Chapter 4 #3
She nodded solemnly and stared down at the ground in front of her. When she reached him, she paused and held up her notebook. "I'm ready to take any notes you might want jotted down."
For the next several minutes they walked around the outside of the building and he would call out his evaluation for her to list in her ever-present notebook.
"West wall," he said. "Six, maybe eight boards worth pulling. Long enough for shelves if they come loose clean. South corner's no good. Too much rot."
She wrote it down, then glanced through a paneless window. "Could the crosspieces be used?"
Surprised by her astute question, Wilson glanced toward the interior framing. "Perhaps some. Not all. Depends on how hard they're nailed in and whether they're split. And whether they can be removed without the building falling down on top of us."
"Then we should list them separately."
We. The word passed quickly enough, but Wilson heard it, and it stirred something in him that he quickly suppressed. "I'll need to use my wagon when it's time to haul what we salvage. Buggy won't do."
He’d just been thinking out loud, but Miss Owens scrupulously made a note.
Wilson nudged one board slightly with his boot, testing how firmly it remained attached. He returned to the west wall and worked his knife beneath another board edge.
More good wood there than Daniel likely expected. Not enough to build anything fine. But shelves didn't need fine. They needed sturdy, steady, and useful.
Finally, he took a step back. "It'll take effort getting it free and cleaned up, but I reckon there’s enough sound lumber here to make it worth doing.”
“Truly?” Relief moved across her face so plainly he had to look back at the building.
“Mind you, it won’t do everything we’d talked about. Should be able to salvage enough wood to cover one wall, maybe a wall and a half, with shelves.”
“Oh, but this will still help so much. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your willingness to do this.”
Uncomfortable with her gratitude, he made a non-committal sound then changed the subject. “If the weather holds, I can get started Saturday.”
"I can help," she said.
She’d managed to surprise him yet again. "With what?"
She drew herself up as if offended. "I may not be able to tell which pieces are worth salvaging and which are not or pry them loose, but there are certainly lots of other ways I can help.
" She glanced toward the weeds around the building.
"I can clear some of this growth away. Pull nails once the boards are loose. Move boards to the wagon, even if just one at a time.”
Wilson studied her a moment.
A schoolteacher with dust already gathering on the hem of her skirt, notebook in hand, talking about pulling nails from salvaged lumber as if it were the most sensible conclusion in the world.
Maybe to her, it was.
"You ever pull nails from old boards?" he asked.
"No," she admitted. "But I expect I can learn."
Something like amusement tugged at him before he caught it.
"Reckon you likely can." Then he raised a brow. “But you do know it’ll be hot, dirty work and that we’ll be dealing with insects and other critters that might call this home.”
He caught a quick grimace before she shrugged. “If you can deal with it, so can I. After all, we’re doing this to make the archive more functional which will make my work easier.”
Wilson still had his doubts as to how long she’d last, but he supposed if she was determined to try, he wouldn’t stand in her way. “Best to get an early start, before the heat of the day sets in.”
“I’ll be there,” Miss Owens said promptly. Then, as if the matter were settled, she tucked her notebook beneath one arm and glanced toward the scrub oak. “Give me a few minutes and I’ll have the food set out for us.”
Wilson watched her make her way back through the weeds toward the picnic blanket.
A man could grow dangerously accustomed to seeing Miss Owens waiting for him at the end of a morning's work.
He straightened. Best stop that sort of thinking before it settled too deep. He'd made peace long ago with the fact that certain things simply weren't for him.
Wilson set his jaw and turned back toward the structure, considering what he'd need when he returned. A pry bar. Gloves for himself and Miss Owens, since she insisted on helping. A hammer, no, hammers. A can for whatever nails they could salvage.
The work would be awkward and dirty and slower than using new lumber. But the boards were free for the taking and would serve the intended purpose.
Behind him, Miss Owens was likely smoothing out napkins beneath the scrub oak as calmly as if sharing a meal alone with him in the middle of nowhere was the most natural thing in the world.
An appealing picture, no matter that he wanted to ignore the pull.
Wilson drew a slow breath, then finally turned away from the building and headed back toward the waiting picnic blanket.
