An Irresponsible Adult
Chapter Two
When I’m ashore, I frequently find myself at Wegman’s supermarket in Mount Laurel, New Jersey. I love going there because Monica loves going there. If she’s not a gourmet chef then Wolfgang Puck isn’t Wolfgang Johann Topfschnig. Wegman’s sees folks like Wolfgang and Monica coming, and it is ready for them. I’ve seen produce in their bins that you normally see only in National Geographic photos. In the meat case, they have ahi tuna shipped overnight from Malaysia. The cheese case speaks in dozens of exotic languages. Monica can spend hours and hundreds of dollars in Wegman’s aisles in one visit. She is always smiling at those times, a saintly smile, which is appropriate. Wegman’s has a steeple on its roof. I tell Monica she should genuflect when she enters through the automatic doors. I have dubbed Wegman’s the Cathedral of Conspicuous Consumption.
It was late August in 2006, the Sunday before Labor Day, and we had gone to Wegman’s for an afternoon service. Because I am not a devotee of that religion, I often get no deeper into the cathedral than the coffee bar just inside the front door. Some chain establishments have a Starbucks counter. Wegman’s has the equal, but with its own brand of coffee, its own grinds. I get a cup of Seattle Roast or, when I’m less adventurous, Donut Shop coffee and then take a stool at one of the small tables in the alcove next to the foyer. From here, I can inspect the flow of humanity and sneer righteously. This is because I know the forces that brought the couples – and on a weekend, at least, the crowd comes in twos, like beasts boarding Noah’s arc – through the front doors. I am certain there is a direct link between the Food Network and the success of a supermarket that thrives not on coupons or ten-for-one sales but through your eagerness let it pick your pocket. You’ve seen Emeril prepare the meal. Now you are here to prove you are his equal. And in many cases, you have brought your husband in tow, like a docile elephant, hulking behind you, guided not by his own mind but by his expectation of your next command. This is good, because there may be heavy lifting involved.
I confess that at times, I’m the elephant. But often, I get to wait on a stool, sip my coffee and watch the crowd. And this August visit was one of those times. I cannot honestly recreate what followed, although I can speculate. My guess is that the crowd on this afternoon was not that spectacular, nothing to stir my imagination. On a good day, I’ll see a mother and adult daughter, for example. I can see the same curve in the nose, and although one nose is thicker than the other, just as one neck is wattled more than the other, it is clear that both are packages containing the same ingredients. So I will watch how they interact. Is there fondness or hostility? Superiority or submission? Then I will fabricate their story. This is a pastime I cannot suppress. A young couple with kids comes through the foyer beside me, stops at the fresh corn bins fifteen feet from my table, and I watch to analyze the parenting and assess the future of these children. It’s all very judgmental and it takes a lot of concentration.
But this probably was an afternoon without particularly good candidates for my inspection, so my mind drifted back a couple of weeks, to the trip Robin made from Long Island Sound to Annapolis, Maryland, where she stays most of the time. Monica and I had sailed first to Newport and then on to Rockland Maine in early July. She went home, her vacation time exhausted. I spent ten days in Maine and then, alone, began a series of day trips along the coast. When I reached the Connecticut River, my friend, Curt Michael, joined me on Robin to help for the overnight sail down the New Jersey coast and the two more days from Cape May to Annapolis. It was the longest stretch “Mike” and I had ever spent together, even though we had known each other for 46 years. We met as college freshmen, living in the same dorm. Mike was pragmatic, smart and fun. I was an immature, obsessive loose cannon. We and three other young men developed a bond that has lasted our lifetime. But Mike and I had never spent five consecutive days confined to the same space as we did on Robin. In the long, monotonous hours that Robin motored and motor-sailed along the 300-mile course, Mike and I had plenty of time to talk. In one of the conversations, he told me of the ten goals he had set for himself to complete in his lifetime. Some were boating goals. Mike, a licensed captain, teaches boating and owns a 40-foot sportfishing boat. Among his goals was a long trip up the Hudson River and Vermont’s Lake Champlain. Another was a winter spent cruising down the Intracoastal Waterway. His non-boating goals included building a retirement home – a project that was now under way – and a grand tour of national parks in the United States.
Mike’s words came back to me sitting on the stool in Wegman’s. As I sipped my coffee from its paper cup with plastic lid, I made a quick observation. I had never in my life set goals for monumental achievements. I had established expectations. As a teen, I decided that my primary responsibility in life was to be a good parent. This commandment had guided my life from that point on, forming the basis on which I habitually made all my decisions. Also, I had always wanted to write a book and get it published. That happened in 2002, but while it was an achievement that I found quietly pleasing, it was not the product of goal-setting. Rather, it was the result of years of hard work as a journalist intersecting with an assignment to report on a big story that was worth writing at book length.
But what, I thought, if I had some goals? What would they be? And what if I set a deadline to achieve those goals? As quickly as I had asked those questions, my mind began providing answers. There were, I discovered, pent-up desires, quite easily defined. I wanted to finish writing a novel that I had begun a decade earlier. I wanted to compete in a downhill skiing race. I wanted to sail singlehanded to Bermuda. And I wanted to do all those things in the next 12 months, by Labor Day 2007, the year that I turned 65.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
That's as far as I'm going with Leaving Harwich. If you have been critiquing it, you should have enough now to draw some conclusions. If you do, I hope to hear your thoughts. So far, only two readers have weighed in, but they both have been immensely helpful.
Next up, a few chapters from An Irresponsible Adult. I've already included the first chapter early on in this blog, but I'll post it below so you can start fresh. The same rules apply. Please, no flattery. Only thoughtful criticism that will improve the work.
An Irresponsible Adult is subtitled: Reflections on a Solo Voyage. I call it a motivational memoir because of its purpose.
See what you think.
AN IRRESPONSIBLE ADULT
Reflections on a Solo Voyage
By
Douglas A. Campbell
Part I – Alone
Chapter One
I am alone on my sailboat in a harbor at the edge of the treacherous North Atlantic, but the feeling inside my chest is that of a high wire aerialist about to cross a cable strung between two skyscrapers. I am not afraid – not yet – because I am as focused as is that hypothetical acrobat. I’m trying to stay out of trouble by navigating a safe course. My boat, Robin, is steered by a tiller – a long, curved lever made of laminated wood and attached to the rudder, which hangs off of my boat’s pointed stern. I am shoving the tiller to port and to starboard, steering Robin east and then west, within the limits of the Newport, Rhode Island, harbor. To my south, an invisible line crosses the harbor. At one end of the line is an orange buoy. At the other end is a small, anchored power boat. This is the starting line for a race I have entered. I am staying well away from that line. I am not afraid of the line. Fear is beyond it, although at this point I only suspect that. I am not thinking about fear. I am thinking very hard about avoiding the 39 other boats that are crisscrossing the harbor to the north of the starting line. Some – the lighter boats – are sailing already. I am running Robin’s diesel engine because the wind is slight, not really enough to move my heavy, 32-foot boat with anything less than all her sails raised. A half hour ago, when Robin was still tied to a mooring amidst perhaps 200 other vessels in the cluttered anchorage close to town, I raised the mainsail up its track on the back of the mast. Until only days ago, that had been a very difficult job, resulting in rivers of sweat. Then, after three years of sailing Robin, I discovered a very easy way to raise the mainsail. So that’s what I did back there on the mooring. If there is any wind, the boat will swing around its mooring and point into the wind when the mainsail is raised. That didn’t happen this windless morning. Once the main was up, I raised the staysail, a small sail hung in front of Robin’s mast. That left the genoa, Robin’s largest and, at times, most powerful sail, still rolled around the cable – called the forestay – that angles up from the very tip of the bowsprit to the top of the mast, about 43 feet above the cabintop. The genoa is rolled up like a window shade, so I could, at any time, unfurl it by pulling on one of two ropes or lines – we sailors call them sheets when they control a sail. But I have left the genoa furled because it is a cumbersome sail to handle each time you turn the boat. It gets caught around the inner forestay – the shorter slanting cable that the smaller staysail is attached to. I didn’t want to deal with a tangle of Dacron sail fabric, not now, a half hour before the start of the 635-mile Bermuda One-Two sailboat race, not in the midst of 39 boats waiting to cross the starting line, not in front of a few hundred spectators who have bothered, on a chilly, overcast Saturday morning in early June, to focus their attention on this gaggle of boats and the solitary women and men who are poised on each, preparing to leave this safe harbor for many days alone at sea.
I am no more afraid – although this will be my first long offshore voyage alone – than the seasoned aerialist, who ignores the chasm below his high wire, the ghastly pit into which one misstep will send him. And yet, I am not brave. I simply cannot, yet, see the ocean – with its unmentionable depth and its ability to turn in minutes from serene to savage. That is beyond the land that confines this harbor. I am too busy to think of all that could go wrong. In stories that I have written as a staff member of Soundings, a boating magazine, I have catalogued the mistakes and misfortunes that have sent other sailors to their graves out there. And so, with an intensity bordering on obsession, I have spent recent months eliminating risks. Before this race, Robin had no life raft. Now she has one, strapped in a corner of the cockpit. She had no emergency radio beacon to alert the Coast Guard should I need to be rescued. Now a so-called EPIRB is mounted high on a wall inside the cabin. There was no manual bilge pump. Now there is one in the cabinet below the EPIRB and another near my shins out here in the cockpit. The list of safeguards is enormous. It shows in the credit card bill that Monica, my wife, tries to pay off each month. I started with a budget of $2,000 for this race. The decision to buy, rather than rent, the life raft nearly took care of that budget in one shot. But the intensity that is now guiding my hand on Robin’s tiller would not allow the collapse of my budget to be a reason for quitting this race. I had to be in Newport on June 9, 2007. Reining in a squandering man is certainly the job of a wife. But Monica, who right now is standing under some kind of shelter on the shore to the east, only encouraged my preparations for this contest. Indeed, she will meet me when I arrive in Bermuda and then race back to Newport with me on Robin.
For now, however, I am alone on board this boat, and I will be for several days and nights. I am not afraid, and yet I am not happy or excited. Twenty-eight years of sailing have led me to this harbor. Absent-minded reflection on the sailing adventures of others has turned me toward this single-handed challenge. A couple of years of immersion in my work as a boating writer has given me an appreciation for what completion of a voyage to Bermuda could feel like. And here I stand, steering Robin closer and closer to the reality that I have for so long visualized. My hair should be standing up on the back of my neck, like a dog ready to fight. Maybe a gunslinger’s grin should be forming in the corner of my mouth, or a coward’s quiver revealing itself in my grip on the tiller. I should be reacting in some way that I am not. Almost every emotion seems to have been wrung out of me as I wait for the cannon blast that will signal the start of the race. I am purposeful, businesslike. My approach has been conservative. I will roll out the genoa only in the last seconds before the cannon fires, and then I will – from wherever I find myself in this harbor – drive for the starting line and the ocean beyond. I can feel the pace of these coming moments establishing itself. In the passing of another sailor’s boat, I hear the hiss and gurgle of a wind-driven bow wake, the flap of a loosened sail as another boat turns through the wind. Robin’s engine is off now. Four of the classes have already started: the fastest boats got off the line more than thirty minutes ago. A blue and white flag on the boat at the end of the starting line shows that there are less than four minutes until we in Class Four race. I steer Robin to the east, trying to gauge where I will turn around to begin my run toward the start. My heart beats slowly, almost coasting like a locomotive when the throttle is eased. I have an inner momentum that carries me forward. Inside, I feel as I have – too infrequently – when taking an exam that I know I will ace. I am confident in Robin. I am confident of my ability to handle her. And in that place where pleasure and sorrow each can reside . . . there is nothing. Or that is how it feels. It will take me months to categorize the sensation, to realize that it is resignation, like the acceptance phase of the terminally ill. It is resignation, seasoned with dread.
Next up, a few chapters from An Irresponsible Adult. I've already included the first chapter early on in this blog, but I'll post it below so you can start fresh. The same rules apply. Please, no flattery. Only thoughtful criticism that will improve the work.
An Irresponsible Adult is subtitled: Reflections on a Solo Voyage. I call it a motivational memoir because of its purpose.
See what you think.
