BINARY CODE-Chapter 4-Timeless Moments

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As Stokely said, the attic ran the length of the house. At either end were slats which allowed in light. Over them screens had been nailed recently to keep out birds and insects. The attic was a repository for all the accessories which were missing from the sparsely furnished rooms downstairs--lamps, pictures, bedstands, crockery, washbasins, bookshelves. It looked like a general store. I wondered why the Aunts had bothered to cart everything up there instead of just leaving it in its natural place. Stokely had marshalled everyone down to the far end where they were standing around some trunks. "Evan," he yelled. "Where did you get to?" "I was just having a gander," I replied. "What have you got in store for us, Stoke?" "I thought a little fashion show." Stokely replied. "Check this out." He opened the first trunk and pulled out an old fashioned knit bathing suit, the kind Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin used to wear. He held it up against his chest. "These must be old Helmut's things," he announced proudly. "They've got to be at least seventy years old." Dewey and Jonah opened the next trunk. They pulled out a silk taffeta gown to squeals of delight from Clare. "Okay. Let's just make sure we handle everything carefully. Pick out what you want and we'll put the rest back. Then we can have a little daguerrotype session down on the porch to immortalize ourselves on celluloid." Having given orders to his troops, Stokely now turned his attention to a trunk which had a padlock. I can still see him there, outlined against the louvred light streaming in from the slats at the end, straining against the padlock on the trunk. "Hey, Evan," he called to me. "Can you see if there's a hammer in that toolbox?" He was pointing at a box under a table in between myself and Lydia, who was standing beside me. I think you would agree that this was a simple request, certainly nothing that would change the course of history, or my history anyway. But it did. When we heard his request, Lydia and I bent down for the box at the same time, first bumping shoulders, then heads in the process. After a gasp, she laughed, a deep throaty laugh which was in stark contrast to Clare's high pitched giggle. Then simultaneously, no more exactly than if we had practiced our lines on cue through countless rehearsals, we looked at each other and said: "Sorry. How clumsy of me." You may say that what I now write I write with the benefit of hindsight, but I am telling you a feeling that I felt at that moment in that spot. As we looked at each other, I knew beyond any doubt that I would marry her. It didn't matter that she was Jonah's girlfriend, or that I barely knew her or that I had never talked to her other than as a member of a group. There is some truth about what the French call a coup de foudre, the thunderbolt. I had read about it or seen it in the movies, but I know that for me, and for her too, a curtain had opened to a different world and the two of us had stepped in without asking or looking back. Of course, that part is seen in hindsight. What we really did then was an Alphonse and Gaston routine. After you. No, after you. I ended up pulling out the box, and opening it up with the two of us crowded over it. The box was wooden with two compartments inside. It was too nice to be a toolbox, and too large and too masculine to be a jewelry case. The velvet lining made it an unlikely storage place for tools. In the top compartment were some old coins, an Indian head penny among others, and what looked like costume jewelry. Upon closer examination, I determined it was costume jewelry. "What do you know? A treasure chest," I said. I picked up the first compartment and lifted it out of the box, giving it to Lydia to examine. At first glance, the rest of the box seemed to be empty. In the corner however the velvet was torn and there was cream coloured paper underneath. I poked my finger through the hole, and found that the velvet gave way quite easily, revealing a piece of thick gauge card with a key attached to it. The card had numerous tiny holes punched in it. I looked to see if there was anything else under the velvet, but there wasn't. The box was empty. "Hey, Stokely," I said, rising and walking towards him. "Try this key. Maybe it'll work." Stokely, who was at the point of applying brute force to the recalcitrant lock, paused briefly. He took the key and tried the lock. It didn't fit. He tossed it aside and harrumphed. "Like Fort effing Knox," he muttered to himself. He then spied an old iron, the type that used to be heated directly on the hearth and was made of the same metal as its name. He took it and warning us to step back, came crashing down on the padlock. The padlock held, but the hasp holding it didn't. It broke off and fell on the floor. "Now we'll see what goodies are in here," he said excitedly. He flung open the trunk to reveal...sheets. Thick cotton percale sheets, but sheets nonetheless. An entire trunk of them, some of them relatively new. This made sense to nobody except those of us who knew the Aunts. We had a good chuckle which hid our disappointment. Stokely's attention returned to the task at hand, choreographing the picture shoot. After a prolonged session of trying on various outfits, he approved everyone's choice, a combination of dandyish outfits and bathing costumes for the men, and ball gowns and hooped skirts for the women. It was now late afternoon, and we started down out of the attic. Again I trailed the others, and again I could not resist availing myself of a souvenir. My interest was piqued, and I bent down and scooped up the key I had found in the box and pocketed it next to my illicit copy of Ghost Stories. We split off at the second floor to prepare ourselves, women at one end and men at the other. When we emerged we all thought we looked rather foolish, but in the pictures