It could well be that inspecting the outbuilding had been the safer part of this outing.
By the time Wilson reached the blanket beneath the scrub oak, Miss Owens knelt beside the basket and had already unpacked most of the lunch.
The basket sat open beside her. Fried chicken rested beneath a folded cloth, alongside biscuits wrapped in another towel to keep the dust and insects off.
A jar of preserves caught the sunlight where she'd set it near two tin plates.
And she was in the midst of lifting out what looked like blackberry cobbler.
She glanced up as he approached. “I hope you don't mind cold chicken." she spread her hands to encompass the food. "My mother insisted I pack enough to make sure we didn't go hungry.”
Wilson settled himself carefully onto the edge of the blanket, leaving what felt like a respectable amount of distance between them. “Your mother must have thought you were feeding half the county.”
“It would appear so,” she agreed, amusement warming her voice. “Mother considers feeding people a sacred obligation.”
Wilson accepted the plate she handed him.
Then she shifted to a seated position and tucked her bent knees under her skirt before picking up her own plate.
For a few moments they ate in comfortable quiet.
Too comfortable.
Wilson forced his thoughts to other things
The satisfying taste of the chicken he was eating. The sound of a crow cawing from a nearby tree and even closer, grasshoppers clicking through the weeds. The summer heat that was only partially offset by the shade from the scrub oak they sat under.
Then Miss Owens claimed his attention again. “Do you think we'll be able to salvage enough nails to cover our needs?” she asked as she poured lemonade into two cups
Wilson swallowed his bite before answering. “Probably about half that.”
"Oh." She nibbled her lip for a moment before drawing her shoulders back. "I asked Daniel about spare lumber, not nails. It won't hurt to check in with him again I suppose."
The schoolteacher never seemed to give up.
Wilson took another bite of chicken.
"How are you planning to organize all of it anyway?"
Miss Owens looked up. "The displays?"
He nodded.
"Actually, you might be able to help me with that?"
What had he let himself in for? "I'll do what I can," he said cautiously.
She opened her notebook that sat on the blanket beside her. "I'm planning to keep each family's materials together, of course. What I haven't settled on is how to arrange the family displays themselves.”
Relieved that her question was focused on the archive, Wilson frowned slightly. “How do you mean?”
"What story do I want the overall display to tell? How do I want visitors to experience it?" Her face took on that passionate expression she tended to wear when talking about the archive.
“For instance,” she continued, flipping through several pages, “I'm trying to decide whether the founding families ought to have their own section apart from the others and maybe even have a Revolutionary War descendants’ section to give a sort of historical timeline of the town and the people who built it.”
She brushed a loose strand of hair back behind her ear before continuing. "Another way I could do it is to group them by occupation. Husbandmen together. Merchants together. Craftsmen together. Professionals together. That would give the display an industrial view."
Wilson took another bite of chicken while she spoke. She'd obviously put a great deal of thought into this.
"And then there's the option of not creating categories at all. Simply arrange them alphabetically by family name. That would remove any appearance of favoritism from the arrangement and have the added benefit of grouping families who are related, at least from the paternal side, together."
Something in her tone made him wonder if she'd faced some accusations of favoritism or opposing pressures to arrange things a particular way.
Now she was looking his way with a question in her expression. "I need to make a decision soon and I'd be interested in hearing your opinion."
He took a bite of biscuit while he thought over her question. She was looking at him as if his opinion truly mattered and he wanted to give it proper consideration.
“Are you set on using one of those three methods?”
She paused in the midst of spreading jam on her biscuit. "I'm always open to hearing new ideas."
"There’s one thing you haven’t reckoned with that'll likely affect where you set your displays. And it doesn't have anything to do with who did what or what their name is."
"What's that?"
"Size and weight. When I was in your display room on Tuesday, I spotted some heavy-looking pieces like those cannon balls near the door that shouldn't go up on a high shelf.
And large bulky pieces like that portrait I saw over in the far corner that likely should hang on one of the walls where we won't have shelves.
That's regardless of if the family they belong to work in a particular occupation, or belong to a founding family or have a last name that starts with a B or a K. "