AN IRRESPONSIBLE ADULT
Reflections on a Solo Voyage
By
Douglas A. Campbell
Part I – Alone
Chapter One
I am alone on my sailboat in a harbor at the edge of the treacherous North Atlantic, but the feeling inside my chest is that of a high wire aerialist about to cross a cable strung between two skyscrapers. I am not afraid – not yet – because I am as focused as is that hypothetical acrobat. I’m trying to stay out of trouble by navigating a safe course. My boat, Robin, is steered by a tiller – a long, curved lever made of laminated wood and attached to the rudder, which hangs off of my boat’s pointed stern. I am shoving the tiller to port and to starboard, steering Robin east and then west, within the limits of the Newport, Rhode Island, harbor. To my south, an invisible line crosses the harbor. At one end of the line is an orange buoy. At the other end is a small, anchored power boat. This is the starting line for a race I have entered. I am staying well away from that line. I am not afraid of the line. Fear is beyond it, although at this point I only suspect that. I am not thinking about fear. I am thinking very hard about avoiding the 39 other boats that are crisscrossing the harbor to the north of the starting line. Some – the lighter boats – are sailing already. I am running Robin’s diesel engine because the wind is slight, not really enough to move my heavy, 32-foot boat with anything less than all her sails raised. A half hour ago, when Robin was still tied to a mooring amidst perhaps 200 other vessels in the cluttered anchorage close to town, I raised the mainsail up its track on the back of the mast. Until only days ago, that had been a very difficult job, resulting in rivers of sweat. Then, after three years of sailing Robin, I discovered a very easy way to raise the mainsail. So that’s what I did back there on the mooring. If there is any wind, the boat will swing around its mooring and point into the wind when the mainsail is raised. That didn’t happen this windless morning. Once the main was up, I raised the staysail, a small sail hung in front of Robin’s mast. That left the genoa, Robin’s largest and, at times, most powerful sail, still rolled around the cable – called the forestay – that angles up from the very tip of the bowsprit to the top of the mast, about 43 feet above the cabintop. The genoa is rolled up like a window shade, so I could, at any time, unfurl it by pulling on one of two ropes or lines – we sailors call them sheets when they control a sail. But I have left the genoa furled because it is a cumbersome sail to handle each time you turn the boat. It gets caught around the inner forestay – the shorter slanting cable that the smaller staysail is attached to. I didn’t want to deal with a tangle of Dacron sail fabric, not now, a half hour before the start of the 635-mile Bermuda One-Two sailboat race, not in the midst of 39 boats waiting to cross the starting line, not in front of a few hundred spectators who have bothered, on a chilly, overcast Saturday morning in early June, to focus their attention on this gaggle of boats and the solitary women and men who are poised on each, preparing to leave this safe harbor for many days alone at sea.
I am no more afraid – although this will be my first long offshore voyage alone – than the seasoned aerialist, who ignores the chasm below his high wire, the ghastly pit into which one misstep will send him. And yet, I am not brave. I simply cannot, yet, see the ocean – with its unmentionable depth and its ability to turn in minutes from serene to savage. That is beyond the land that confines this harbor. I am too busy to think of all that could go wrong. In stories that I have written as a staff member of Soundings, a boating magazine, I have catalogued the mistakes and misfortunes that have sent other sailors to their graves out there. And so, with an intensity bordering on obsession, I have spent recent months eliminating risks. Before this race, Robin had no life raft. Now she has one, strapped in a corner of the cockpit. She had no emergency radio beacon to alert the Coast Guard should I need to be rescued. Now a so-called EPIRB is mounted high on a wall inside the cabin. There was no manual bilge pump. Now there is one in the cabinet below the EPIRB and another near my shins out here in the cockpit. The list of safeguards is enormous. It shows in the credit card bill that Monica, my wife, tries to pay off each month. I started with a budget of $2,000 for this race. The decision to buy, rather than rent, the life raft nearly took care of that budget in one shot. But the intensity that is now guiding my hand on Robin’s tiller would not allow the collapse of my budget to be a reason for quitting this race. I had to be in Newport on June 9, 2007. Reining in a squandering man is certainly the job of a wife. But Monica, who right now is standing under some kind of shelter on the shore to the east, only encouraged my preparations for this contest. Indeed, she will meet me when I arrive in Bermuda and then race back to Newport with me on Robin.
For now, however, I am alone on board this boat, and I will be for several days and nights. I am not afraid, and yet I am not happy or excited. Twenty-eight years of sailing have led me to this harbor. Absent-minded reflection on the sailing adventures of others has turned me toward this single-handed challenge. A couple of years of immersion in my work as a boating writer has given me an appreciation for what completion of a voyage to Bermuda could feel like. And here I stand, steering Robin closer and closer to the reality that I have for so long visualized. My hair should be standing up on the back of my neck, like a dog ready to fight. Maybe a gunslinger’s grin should be forming in the corner of my mouth, or a coward’s quiver revealing itself in my grip on the tiller. I should be reacting in some way that I am not. Almost every emotion seems to have been wrung out of me as I wait for the cannon blast that will signal the start of the race. I am purposeful, businesslike. My approach has been conservative. I will roll out the genoa only in the last seconds before the cannon fires, and then I will – from wherever I find myself in this harbor – drive for the starting line and the ocean beyond. I can feel the pace of these coming moments establishing itself. In the passing of another sailor’s boat, I hear the hiss and gurgle of a wind-driven bow wake, the flap of a loosened sail as another boat turns through the wind. Robin’s engine is off now. Four of the classes have already started: the fastest boats got off the line more than thirty minutes ago. A blue and white flag on the boat at the end of the starting line shows that there are less than four minutes until we in Class Four race. I steer Robin to the east, trying to gauge where I will turn around to begin my run toward the start. My heart beats slowly, almost coasting like a locomotive when the throttle is eased. I have an inner momentum that carries me forward. Inside, I feel as I have – too infrequently – when taking an exam that I know I will ace. I am confident in Robin. I am confident of my ability to handle her. And in that place where pleasure and sorrow each can reside . . . there is nothing. Or that is how it feels. It will take me months to categorize the sensation, to realize that it is resignation, like the acceptance phase of the terminally ill. It is resignation, seasoned with dread.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Chapter 12
Blind Alley
This, I think, is the price I’m paying for not having a better plan when I left Harwich. Why didn’t I think of a flashlight? I’m stranded on this mountainside until the dawn comes. And we are now a thousand feet up, high enough on the mountain that the air is colder than in the city. I never should have gone with the farmer. I have to say I’m angry with myself for my poor judgment.
But then, if I’d refused his offer, wouldn’t the next car have been the Porsche? Of course, maybe that was another Porsche. Any other night, I probably wouldn’t be so jittery about it. But, no, Rutland has only what – maybe fifteen thousand people? How many silver Porsche’s are in this area?
I shuffle in the direction I think will lead to the guard rail. It’s only a half dozen steps before the side of my left shin hits something hard. When I reach down, I feel the corrugated metal and some bolts that hold its sections together. Feeling with both hands, I make sure it’s high enough to sit on and then I lower my tail onto the rail. It feels good to get off my feet.
In this situation, I need a plan. Here I can’t even see my fist, not like back down the mountain, when I stood under one street light and had another one that would light up any traffic before it reached me. Here, all I’ll see will be two headlights. I won’t be able to tell what kind of car is coming – cop, Porsche or whatever. How am I going to protect myself from another wacko?
First thing to do, if I see something coming I don’t know about, I should jump behind the guard rail that I’m sitting on and hide. But I can’t see what is there. I could be jumping over a cliff or into a ravine. I’d better check out what’s behind me here in the dark.
I swing my downhill leg – my left leg – over the guardrail. My foot falls on what seems to be flat ground, so, turning, I swing my right leg over. Still sitting on the rail, my feet both seem to be somewhat level, so I stand in a crouch. With both hands gripping the rail – it’s cold to the touch – I walk my feet away from the highway. There is a small slope, not too much. So I stand and take a few more steps and feel my footing changing from gravel to grass – clumps of it, not like a lawn but like the hummocks in a swamp. I stoop and feel the grass with my hands. It’s not grass at all but leaves of some kind. Leaves that low probably are poison ivy. I can’t tell by touch. It’s lucky that I don’t catch poison ivy. I should say: Only a little. But I’d better not think about lying down in it.
Now it occurs to me that if that Porsche that passed happened to be Mr. Ponytail, and if he happened to be tracking me, I shouldn’t remain here, right where the old guy left me. I need to move away. Since uphill is toward Boston, I’ll follow the guardrail in that direction, put some distance between me and the farmer’s dirt road.
But wouldn’t you know? Soon as I begin climbing, I hear some vehicle up ahead, coming my way. I fall flat on my stomach in the gravel behind the guardrail. This is becoming habit-forming. My face is in weeds, just like back behind the liquor store when I escaped Mr. Ponytail.
I can see under the steel rail and, for an instant, everything in view is brightly lit by headlights. The car keeps going down the mountain, however, and when its tail lights disappear around the curve of the highway, it’s like someone threw off the light switch. I’m in total darkness once again.
Getting up onto my knees and then my feet, I reach for the rail and begin climbing again, trying to get as far uphill from the farmer’s road as possible. The grade of the roadside becomes a little steeper, so my right foot is downhill from my left. The gravel under my shoes is small – maybe the size of walnuts – and my feet are slipping out from under me after every few steps.
Now what’s that? My right foot has hit on something hard, not gravel. I get back down on my knees and feel about. It’s hard and rounded, and it doesn’t take long for the image to form itself in my mind. It’s a steel culvert coming out from under the highway.
I feel my way along to its end. The steel tube is about three feet in diameter, and there’s no grate or any other obstruction across its end. This would make a good hiding place, just in case. I’ll stop here and wait for a ride – a good ride.
So far tonight on this mountainside – it leads up to a couple of Vermont’s biggest ski areas – I have seen only two cars: That Porsche that passed the farmer’s Cadillac, and the car that just went down the mountain. I wouldn’t have dared take a ride in either. First off, I can’t tell what they are before they arrive. If I have to wait for daylight so I can see what’s coming, then I guess I’ll wait.
But what other options are there? I wouldn’t be afraid of hitching a ride on a big truck, a semi. And come to think of it, a truck would probably be going pretty slow if it was climbing the mountain, going my way. So that’s the plan. Until it gets light out, I’ll take a ride only if I can get one in a truck.
The culvert makes a good place to wait. I can straddle it like a horse so I don’t have to stand. Let me try that. Okay, it’s comfortable enough. I can’t see over the top of the guard rail from this position but a passing car probably can’t see me, either. And if necessary, I have a hole where I can hide.
I’m sure lucky it isn’t raining or, worse, snowing. The culvert wouldn’t be much help in the rain. There would probably be water flowing through it, maybe enough that it would be gurgling Right now, it is pretty quiet. There’s not even enough breeze to make that whispering sound the wind makes going through the trees, not even a rattling of the drying autumn leaves.
In the distance, I can hear the sound of a brook deep in a valley behind me, down the hill where the culvert drains. It’s a low, rushing sound, barely enough to hear, constant but not enough to hide the song of a night bird if it was singing nearby. If it were summer, there would be insect sounds. But the first frost last week must have driven the bugs into hibernation. Without the splashing of the brook, it would be silent here. Silent, totally dark, impenetrable. Quiet enough to snooze.
Except just as I thought that, I began to hear another, faint sound coming from up the mountain. In one ear, I here the brook. In the other, this sound which could be a wind stirring the treetops at a higher altitude on the mountain.
But as I listen, I know exactly what I’m hearing. It’s a car coming down the highway, and looking up the hill, I can already see the glow of its light – not the direct beam of its headlights but a white glow moving through the nearby forest where the highway must be around a bend.
I’m lowering myself to crouch before the opening of the culvert, and I can now see the headlights under the uphill part of the guardrail. And this is odd: I hear the car downshifting, as if it’s going to stop. Oh, man! It’s a Porsche. I’d know that sound anywhere! He’s slowing even more as he passes me, and I’m getting lower, ready to back into the culvert. The Porsche is about one hundred yards – a soccer field – down the hill and stopping. Maybe he is at the farmer’s road.
Now I’m peering over the top of the culvert up the bank to the highway, so I can’t really tell what’s happening. But I hear the Porsche’s engine rev a bit and I see the sweep of his headlights against the trees of the forest just downhill on my side of the highway. Geeze, he’s turning around!
No time to waste. I get down on my knees and crawl backward into the culvert. There is sand under me, damp on my knees, the wetness sponging through my jeans and the sand gritty on the palms of my hands. I can feel spider webs catching on the back of my head as I retreat into the culvert.
