As Tucker predicted, sure enough, hidden behind the plasterboard walls that the crew has demolished today, is a shallow fireplace with thick wood panel surrounds. Because it’s not that deep, Tucker says that it was meant more for warmth than cooking. Even so, at some time in this house’s history, this fireplace was the focal point of a parlor that probably saw very little use. The good parlor. The one meant for receiving important guests, and for wakes. The good news is that the panels are pristine, a little Liquid Gold and elbow grease, and the smoke from many years of fires will give way to the soft glow of polished oak. The mantel is gone, but that’s not the end of the world, Tucker says. He’ll start looking online tonight, see if one of the architectural-salvage places has a mantel that would fit the era. What’s even more exciting is the idea that there’s another fireplace in the second-best parlor, that maybe the foursquare chimney has four flues and that this house will be effectively restored to its proper number of fireplaces. Which makes Tucker wonder if there are fireplaces upstairs, although, as he says, it’s possible but not probable. Heating bedrooms wasn’t a priority in the eighteenth century. That’s what quilts were for. There are several trunks upstairs, all of them piled high with junk, but maybe there’s a treasure trove of old quilts in one of them. It would be kind of nice to have an antique quilt restored and hung as a conversation piece.
Tucker is alone in the house, sucking up the day’s debris with the work vac now.
“It’s beautiful,” I shout at him over the sound of the work vacuum.
Tucker hits the button to shut it off. “It is. I’m really relieved that they didn’t screw around with the paneling when they mounted the plasterboard, and that it wasn’t put up to hide some damage.” Tucker runs a hand down the smooth wood of the raised panel to the left of the fireplace. “Such workmanship.” I can hear the reverence in his voice. “All done with hand tools.”
Shadow is sniffing at the right-hand panel. His little ears are cocked and he’s giving it a close examination. He raises a paw and starts to scratch.
“Hey, don’t do that.” Tucker reaches for the dog’s collar, pulls him away from damaging the panel.
“Do you think there’s something behind the wall?” I’m thinking animal, not treasure.
“Oh, wait.” Tucker runs a hand down the right side of the panel. Sure enough, there’s evidence that the panel is hinged. “Probably a space to dry firewood.” He slips a flat-head screwdriver out of his back pocket, gently fits the blade in, pulls toward himself. A narrow door opens. The centuries-old scent of dry wood drifts out.
The dog immediately pokes his head into the space, woofs.
“Shadow, what the heck has gotten into you?” I make the dog back up out of the way. It’s like he wants first dibs at whatever treasures lie within.
“He probably smells old mouse droppings.”
“Yuck.”
“Desiccated old mouse poop—dogs love it.” Tucker pulls his LED flashlight out of his other back pocket and shines it into the space. A few sticks of kindling, an empty, lidless preserve jar, and a broken candle are all that he can find. “Take a look.” He hands me the flashlight so that I can get a good look at the tall, narrow space, perfect for playing hide-and-seek. Tucker starts tossing pieces of the old wallboard into the big blue barrels he’s brought in.
Shadow keeps pushing his head into the narrow space; the sound of his deep olfactory exploration is almost explosive. I think about the dogs that Meghan talked about, the explosive-detection dogs, whose noses keep soldiers safe.
Following the direction of the big dog’s nose, I aim the flashlight into the cupboard and see that, high up on the left-hand side, there is a narrow shelf. At first I don’t see anything, but then I realize that there is an object on the shelf. I tilt the flashlight slightly and the object becomes a narrow book on its side. I reach for it. “Hey, Tucker, look at this.” The dog’s nose follows my hand with the book in it. The book isn’t so much a book as a chunk of pages evidently torn out of a larger volume. “The pages are sewn together, repaired from their extraction from the original volume. I read the faint pencil writing on the top page. “Susannah Day, her book.”
Together we go into the kitchen, where the light is better this time of day. The paper feels thick and fragile at the same time, dusty to the touch, and the pages are brown-edged, like sugar cookies left just a little too long in the oven.
I gently open it to the first page.
1st March 1832. Mr. Day at home. Set my loom with last year’s flax. Called out to attend Mrs. Tarr in Lanes Cove. Safe delivered of daughter, her third.
4th March. Mr. Day at sea. Two yards good cloth made. Attended Mr. Lyons for sore throat. Gave him a gargle.
“It’s a diary, or journal. Susannah Day must have been a nurse. Wonder where the rest of it is.” The backmost page is torn in half.
