Nathan's Carousel

 

G. E. Shuman

(A story best enjoyed on a cold and blustery day.)

                I was awakened that day by the rustle of fallen leaves as they whipped against the glass of my bedroom window. The room was all but dark, but not from the earliness of the hour. Indeed, my wife and children were up and gone already, and I was alone on this unusually dreary fall day. My good family had let me sleep, as a stubborn cough and nagging fever had kept me up and held me down throughout the long cold night which now seemed intent on delaying the light of day.  It was nearly mid-morning, but the streetlights were still on beneath those thick black clouds. I lay for a while, with some comfort, in my warm bed, listening to the leaves and their crisp crackling in the blowing air.       

               The sounds soon turned to the fierce beating of window glass by uncounted drops, as cold rain came upon the old house on Wellington Street.  I could hear and nearly feel the accompanying bitter wind, as it whistled against the walls, frantically prying at the old cedar-shingled front of this massive and aging building we call home. It was good, I thought, even if in the grip of a virus, to be able to stay home today. After passing in and out of some few more minutes of fitful sleep, I decided to get up. I soon stood a moment, motionless, at the foot of my bed. The entire scene was a bit surreal to me. The howling noise outside and my sore and feverish skin reminded me again that I could not venture out today.

                I have always liked, but somehow disliked this old Vermont house. When we bought it years ago, I knew it had stood already on its granite cellar walls for nearly a hundred years. Our family was once told that the house had been built by a dentist, or by whatever manner of professional man was referred to as a dentist all those years ago. We had heard that the dentist's family had lived here only briefly and had sold the house within a few years of its completion, only to build another in another part of town. The dentist story soon became fact to us, as we told it to others, ourselves. We would never know if it was the truth.  

                In those long past times, our neighborhood was the affluent place to live around here. The area's best-known professional people constructed these once-grand, towering old homes. I am sure they enjoyed looking down on the village below from high on this lofty hill. But today they would also see across the valley, at newer, smaller houses, with bigger yards. Those homes are covered in plastic siding and lacking in size, ornament, and the beautiful, pillared front porches of our aging neighborhood.

                Yes, I have always liked our massive, solid house. This day's blasting wind could never get inside, and the snows of scores of winters have not broken down the thickly beamed old roof. And, yes, I have disliked the house a bit, too. It is ever in need of repair and surely never again to see perfect health and form. The upkeep is without end, and all the painting and papering are not enough to hide the wrinkles of age, the onslaught of time. Ancient pipes and wires thread their way through these old, plastered walls, and I fear, as would any elderly man, that these arteries, as his, might soon break from age alone.

               

2.

 

I took my robe from the bedpost and slowly walked into the hallway which winds around and past three more bedrooms, until it becomes the stairway down to the main floor of the house. It is true that I always feel lonely when I am here alone. The house is bright enough, and homey enough, but still so large, far too large for one person to spend much time here alone. It was made for families, by a family. It should never be this empty, I thought. I walked past each room on my way to the stairs, and was reminded, as always, of my three grown children, and that they played and slept and grew up here. It is not easy for me to think of how short the years were when they were home; and I pushed the idea of their being grown from my mind. *

                As I approached the stairway I happened to glance into the last room. It is the first you reach as you surmount the stairs, and the last that one of our older three girls had occupied, before going off to college a few years ago. At this writing it is still her room, and filled with her things, but no one sleeps here anymore, unless she is here on a holiday. The urge to step into the room was just too much for me; perhaps in part because I was alone and wanting something else to think of for a moment, and, in truth, because I missed my little girl so much. For whatever reason, I was soon standing in her room, glancing around at the things that made this room hers. At that moment I felt sad, and seemed to recall that when I am ill, I tend to do more lonely things, more things that make me sad. This was not a comfortable thought to have.

                As I stood, gazing about my daughter's room, I happened to notice a light, dimly shining out from the crack under her closet door. My first thought was that she had been so wasteful in leaving the light burning. It was very much like one of our children to be unconcerned with the electric bill, and this girl had been away at school for several months now. Why weren't kids more aware of such things? I opened the door and intended to reach for the string to extinguish the light but did not end up doing so right away.

                My daughter's closet has always been a strange place in our home. Firstly, it was constructed, I suspect, to make use of waste space in the eves of the house, and it is an oddly impractical place to actually store things.  The door to the closet is on the far end of the side wall of the room, and the narrow, slanted space behind the door runs the entire length back to the front of the room. This makes for a long, dim passageway of a closet, and I have never understood why anyone would want one like that. The closet is also the only untouched, unfinished area in our old house. In the past nearly one hundred years of almost constant darkness its bare plaster walls have never been painted, and its floor never finished. The tiny bulb above the door at the close end of the closet provides the only light to have entered this cramped space for any of those scores of years.

                On any other occasion I would have left the room and gone about the many things that always fill my days, but this day was so different; so strange, somehow. Perhaps it was due only to my fever, and to my sadness in the emptiness of our children’s rooms, but I just had to peek my head into the closet and look the length of it to that far end wall.