I can hear the Porsche beginning to drive back up the hill, but it’s going slowly, still in first gear. And now it sounds – I can’t be sure and I sure am not going to try to see – it sounds like he’s stopping – right above me!
There is a voice, muffled, blocked by the sound of the idling car engine. My head is just inside the culvert opening, so I’m straining to hear. Wait, the engine just stopped. Now, silence, the kind of loud silence you’d get sitting in a metal garbage can playing hide-and-seek. And now the voice again. I’d recognize it any place. Mr. Ponytail.
“Call it a hunch,” he says. “I saw that old car stopped just down the hill from where I’m standing and at first I thought nothing of it. What?”
Sounds like he’s on a cell phone, talking with someone.
“Yeah, I drove on by, all the way up to Killington or just past, where Route 100 turns north. But then I thought: There’s no reason for that car to be stopping there except I’d noticed a dirt road just opposite it. And I thought, if he’s hitching up the mountain, maybe they’re dropping him off. What?”
Silence again. Guess he’s listening to whoever it is.
“No, I heard it on the scanner. A cop saying he had a hitchhiker in custody and was pursuing a fleeing vehicle. The cop asked someone to come and apprehend the hitchhiker. I was there in less than a minute, but the kid – and I’m sure it was the kid – was gone.”
What is this guy’s problem? Why is he tracking me? I can’t believe I’m being hunted! My heart is beating now in my chest so hard it seems to echo in my ears, in this culvert, the sound of my pulse amplified by the corrugated steel, so loud it could be vibrating up through the ground, through the pavement, right into Mr. Ponytail’s feet!
“Look, I know we have to find him. He knows too much already.”
Another pause, and then,
“I’ve never lost one before, Fred. He looked like all the rest, a perfect prize. Don’t worry, I’ll find him, probably before sunrise. Vermont’s not that big.”
A pause, and then,
“It’s a promise!”
Blind Alley
This, I think, is the price I’m paying for not having a better plan when I left Harwich. Why didn’t I think of a flashlight? I’m stranded on this mountainside until the dawn comes. And we are now a thousand feet up, high enough on the mountain that the air is colder than in the city. I never should have gone with the farmer. I have to say I’m angry with myself for my poor judgment.
But then, if I’d refused his offer, wouldn’t the next car have been the Porsche? Of course, maybe that was another Porsche. Any other night, I probably wouldn’t be so jittery about it. But, no, Rutland has only what – maybe fifteen thousand people? How many silver Porsche’s are in this area?
I shuffle in the direction I think will lead to the guard rail. It’s only a half dozen steps before the side of my left shin hits something hard. When I reach down, I feel the corrugated metal and some bolts that hold its sections together. Feeling with both hands, I make sure it’s high enough to sit on and then I lower my tail onto the rail. It feels good to get off my feet.
In this situation, I need a plan. Here I can’t even see my fist, not like back down the mountain, when I stood under one street light and had another one that would light up any traffic before it reached me. Here, all I’ll see will be two headlights. I won’t be able to tell what kind of car is coming – cop, Porsche or whatever. How am I going to protect myself from another wacko?
First thing to do, if I see something coming I don’t know about, I should jump behind the guard rail that I’m sitting on and hide. But I can’t see what is there. I could be jumping over a cliff or into a ravine. I’d better check out what’s behind me here in the dark.
I swing my downhill leg – my left leg – over the guardrail. My foot falls on what seems to be flat ground, so, turning, I swing my right leg over. Still sitting on the rail, my feet both seem to be somewhat level, so I stand in a crouch. With both hands gripping the rail – it’s cold to the touch – I walk my feet away from the highway. There is a small slope, not too much. So I stand and take a few more steps and feel my footing changing from gravel to grass – clumps of it, not like a lawn but like the hummocks in a swamp. I stoop and feel the grass with my hands. It’s not grass at all but leaves of some kind. Leaves that low probably are poison ivy. I can’t tell by touch. It’s lucky that I don’t catch poison ivy. I should say: Only a little. But I’d better not think about lying down in it.
Now it occurs to me that if that Porsche that passed happened to be Mr. Ponytail, and if he happened to be tracking me, I shouldn’t remain here, right where the old guy left me. I need to move away. Since uphill is toward Boston, I’ll follow the guardrail in that direction, put some distance between me and the farmer’s dirt road.
But wouldn’t you know? Soon as I begin climbing, I hear some vehicle up ahead, coming my way. I fall flat on my stomach in the gravel behind the guardrail. This is becoming habit-forming. My face is in weeds, just like back behind the liquor store when I escaped Mr. Ponytail.
I can see under the steel rail and, for an instant, everything in view is brightly lit by headlights. The car keeps going down the mountain, however, and when its tail lights disappear around the curve of the highway, it’s like someone threw off the light switch. I’m in total darkness once again.
Getting up onto my knees and then my feet, I reach for the rail and begin climbing again, trying to get as far uphill from the farmer’s road as possible. The grade of the roadside becomes a little steeper, so my right foot is downhill from my left. The gravel under my shoes is small – maybe the size of walnuts – and my feet are slipping out from under me after every few steps.
Now what’s that? My right foot has hit on something hard, not gravel. I get back down on my knees and feel about. It’s hard and rounded, and it doesn’t take long for the image to form itself in my mind. It’s a steel culvert coming out from under the highway.
I feel my way along to its end. The steel tube is about three feet in diameter, and there’s no grate or any other obstruction across its end. This would make a good hiding place, just in case. I’ll stop here and wait for a ride – a good ride.
So far tonight on this mountainside – it leads up to a couple of Vermont’s biggest ski areas – I have seen only two cars: That Porsche that passed the farmer’s Cadillac, and the car that just went down the mountain. I wouldn’t have dared take a ride in either. First off, I can’t tell what they are before they arrive. If I have to wait for daylight so I can see what’s coming, then I guess I’ll wait.
But what other options are there? I wouldn’t be afraid of hitching a ride on a big truck, a semi. And come to think of it, a truck would probably be going pretty slow if it was climbing the mountain, going my way. So that’s the plan. Until it gets light out, I’ll take a ride only if I can get one in a truck.
The culvert makes a good place to wait. I can straddle it like a horse so I don’t have to stand. Let me try that. Okay, it’s comfortable enough. I can’t see over the top of the guard rail from this position but a passing car probably can’t see me, either. And if necessary, I have a hole where I can hide.
I’m sure lucky it isn’t raining or, worse, snowing. The culvert wouldn’t be much help in the rain. There would probably be water flowing through it, maybe enough that it would be gurgling Right now, it is pretty quiet. There’s not even enough breeze to make that whispering sound the wind makes going through the trees, not even a rattling of the drying autumn leaves.
In the distance, I can hear the sound of a brook deep in a valley behind me, down the hill where the culvert drains. It’s a low, rushing sound, barely enough to hear, constant but not enough to hide the song of a night bird if it was singing nearby. If it were summer, there would be insect sounds. But the first frost last week must have driven the bugs into hibernation. Without the splashing of the brook, it would be silent here. Silent, totally dark, impenetrable. Quiet enough to snooze.
Except just as I thought that, I began to hear another, faint sound coming from up the mountain. In one ear, I here the brook. In the other, this sound which could be a wind stirring the treetops at a higher altitude on the mountain.
But as I listen, I know exactly what I’m hearing. It’s a car coming down the highway, and looking up the hill, I can already see the glow of its light – not the direct beam of its headlights but a white glow moving through the nearby forest where the highway must be around a bend.
I’m lowering myself to crouch before the opening of the culvert, and I can now see the headlights under the uphill part of the guardrail. And this is odd: I hear the car downshifting, as if it’s going to stop. Oh, man! It’s a Porsche. I’d know that sound anywhere! He’s slowing even more as he passes me, and I’m getting lower, ready to back into the culvert. The Porsche is about one hundred yards – a soccer field – down the hill and stopping. Maybe he is at the farmer’s road.
Now I’m peering over the top of the culvert up the bank to the highway, so I can’t really tell what’s happening. But I hear the Porsche’s engine rev a bit and I see the sweep of his headlights against the trees of the forest just downhill on my side of the highway. Geeze, he’s turning around!
No time to waste. I get down on my knees and crawl backward into the culvert. There is sand under me, damp on my knees, the wetness sponging through my jeans and the sand gritty on the palms of my hands. I can feel spider webs catching on the back of my head as I retreat into the culvert.
I can hear the Porsche beginning to drive back up the hill, but it’s going slowly, still in first gear. And now it sounds – I can’t be sure and I sure am not going to try to see – it sounds like he’s stopping – right above me!
There is a voice, muffled, blocked by the sound of the idling car engine. My head is just inside the culvert opening, so I’m straining to hear. Wait, the engine just stopped. Now, silence, the kind of loud silence you’d get sitting in a metal garbage can playing hide-and-seek. And now the voice again. I’d recognize it any place. Mr. Ponytail.
“Call it a hunch,” he says. “I saw that old car stopped just down the hill from where I’m standing and at first I thought nothing of it. What?”
Sounds like he’s on a cell phone, talking with someone.
“Yeah, I drove on by, all the way up to Killington or just past, where Route 100 turns north. But then I thought: There’s no reason for that car to be stopping there except I’d noticed a dirt road just opposite it. And I thought, if he’s hitching up the mountain, maybe they’re dropping him off. What?”
Silence again. Guess he’s listening to whoever it is.
“No, I heard it on the scanner. A cop saying he had a hitchhiker in custody and was pursuing a fleeing vehicle. The cop asked someone to come and apprehend the hitchhiker. I was there in less than a minute, but the kid – and I’m sure it was the kid – was gone.”
What is this guy’s problem? Why is he tracking me? I can’t believe I’m being hunted! My heart is beating now in my chest so hard it seems to echo in my ears, in this culvert, the sound of my pulse amplified by the corrugated steel, so loud it could be vibrating up through the ground, through the pavement, right into Mr. Ponytail’s feet!
“Look, I know we have to find him. He knows too much already.”
Another pause, and then,
“I’ve never lost one before, Fred. He looked like all the rest, a perfect prize. Don’t worry, I’ll find him, probably before sunrise. Vermont’s not that big.”
A pause, and then,
“It’s a promise!”
Monday, November 16, 2009
Chapter 11
Beyond the City Lights
I’m east of Rutland on Route 7. I walked past a sign that said welcome to Rutland, so I hope I’m beyond the reach of the local police. I know I’ve left behind most of the street lights. I’m finding that it is very dark up here, on the hillside approaching the Green Mountains. (Actually, I’m standing under a street light in front of a motel that has only two cars in its parking lot under its dimly lit sign.) When there are no lights nearby, you can look up and see so many stars that you’d think someone salted the black sky. I just stopped under this light hoping it will help someone driving by to see me and my thumb, so right now I can’t see the stars. There is one other street light, just down the road and closer to Rutland, so I can see what kind of car is approaching. If it’s a cop, I can duck out of sight.
If I get lucky, I’ll catch a ride all the way to Boston. At first, I was disappointed that the cop came along back there. I was happy to be climbing into that pickup. By now, I’d have been half way across the state and Boston would be maybe only two more hours away.
But hiking out of Rutland gave me time to think. The pickup would probably have left me in the middle of nowhere. And that is if we didn’t end up wrecked in some ditch beside the highway. Riding in the truck bed, I’d probably have been killed. The more I think about it, that guy probably took off from the cop because he had been drinking. That and the fact the truck wasn’t registered. He was facing some serious trouble.
So as I was walking through the back streets in Rutland, I decided that I would be more particular about whose car I get into. Right now my batting average stinks, if you think about the three rides I’ve been offered. The only good one was with the ladies in the Chrysler.
But it must be close to midnight now and it’s starting to get chilly. I zipped my fleece a little bit ago, here in front of the motel. I have my hands shoved in the pockets of my jeans. My feet are warm, I’ll say that. I put two pair of socks on under my hiking boots before I left Harwich. But I wish I’d brought a cap of some kind – preferably a ski cap.
So I’m looking forward to getting inside any decent looking car. So far, not a single car has passed going my way, only a couple of trucks going down the hill toward Rutland.
I don’t know exactly what time it is because I left my cell phone in my dorm room. That was on purpose. I didn’t want to be able to call for help if things got difficult. I remember one time Grandpa Maurice told me that self-reliance is a quality among men that is hard earned. You have to start early thinking for yourself, he says.
