The Chimney

It was a cold drizzle — stark gray skies undulating with silver, white and pewter clouds. The wet seeped through the skin, through the bones, and reminded one of how dismal a day could be, how life could be, at times. Dark and cold and soul permeating.

The rain came down in long, frigid droplets - the temperature on the dash read 43 degrees. Might as well have been twenty, the way the morning felt - frozen, but not - like a lake with a veneer of ice enticing one to cross it.

Princess Annie sat in the warmth of the car, the wipers periodically jumping up and clearing the view, then pausing, so that the drizzle covered the windshield, slowly warped the scene before her, a watery image, blurred by rain and her tears.

Oh, stop it, she thought. Stop it, stop it, stop it. You are too old for tears over the past.

She wiped her cheeks with the edge of her palms and peered momentarily in the vanity mirror. Nice car, she thought. Heat purred through the vents and the dash was alit in apatite blue; wood grain accents glowed softly in the early dawn light.

Well, enjoy it while you got it.

Her name, of course, was not Princess Annie. Annie, yes. She was appointed princess by her great-grandmother, a reminder - she was told - of her ancestors. Lord, she thought, thinking of her great-grandmother, I look as much like my ancestors as Joan of Arc looked Egyptian.

No matter, said Great-Grandmother, it still exists in you.

The drizzle began to let up and the sun struggled to lighten the sky.

“The chimney, my love,” Grandmother kept saying, “The chimney. Don’t let the chimney sweep the birds.”

“What are we talking about, Grandmother?” Annie would sometimes ask. But her grandmother would merely smile, her eyes alit with an unearthly glow, then she would once slip again into a deep recession from the world.

Well, here I am, thought Annie.

The wipers popped up again, zipped away the muddling rain, and the view in front of her came clear. The faint gravel lane, yellow grass in the middle; the huge oak tree midway up the lane where Annie and her cousins had build a palace in the folds of the branches what seemed a lifetime ago. One weathered and mossy board still clung to the upper trunk of the massive tree. Great-grandmother once told her she, too, climbed that tree and would sit and watch the fields be tended. And one time, she made a pet of a baby blue jay from a nest she had discovered. She’d named him Hoppy, as he would hop along after her before he could fly. Years later, one of the Mullins brother’s had shot him when she had refused his hand at a dance. And her eyes had glistened slightly when she spoke of it.

The lane continued up the hill and there, imposingly and dreadfully, stood the old manse. Just beyond, one could make out the small copse that bordered the family cemetery. Old grey tombstones stood askew, and a rusted iron fence formed a barrier around the burial grounds. From where she sat, Annie could see the iron gate twisted slightly open on its hinges.

The chimney, Annie thought. Well, grandmother, there are four. I suppose I shall check them all.

Annie switched off the car, and her skin prickled in the cold damp. The rain had stopped, and as she made her way up the lane, the house loomed larger and starker - the softening porches long gone, the windows hewn with jagged glass, the foundation sagging to the west, as if leaning to where the sun set. It was all gone, this twelve-hundred acres, this old family home, all of it, excepting the old cemetery. That acre would remain untouched while this land grew up around it.

There were four chimneys in the house: the central chimney, slap in the middle of the house, and one time warmed the parlor and the dining room. One on the west of the house, warming the library, and two on the north, one for the drawing room and one for the pantry. Off the pantry was the breezeway, long since enclosed, that stretched what seemed forever to the kitchen. In grandmother’s youth, it had once been a greenhouse, with long rows of glass windows topping a brick kneewall, but a spate of feuds put an end to transparent walls.

Annie stopped and considered the house and memories, the stories and lives. Just off to the east about fifty yards or so was the only other structure still standing — the old smokehouse. Heavy wood planks and cedar shingled roof, she could still see the smoke pouring out from the eaves and smell the crisp, charred autumn air; hear the contented grunts of drunk hogs. It was a kindness, her Uncle Jack told her, she barely tall enough to see over the hog pen. A quart of peach moonshine in their midnight mash. A slit of the blade. Then strung up to drain over a waning moon and a rising sun. They never squealed during slaughter; just went to their destiny drunk with dignity. It was said to be the finest ham in all of Alabama.

The sun made a gallant effort to pierce the leaden sky, and Annie hugged her long coat closer, turned her collar against the chill. A few rays burst through and glimmered off a dagger of glass in an upstairs window, glinting like a gold tooth in an old, dark face. Two hundred years, and the house seemed to sigh, as though it knew its end was coming, its destruction written in the stars.

Annie thought of her grandmother as a child, raised here, and her great-grandmother, and a hundred more years of ancestors here, and stifled a sob that welled up as abruptly as her grandmother’s last breath.

Jesus, God, she said aloud. What am I doing here?

The chimneys.