                I had probably not seen so deep inside this narrow space more than twice in all the years we had owned the old house. There was a strong feeling that things were somehow detached in here; that

3.

 

for some reason the rest of the world had little to do with how things were in here. It was a feeling that I cannot explain, but one brought on, in part, by the contents of the closet. This had been less a place to hang clothes and more of a playhouse for my children years ago.  The older two girls had put playthings in here when they were quite young, and our youngest of the three had added hers later.

                We do try to keep a tidy house but have taken little thought of this nearly unusable part of our home. Many of the old toys, games and childhood drawings were still here. I imagined it to be a place of squirreled away memories; with ever more treasures of passing playtimes heaped on those already there; added over years, while the first were never removed. It seemed that the closer to the closet doorway you looked, the more recent the things collected; the further back you peered, the further back into time and playtimes you could see.              

                 There was no good reason for what I did next on that cold and surreal excuse for a day. I just did it. I entered the doorway; passed the dim bulb hanging from the ceiling, and crept over unnumbered paper and plastic memories, to the very back of the closet, where I knelt and then sat still on the rough old floor. It is a strange feeling to be, for the very first time, positioned in a shadowy place in a home you have owned for many years. The imperfections of the walls, the bits of wood in the corner, and the few discarded nails on the floor had been here, untouched, I was sure, the nearly hundred years since this house that I own had been built.  I had just never seen them before. I was suddenly quite aware of great silence in the place, and even held my breath to try to hear the wind outside these walls. I could not. This spot was somehow totally insulated from the noise, and I soon came to learn, as insulated from much else of the effects of living in our world.

                I must have remained there, motionless in the silent closet, for several minutes before noticing the old board wedged up against the end wall. I vaguely remembered seeing it, some years before, from the doorway, but had thought it just another remnant of construction of the old house. It was jammed up against that small wall, held in place at the ends by the corners of the other walls. It looked to have no purpose, and on this strange day I decided to pry it free. This I did, and it came off the wall readily, as if meant to do so, or as if others had removed it at earlier times. To my surprise, there was a roughly rounded hole about a foot in width in the wall behind the board. This hole in the plaster looked to have been pounded out by amateurish hands; almost in a childish, random fashion. It was the strangest feeling to put my hand into that black hole, and to find what I did upon doing so.

                I pulled my treasure from its hiding place inside the wall and blew the plaster dust from its top. The light was so dim here; I had no idea what I had found but was intent on finding out. Creeping back through my now-grown children's abandoned rubble of toys, I made my way to the door, and back into the brighter light of my daughter's room. Sitting down on her bed, I began to study my find from the closet. What an unusual day this blustery bitter-cold sick day was, I thought, noticing that I could clearly hear the howl of the wind again.

                The thing I now held in my lap was a smallish, old time round hat type box of the kind that ladies of the past purchased their best plumage-laden millinery in, and stored it in. It was indeed smallish for such a thing, and old, although age was not what first caught my eye about the box. The box looked,

4.

 

strangely enough, as if someone had waxed the outside of it, especially around the edge of the flat round cover. It was as though the box had been sealed by the drippings of a candle, and then opened and resealed several times, as the wax was of two or three distinct colors and textures. I could not imagine what might be inside this thing and decided, quite obviously, that I had to find out. I opened the box as carefully as I could.

                Removing the pasteboard cover from my newly found treasure, while still sitting on the bed in a state of mild fever was an almost dizzying experience. Could this be some old timer’s nest egg, somehow forgotten when a family moved from the house? Whatever I had found, I immediately knew that something very special was in my hands. The box was layered inside with several pieces of folded papers, notes from the past.

                There was a drawing in the top of the box. The drawing I held was a simple childish depiction of a person, seemingly a child, lying on a bed. The paper was in very good condition, as were the others, and it was easy to tell that this picture was not a happy one.  The crudely drawn face was that of a child in pain. The face had a sad look; the eyes big and hollow; and the mouth downturned in a frown. One stick-figure arm clutched what looked to be a toy carousel being held at his side, on the bed. The other arm held a cross. That was all the picture told.           The back side of the paper held a date, it read December 30. 1905, and the words “To Nathan.”

                Just beneath one small note to the mysterious Nathan, was another similar one. This page was signed by someone by the name of Samuel B. and carried the simple message of "Best of wishes Nathan. " It also had numbers on it. These numbers were 1912. Then I saw the longer letter beneath the other papers.

                I began to read the long, pencil-lettered note, aloud.  "This is my young brother Nathan's carousel. It was his Christmas gift from Mother and Father, in this, the fifth year of his life, and the year of the building of our fine new house. Nathan is not with us now, being taken by a winter’s grip only Monday last. He did so love the wooden horses on the big ride at the fair. Mother and Father knew he would delight to see them all year round, so gave him his beloved toy to pass the winter. So sad he had it only days before God took him from us. I fear that Mother will never be the same with Nathan gone.  She is so sorrowful now. Father is waiting already to sell the new house, to help relieve her pain. Nathan wound the key to the carousel one last time the night before he was taken from us. He loved to watch the toy go round but fell to eternal sleep before it played its tune again. It is wound still, with the very might of my little brother's sickly hand that Sunday evening. Stored within the spring of the toy is all the life left of him.