Anyway, I use my cell phone as a watch, and I don’t really know what time it is so I’m guessing it’s around midnight. I’m lucky there’s no wind blowing tonight, or I’d be really cold. When those trucks went by, they pushed a blast of air in front of them that rocked me where I’m standing and sent cold air up under my fleece. No, I’ll probably take the first ride that comes along.
I keep thinking about Jen. She was really nice to talk to, very easy. And her smile! Wow! I wonder why dimples make you think happy thoughts. I’d like to get back to Rutland, maybe once I have a job and have some days off. I could hitchhike back to Rutland. I’d be coming down this hill just like those trucks, and I’d find Jen working at the diner just like tonight.
Hey, headlights! Looks like a car, a big car. It’s passing under the distant street light and I don’t see any police lights on the roof. Time to stick out the old thumb.
The car is slowing and as it gets closer, I can see it’s an old Cadillac – really old, maybe a 1970s model. Just like the Chrysler, it’s hard to tell what color it is because of the street lights and how they wash away colors and leave everything sort of a muddy gray. As the car pulls up beside me, I hear its tires crunching in the roadside sand. The windows are all up, so I open the passenger’s door and look in. There is an old man driving and I don’t see anyone else in the car.
“You lookin’ fo-ah a ride?” he asks, speaking real Vermont. He has longer hair than I would have expected, long and white, with whiskers that come down in front of his ears to his jaw, but no beard. His mouth looks sunken. He’s probably missing some teeth.
I have an impulse to make a joke of his question. Like: No, I was just cooling my hand. It got too hot in my pocket.” But I really want a ride, so I stifle myself.
“Sure,” I say.
“Ain’t goin’ too fah,” the old man says, “but yo-ah welcome to come as fah as I go.”
“Thanks,” I say, unslinging my pack and settling into the front seat as I pull the door shut with a solid thunk. The seat is leather and it’s wide, but it’s worn. My butt seems to sink into it. I’m almost looking up at the dashboard, like a little kid. It’s just now that I notice it, dangling on a string from the rear view mirror – the shrunken head!
I glance sideways at the old man. He’s looking up at the road and he, too, looks like he has to peek over the top of his steering wheel. His head – visualize this – because his cheeks and mouth are sunken, he looks like the head hanging from the mirror. I wonder if it’s a relative. His head is tilted a little away from me and his eyelids, which are thin as chicken skin, droop low, like he’s about to drift into sleep. I figure it wouldn’t hurt if I could get him talking.
“You live around he’ah?” I say, slipping into my own Vermont accent, which constant immersion at Harwich has nearly eliminated from my speaking as a river polishes smooth great boulders.
“Got a fahm up side the mountain,” he replies. I notice his eyelids don’t rise any with his effort at speaking. Nor does he add any more information to this brief remark. I need to stir him a bit.
“Dairy fahm?” I ask, hoping I’ll strike on a topic we can discuss.
“Small herd,” he says, and leaves it at that. I decide I can be terse, too.
“Holsteins?”
He nods. Man, this isn’t getting far. I push ahead, though.
“Same’s us,” I say. Then I look straight ahead into the blackness that’s barely illuminated by the feeble, old headlights of the Cadillac. I’m not going to push this old guy. Maybe he just doesn’t like to talk.
It is a full minute later or more when he clears his throat.
“Used to have Gurnseys,” he says. “A bit skimpy on th’ milk, though.”
Just like fishing, I think. Got to give them some bait before they’ll bite. Now the old guy starts talking about his farm, about the hard work keeping it going. He talks about the two sons who moved away and won’t help with the cattle or the fields, despite his wish for them to take over the farm.
I think about how happy I’d be if Mom and Dad came to me to ask if I’d want to run the farm. They know how I’d answer. I’ve never kept it a secret from them that I plan to be a dairyman. I can’t imagine why the old guy’s sons wouldn’t want his farm, unless it is one of those ragged pieces of land, all stone and mud, with the boards on the side of the barn rotted from the ground up and a herd of scrawny, filthy cows who’ve never been tended in their lives. I glance at the old guy and can imagine him having just such a farm. I wouldn’t want it either.
He’s rambling on with his life’s story, and there’s no one else on the road and except for his scratchy voice, it’s quiet in the car. Suddenly from the back seat there’s a yawn and then a voice.
“Gramps, you talkin’ to yourself or what?” I look around, surprised to say the least, and see a small girl sitting up, rubbing her eyes. When her little fists separate and she opens her eyes, she gasps at the sight of me. Moving up behind the old guy’s headrest, she whispers: “Who’s he?”
“Hitchhiker,” the old guy says.
“Where’s he going?” she whispers again, darting a quick look at me and then away.
“I was just goin’ t’ ask him,” he says and, without looking at me, continues: “We’re tuh’nin off up he’ah just ahead. Yo’ah welcome to come home with us and stay the night. Got plenty ‘a room.”
“No, but thanks anyway,” I say. With the visions of his farm that are already filling my imagination, I don’t want to discover the real thing for myself. “I’ve got to get to Boston tomorrow morning.”
“Suit y’self,” he says. “Just thought I’d offah. We’ah up he’ah on the left.”
The Cadillac rumble’s to a stop just as some high beam headlights from behind ignite the car’s interior. Precisely as we come to a halt, the Caddy rocks with the wind blast from the speeding car. I look ahead quick enough to see what’s racing by – a silver Porsche Carrera.
Cold rivulets of sweat trickle down my armpits as the Porsche’s tail lights disappear up the hill where the highway bends to the right. I start to open the door, the pack still on my lap, when I turn to the old man. “I really want to thank you for the lift,” I say, trying to smile and not noticing that I’m slipping back into my Harwich accent. “Good luck with the farm.”
The Cadillac’s front wheels turn slowly on the gravel and then the big car rolls in an arc across the climbing pavement. On the far side of the highway, it bows down onto a dirt road that heads north from here. I watch its red lights and the dim patch of white where the headlights are barely illuminating the road in front of it as the old guy and the girl slowly make their way into the mountainside woods and, somewhere in the darkness, their farm.
Once the car lights are completely gone, I find myself in utter darkness. Only by tilting my head back and looking straight up can I see anything – the stars, throwing in all futility their insignificant light. They don’t give so much of a glow that I can actually tell where the treetops end and the sky begins except that at a certain angle, I see nothing. I raise my hand before my eyes and cannot see it. Nor can I tell where to step. I finally locate the Big Dipper with its two stars that point to the North Star. I know Route 7 goes east and west, generally, so I know which way should be uphill, or east, my direction of travel. I remember that when we pulled over, I saw a steel guardrail on the side of the road. I need to find that in the darkness, if only to have a place to sit – and to hide if I need to.
Beyond the City Lights
I’m east of Rutland on Route 7. I walked past a sign that said welcome to Rutland, so I hope I’m beyond the reach of the local police. I know I’ve left behind most of the street lights. I’m finding that it is very dark up here, on the hillside approaching the Green Mountains. (Actually, I’m standing under a street light in front of a motel that has only two cars in its parking lot under its dimly lit sign.) When there are no lights nearby, you can look up and see so many stars that you’d think someone salted the black sky. I just stopped under this light hoping it will help someone driving by to see me and my thumb, so right now I can’t see the stars. There is one other street light, just down the road and closer to Rutland, so I can see what kind of car is approaching. If it’s a cop, I can duck out of sight.
If I get lucky, I’ll catch a ride all the way to Boston. At first, I was disappointed that the cop came along back there. I was happy to be climbing into that pickup. By now, I’d have been half way across the state and Boston would be maybe only two more hours away.
But hiking out of Rutland gave me time to think. The pickup would probably have left me in the middle of nowhere. And that is if we didn’t end up wrecked in some ditch beside the highway. Riding in the truck bed, I’d probably have been killed. The more I think about it, that guy probably took off from the cop because he had been drinking. That and the fact the truck wasn’t registered. He was facing some serious trouble.
So as I was walking through the back streets in Rutland, I decided that I would be more particular about whose car I get into. Right now my batting average stinks, if you think about the three rides I’ve been offered. The only good one was with the ladies in the Chrysler.
But it must be close to midnight now and it’s starting to get chilly. I zipped my fleece a little bit ago, here in front of the motel. I have my hands shoved in the pockets of my jeans. My feet are warm, I’ll say that. I put two pair of socks on under my hiking boots before I left Harwich. But I wish I’d brought a cap of some kind – preferably a ski cap.
So I’m looking forward to getting inside any decent looking car. So far, not a single car has passed going my way, only a couple of trucks going down the hill toward Rutland.
I don’t know exactly what time it is because I left my cell phone in my dorm room. That was on purpose. I didn’t want to be able to call for help if things got difficult. I remember one time Grandpa Maurice told me that self-reliance is a quality among men that is hard earned. You have to start early thinking for yourself, he says.
Anyway, I use my cell phone as a watch, and I don’t really know what time it is so I’m guessing it’s around midnight. I’m lucky there’s no wind blowing tonight, or I’d be really cold. When those trucks went by, they pushed a blast of air in front of them that rocked me where I’m standing and sent cold air up under my fleece. No, I’ll probably take the first ride that comes along.
I keep thinking about Jen. She was really nice to talk to, very easy. And her smile! Wow! I wonder why dimples make you think happy thoughts. I’d like to get back to Rutland, maybe once I have a job and have some days off. I could hitchhike back to Rutland. I’d be coming down this hill just like those trucks, and I’d find Jen working at the diner just like tonight.
Hey, headlights! Looks like a car, a big car. It’s passing under the distant street light and I don’t see any police lights on the roof. Time to stick out the old thumb.
The car is slowing and as it gets closer, I can see it’s an old Cadillac – really old, maybe a 1970s model. Just like the Chrysler, it’s hard to tell what color it is because of the street lights and how they wash away colors and leave everything sort of a muddy gray. As the car pulls up beside me, I hear its tires crunching in the roadside sand. The windows are all up, so I open the passenger’s door and look in. There is an old man driving and I don’t see anyone else in the car.
“You lookin’ fo-ah a ride?” he asks, speaking real Vermont. He has longer hair than I would have expected, long and white, with whiskers that come down in front of his ears to his jaw, but no beard. His mouth looks sunken. He’s probably missing some teeth.
I have an impulse to make a joke of his question. Like: No, I was just cooling my hand. It got too hot in my pocket.” But I really want a ride, so I stifle myself.
“Sure,” I say.
“Ain’t goin’ too fah,” the old man says, “but yo-ah welcome to come as fah as I go.”
“Thanks,” I say, unslinging my pack and settling into the front seat as I pull the door shut with a solid thunk. The seat is leather and it’s wide, but it’s worn. My butt seems to sink into it. I’m almost looking up at the dashboard, like a little kid. It’s just now that I notice it, dangling on a string from the rear view mirror – the shrunken head!
I glance sideways at the old man. He’s looking up at the road and he, too, looks like he has to peek over the top of his steering wheel. His head – visualize this – because his cheeks and mouth are sunken, he looks like the head hanging from the mirror. I wonder if it’s a relative. His head is tilted a little away from me and his eyelids, which are thin as chicken skin, droop low, like he’s about to drift into sleep. I figure it wouldn’t hurt if I could get him talking.
“You live around he’ah?” I say, slipping into my own Vermont accent, which constant immersion at Harwich has nearly eliminated from my speaking as a river polishes smooth great boulders.
“Got a fahm up side the mountain,” he replies. I notice his eyelids don’t rise any with his effort at speaking. Nor does he add any more information to this brief remark. I need to stir him a bit.
“Dairy fahm?” I ask, hoping I’ll strike on a topic we can discuss.
“Small herd,” he says, and leaves it at that. I decide I can be terse, too.
“Holsteins?”
He nods. Man, this isn’t getting far. I push ahead, though.
“Same’s us,” I say. Then I look straight ahead into the blackness that’s barely illuminated by the feeble, old headlights of the Cadillac. I’m not going to push this old guy. Maybe he just doesn’t like to talk.
It is a full minute later or more when he clears his throat.
“Used to have Gurnseys,” he says. “A bit skimpy on th’ milk, though.”
Just like fishing, I think. Got to give them some bait before they’ll bite. Now the old guy starts talking about his farm, about the hard work keeping it going. He talks about the two sons who moved away and won’t help with the cattle or the fields, despite his wish for them to take over the farm.
