Page 5 of Upstate

“I’m Rhonda Tate.” Keeping her hands in her pockets, she says, “So, what do you think of the place?”

I turn a slow circle, taking it all in. There’s only one word that comes to mind. “It’s magical.”

Rhonda’s expression softens as if I’m a spy who’s given the correct code word. Though we’re standing farther apart than the required six feet, a sympathetic current surges between us. She looks around, smiling. “It is a magical place, isn’t it?”

“Like a fairy tale,” I say.

“I wouldn’t go that far.” Rhonda rearranges her features back into businesslike lines. “Let’s start with the bookshop.”

As we cross the lawn, I realize only the upper part of the banked barn was visible from the drive. The full height of the three-story structure reveals itself where the lawn slopes down to a field of wildflowers. “It’s so much bigger than it looks.”

“Impressive, isn’t it? The animal pens are down there,” Rhonda says, pointing.

“There are animals?”

“Used to be. Sheep, mostly. Not anymore, though. The bookshop’s up here. You’ll notice the barn isn’t insulated or heated, which is why the business was only open to customers in the summer. The rest of the year it was all mail order.”

“Kind of like Amazon?”

Rhonda snorts. “Believe me, this is nothing like Amazon.”

Jigsawed letters of the alphabet nailed to the barn’s siding spell out red barn books. Beneath them, the door slides open with the exact rusty squeal I imagined. Rhonda covers her face with a pleated blue mask that makes her look like a grumpy nurse. I put one on, too, knowing how wary they are, upstate, of city people who might be infected. I don’t bother explaining about me and Matt Damon.

“Come on in,” Rhonda says, flicking a switch. Strings of lights slung from timber beams dispel the gloom. Inside the barn, the smell hits me first: dust and paper, yes, but other scents, too. I step aside to pull down my mask and inhale deeply, relishing the earthy perfume. The meaty scent of mushrooms. The clean tang of soil. The sickly-sweet insides of a dried-out jar of honey. Spilled red wine. The pavement after it rains.

Refitting my mask, I rejoin Rhonda. The rectangle of light spilling through the barn’s open door spotlights a table laden with dust-covered books and stacks of magazines. Nearby, barrister bookcases are packed with books, stools and benches are piled with books, baskets and boxes are crammed with books, crates and cartons are stuffed with books. There are map drawers, too, and a rack bloated with matted prints. The rest of the barn is sectioned into aisles by metal shelves that stand back-to-back, filled top to bottom with books.

My vision blurs at the sheer number of things. Needing to focus on a single item, I pick up a book from the table and wipe it clean. The green cloth cover has gold lettering and is embossed with clusters of berries. Inside, there’s a print of a young man wearing a rumpled shirt and a black hat, hand propped jauntily on his hip. The title page tells me it was printed in Brooklyn, New York, in 1856. In what world, I marvel, am I holding the second edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass?

A sudden movement catches my eye. I look down to see a green-striped snake slithering past my shoe. My mind flashes to a paper I wrote on animal imagery in Whitman’s poem for an American literature class. How did that line go? In vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs.

“It’s good luck to see a snake come out of hibernation,” Rhonda says as the creature glides outside to sun itself.

I place Leaves of Grass gently on the table. “And all the books come with it?”

“Everything you see, and whatever’s in the loft and the house and the outbuildings, too. Books, shelves, furniture, old farm equipment, the lot. As long as you plan to revive the business, that is.”

A thousand details catch my eye: curl-edged postcards tacked to bulletin boards; outdated calendars hanging from hooks; framed maps mottled with mold. There are drifts of dead flies on windowsills and tattered spiderwebs in every corner. Despite the general air of neglect, the barn is movie-set charming. My business experience, though, is limited to witnessing my dad wrestling with his company’s accounts, a monthly struggle that made balancing books seem harder than writing them. “Is there an inventory?”

“There was at one time, but I haven’t seen it in years. Evelyn lost track of such things by the time the shop closed.”

“You knew her, then?”

“Very well, yes. Evelyn Cabot always did things her own way. I admired that about her.” Rhonda gestures with her chin. “Go ahead, take a look around.”

Leaving Rhonda by the door, I duck behind a shelf and take out my phone. A quick search on eBay reveals the same edition of Leaves of Grass I held in my hand recently sold for eighteen thousand dollars. “Holy shit,” I whisper. Maybe this barn really is like a dragon’s treasure hoard. I know most of the books won’t be worth anything near what the Whitman goes for, but even so, dollar signs dance in front of my eyes as I walk up and down the aisles, counting metal shelving units. I multiply that number by the number of shelves in each unit, then again by the number of books I estimate on a single shelf. Looking at the total in my calculator, I’m stunned. There could be over twenty thousand books in this part of the barn alone.

Rhonda resumes our tour, revealing dozens more boxes of books in the loft—as well as bat droppings on the floor and a beehive in the wall. Down on the barn’s lower level, where our footfalls send field mice scurrying, there are even more books, along with metal fence panels and stacked picnic tables. Exploring the empty sheep pens, we startle a feral cat who’s nursing a mewling litter.

“Sorry to disturb you, Mama.” Rhonda speaks softly to the cat, then turns to me. “You need cats in a barn to keep down the mice, but you ought to have this one spayed if you don’t want to be overrun. I volunteer at the county animal shelter. I can help you place the kittens once they’re weaned.”

“Me?”

“Like I said, everything’s included, even the cats.”

Back outside, I’m thinking of all the used books I’ve bought from independent sellers on eBay and AbeBooks when I ask Rhonda, “Have any of these books been listed online?”

She shakes her head. “Evelyn ran her business the old-fashioned way. Spectrum has service along Ridgetop Road if you want to get the internet, but as far as selling online, you’d be starting from scratch. Think you’d be up for that, Audrey?”