Behind this Stone by Tom Sheehan

I’ve always listened to humming here in this old house of mine, thinking so many times from my early years that it was the universe humming, or the humming of the gods coming to sensitive me, especially in that period around my 12^th year when my imagination ran wild.

This street, the people living here, the neighbors on the road, have no idea what lies beneath my house, old, still here and livable, though it was built in 1742. They think its history began that year, as does the town and the officials who keep records and agree it was built in that year. And, too, the archeologist who dug up the ruins of the First Iron Works of America for the eventual restoration and its celebration as a National Historic site a mere 200 feet away, who had no idea of any previous history of the house.

Until 1953, after my service in Korea and my release from the army and I was working summers on the reconstruction, when he asked permission to dig up the driveway.

Roland Robbins, who had discovered the ruins of Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond, and was in charge of this iron works recovery, had an idea that the water to run the great waterwheel bellows for the huge furnace must have come from a local pond, Lily Pond as it was called by my pals and me, but was known in early books as Pranker’s Pond. Robbins further believed that that body of water fed a channel or canal to run the huge waterwheel that turned the bellows pumping air into the furnace. I gave him the authority to dig up the driveway whereby he could study the sides of the trench and search for evidence of the original channel or canal … as long as I could do the digging. I was looking at overtime, a whole weekend of it.

He said, if it was there, it would be a cinch to recognize it.

He was right on the mark. The trench was about 25 feet long and began at the edge of the sidewalk and proceeded up the driveway at a depth of 8 feet. It was on a Sunday afternoon, late in that afternoon, the sun still full of itself, sweat pouring off my back, my muscles finally beginning to feel their extensive efforts, my throat getting dry, that I sat in the bottom of the trench with the water jug in front of me, calling out to be emptied.

I was thirsty. I remembered being thirsty in Korea, my canteen punctured by a bullet, sitting in a bunker with two comrades and the earth shaking around us. We talked about the coolest water we could think about, for there was not a drop to drink in the bunker.

That’s when I turned to look at the sides of the trench for the first time with some kind of discerning eye. And there, like a half circle, a mark of old earth and untouched, virgin earth, loomed the shape of a channel and I was perpendicular to it. I saw the half circle line more visible to my eye than one of the blue veins on my arms or on the back of my hands. It was about 8 or 10 feet wide at its widest, which was about two feet below the driveway surface. Understandably I realized anything above that point must have been disturbed when the hole for the foundation had been dug by hand.

What I also remembered, almost immediately, that to one side of the trench must be the huge corner stone that served as part of the foundation of the house, and most likely had been unearthed in the digging. It was so big, the stone, that it formed a huge part of one corner of the old fieldstone foundation that now and then, with three or more days of rain, allowed groundwater to seep in on the cellar floor.

Sometime after the place was built, maybe around the start of the 20^th century, a cement floor was put down in the cellar, the 8 fireplaces in the house were closed up and, with the advent of central heating, a hot water furnace had been installed, and pipes installed and connected to large iron radiators.

In my mind I saw it all happening, how they hand-drilled their way through huge beams that often ranged from 13” x 12”, or such odd sizes, or cut with saws chunks of beams to run level pipes through.

And sitting there, spilling water on my head, sipping at the cool contents, thinking of old comrades and wondering where they were, how things had gone for them after I left, I heard the murmur again.

I froze in place. It was the same hum, the same murmur. I stabbed at the vertical side of the trench with the pick end, on the side nearest the house. A clump of dirt fell away. The sound was louder. I jabbed the pick again and as more dirt fell the sound grew louder. I was mystified. I was suddenly frightened for the first time since the war, but I knew I had to call Roland Robbins at home and explain what I had found.

He would, of course, like all archeologists, want to know everything at once. I was sure that he’d drive out to the house from Sudbury on a Sunday to see for himself … to hear for himself.

I was ready to do that, and as if my mind was being read, the humming stopped, the murmurs stopped, a small but sensitive vibration took place and a voice, in clear and unmistakable high English, came to me. The voice addressed me and said, “Thomas, it is not our time. We have to wait until December 12^th, the year 2012 and the start of the new Mayan calendar. Be ready for us.”

It’s been here and gone on and I can look over what used to be, from my favorite window, a cane and a walker steady replacements for pick and shovel.

Tom

Old ironworks in Saugus from Wikicommons