I think about how happy I’d be if Mom and Dad came to me to ask if I’d want to run the farm. They know how I’d answer. I’ve never kept it a secret from them that I plan to be a dairyman. I can’t imagine why the old guy’s sons wouldn’t want his farm, unless it is one of those ragged pieces of land, all stone and mud, with the boards on the side of the barn rotted from the ground up and a herd of scrawny, filthy cows who’ve never been tended in their lives. I glance at the old guy and can imagine him having just such a farm. I wouldn’t want it either.
He’s rambling on with his life’s story, and there’s no one else on the road and except for his scratchy voice, it’s quiet in the car. Suddenly from the back seat there’s a yawn and then a voice.
“Gramps, you talkin’ to yourself or what?” I look around, surprised to say the least, and see a small girl sitting up, rubbing her eyes. When her little fists separate and she opens her eyes, she gasps at the sight of me. Moving up behind the old guy’s headrest, she whispers: “Who’s he?”
“Hitchhiker,” the old guy says.
“Where’s he going?” she whispers again, darting a quick look at me and then away.
“I was just goin’ t’ ask him,” he says and, without looking at me, continues: “We’re tuh’nin off up he’ah just ahead. Yo’ah welcome to come home with us and stay the night. Got plenty ‘a room.”
“No, but thanks anyway,” I say. With the visions of his farm that are already filling my imagination, I don’t want to discover the real thing for myself. “I’ve got to get to Boston tomorrow morning.”
“Suit y’self,” he says. “Just thought I’d offah. We’ah up he’ah on the left.”
The Cadillac rumble’s to a stop just as some high beam headlights from behind ignite the car’s interior. Precisely as we come to a halt, the Caddy rocks with the wind blast from the speeding car. I look ahead quick enough to see what’s racing by – a silver Porsche Carrera.
Cold rivulets of sweat trickle down my armpits as the Porsche’s tail lights disappear up the hill where the highway bends to the right. I start to open the door, the pack still on my lap, when I turn to the old man. “I really want to thank you for the lift,” I say, trying to smile and not noticing that I’m slipping back into my Harwich accent. “Good luck with the farm.”
The Cadillac’s front wheels turn slowly on the gravel and then the big car rolls in an arc across the climbing pavement. On the far side of the highway, it bows down onto a dirt road that heads north from here. I watch its red lights and the dim patch of white where the headlights are barely illuminating the road in front of it as the old guy and the girl slowly make their way into the mountainside woods and, somewhere in the darkness, their farm.
Once the car lights are completely gone, I find myself in utter darkness. Only by tilting my head back and looking straight up can I see anything – the stars, throwing in all futility their insignificant light. They don’t give so much of a glow that I can actually tell where the treetops end and the sky begins except that at a certain angle, I see nothing. I raise my hand before my eyes and cannot see it. Nor can I tell where to step. I finally locate the Big Dipper with its two stars that point to the North Star. I know Route 7 goes east and west, generally, so I know which way should be uphill, or east, my direction of travel. I remember that when we pulled over, I saw a steel guardrail on the side of the road. I need to find that in the darkness, if only to have a place to sit – and to hide if I need to.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Chapter 10
The Way Forward
Here’s what I know. Boston is about 170 miles from Rutland. New York City is about 220 miles away. It takes less than three hours to drive to Boston, nearly four and a half to drive to New York. I checked Google Maps at the library in Burlington, and none of this information made the choice any easier. I’ve been thinking about it up until now, but now I have to decide.
In New York’s favor is that it’s bigger, so there have to be more jobs there. There must be ten thousand restaurants that need dish washers or table cleaners, and probably no one will ask me any questions, only can I get the plates clean.
In Boston’s favor is that it’s smaller and I’ve been there a few times, enough to know where the main streets are. And there are lots of colleges, so there’s lots of teen aged kids. I can maybe blend in better in certain parts of town.
I like the fact that Boston is familiar. That should count for a lot. New York actually gives me an uneasy feeling, probably because it’s foreign to me. I guess that decides it, then. I’ll head to Boston, and that means finding the road east, to White River Junction.
Route 4 heading east is called Woodstock Avenue. It goes generally uphill, toward the Green Mountains. It’s a wide road with a lot of businesses along it and some homes. I begin walking east on the edge of the road under the street lights, and when I hear a car behind me, I turn to see what’s coming. Obviously, I won’t be taking any rides in Porsches. And if it is a police car, I won’t put out my thumb. I’ll just try to act calm and let it pass.
Right now, there isn’t much traffic. I guess that’s normal after ten o’clock at night, although I would have thought a Saturday night would have been busier. A taxi passes going toward the center of town. I don’t want that, either. Under the street lights, I can see into the cab and notice the driver is looking back toward me. I look away.
But now some kind of pickup is headed my way. I stick out my thumb and face the truck, standing as tall as I can. As it comes closer, I can see that it is an old Chevy. We used to have one like it on the farm. The windows are so old they are not tinted and I can see into the cab. The driver is looking at me. There is a woman in the passenger’s seat and a dog between them, but still he’s slowing down. He stops beside me, and the lady cranks down her window. The man leans across her lap. He has a thick beard. She has long, blond hair and a thick neck. She smiles.
“Where you headed?” the man asks. His voice is gruff. I can tell he’s from Vermont by the way he paces his words and the way he says “where” – whey-ah. The dog tries to get in front of him, stepping on the lady’s lap to get to the window and me. The dog’s yellow – part golden retriever but with short hair and a longer nose – and his tongue is hanging out and dripping saliva.
“Boston,” I say, “But I’ll take a ride as far as you’re going.”
Almost as soon as I’ve said that, I wonder if I should have. I smell an odor coming from the truck. I think it may be beer.
“We’re going up the road a piece,” the man says. “You’re welcome to climb in the back if you want to. We’re a might crowded in here, as you can see.”
There is so little traffic, I decide to chance it. First I swing my backpack into the truck bed. Then I go around to the rear and begin climbing up the bumper and over the tail gate. Only then do I notice the red and blue lights flashing off the back of the pickup cab.
I swear I don’t know where that cop came from.
“Step down,” the voice directly behind my head says. I reach forward and grab my pack, then obey the command.
When I turn around, there is a police officer only a little taller than I. His blond hair is short above his ears – the part of his hair that isn’t under his hat. He’s shining a flashlight in my face. He doesn’t say anything at first, just looks straight into my eyes. I can’t see his eyes because of the flashing lights of his car behind his head. Then he swings the beam of his flashlight toward the curb – there is a sidewalk here.
“You go over there and sit on the curb and wait,” he says.
I do as I’m told. Now the cop puts the heel of his right hand on the grip of a pistol in a holster on his thick black leather belt and begins to step around toward the front of the pickup. I remember what I smelled a moment ago and I think: This isn’t going to go too well for me or my ride.
Just then, there is gravel spraying everywhere, clattering off the metal of the pickup body, and the pickup is moving forward, its rear wheels skidding sideways, toward the sidewalk.
The cop jumps back from the truck. I see his mouth open and watch as he draws his pistol from the holster and aims at the back of the truck. He is screaming something, but the roar of the truck’s engine drowns his words.
I look toward the truck and see the dog’s yellow face looking back through the rear window, barking, as his owners try to make their escape, try to out-race a brand new police car by getting a head start in their old Chevy pickup with a big eight cylinder engine. I see the pickup swerve left and then dart right into a side street, and it strikes me now that there was no license plate on the bumper I’d been climbing.
Looking back at the cop, I see him trying to stuff his pistol back in its holster as he fumbles with a microphone clipped to his chest.
“I need a backup on Woodstock, eastbound past the funeral home,” he yells as he turns to get back to his cruiser, his legs tangling together like old vines in a hedgerow. “Chevy pickup fleeing the scene. I’m in pursuit. One hitchhiker in custody, waiting on the curb.”
He gets in his cruiser, floors the gas pedal and punches his siren on. In a moment, he is turning right on the same side street the pickup took, and I’m running across Woodstock to the far side, looking to lose myself on another street, unnoticed like loose change that falls through a hole in your pocket.
The Way Forward
Here’s what I know. Boston is about 170 miles from Rutland. New York City is about 220 miles away. It takes less than three hours to drive to Boston, nearly four and a half to drive to New York. I checked Google Maps at the library in Burlington, and none of this information made the choice any easier. I’ve been thinking about it up until now, but now I have to decide.
In New York’s favor is that it’s bigger, so there have to be more jobs there. There must be ten thousand restaurants that need dish washers or table cleaners, and probably no one will ask me any questions, only can I get the plates clean.
In Boston’s favor is that it’s smaller and I’ve been there a few times, enough to know where the main streets are. And there are lots of colleges, so there’s lots of teen aged kids. I can maybe blend in better in certain parts of town.
I like the fact that Boston is familiar. That should count for a lot. New York actually gives me an uneasy feeling, probably because it’s foreign to me. I guess that decides it, then. I’ll head to Boston, and that means finding the road east, to White River Junction.
Route 4 heading east is called Woodstock Avenue. It goes generally uphill, toward the Green Mountains. It’s a wide road with a lot of businesses along it and some homes. I begin walking east on the edge of the road under the street lights, and when I hear a car behind me, I turn to see what’s coming. Obviously, I won’t be taking any rides in Porsches. And if it is a police car, I won’t put out my thumb. I’ll just try to act calm and let it pass.
Right now, there isn’t much traffic. I guess that’s normal after ten o’clock at night, although I would have thought a Saturday night would have been busier. A taxi passes going toward the center of town. I don’t want that, either. Under the street lights, I can see into the cab and notice the driver is looking back toward me. I look away.
But now some kind of pickup is headed my way. I stick out my thumb and face the truck, standing as tall as I can. As it comes closer, I can see that it is an old Chevy. We used to have one like it on the farm. The windows are so old they are not tinted and I can see into the cab. The driver is looking at me. There is a woman in the passenger’s seat and a dog between them, but still he’s slowing down. He stops beside me, and the lady cranks down her window. The man leans across her lap. He has a thick beard. She has long, blond hair and a thick neck. She smiles.
“Where you headed?” the man asks. His voice is gruff. I can tell he’s from Vermont by the way he paces his words and the way he says “where” – whey-ah. The dog tries to get in front of him, stepping on the lady’s lap to get to the window and me. The dog’s yellow – part golden retriever but with short hair and a longer nose – and his tongue is hanging out and dripping saliva.
“Boston,” I say, “But I’ll take a ride as far as you’re going.”
Almost as soon as I’ve said that, I wonder if I should have. I smell an odor coming from the truck. I think it may be beer.
“We’re going up the road a piece,” the man says. “You’re welcome to climb in the back if you want to. We’re a might crowded in here, as you can see.”
There is so little traffic, I decide to chance it. First I swing my backpack into the truck bed. Then I go around to the rear and begin climbing up the bumper and over the tail gate. Only then do I notice the red and blue lights flashing off the back of the pickup cab.
I swear I don’t know where that cop came from.
“Step down,” the voice directly behind my head says. I reach forward and grab my pack, then obey the command.
When I turn around, there is a police officer only a little taller than I. His blond hair is short above his ears – the part of his hair that isn’t under his hat. He’s shining a flashlight in my face. He doesn’t say anything at first, just looks straight into my eyes. I can’t see his eyes because of the flashing lights of his car behind his head. Then he swings the beam of his flashlight toward the curb – there is a sidewalk here.
“You go over there and sit on the curb and wait,” he says.
I do as I’m told. Now the cop puts the heel of his right hand on the grip of a pistol in a holster on his thick black leather belt and begins to step around toward the front of the pickup. I remember what I smelled a moment ago and I think: This isn’t going to go too well for me or my ride.
Just then, there is gravel spraying everywhere, clattering off the metal of the pickup body, and the pickup is moving forward, its rear wheels skidding sideways, toward the sidewalk.
The cop jumps back from the truck. I see his mouth open and watch as he draws his pistol from the holster and aims at the back of the truck. He is screaming something, but the roar of the truck’s engine drowns his words.
I look toward the truck and see the dog’s yellow face looking back through the rear window, barking, as his owners try to make their escape, try to out-race a brand new police car by getting a head start in their old Chevy pickup with a big eight cylinder engine. I see the pickup swerve left and then dart right into a side street, and it strikes me now that there was no license plate on the bumper I’d been climbing.
Looking back at the cop, I see him trying to stuff his pistol back in its holster as he fumbles with a microphone clipped to his chest.