Right, she thought. The chimneys. Grandmother and her chimneys. And just then the clouds unleashed their silvery rain and Annie trotted up the last of the lane and up the brick steps and pushed the old door open.

A shiver swept through her, from the chill and the dank, as she glanced around the interior. It was a shell of itself, and had been for decades. One can’t protect abandoned old houses in the country — too many crops of rowdy teens, hungry families, wandering vagrants. Wood gets stripped for warmth in the winter; fixtures for dollars in the summer. What is amazing is that anything is left at all.

Leafless vines climbed through eaves, through broken windows, half-open doors. In summer, Annie knew, a minor jungle would spring forth and snuff the smell of decay with jasmine and wisteria. She had come, seven years previous, with grandmother. Stopped to see the old plantation, great-grandmother’s grave, all the rest of them. And Grandmother had remarked how the jasmine smelled like youth, and pleaded Annie to remove the last crystal doorknob that was somehow overlooked by the scavengers. But now, it was all decay, damp and cold and teary.

Like my life, thought Annie, then bit her lip abruptly and pulled a small flashlight from her pocket. Just shy of destitution.

The old fireplaces remained, unlike the rest of the house, most assured of themselves, their ancient sienna brick welded together with an ochre mortar. Stripped of their mantels and frontispiece, their blackened hearths yawned wide.

Annie, feeling foolish, looked first in the grand fireplace. It seemed most likely the one to which grandmother averred in her dying delirium. She knew Annie’s divorce had been brutal; had always known her ex-husband’s nature. No, grandmother knew what a man of great resources could do when he set his mind to destruction. Twenty-two years ago, grandmother politely asked her not marry him. Then she never spoke of it again.

Annie once asked how she managed such a cheery nature about it. Grandmother said, “If one can’t change the reality, one can at least be happy in fantasy.”

She poked her head up the fireplace with that thought. The damper and chimney cap were long gone, and rain had glistened the soot so that it shone like obsidian. The beam of light bounced around, revealing two hundred years of smolder and ash. Likewise the three other fireplaces.

The sun was pushing forth its effort to win the day when Annie stepped into the breezeway and sat down upon the stoop to the yard. Broken glass winked in the passing rays, and the wind stirred the clouds into disarray. Annie sighed, and from her coat pocket pulled the small black notebook her Grandmother had kept, its leather supple, its pages rich. She rubbed it gently, then opened it and glanced at her grandmother’s beautiful hand, her musings on life, her small sketches of trees and flowers, birds and buildings, as though sometimes a sketch was better than a description.

********

April 3, 1937 - Charles stopped on his way to fishing. I told him perhaps he should go another day. He asked me why on earth. I told him the fish never bite when the cows are lying down. Of course, he did not believe me.

October 12, 1943 - He left for the war today. Father is sick. Jack’s been gone for over a year. How barren it is with all the men gone.

June 6, 1977 - I have a beautiful grandchild!

The dawn is my favorite time of day. The world is so quiet I can think.

********

Annie closed the notebook, slipped it back in her pocket, caught a glimpse of her naked ring finger, still slightly indented where her wedding ring once resided. That was sold for the attorney. The one who died abruptly in the Bahamas midway during her divorce. She supposed she should have saved the money for a place to live, or for grandmother’s back taxes, had she known then. She didn’t need a lot — just enough to pay the taxes, and hire another lawyer — oh, and bury grandmother. How incredible it is, when people know you’re financially challenged. This was all very foreign to her.

Empty chimneys, empty bank account. Borrowed car. She walked out to the cemetery and wondered what she was looking for. But the taxes, grandmother. The chimney, my dear.

The hard chill had left the air, but the rain had not finished, and Annie dashed back to the breezeway and ducked inside as the bottom fell out of the sky. The rain drummed hard on the tin roof of the kitchen, when it struck her. The kitchen! The biggest fireplace in the house, its flagstone hearth large enough to hold a hog. She trotted down the long breezeway and down the three steps onto the flagstone floor. The hearth covered almost the entire eastern wall. She walked over to it and perched on the hearth that rose from the floor to almost hip high, flicked on her flashlight and peered up. It was massive. She climbed upon the hearth and ducked beneath its ledge and stood up, and peered along the smoke ledge. The flagstones here were not nearly as sooty, and she ran her hand over each stone, carefully pushing against each one. They were rock solid.

Grandmother! She cried, voice echoing up the chimney. She turned to duck down, and saw the hollow in the stone. And deep inside a charred wooden box was wedged.

She caught her breath, dropped her flashlight. It took her twenty minutes to dislodge it, and when she did, almost dropped it from the weight. Hands black with soot, she sat on the edge of the hearth and shakily undid the ancient hasp. She waited a moment, thoughts of her grandmother, her marriage, her ancestors rushing like a vortex through her mind.

In the box, a fortune in Spanish gold.