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.