“I need a backup on Woodstock, eastbound past the funeral home,” he yells as he turns to get back to his cruiser, his legs tangling together like old vines in a hedgerow. “Chevy pickup fleeing the scene. I’m in pursuit. One hitchhiker in custody, waiting on the curb.”
He gets in his cruiser, floors the gas pedal and punches his siren on. In a moment, he is turning right on the same side street the pickup took, and I’m running across Woodstock to the far side, looking to lose myself on another street, unnoticed like loose change that falls through a hole in your pocket.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Chapter 9
East Meets West
I confess that I’m a little nervous as I push open the front door of the diner and look up and down the street. There is no Porsche in sight, though, so I step out onto the sidewalk, my chest swelled with pride, a matador entering the bull ring, a NASCAR driver sitting in the pole position just before the start. Jen has lifted my spirits, validated my cause. If she admires me, I can’t question myself. She makes my backbone stronger.
But like the matador and the race car driver, I don’t yet see the end of my challenge, just the beginning. In fact, to advance at all, I have to choose my destination – New York or Boston. I can’t really proceed from where I am – the crossroads in Rutland – until I know where I’m going.
I guess the big question is where do I want to get, ultimately. If I look ahead far enough, I want to be right back here, on a Vermont dairy farm, running it, doing all the things it takes to make the farm work, both right now and in the future.
A farm is like a little world of its own. The inhabitants are you – the farmer – and your herd of cows. Our cows are Holsteins, the most common milk cows in Vermont. They have big black patches of coarse hair growing on a background of white. Holsteins give more milk than any other common breed. That’s the good thing. The not-so-good thing is that the fat content in their milk – the cream –is lower than on some other breeds.
The trick for the dairy farmer like Dad, if he is going to be successful, is to have cows whose production is high – about 35 quarts a day is good – but whose fat content also is in the high range.
We have a herd of one hundred and ten cows, which is middle-sized for a local dairy farm. At any one time, we have about forty-five cows that are producing milk. A cow has to get pregnant and then have her calf before her milk starts to flow. Then she produces milk for about eight months to a year before she begins to dry up. The only way she will give more milk is for her to get pregnant again.
There’s a lot more to it than that. But the key to being a great dairy farmer like Dad is how you manage the statistics. Like Dad says, you have to have the same enthusiasm for bovine data as a baseball nut has for his statistics. Dad has that information in his head from studying all of the cows and bulls in New England and New York State. He is always calculating which bulls and cows will have calves that can produce huge quantities of milk while still achieving a high fat content.
Dad has taught me everything he knows. It only makes sense that I will take that knowledge into the future. I know he and Mom will be proud of me when I have my own dairy farm just like they have.
So I don’t need Harwich. I need money to buy a farm, one that some day I can add to theirs, and I need to start making that money as soon as possible. I don’t need to know about literature – although I do enjoy reading the books in my English Lit class. That’s why I brought along in my pack the 628 pages of the novel Of Human Bondage, which I started this afternoon in the library in Burlington.
I like school well enough. I always did fine back in the Northeast Kingdom, where now I’d be in the regional high school. Like I told Jen, it’s the expectations that weigh down on me at Harwich. Some times I feel like I’m in a pot on the stove – one of Mom’s big cast iron pots, with a heavy lid on it. The heat under the pot is constant and the water is boiling but the lid is heavy and keeps in the steam and the pressure keeps building. If Mom and Dad suggested I move back home, the lid would be removed and the pressure would disappear.
But that wasn’t going to happen. And every time I got a grade that was something less than perfect, it was like the flames had been turned up under the pot.
I was supposed to run cross country this fall. I decided in the summer that if my grades weren’t straight As – which they have never been at Harwich – I couldn’t afford to join the cross country team.
The coach, Mr. Ellis, stopped me in the hall a couple of days after I returned to Harwich. I remember it was a rainy day, a little raw for September, and I was in the big barn, the administration building, because I had to fill out some forms.
“Benoit,” he said. “Practice starts this afternoon. See you there.”
It was like an order, all business. Mr. Ellis is a big man, big and old, with gray hair above his ears and dark hair on the backs of his fingers, which are thick as the nipples on a cow’s udder. I don’t think he could run to town and back. He has a huge belly, and his whole head is red, from his collar up, like he’s about to explode. He walks tilted back, I guess to balance his stomach. His shoes are very large and his hair, the part that isn’t gray, is sandy and curly although not too long. I guess you would say he is imposing. I was at the gym that afternoon.
Mr. Ellis never gives you a chance to question what you’re doing. “Everybody outside,” he said when the last boy arrived. “We’re going to run the mountain to see who still has it.”
Running the mountain meant climbing a dirt road that leads up the hill from Harwich Academy, then turning off on a trail that loops through the forest of Mt. Mitchell, a solitary knob north of town. The trail circles the knob, crossing its wooded peak at one point. Then you run back down the road to the school. The whole loop is eight miles. It is no way to start your training, but it sure does weed out the kids who have taken the summer off from running.
Even though I had been mulling the idea of quitting Harwich – not all that seriously, but the germ of the idea was there – I had put in some miles on the dirt roads near the farm almost every day after working, except when we were haying – harvesting the alfalfa to feed it to the cows – because that work often lasted well after dark. So I was in shape to run the mountain. My goal was to make the freshman ski team in November, and running was a big part of training for that team.
After running the mountain, I got back to Harwich in the lead group. Mr. Ellis was standing at the gym entrance, a stop watch in his hand. When we saw him, everyone sprinted toward the door. I got there second. He smiled at us and then pointed to me.
“Benoit almost won, and he’s only a freshman,” he told the others. “You guys have a lot of work to do.”
That little victory kept me going until the end of September, when the first round of tests came. By then, I was placing high in our cross country meets, and Mr. Ellis was using my results to insult the rest of the team members. It was an uncomfortable position to be in for me. My friends seemed to back away from me a bit. And some of the upper classmen were actually rude. For the first time, I heard them call me Canuck, an ethnic slur against French Canadians.
The first test results were posted on the last Friday in September, just three weeks ago. The leaves in the forest had begun to turn their autumn colors. Yellows and oranges were mixed in with the still-green leaves and the woods looked like carrots, corn and peas heaped on a plate. I was going home that afternoon, so after my last class, I went to the barn to see how I’d done.
There, for everyone to see, were my grades on separate sheets for each course. My only A was in English Lit. The rest were Bs except for one. In social studies, I had a C.
The next week, on Monday, I didn’t go to cross country practice. I had made up my mind and had quit. Mr. Ellis found me on Tuesday between classes. He was scowling, his curly, bushy eyebrows down over his eyes like awnings on a storefront. I blamed my slipping grades.
“Nonsense,” he said. “You have a solid B average.”
There was something about his choice of words – nonsense, just the word Uncle Steve had used to dismiss my unhappiness with Harwich.
The coach stood in front of me like a towering wall, big and immovable. It made no sense to argue with him. But at that moment, I thought about what Grandpa Maurice had said at the picnic.
“At some point . . . you will make such decisions for your self.”
East Meets West
I confess that I’m a little nervous as I push open the front door of the diner and look up and down the street. There is no Porsche in sight, though, so I step out onto the sidewalk, my chest swelled with pride, a matador entering the bull ring, a NASCAR driver sitting in the pole position just before the start. Jen has lifted my spirits, validated my cause. If she admires me, I can’t question myself. She makes my backbone stronger.
But like the matador and the race car driver, I don’t yet see the end of my challenge, just the beginning. In fact, to advance at all, I have to choose my destination – New York or Boston. I can’t really proceed from where I am – the crossroads in Rutland – until I know where I’m going.
I guess the big question is where do I want to get, ultimately. If I look ahead far enough, I want to be right back here, on a Vermont dairy farm, running it, doing all the things it takes to make the farm work, both right now and in the future.
A farm is like a little world of its own. The inhabitants are you – the farmer – and your herd of cows. Our cows are Holsteins, the most common milk cows in Vermont. They have big black patches of coarse hair growing on a background of white. Holsteins give more milk than any other common breed. That’s the good thing. The not-so-good thing is that the fat content in their milk – the cream –is lower than on some other breeds.
The trick for the dairy farmer like Dad, if he is going to be successful, is to have cows whose production is high – about 35 quarts a day is good – but whose fat content also is in the high range.
We have a herd of one hundred and ten cows, which is middle-sized for a local dairy farm. At any one time, we have about forty-five cows that are producing milk. A cow has to get pregnant and then have her calf before her milk starts to flow. Then she produces milk for about eight months to a year before she begins to dry up. The only way she will give more milk is for her to get pregnant again.
There’s a lot more to it than that. But the key to being a great dairy farmer like Dad is how you manage the statistics. Like Dad says, you have to have the same enthusiasm for bovine data as a baseball nut has for his statistics. Dad has that information in his head from studying all of the cows and bulls in New England and New York State. He is always calculating which bulls and cows will have calves that can produce huge quantities of milk while still achieving a high fat content.
Dad has taught me everything he knows. It only makes sense that I will take that knowledge into the future. I know he and Mom will be proud of me when I have my own dairy farm just like they have.
So I don’t need Harwich. I need money to buy a farm, one that some day I can add to theirs, and I need to start making that money as soon as possible. I don’t need to know about literature – although I do enjoy reading the books in my English Lit class. That’s why I brought along in my pack the 628 pages of the novel Of Human Bondage, which I started this afternoon in the library in Burlington.
I like school well enough. I always did fine back in the Northeast Kingdom, where now I’d be in the regional high school. Like I told Jen, it’s the expectations that weigh down on me at Harwich. Some times I feel like I’m in a pot on the stove – one of Mom’s big cast iron pots, with a heavy lid on it. The heat under the pot is constant and the water is boiling but the lid is heavy and keeps in the steam and the pressure keeps building. If Mom and Dad suggested I move back home, the lid would be removed and the pressure would disappear.
But that wasn’t going to happen. And every time I got a grade that was something less than perfect, it was like the flames had been turned up under the pot.
I was supposed to run cross country this fall. I decided in the summer that if my grades weren’t straight As – which they have never been at Harwich – I couldn’t afford to join the cross country team.
The coach, Mr. Ellis, stopped me in the hall a couple of days after I returned to Harwich. I remember it was a rainy day, a little raw for September, and I was in the big barn, the administration building, because I had to fill out some forms.
“Benoit,” he said. “Practice starts this afternoon. See you there.”
It was like an order, all business. Mr. Ellis is a big man, big and old, with gray hair above his ears and dark hair on the backs of his fingers, which are thick as the nipples on a cow’s udder. I don’t think he could run to town and back. He has a huge belly, and his whole head is red, from his collar up, like he’s about to explode. He walks tilted back, I guess to balance his stomach. His shoes are very large and his hair, the part that isn’t gray, is sandy and curly although not too long. I guess you would say he is imposing. I was at the gym that afternoon.
Mr. Ellis never gives you a chance to question what you’re doing. “Everybody outside,” he said when the last boy arrived. “We’re going to run the mountain to see who still has it.”
Running the mountain meant climbing a dirt road that leads up the hill from Harwich Academy, then turning off on a trail that loops through the forest of Mt. Mitchell, a solitary knob north of town. The trail circles the knob, crossing its wooded peak at one point. Then you run back down the road to the school. The whole loop is eight miles. It is no way to start your training, but it sure does weed out the kids who have taken the summer off from running.
Even though I had been mulling the idea of quitting Harwich – not all that seriously, but the germ of the idea was there – I had put in some miles on the dirt roads near the farm almost every day after working, except when we were haying – harvesting the alfalfa to feed it to the cows – because that work often lasted well after dark. So I was in shape to run the mountain. My goal was to make the freshman ski team in November, and running was a big part of training for that team.
After running the mountain, I got back to Harwich in the lead group. Mr. Ellis was standing at the gym entrance, a stop watch in his hand. When we saw him, everyone sprinted toward the door. I got there second. He smiled at us and then pointed to me.
“Benoit almost won, and he’s only a freshman,” he told the others. “You guys have a lot of work to do.”
That little victory kept me going until the end of September, when the first round of tests came. By then, I was placing high in our cross country meets, and Mr. Ellis was using my results to insult the rest of the team members. It was an uncomfortable position to be in for me. My friends seemed to back away from me a bit. And some of the upper classmen were actually rude. For the first time, I heard them call me Canuck, an ethnic slur against French Canadians.
