As much as Winston and May adored Ben, there would only be room enough for the two of them in the barn’s hidden space. This was something that they discussed the first time Winston explained his idea of the false wall inside the barn. They could not let a single soul know of their plans. It was bad enough that they risked being cooped up in the small space for a week or two, praying that the PLA didn’t use the barn for target practice or torch it just for the hell of watching it burn. There were so many things that could go wrong, and one of their neighbors ratting them out, whether intentional or not, was not an option.
“George still has some stuff left,” Ben said. “He said he’s got some of that Franco-American shit with your name on it. Better get on down there and stake your claim before somebody else with bad taste claims it.”
They all laughed.
“You know how I gotta have my Franco-American, Ben.”
“It’s practically lore ‘round these parts, Winston.”
Lunch over, Ben stood, chugged the remaining tea, and took in one last gaze of his friends, Medusa’s stump, and the lake.
“Well, I better get on home. I’d like to think that this whole damned thing was all hat and no cattle, but I wasn’t born in the dark.”
“Nope,” Winston said as he stood. He shook Ben’s hand, “we’ll make it through to the other side, Ben.”
“I’d like ta think so.”
“Why not head over to Lafayette? It’s not in the PLA’s direct path.”
“Frig Lafayette. I’m eighty-two years old, for Christ’s sake. I’m not running. Nah, I’ll greet them bastards on my own front porch with my gun if it comes down ta that.”
“I wish you luck, Ben.”
“Peace be with you, Winston. May.”
Ben and Winston’s hands were still locked. Ben didn’t want to let go because he knew deep in heart that this was his end. He’d never see his friends again. May stood and hugged Ben tightly. Ben nodded his head, got into his car, and drove away, not uttering another word lest he burst into tears. As the car left the driveway, a pang of guilt surged through Winston’s gut. He turned to May, thinking that he’d find comfort in her eyes. But she just shook her head, gathered the dishes, and walked back inside. He knew that May was right — Ben might do just fine with them in the barn, but he might also inadvertently get them all killed, which was a risk they couldn’t take.
Amadeus curled up near the corner of the barn, drifting in and out of cat slumber while watching Winston as he cut and carried the lengths of lumber inside the barn. Inside, Winston framed out the false wall by using two-by-fours and screwed everything together so as not to make too much noise banging nails, which might encourage unwelcomed curiosity. Ben had been gone only an hour or two, and there was plenty of daylight left. Winston was making tremendous progress, his stamina that of a man half his age. He screwed what would mimic the outside wall to the studs on the inside of their hiding spot, leaving the area between the actual outside barn wall and the first stud open to create a slim doorway of less than sixteen inches — a space just barely large enough to slip through. At that sixteen-inch measurement, he ran the boards all the way across the entire side of the false wall. It wasn’t difficult work, but he could have used another hand to help position the boards in place while he teetered on the old hand-me-down ten-foot aluminum ladder. The ladder had been Mayor Wellbeloved’s, and was spattered with every color of paint, from the white on the main house to the evergreen on the shutters to the pale yellow Ben and the Mayor painted Ben’s house (June’s favorite color was yellow) and to Winston’s barn red. That one aluminum ladder, bought down at Calef’s in 1954 by May’s then-twenty-year-old father — long before the thought of holding a political office entered his mind — displayed a history that many people might take for granted. Not Winston, though. To him, that rickety, old ladder that ought to have been recycled by now was as sentimental as the lines of his own face. Every spatter of paint on that ladder corresponded to some life event experienced by Mayor Wellbeloved, May or Winston. That ladder was a book, a love letter, and a gift — a memory of a great man. And Winston revered that hand-me-down ladder as if it were gilded in gold because Mayor Wellbeloved had told the same stories over and over again of painting houses and pruning Medusa and having to set the ladder on several cinder blocks because it was six inches too short to climb onto the house’s roof without them and of hanging the Christmas lights every day after Thanksgiving. The ladder also did double duty as a sawhorse, and even as a gurney when twelve-year-old May twisted her ankle across the street in the field where the wild Southern Highbush blueberries ripened every July — and still do. That was a favorite story of Mayor Wellbeloved’s to tell — how when May got the inkling to make a blueberry pie for her mother who was upstairs sick in bed (in the early days of the story, the Mayor usually left out the part where Mrs. Wellbeloved, Mary, had suffered a heart attack, which then caused a stroke, and left her essentially an invalid, barely able to speak. Mary was only twenty-eight and suffered from a congenital heart birth defect. It was nobody’s fault, but she would die only a few weeks later, there, at home in bed with her husband and daughter by her side. It wasn’t until later in life that the Mayor sometimes included Mary’s story). The blueberries were ripe for picking and May was excited to bake something for her mother, to prove that she could do it all by herself. When May had picked a basketful of blueberries, she waved to her father, who was standing at the edge of the driveway, taking a break from painting the house and chitchatting with Ben. As he waved back to his daughter, she suddenly disappeared in the tall grass. He heard her cry out and he and Ben ran to her aide. She sobbed that she twisted her ankle on a rock — that rock! — but when the Mayor looked down, all he saw was a pebble the size of a walnut. The Mayor saw that she was upset that she spilled the blueberries and he held his laughter until later that evening when he told the story to Mary in private. He asked Ben to get the ladder and bent down and helped May pick up every blueberry that spilled and when Ben came back with the ladder, they carefully placed May and her basket of berries onto it and brought her back to the house, making loud ambulance noises and zigzagging all the way. Needless to say, she forgot all about her pain by the time the pie came out of the oven. Mary said in a low, raspy voice that May’s blueberry pie was the best thing that she had ever tasted in her life.
So, while the stories were never about the ladder, that ladder often played a supporting role in so many of Mayor Wellbeloved’s stories and had become a member of the family. Plus, the ladder was still sturdy enough to perform its duties safely.
May stood at the open door and peered into the room. It was empty, save for Winston standing on the ladder. The space already felt cramped to her. Winston blushed, embarrassed that she noticed the emotion on his face as he reminisced about the blueberry story.
“I brought you some water,” she said, “you know how your head aches when you get dehydrated.”
“Thank you, Mother,” Winston said. He stepped off the ladder and took the glass of water and gulped it all down in one single swallow.
“I don’t know why you keep hanging on to that old thing when Calef’s got brand new fiberglass ones in stock.”
Winston felt the ladder’s cold aluminum, running his fingers over dried clumps of paint, looked at May, and said, “oh, I dunno, I kinda like its history.”
“You’re a sentimental old fool whose gonna break his neck climbing on that rickety thing.”