this doesn't appear so. Jonah was the star. He had on striped bathers with horizontal bands, and he had managed to find a straw boater. Stokely and Dewey wore removable collars with thin slits for their ties, and spats over their sneakers. They had both slicked back their hair and parted it in the middle. I too wore a woolen bathing costume, too black and too tight. When I look at myself now I am struck by two things. I had forgotten how skinny I was. I had also forgotten how I used to have a smile which hid just about anything, even thighs raw with pain from the chafing of scratchy wool. The women looked the real ticket. Tess was regal. In the picture she is in the middle of our group, her hair pulled back in a bun, her eyes looking straight at the camera. Her chin is at that perfect angle which suggests strength but stops short of haughtiness. Her smile is one of somebody who acknowledges the honour and responsibility of being the keeper of the family flame. Clare looks coquettish in a frilly outfit, but her eyes look peevishly at Stokely, a harbinger of things to come. Lydia is off to the side. Her long hair is braided in a single plait which rests on her right shoulder. The dress she is wearing could not have fit her better had there been a dressmaker there on the spot. At that angle the tight bodice shows her form, that line which I came to treasure. Her smile is one of girlish embarrassment. Her eyes are looking across the others at me, as if she has suddenly seen something for the very first time. The picture is proof that youth is timeless, and from my vantage point, oh-so-fleeting. The camera captured in black and white--Stokely's idea--a moment which could have been any moment in the last hundred years, a moment of sublime perfection, of the casual insouciance of youth before the onset of real life. Dinner that night was another magical experience. We began with raw oysters dipped in lemon and horseradish, washed down with ice cold beer. That was followed by soft-shelled crabs, rolled in spiced flour and sauteed to crispy perfection. We also had slaw and cornbread with wild honey. We finished with a latticed strawberry and rhubarb pie, crispy on the bottom and tangy and sweet on the inside. Just like there is more satisfaction to winning a sports event as a part of a team rather than as an individual, there is something special about a crew of friends pitching in to prepare a meal. The energy seems to translate into the food, and each person has a part in and can enjoy the final result. Stokely had delegated responsibilities, but as with the cox in a crew, everyone pulled together. Candles, linen napkins, and bone china added to the atmosphere. Toasts followed, with a limerick from Tess in honor of her brother: I can tell you that it is no fluke One thing about Stoke makes me puke It is bad that he studies But worse that he's buddies With Evan, that wadhead, from Duke

It was all good natured. When we retired to the hammocks on the porch, I announced I had a surprise. I had been flipping through the ghost story book I had pilfered from the Summer House and I had found a chapter on Matthews and the Old Woods. I had always thought that this legend was one of Stokely's creations, used strategically to impress newcomers. From the book, however, it appeared that the tale preceded him. The Old Woods were located about three miles on the other side of Matthews. To get there you had to turn off the state highway and go down a dirt road. The woods were a band of pines about a quarter of a mile away from the beach, so in approaching them they appeared as a dark stripe on the horizon against the lighter fields. I would have no idea what they looked like during the day as we had only ever been there at night under a moon. The tale of the Old Woods was the usual apocryphal ghost story. Its origin and dates were obscure, ranging from the 17th to 18th centuries. Supposedly if the moon was right you could see a ship sail across the top of the pines, an eerie light which moved from right to left as you faced the water. The story behind it was that a fleet of English ships had landed there searching for Jamestown, which actually lay well to the south. They were set upon by a group of pirates from French corsairs. Forced to stay ashore, they fell victim to a disease. Not all of them were well enough to go back to sea to escape the pirate ships which blockaded them. One ship was left behind with a complement of sick men under a Captain Matthews, with instructions to set sail once they had recovered or to wait for reinforcements which would be sent from Jamestown. They were never seen again, and they and their ship disappeared without trace. Legend had it that the ship sailing across the pines was a ship of wraiths looking for revenge on their comrades who had left them to an uncertain fate in a new and dangerous land. The legend also said that when the moon was full, their moans could be heard deep in the woods. This story, embellished by Stokely whenever he retold it, never failed to scare the hoots out of new visitors to Valhalla. As a ploy for breaking the physical ice with girls seeking reassurance in the midnight darkness of a pine forest, it was without peer. As luck would have it, the next night was a full moon, two weeks before Halloween. It was agreed that after a day spent sailing to the lighthouse of Haynes Point, we would all pay a visit after dinner to the Old Woods in the Green Monster. To frissons of excitement cut off by the yawns of exhaustion from a full day, we left the porch, leaving behind the quiet peace of waves lapping against the breakwater in front of the Bungalow. I returned to the room I shared with Dewey, and the last thought which drifted through my mind before dropping off to sleep was me holding the herbal scented plait of Lydia to my nose and kissing the nape of her neck. I fell asleep wrapped in that blanket of confusion which is the feeling of being both happy and scared.