The first test results were posted on the last Friday in September, just three weeks ago. The leaves in the forest had begun to turn their autumn colors. Yellows and oranges were mixed in with the still-green leaves and the woods looked like carrots, corn and peas heaped on a plate. I was going home that afternoon, so after my last class, I went to the barn to see how I’d done.
There, for everyone to see, were my grades on separate sheets for each course. My only A was in English Lit. The rest were Bs except for one. In social studies, I had a C.
The next week, on Monday, I didn’t go to cross country practice. I had made up my mind and had quit. Mr. Ellis found me on Tuesday between classes. He was scowling, his curly, bushy eyebrows down over his eyes like awnings on a storefront. I blamed my slipping grades.
“Nonsense,” he said. “You have a solid B average.”
There was something about his choice of words – nonsense, just the word Uncle Steve had used to dismiss my unhappiness with Harwich.
The coach stood in front of me like a towering wall, big and immovable. It made no sense to argue with him. But at that moment, I thought about what Grandpa Maurice had said at the picnic.
“At some point . . . you will make such decisions for your self.”
Friday, November 13, 2009
Chapter 8
A Fork in the Road
Rutland is Vermont’s second largest city or town, which isn’t saying much. It has less than half as many people as Burlington, which has only 39,000 residents. Coming into Rutland from the north off Route 7, which now is pretty much like any Interstate highway, you find yourself in a small town with old brick buildings built one hundred years ago. The police station is in the center of town, right around the corner from the fire department and just off Route 7 and Route 4, which is the east-west highway. Route 4 leads to Albany, New York, going west and, in a roundabout way, to Boston going east. Beyond Albany, I know, is New York City. It is in Rutland that I’ll have to choose my future.
Betty drives me past the police station so I’ll know where it is. Then she takes me a block closer to Route 4, where she pulls to the side of the street directly under a street light.
“I guess you know your way from here,” she says, looking over the back of her seat.
“Route 4,” I say.
“You’ll make just as good time if you decide to spend the night here,” Betty says.
“You probably won’t have much luck with traffic,” Doris offers, peering around her headrest. She can’t actually look at me, so I glance over to Fran, who looks worried.
“Thank you very much for the ride,” I say, and I open my door and step out onto the sidewalk, dragging my pack with me. It is chilly outside now, so I drop the bag on the concrete of the sidewalk and unzip it to get my fleece. I hear one of the car doors shutting and when I look up, Betty is coming through her own headlights, her arms spread to give me a hug. She is almost as tall as I am. Before I can respond, she wraps her arms around me, pinning mine at my sides, smothering me in cloth that smells like drugstore perfume. She squeezes hard.
“Please be careful,” she says, almost in a whisper.
“I will,” I say, barely able to breathe, let alone talk.
Betty releases me except for her hands on my shoulders. “I think we ditched that Porsche,” she says, “but watch out. That guy gives me the creeps.”
“Thanks,” I say, trying to laugh, to lighten the moment. “Like I wasn’t already scared enough!”
“Good luck in New York,” Doris calls from her window as Betty once more passes through the Chrysler’s headlights. Then they are off and I’m alone on the sidewalk, not quite ready to decide which way I’m going.
I’m standing on Wales Street, according to the street sign. I walk north a bit and then east until I see the sign for a diner. Inside, there is the usual counter with round, chrome stools standing in front of the black-and-white tile counter front. There is an old fashioned juke box unit mounted on top of the counter. It has chrome buttons you push to select a song, and it actually works if you deposit a quarter in the slot.
I take one of the stools. They are all empty now at nearly ten o’clock at night. As I’m sliding a menu from its chrome holder between a napkin dispenser and the ketchup bottle and salt and pepper, I see the white apron of a waitress appear in front of me.
“Coffee?” she asks. I look up to a pretty, young face, framed in short, dark hair. Her eyes are big and deep brown, almost black, and she’s wearing shiny lipstick, sort of salmon colored. There are small dimples beside each corner of her mouth, and one crooked upper tooth in the front catches a bit on her lower lip. Her name tag says “Jen”.
“I said do you want coffee?” she says, cocking her head sideways, grinning like maybe she’s embarrassed because I was so busy looking at her that I didn’t answer.
“Uh, sure,” I say, then remember to add “Jen.” She could be my age, I think, except I don’t think she’d be allowed to be working here if she was only fourteen.
I watch her go down to the coffee pots on the back counter to my left. She’s wearing a pink blouse and a black skirt. It looks like a uniform. She comes back with a steaming mug and a handful of creamers, all of which she sets carefully before me on the pale green Formica counter. Her hands are beautifully shaped, strong but slender, and yet her fingernails are chipped, as if she’s been doing rough work.
“I haven’t seen you in here before,” she says, leaning back against a refrigerator, her hands behind her.
“No,” I say, pouring one creamer into the mug, “I’m on my way south but my last ride wasn’t going any farther.”
Her expression changes. She has been smiling, but now there is a question on her face, one she seems not quite prepared to ask.
“I’m heading either to Boston or New York,” I offer. “I haven’t exactly decided which yet.”
“Why are you going if you don’t know where?” she asks. “That seems a little foolish.” Her dimples, which had disappeared for a moment, return as does her smile. She is challenging me, right off the bat. I like her way and, almost instantly, I feel I probably can tell her anything. And it’s been bottled up in me so long, my reasons for leaving Harwich, that I’m ready to reveal everything if she wants to listen.
I’ve tried to talk about my “issues” – I sound like a school counselor, don’t I ? – with several people in the past year, but I almost never get any place. Probably that’s because they’ve almost always been old people.
The first was Uncle Steve. I had taken Mom’s computer down the hill to his home. She was having problems logging on, and she uses the computer to keep the farm business going, so she needed it fixed right away.
It was early one Saturday morning last semester – probably in April because there were still patches of snow on the hillside pastures facing south and lots of snow on the far hills in the forest that, even in winter, is shaded most of the day on the northern slopes. I had to walk on the crowned pavement of the country road that passes both of our houses. There was squishy mud on the dirt shoulders, and I was pulling my old wagon with the computer in it, wrapped in a blanket. Uncle Steve heard my feet banging mud off them when I got up to his front door.
“Take your shoes off, Michael,” he said when he had pushed open the storm door. “They can dry off in the sun out here, and I won’t have to clean up after you.”
I got the shoes off and then carried the computer inside. It looked like a sick child, the way it was wrapped.
“This way,” he said, and I followed him down the short flight of stairs to the lower level of his house, like I had never been there before. “Here, put it on this table,” he said. His television up on the far wall was playing as it always did. There was an old black-and-white movie with a lot of singing. He glanced at it and then back at me. “Can I get you a glass of orange juice?”
I like visiting Uncle Steve. His voice is low, deep but soft. You want him to keep talking, no matter what he’s saying. I think he would make a good salesman because no matter what he was selling, you’d buy it just to keep him talking. Maybe an even better priest.
He brought in the orange juice, which I didn’t really want but would never refuse, and set it on the table near the computer. “Pull up a stool,” he said as he laid down his cane and lowered himself carefully into his swivel office chair.
I come home from Harwich every Friday afternoon. (My folks are away for their one trip of the year this weekend – the New England Farm Show. That’s why I was able to leave Harwich today.) There is always work for me on the farm, and unless there are weekend activities at school, I’d rather be on the farm. I had plenty to do on the Saturday when I took the computer to Uncle Steve – splitting wood with the gasoline-powered wood splitter was high on the list – but right now Dad was down for his morning nap and wouldn’t be up for another hour. I moved a stool close to the table, picked up the glass of juice and settled beside Uncle Steve. He began taking the computer apart.
“How is school?” he asked as he started up a small vacuum cleaner to get dust out of the computer case.
“Oh, okay, I guess,” I said. I was having a particularly hard semester at Harwich. My grades were all B’s. I knew I should be doing better, but I seemed to be struggling.
“Just okay?” Uncle Steve asked, not looking at me because he was concentrating on the guts of the computer.
“I guess it should be better,” I said.
He stopped the vacuum and looked at me. “A bit of a hassle?”
“I know I’m supposed to be getting all A’s,” I said. “It’s costing Mom and Dad a lot of money to keep me there, but I don’t seem to be up to the job.”
“Nonsense,” he said, turning his attention back to the computer. “You’re a bright young man. You’re a Benoit, and you have some of that good Patenaude blood in you, too.” He took a circuit board out of its slot in the computer frame and held it under a magnifying glass to study its coding.
I wanted to tell him the weight I felt on my shoulders, carrying all that smart blood in my veins but not performing like any sort of genius. But we’d gone this way before, Uncle Steve and I, and I knew where it headed. Buckle down, he would say. It’s no harder than plowing a field, the work you have before you.
**
That was half a year ago. Now I am sitting at Jen’s counter in Rutland and I can sense that she will listen and understand.
“What grade are you in?” I ask her.
“Junior,” she says. “Just like you?” Her voice rises into its question mark.
“No,” I say, knowing this has to be honest if it is going to be good. “Ninth grade.”
“Well knock me over with a feather!” she says. “Where do you go to school?”
I’m embarrassed to tell her I’m a Harwich boy. I know that doesn’t play very well with public school kids and I suspect she’s not in private school if she’s working in a diner. So I choose to be imprecise.
“In the Northeast Kingdom,” I say, falling back on the trick I used on Betty and her friends.
“Yeah? Where?” she asks, coming toward me and leaning her elbows on the counter, her chin in her hands. I notice for the first time that there is a dimple in her chin, too. She’s really cute. “Oh,” she says, apparently startled by something. “I forgot to ask you what you’d like to eat. Are you hungry?”
“The coffee is enough for now,” I say, thinking I’ve dodged her probing questions.
“Okay, so where in the Northeast Kingdom,” she says. “What school?”
I’m pinned against the wall. “Harwich,” I say, hoping she’ll think I’m talking about the local public school.
“So you’re a private school boy,” she says. Her smile remains pleasant, not the sneer I’ve seen on some public school kids when they realize where you’re from. “I’m home-schooled,” she continues. “Have been my whole life. How do you like Harwich? I bet it’s fun, and what a great education.”
“I’d give anything to trade places with you,” I say. “In fact, tonight I’m leaving Harwich for the last time. I’m never going back.”
“Why?” Jen asks, honestly perplexed. “I’ve always thought it would be great to be living at a boarding school, having all those great teachers and so many smart friends,” she says. “How could you not love it?”
“It’s the baggage,” I say, not wanting to whine but hoping finally I have someone who will listen to my complaint, my reason for taking to the road.
Just now, an elderly couple comes through the door and Jen abruptly follows them down to a booth where they sit. After she’s gotten them coffee and taken their order, she comes back behind the counter, where she takes a pie from the pastry case and cuts out two pieces. I watch her the whole time. I like the way she talks to the couple, not too familiar but also not condescending, the way some people are with old folks. She comes back to me when their order is filled and once again puts her chin in her hands.
“Tell me about the baggage,” she says.
“When you’re the first person in your family who can go to college,” I say, “people rely on you to do that, to do what they never were able to do. They sacrifice so you can do what they always wanted to do. It obliges you. Do you see what I’m saying?”
“Sure,” Jen says. “It’s a burden. Not quite as big a load to carry as when your parents are Ivy League graduates who met when they both were on Rhodes scholarships, but big enough.”
I’m stunned, knocked back like I’d just grabbed the electric fence around the pasture. She is obviously describing her own situation. I never would have guessed that a diner waitress came from such a high-powered background. I’m humbled.
“How do you deal with that?” I ask. “I guess there must be some pretty massive expectations for you.”
“Massive enough. But there’s nothing I can run away from. Not like you,” she says, and I feel her judgment cutting me down. I feel like a whimpering puppy. There’s no way in sight to restore my image before Jen. “So I keep my nose in my books,” she says, “and I work this job as hard as I can, because I’ll be skunk food before I’ll miss out on my own Rhodes scholarship.”
“Well, I guess we have similar goals,” I say. “You want to match your parents. I want to be the best dairy farmer in Vermont, just like my dad. I just need to do it on my own terms, not by first being what someone else wants me to be.”
I nod toward the pastry case, smile at Jen and say: “I’ll take a big piece of apple pie and some vanilla ice cream, please.”
“A good choice,” she says, reaching across the counter and squeezing my hand. “One for the road. But which road, Michael of Harwich? Which way will you go from here?”
