width of the room; at one end of the attic the stacks reached almost to the gabled ceiling. Shelves on the low side walls were lined with old lamps—both electric and kerosene—vases, stacks of dishes, small boxes and bins overflowing with electrical cords, light bulbs, dried roses, socks, and shoes, and dozens of old Mason jars full of buttons, marbles, keys, and rusty screws and nails, all of it coated with a thick film of dust. Maggie could actually see the dust motes dancing gleefully in the morning light that filtered through the torn curtains on the window at the far end of the room. “Oh Gram, where do we start?”
“We start by opening that window. Can you get to it?”
Maggie climbed around and over furniture and boxes to the far side of the attic, sending years of settled dust whirling into the air. She sneezed six times before she managed to get to the window. And then she had to clamber back for a hammer to get the window loosened from its frame so it would open.
“Good,” Gram said. “A job begun is half done.”
“But we haven’t done anything yet.”
“Yes, we have. We’ve opened the window.”
Maggie almost laughed. Or maybe it was a sob. She couldn’t really tell.
“Since you’re back there,” Gram instructed, “start with that stack of clothes beside you. I’ll work from my end, and we’ll meet in the middle.”
“Next year, maybe.”
Gram laughed. “You might be right, dear.” She pulled a roll of white plastic garbage bags out of her cardboard box and tossed it to Maggie. “If it looks nice enough to give to the church for their jumble sale, put it in one of these.” She tossed over a roll of black plastic bags. “If it’s junk or broken beyond repair, use these. And if you want to keep it or if it looks like a family piece, set it aside. Once we clear a path through this mess, you can put the things we’re keeping in one of these boxes. We’ll take the full bags downstairs before lunch.”
“And call it a day?”
“That was our deal.” Gram smiled. “Now get to work.”
Maggie pulled a dress off the pile of clothes that lay on top of a stack of boxes that lay on an upturned desk that lay on top of a large wooden chest. The dress had once been blue but now was gray with dust and eaten by moths. She shoved it in a black plastic bag. “By the look of this stuff, we’ll have this whole roll of bags filled by noon.” As she pulled off more dusty sweaters, shirts, and slacks—polyester, no less—she sneezed again, then grimaced and shook her head and wondered why on earth she had traded her final year of college to come sort through her great-grandmother’s junk. But even as the thought came to her, she knew it was the other way around. She had come to sort through her great-grandmother’s stuff so she wouldn’t have to go back to college.
Three hours and a dozen bags later, she managed to clear enough floor space to set the desk upright on the floor under the window. “It’s a nice view,” she said. “And it’s a beautiful desk.”
She ran her hand over the weathered pine surface, bowed a little with age, and opened the small drawer in the desk’s apron. It was empty, save for a dead blue bottle fly. Maggie slid the drawer shut. She stood for a moment, staring out the window at the hillside that sloped down to the valley with its crisscross lines of stone walls and the green fields between.
Turning away from the window, she lifted the lid of the wooden trunk on which the table had been sitting. It was locked. Maggie looked at it more closely. It looked old. Very old. Its edges were reinforced with metal straps, it had a metal handle on each end, and on the front, just below the lock, was the monogram E.B. Maggie was curious. She felt around its sides for a key. She got down on her knees and looked on the floor nearby. No key. She sat back on her heels and looked around. Her eyes fell on the row of Mason jars, two of which were full of keys. She climbed over a table and two dressers, grabbed one of the jars of keys, and returned to the trunk. Looking at the lock, she knew most of the keys wouldn’t work. She needed an old skeleton key. She dumped the jar of keys on the desk, spread them out, and discovered three skeleton keys. None of them worked. She returned the keys to the jar, clambered back over the table and dressers, putting that jar back and grabbing the other. This one held five skeleton keys. Maggie tried them one after another. When she slid the third one into the lock and turned it, the lock clicked open. She lifted the lid and gasped.
“Holy cow, Gram. Look at this!”
“Maggie, dear, I couldn’t get back there without a crane.”
“Books, Gram. Old ones. They’re beautiful.” She lifted out a red leather volume and looked at its spine. Shakespeare. Carefully she opened it. The endpapers looked like an aerial view of ocean waves. Even more carefully she turned the page. It was blank except for the initials EB written in beautiful script in the upper right corner. Maggie wondered briefly who EB was before she turned the page. Opposite the title page was a painting, or maybe it was an engraving, of a statue—a man in 18th century garb sitting on a stone, with two women dancing beside him. The printing beneath the picture was faded and blurred. She raised the book closer to her face to try to read the words, and the wonderful smell of old books filled her nostrils, for a moment overpowering the dust in the air. She closed her eyes for a moment and breathed it in. When she opened her eyes, she tried to make out the words beneath the picture but it was hopeless. She had no idea who the sculpture was supposed to represent. Shakespeare with his muses? She gently ran her hand over the title page, which was surprisingly soft and smooth beneath her fingers, and read: “The Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare Revised by George Steevens. Vol. 1.” She wondered who George Steevens was and why his last name had three e’s. At the bottom of the page were the Roman numerals MDCCCII. It took her a moment to decipher them.
“Gram!” she exclaimed. “This book was published in 1802!” Shoving the keys back into the jar, she set the book gently down on the desk, and picked another out of the trunk. Shakespeare. And clearly part of the same set. She placed it on the desk on top of the first book, and pulled out another. Altogether there were nine volumes of Shakespeare. Then three volumes of Spencer’s Faerie Queene. Two volumes of Boswell’s Life of Johnson. Johnson’s London and The Vanity of Human Wishes. Almost two dozen volumes of Sir Walter Scott. Lyrical Ballads. Four of Jane Austen’s novels, each in three volumes.
Maggie shook her head, wondering and delighted and hardly able to believe what she was seeing. “Gram!” She held two of the Austen books up so Gram could see. “Look at these! They’re gorgeous!”
Gram looked up and smiled. “Finder’s keepers, dear.”
Maggie’s eyes went wide. “Really?”
“Helen left it all to your grandpa, and he left it all to me, so it’s mine to do with as I please.” Maggie’s grandfather had died three years ago. “If you want them, they’re yours. It’s about lunchtime. You at a good stopping place?”
“No way. I want to see what else is in here.”
“All right. I’ll start lunch and holler at you when it’s ready.” Gram went downstairs, carting two bulging black bags with her, and Maggie stayed to look at the books.
The entire desk top was covered with stacks of books by the time she pulled out the last one, a faded but still lovely little copy of Paradise Lost. She opened the cover. Inside lay a thin parcel of papers, folded into a square, yellow with age, and tied with a faded blue ribbon. Maggie set the book in her lap, carefully untied the ribbon and even more carefully unfolded the papers. There were three sheets of paper, and on each side of each paper in a beautiful flowing hand was a poem followed by the initials E.B., a month, and the year 1818. Maggie held the pages gently, a little awed that in her hands were poems penned 170 years ago. When she glanced at the poems, she recognized their square shape and quickly counted the lines. Fourteen. These were sonnets. She began to read the first one. By the time she had finished it, her chest felt hollowed out by the words and her hands were almost shaking.
“Maggie!” Gram called from downstairs. “Lunch!”
Maggie glanced at the papers again, then shakily re-folded them, tied them with the blue ribbon, and put them in the desk drawer. She would read them, all of them, later. She decided she wouldn’t tell Gram about them. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
I'm intrigued and want to read more!
I called my Grandmother "grams." I feel dusty after reading this chapter. Very good!