27 Birdie
BIRDIE
I step into the historical society building to see a new face greeting me from the welcome desk.
He’s an old white man, probably mid-seventies, with grey hair, square-framed glasses, and a bushy mustache.
“Well, hello there, young lady. Welcome to the Burr Island Historical Society. You here for a tour?”
“Actually, no. My name is Birdie Rhodes. I’ll be working with Professor Howe for the summer. He told me to meet him at the archives at nine o’clock. I assume I’m in the right place?”
“Another historian, eh?” He gets up from his stool with a groan, stepping around the desk.
“Well, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that our humble little historical society has one of the most detailed archives on Colonial America on the continent.
It’s a veritable treasure trove of interesting information. ”
I stiffen at the words “treasure trove.” Hortie and Jasper have me all spun up thinking I’m about to uncover some kind of cabal of corruption.
I can just picture it now, me on the front page of national newspapers, posing with the artifacts I saved from a ring of illegal traders.
Batting the mental image away, I flash this volunteer a smile.
“I’m excited to get started. Can you point me in the direction of the archives? ”
“Why don’t I take you?” he offers.
“Oh, that’s not necessary—”
“Nonsense,” he says over me. “Happy to help. I try to get up and do a little walk around the floor every hour or so anyway. With these old knees, if I don’t use ’em, I’ll lose ’em. But you wouldn’t know anything about that yet, would you?”
I laugh. “I suppose not. I still feel pretty spry most days.”
“Yeah, well, enjoy it while it lasts.” He ducks down, rummaging in a drawer. Righting himself, he plops a sign on the desk that reads “BACK IN 5 MINUTES.” Then he steps around the desk. “Okie dokie, artichokie. Let’s go track down Howe.”
“I don’t think I caught your name,” I say, following at his side.
“I’m Richard Everetts. You can call me Rich.”
A few tourists mill around the front exhibit room, talking low as they shift between the different displays.
Rich leads me through a second room that tells the story of early life on Burr Island.
There are several artifacts kept in cases in the middle of the room.
I see a mix of buttons and textile fragments, silver cutlery, some patterned china dishes.
“How long have you lived on the island, Rich?”
“Oh, only all my life. I’m a fourth-generation Burr Islander.”
“You must know the Prescotts then.”
He chuckles. “Of course. Everyone knows the Prescotts.”
“Then I suppose you’ve heard about Lydia?” I follow him around the corner to an alcove. It’s framed on one side by a pair of all-gender bathrooms. On the other side, there’s an elevator.
“Lydia?” He presses the elevator’s down button.
“Yeah, Jasper’s great-aunt? The one who just died?”
His brow furrows as he glances my way. “Lydia, you say?” Slowly, he shakes his head.
“No, I don’t know any Lydia Prescott. Esther had an aunt named Winifred.
Old Winnie, we called her. She made the best toffee candies.
” He sighs wistfully. “She used to pass them out during every Founder’s Day Festival.
How we all lined up for a handful of Miss Winnie’s toffees.
But she died some twenty years ago now.”
I follow him into the elevator in a daze. Hortie definitely said the name Lydia, right? I must have heard the name wrong . . .
Rich presses the B for basement, and we slowly descend.
I’m distracted as he goes on about the history of the island.
“As you probably already know, this building was built on the remains of All Souls Church. Now, All Souls was the first church built on Burr Island, way back in the 1630s. It was also the first building on the island made entirely of stone. You can still see some of the original foundation—Ah, here we are.”
The elevator dings and the doors glide open, revealing a bright wall of glass. Behind the glass is a library with tons of shelves, stacked fit to burst with books. The Burr Island Archives. Something in me settles, soothed by the presence of so much history.
“See the foundations?” Stepping out of the elevator, Rich points with his finger, trailing it along what is clearly a crumbling stone wall displayed just behind the glass.
“This foundation goes all the way around, marking the original footprint of the church. Some of it remains buried, of course, but they left this part exposed as its own sort of exhibit.”
We walk along the wall of glass. “This here was the original entrance to the church,” he adds, pointing to a pair of glass doors. “Now it’s the entrance to the archive. Pretty neat, huh?”
I take in the stonework that arches up to frame out the old church doorway. Most of the stones are missing, leaving less than sixty percent of the original frame, but they worked it in around the glass doors, leaving gaps to show the missing stones. It makes for a cool effect.
“The archive itself is actually two floors,” Rich goes on.