“I don’t know, but I can taste the freedom in either direction,” I say. She brings a huge slice of pie with two scoops of ice cream and, setting it down in front of me, resumes her place across the counter.
“Do you think you’ll ever come back through Rutland again?” she asks. “I”ve enjoyed our little talk, and I envy your strength, your backbone to make your own decisions. Don’t think I haven’t dreamed of doing the very same thing.”
“If I know you are here, I’ll return,” I say. It seems very melodramatic. I finish my pie and ice cream, fish some dollars from my wallet and reach across the counter to shake her hand, feeling like quite the man.
“Be a good boy,” she says.
A Fork in the Road
Rutland is Vermont’s second largest city or town, which isn’t saying much. It has less than half as many people as Burlington, which has only 39,000 residents. Coming into Rutland from the north off Route 7, which now is pretty much like any Interstate highway, you find yourself in a small town with old brick buildings built one hundred years ago. The police station is in the center of town, right around the corner from the fire department and just off Route 7 and Route 4, which is the east-west highway. Route 4 leads to Albany, New York, going west and, in a roundabout way, to Boston going east. Beyond Albany, I know, is New York City. It is in Rutland that I’ll have to choose my future.
Betty drives me past the police station so I’ll know where it is. Then she takes me a block closer to Route 4, where she pulls to the side of the street directly under a street light.
“I guess you know your way from here,” she says, looking over the back of her seat.
“Route 4,” I say.
“You’ll make just as good time if you decide to spend the night here,” Betty says.
“You probably won’t have much luck with traffic,” Doris offers, peering around her headrest. She can’t actually look at me, so I glance over to Fran, who looks worried.
“Thank you very much for the ride,” I say, and I open my door and step out onto the sidewalk, dragging my pack with me. It is chilly outside now, so I drop the bag on the concrete of the sidewalk and unzip it to get my fleece. I hear one of the car doors shutting and when I look up, Betty is coming through her own headlights, her arms spread to give me a hug. She is almost as tall as I am. Before I can respond, she wraps her arms around me, pinning mine at my sides, smothering me in cloth that smells like drugstore perfume. She squeezes hard.
“Please be careful,” she says, almost in a whisper.
“I will,” I say, barely able to breathe, let alone talk.
Betty releases me except for her hands on my shoulders. “I think we ditched that Porsche,” she says, “but watch out. That guy gives me the creeps.”
“Thanks,” I say, trying to laugh, to lighten the moment. “Like I wasn’t already scared enough!”
“Good luck in New York,” Doris calls from her window as Betty once more passes through the Chrysler’s headlights. Then they are off and I’m alone on the sidewalk, not quite ready to decide which way I’m going.
I’m standing on Wales Street, according to the street sign. I walk north a bit and then east until I see the sign for a diner. Inside, there is the usual counter with round, chrome stools standing in front of the black-and-white tile counter front. There is an old fashioned juke box unit mounted on top of the counter. It has chrome buttons you push to select a song, and it actually works if you deposit a quarter in the slot.
I take one of the stools. They are all empty now at nearly ten o’clock at night. As I’m sliding a menu from its chrome holder between a napkin dispenser and the ketchup bottle and salt and pepper, I see the white apron of a waitress appear in front of me.
“Coffee?” she asks. I look up to a pretty, young face, framed in short, dark hair. Her eyes are big and deep brown, almost black, and she’s wearing shiny lipstick, sort of salmon colored. There are small dimples beside each corner of her mouth, and one crooked upper tooth in the front catches a bit on her lower lip. Her name tag says “Jen”.
“I said do you want coffee?” she says, cocking her head sideways, grinning like maybe she’s embarrassed because I was so busy looking at her that I didn’t answer.
“Uh, sure,” I say, then remember to add “Jen.” She could be my age, I think, except I don’t think she’d be allowed to be working here if she was only fourteen.
I watch her go down to the coffee pots on the back counter to my left. She’s wearing a pink blouse and a black skirt. It looks like a uniform. She comes back with a steaming mug and a handful of creamers, all of which she sets carefully before me on the pale green Formica counter. Her hands are beautifully shaped, strong but slender, and yet her fingernails are chipped, as if she’s been doing rough work.
“I haven’t seen you in here before,” she says, leaning back against a refrigerator, her hands behind her.
“No,” I say, pouring one creamer into the mug, “I’m on my way south but my last ride wasn’t going any farther.”
Her expression changes. She has been smiling, but now there is a question on her face, one she seems not quite prepared to ask.
“I’m heading either to Boston or New York,” I offer. “I haven’t exactly decided which yet.”
“Why are you going if you don’t know where?” she asks. “That seems a little foolish.” Her dimples, which had disappeared for a moment, return as does her smile. She is challenging me, right off the bat. I like her way and, almost instantly, I feel I probably can tell her anything. And it’s been bottled up in me so long, my reasons for leaving Harwich, that I’m ready to reveal everything if she wants to listen.
I’ve tried to talk about my “issues” – I sound like a school counselor, don’t I ? – with several people in the past year, but I almost never get any place. Probably that’s because they’ve almost always been old people.
The first was Uncle Steve. I had taken Mom’s computer down the hill to his home. She was having problems logging on, and she uses the computer to keep the farm business going, so she needed it fixed right away.
It was early one Saturday morning last semester – probably in April because there were still patches of snow on the hillside pastures facing south and lots of snow on the far hills in the forest that, even in winter, is shaded most of the day on the northern slopes. I had to walk on the crowned pavement of the country road that passes both of our houses. There was squishy mud on the dirt shoulders, and I was pulling my old wagon with the computer in it, wrapped in a blanket. Uncle Steve heard my feet banging mud off them when I got up to his front door.
“Take your shoes off, Michael,” he said when he had pushed open the storm door. “They can dry off in the sun out here, and I won’t have to clean up after you.”
I got the shoes off and then carried the computer inside. It looked like a sick child, the way it was wrapped.
“This way,” he said, and I followed him down the short flight of stairs to the lower level of his house, like I had never been there before. “Here, put it on this table,” he said. His television up on the far wall was playing as it always did. There was an old black-and-white movie with a lot of singing. He glanced at it and then back at me. “Can I get you a glass of orange juice?”
I like visiting Uncle Steve. His voice is low, deep but soft. You want him to keep talking, no matter what he’s saying. I think he would make a good salesman because no matter what he was selling, you’d buy it just to keep him talking. Maybe an even better priest.
He brought in the orange juice, which I didn’t really want but would never refuse, and set it on the table near the computer. “Pull up a stool,” he said as he laid down his cane and lowered himself carefully into his swivel office chair.
I come home from Harwich every Friday afternoon. (My folks are away for their one trip of the year this weekend – the New England Farm Show. That’s why I was able to leave Harwich today.) There is always work for me on the farm, and unless there are weekend activities at school, I’d rather be on the farm. I had plenty to do on the Saturday when I took the computer to Uncle Steve – splitting wood with the gasoline-powered wood splitter was high on the list – but right now Dad was down for his morning nap and wouldn’t be up for another hour. I moved a stool close to the table, picked up the glass of juice and settled beside Uncle Steve. He began taking the computer apart.
“How is school?” he asked as he started up a small vacuum cleaner to get dust out of the computer case.
“Oh, okay, I guess,” I said. I was having a particularly hard semester at Harwich. My grades were all B’s. I knew I should be doing better, but I seemed to be struggling.
“Just okay?” Uncle Steve asked, not looking at me because he was concentrating on the guts of the computer.
“I guess it should be better,” I said.
He stopped the vacuum and looked at me. “A bit of a hassle?”
“I know I’m supposed to be getting all A’s,” I said. “It’s costing Mom and Dad a lot of money to keep me there, but I don’t seem to be up to the job.”
“Nonsense,” he said, turning his attention back to the computer. “You’re a bright young man. You’re a Benoit, and you have some of that good Patenaude blood in you, too.” He took a circuit board out of its slot in the computer frame and held it under a magnifying glass to study its coding.
I wanted to tell him the weight I felt on my shoulders, carrying all that smart blood in my veins but not performing like any sort of genius. But we’d gone this way before, Uncle Steve and I, and I knew where it headed. Buckle down, he would say. It’s no harder than plowing a field, the work you have before you.
**
That was half a year ago. Now I am sitting at Jen’s counter in Rutland and I can sense that she will listen and understand.
“What grade are you in?” I ask her.
“Junior,” she says. “Just like you?” Her voice rises into its question mark.
“No,” I say, knowing this has to be honest if it is going to be good. “Ninth grade.”
“Well knock me over with a feather!” she says. “Where do you go to school?”
I’m embarrassed to tell her I’m a Harwich boy. I know that doesn’t play very well with public school kids and I suspect she’s not in private school if she’s working in a diner. So I choose to be imprecise.
“In the Northeast Kingdom,” I say, falling back on the trick I used on Betty and her friends.
“Yeah? Where?” she asks, coming toward me and leaning her elbows on the counter, her chin in her hands. I notice for the first time that there is a dimple in her chin, too. She’s really cute. “Oh,” she says, apparently startled by something. “I forgot to ask you what you’d like to eat. Are you hungry?”
“The coffee is enough for now,” I say, thinking I’ve dodged her probing questions.
“Okay, so where in the Northeast Kingdom,” she says. “What school?”
I’m pinned against the wall. “Harwich,” I say, hoping she’ll think I’m talking about the local public school.
“So you’re a private school boy,” she says. Her smile remains pleasant, not the sneer I’ve seen on some public school kids when they realize where you’re from. “I’m home-schooled,” she continues. “Have been my whole life. How do you like Harwich? I bet it’s fun, and what a great education.”
“I’d give anything to trade places with you,” I say. “In fact, tonight I’m leaving Harwich for the last time. I’m never going back.”
“Why?” Jen asks, honestly perplexed. “I’ve always thought it would be great to be living at a boarding school, having all those great teachers and so many smart friends,” she says. “How could you not love it?”
“It’s the baggage,” I say, not wanting to whine but hoping finally I have someone who will listen to my complaint, my reason for taking to the road.
Just now, an elderly couple comes through the door and Jen abruptly follows them down to a booth where they sit. After she’s gotten them coffee and taken their order, she comes back behind the counter, where she takes a pie from the pastry case and cuts out two pieces. I watch her the whole time. I like the way she talks to the couple, not too familiar but also not condescending, the way some people are with old folks. She comes back to me when their order is filled and once again puts her chin in her hands.
“Tell me about the baggage,” she says.
“When you’re the first person in your family who can go to college,” I say, “people rely on you to do that, to do what they never were able to do. They sacrifice so you can do what they always wanted to do. It obliges you. Do you see what I’m saying?”
“Sure,” Jen says. “It’s a burden. Not quite as big a load to carry as when your parents are Ivy League graduates who met when they both were on Rhodes scholarships, but big enough.”
I’m stunned, knocked back like I’d just grabbed the electric fence around the pasture. She is obviously describing her own situation. I never would have guessed that a diner waitress came from such a high-powered background. I’m humbled.
“How do you deal with that?” I ask. “I guess there must be some pretty massive expectations for you.”
“Massive enough. But there’s nothing I can run away from. Not like you,” she says, and I feel her judgment cutting me down. I feel like a whimpering puppy. There’s no way in sight to restore my image before Jen. “So I keep my nose in my books,” she says, “and I work this job as hard as I can, because I’ll be skunk food before I’ll miss out on my own Rhodes scholarship.”
“Well, I guess we have similar goals,” I say. “You want to match your parents. I want to be the best dairy farmer in Vermont, just like my dad. I just need to do it on my own terms, not by first being what someone else wants me to be.”
I nod toward the pastry case, smile at Jen and say: “I’ll take a big piece of apple pie and some vanilla ice cream, please.”
“A good choice,” she says, reaching across the counter and squeezing my hand. “One for the road. But which road, Michael of Harwich? Which way will you go from here?”
“I don’t know, but I can taste the freedom in either direction,” I say. She brings a huge slice of pie with two scoops of ice cream and, setting it down in front of me, resumes her place across the counter.
“Do you think you’ll ever come back through Rutland again?” she asks. “I”ve enjoyed our little talk, and I envy your strength, your backbone to make your own decisions. Don’t think I haven’t dreamed of doing the very same thing.”
“If I know you are here, I’ll return,” I say. It seems very melodramatic. I finish my pie and ice cream, fish some dollars from my wallet and reach across the counter to shake her hand, feeling like quite the man.
“Be a good boy,” she says.
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