                No one can change this, so I save it for future eyes. I wish his power to take the carousel to far off days. I have thrown the key so far off too, so none can mix their strength with that of the boy we loved so well. The box is Mother's new pill box hat one. But now she does not care to dress for Sunday. The box will not be missed. She did not see when I removed her candle from its stand and used the wax to seal the cover fast.

 

5.

 

                Please touch this toy with care. If you find it, move the lever but for a moment, and see the motion of Nathan’s very life. See it only briefly, and do not waste. Send Nathan on and let him live forever." The note was thus signed, Jonathan, Nathan's elder brother. January 1906

                I barely dared to look again into the box. Whatever was there had been carefully surrounded and covered by a crumpled newspaper page or two. I would have thought this thing was all a prank, had I not seen the date of Dec. 29, 1905, on the edge of one old, printed page. I lifted the crumpled paper from the center of the hat box and could not believe what lay before my eyes.

                There it was… Nathan's carousel. The old metal toy was right there, and in my own hands, as I raised it carefully from the box. It was smaller than I had imagined, from the brother's drawing. And it was perfect. Six brightly painted pressed-tin ponies stood, ready to run on their tiny metal rods, waiting as they had for ages in that darkened space. The tiny metal carousel roof, with its cheerily painted decorations, looked as if it were nearly new. The trimmings all around the toy were carefully painted there, by such a toy making craftsman as likely no longer exists in our time. The thing could have come from a fancy toy store that very afternoon. But it did not. It had been here, since Nathans last Christmas, while nearly one hundred December Christmas trees had been taken into the house, decorated, and later removed. The carousel had been here through two world wars and more and had lain in silence through countless happy times and surely some sad times in our old home. Thousands of family dinners had taken place in the dining room one floor down, just below this closet; millions of words had been spoken here but not heard by the toy, and a half dozen families had come and gone, pretending to own a home that outlasted them all.

                As I sat there in amazement, I wondered how this toy could be so old, and still so new. I thought of the near-numberless hours since this carousel had last seen the light of day. And I began to see that time had little grasp on what I now grasped in my hands. It was not alive, and although contained the energy from the winding of a small boy's hand, also held the strength to pass that energy on, through many days and years, itself unharmed. It would not grow old. In the sealed box it did not even fade or rust. Indeed, I thought, without life, the ability to sense a passing hour, or the effects of nature on a thing, does the hour pass for that thing at all? I wondered if time had meaning for something without the mind to measure it. I pondered if our lives went whizzing by as a speeded-up film to something so insulated from the world as this one had been. Perhaps the dark closet; the wax covered box, and the silence of the walls all worked to let this small traveler slip quickly, effortlessly through the relentless fingers that press so heavily on us all, time.

Then I saw the small bent-metal lever on the side of Nathan's carousel. I touched the lever, at first afraid to see the carousel fail to run, and then afraid to waste Nathans power, as his brother's note had warned. I placed the toy on the bedside table, and slowly pressed the lever to one side. In an instant the whirring of a tiny flywheel buzzed to life; the music box briefly played its tinny tune, and the carousel spun slowly; its horses gliding up, down, and around, propelled by the spirit and the muscle of the boy Nathan. I quickly pushed the lever back, and chuckled at the wonder of it all, while the carousel abruptly stopped.     

6.

 

                As I cautiously replaced Nathan's toy in its box, and gently tucked the newsprint all around and over it, just as it had been, I knew I would never see the carousel again, and could tell no one of it at all. I had had my turn in line, waiting for the carousel to spin its way through time. I felt honored to have stumbled blindly on this antique traveler. Or did I stumble at all? If so, I was one of several to do so over the years. That I knew. Perhaps we were all meant to greet the carousel, as future dwellers here may do, as long as the old house stands. I placed the drawing, the letter, and the other notes, as I had found them, back into the box. Then I wrote a note of my own to add to the pile of wishes for Nathan.

              It read: "Nathan, thank you for sharing your carousel with me. It is beautiful. Be at peace to know it travels on, and still contains the life you lent to it. A happy journey to you."  I signed the note and added the numbers 1997. I placed it on top of the rest and put the lid on the box. The brief flash of light that was this day was quickly extinguished inside; I knew. Finding a candle, of a different color still from those used before, I lit it, for Nathan.  The wax dripped around the edge of the box, and mingled with wax from ages past, sealing the box once more.

                As I placed the box within the hole, within the closet of the old house, and wedged the board back into place to cover it, I felt sorrow for the young lad Nathan. How sad that this poor child, dead a score of years before the birth of even my parents, had slipped out of existence at such an early age. Or had he, really?