“But the sub-basement is more storage than anything else. We can’t do too much with it at the moment because there’s no elevator that leads down there.
We’ve been raising money for capital improvements for a few years now, but the money keeps getting reallocated to all the ongoing excavation projects. ”
Slipping a keycard from his pocket, he taps it on the little pad to the left of the door. The lights on the pad blink from red to green. Then the doors mechanically unlock. Rich tucks the keycard back in his pocket as he pulls the door open for me. “Ladies first.”
I step past him into the archive. There’s a smell of old things that makes my heart flutter a little faster. Parchment and leather binding, candle wax—it’s the smell of time itself.
“Talk to Ezra and he’ll get you a keycard,” Rich goes on. “That way you won’t need an escort whenever you wanna come down here.”
“Do you always keep it locked?”
“Oh, yes, always. And not all the volunteers qualify for keycard access,” he adds, puffing out his chest with pride.
“Sounds like you run a pretty tight ship.”
“Well, you gotta understand, Birdie. The history here is as old as anything they got in the National Archives. Sure, it’s only about Burr Island, but to us Burr Islanders, that makes it as sacred as the Declaration of Independence.
And we do tours down here, of course,” he quickly adds.
“We’re all about accessibility. There’s a free tour every day at three o’clock.
And tourists can arrange private showings too.
” Perking up, he waves me closer. “Hey, come look at this.”
I follow him over to a map of the island displayed in a glass case on the wall.
Rich gazes at it proudly. “This is the first survey map ever commissioned for the island. It was done in 1634 by William Cooke Rogers. Just look at the detail. Look here—” He points to a spot near the bottom corner of the island.
“My house sits right here at the bend of this creek. And here it is, properly surveyed from four hundred years ago. Pretty amazing, right?”
“It’s fantastic.” I let my gaze trail from the small port area of Calumet, up to the forest at Beale Pointe. I point to a little grid of houses. “Is this Homewood?”
“Yes, indeed. That’s the original settlement established by the five founding families of Burr Island. This is the only map that shows it. After 1637, it disappeared.”
“Like Roanoke,” I murmur.
“Mhmm. Legend says, after those poor women died, their families abandoned the site and scattered, resettled across the island . . . or left for the mainland. The forest claimed it, buried it under root, rock, and tree. And it’s stayed buried for four hundred years .
. . until now.” Clapping his hands together, he smiles.
“Exciting times, Birdie. Exciting times.”
I feign ignorance, curious to see what other morsels of information I can glean. “Who are the five families?”
“Well, let’s see, you got the Blakes . . . though, sadly, none are left of that line. Then there’s the Prescotts, of course.” He ticks each name off on his fingers. “The Hastings, the Dents, the Ames. Of the five founders, descendants from four still call Burr Island home.”
“Wow. That’s really special.”
“You say you know Jasper?”
“Yeah, Phoebe is my friend over at WU. She’s the one who got me the job at Salt & Sage. And I just met Hortense Hastings last night.”
“Old Hortie.” He smiles fondly. “She’s a gem, isn’t she?
And that Phoebe is a firecracker,” he adds with a laugh.
“You know, she once stole all the apples off my favorite tree? I tried to call her on it, but wouldn’t you know, that rascal went and baked them into pies for the high school bake sale.
I ended up buying my own stolen apples off her for ten dollars a pie. Best money I ever spent.”
I can’t help but laugh too. It sounds exactly like something Phoebe would do.
“You should stop by Dent Farms some weekend,” he goes on. “They run a great little farmer’s market with pickles and jams, fresh bread, and tomatoes so good, you’ll taste them and think you’ve died and gone to heaven.”
“I’ll have to do that.” As I say it, a vision comes unbidden to my mind of me carrying Pickles in his basket around a hay bale maze, Jasper following behind, sipping a hot apple cider. My heart clenches tight as I blink the vision away.
Okay, what the heck was that?
“Well, I’ve gotta get back up to the welcome desk,” says Rich, distracting me from my inappropriate daydreaming. “Let’s go find Howe, eh?”
“Yeah, thanks.”
He steps past me. Cupping his mouth, he bellows, “Howe! Where are ya, you old scoundrel?” There’s a muffled shout in response and Rich chuckles. “He must be downstairs. Swing left at the almanacs, and you’ll find the spiral stair in the corner.” He points in the direction I’m meant to go.
“Thanks,” I say again.