Tucker carefully wipes his hands on his jeans. “Can I see?”
I hand him the pages. “I wonder why it was stuck in the wood box. Imagine that someone put that in there and it’s been there, out of sight, for decades. Forgotten.”
“More than a century, if you look at the dates.
I take the book back. As gently as Tucker had, I turn another couple of pages. The writing is so thready, and, in the inadequate kitchen light, not terribly readable.
5th March. Spun six skeins. Mrs. Pierce called. Brought apples.
7th March.… brought to bed with dropsy. Will dose with …
Some of the words are illegible.
“Do you know of her, this Susannah Day?” I ask.
There were Days in the area, even in Dogtown, but I have no idea who she might be.” He shrugs. “You know that I’m not that old, right?”
“I just think of you as the local historian, you know so much about the area.”
“Thirteen generations.” Some folks are satisfied with being second- or third-generation residents here on Cape Ann, and are equally as proud of their Azorean or Italian or Finnish heritage, but Tucker takes a particular satisfaction in the antiquity of his heritage—of being descended from one of the first European settlers. “It’s what the ex makes such fun of, my, in her words, ‘self-awarded medallion of merit based exclusively on being stuck in the same place.’ But to me, it’s important that my kids are fourteenth-generation Bellinghams.” He pauses. “I’m glad I won’t be the last.”
“And your ex-wife, does she come from such old stock?”
“No. Her folks came here because her dad was hired as the hospital administrator.”
I set the old pages down on the kitchen table. The dog rests his head on the table, nose inches away from the diary. He’s sniffing so hard that tiny flakes of paper are breaking off the delicate edges. Tucker slides the book closer to the center of the small table and then I put it back.
“I do get attachment to place.” I run a hand down the dog’s back, then move to the sink, where I fill the kettle. “My family was pretty rooted to their neighborhood, even though they were only”—I emphasize the only kind of teasingly—“in this country for two generations. They were also in Bunker Hill for two generations.”
“Where are they now?”
“My father passed a few years ago. My brothers are all over the state—Worcester, Stoughton, New Bedford; even one out in Stockbridge, trying to find his agricultural roots.”
He notices that I don’t mention my mother. “Your mom?”
And I burst into tears.
Tucker sets a cup of tea in front of me. I’d apologized and blushed red and then wept again. Tucker has clearly enough experience of women to recognize a crying jag that just needs to happen. He found a box of tissues in the bathroom and quietly placed it at my elbow. The dog, for his part, keeps his big head on my lap, and in between wiping my eyes and apologizing to Tucker, I’ve fondled the dog’s ears in the same way I used to fondle the threadbare ears of my comfort bunny when I was a little girl.
If he’s got somewhere else to be, Tucker doesn’t say so; he just sits and waits out the storm. Finally, it subsides with a couple of deep breaths, a self-conscious laugh, and a gathering up of the plenitude of tissues decorating the edge of the table. I excuse myself to go into the bathroom, where the gush of water makes me think of Bob the Plumber and whether or not he’ll really show up tomorrow. My wits gathered and my hair combed, I go back into the kitchen.
I touch the journal with a forefinger. The dog whines. “Thank you.”
Tucker takes his cup to the side of the sink. “I’ll finish cleaning up that mess in there tomorrow.”
“Bob the Plumber is supposed to be here tomorrow.”
“You’ve learned to say ‘supposed to be.’ Good for you.”
Although I can still feel the skim of moisture in my eyes, it’s more a little glint of mischief when I say, “That’s not all I’ve learned. I’ve become a pest. Six messages, all sweet, and then a stern one. That’s when he called me back.”
I follow Tucker out to his truck, the dog behind us. I’ve grabbed a leash from a peg, but I don’t clip it to the dog’s collar. It’s getting dark a little earlier now. This coming weekend is Labor Day weekend.
Tucker’s hand is on the door latch. In the dusk, he looks faded. “The thing is,” he says, “my ex is moving the kids away. She’s getting remarried to a guy in Weston.”
“Why doesn’t he move here? Surely the views are better.”
Tucker laughs, but his face reveals the pain. “I worry that they won’t be from here anymore. That’ll they think of themselves as kids from Weston.”
I don’t touch men, but I find myself reaching out, touching his arm where he leans against the edge of the truck bed. “Nonsense. This place is in their blood. You’re their blood.”
“And blood is thicker than water?”
I look away, and the set of my jaw is suddenly tense. “Not necessarily.”