Hitching a Ride





I needed a ride to get away from Harwich – from the prep school and from the little Vermont village for which the academy is named. I couldn’t just stand on the road at the edge of town and stick out my thumb. There would be too many questions. There would be no one, except perhaps a passing motorist, who did not know that there was a student trying to take a completely unauthorized excursion. I’ve seen it happen before.
Lumpy Peterson had been stopped before his escapade had even started. Lumpy – that’s a silly name, isn’t it? His name is really Charles but he came to Harwich with a built-in nickname that he personally revealed to everyone – Lumpy wanted more than anything to see a movie that had just premiered. It was playing in Montpelier, the state capital. I think it was one of those science-fiction films where the stars are machines.
Anyway, Lumpy decided that because there was not much regular public transportation through Harwich, his only chance was to hitchhike. So that morning, he walked down to the crossroad on Route 2, which bypasses the town, and waited for a car to come along.
Lumpy wears thick glasses that magnify his eyes so they fill the entire lenses out to the frames. He looks like a toad, and still he doesn’t see too well in the distance. So he didn’t know that the car that was coming down Route 2 was actually driven by our headmaster, Mr. Heathridge. Lumpy scrunched his fist into the universal hitchhiking gesture and held it out over the pavement. Old Heathridge’s five-year-old Buick came to a stop. Lumpy climbed in and he never did see that movie.
I didn’t want to spend the next month of weekends in that hot third floor classroom where Lumpy served his sentence for stupidity, and I didn’t have to. I have Will Crawford for a roommate, and I know his secret. He may be only 14, but he has his own car and has had it for a year.
“You going home this weekend?” I asked Will last night. He had come back from dinner – big slabs of roast beef and heaps of mashed potatoes with little lakes of gravy. They feed us well in the Harwich dining room. He was sitting in our darkened room, his face lit by the glow of the screen of his laptop, reading something. He didn’t answer.
“Yo, Craw Man! You hear me?”
He turned and looked at me, but I could see it took time for his brain to catch up to his eyes. He was still locked onto whatever he was reading. Finally, I saw the connection happening somewhere deep behind his face, and he smiled.
“Yeah, Benoit. I’m going. Why, you have plans for our room?”
“I was looking for a ride to Burlington,” I told him.
“They allow farmers in the big city now?” he asked.
Crawford doesn’t live in Burlington. His parents have a vacation home near Mt. Mansfield, where they ski in the winter and play golf and tennis in the summer. They live in Westchester County, a wealthy New York suburb, and they almost never visit the vacation home.
But Will has a key to the house, and he likes to use it as a retreat from Harwich, where’s he’s been a student for the last six years, since he was eight. He often says that without the Mt. Mansfield house, he couldn’t tolerate Harwich. I understand how he feels.
I knew that Burlington was out of Will’ way, but by now – after more than a year being his roommate – I know Will pretty well. He can be arrogant, and I guess that comes with having as much money as he has. He can buy anything he wants, and no one seems to check on what he is spending. But he likes to be generous, so he’ll do almost anything you ask.
“Hey, if it’s too much bother, I’ll find another ride,” I replied. “The Vermont Transit bus will come through after lunch and it will get into Burlington early enough for me to get to the library.”
“You don’t want to waste your time and money on the bus,” Will said. “It’s no problem. You be ready to leave after breakfast?”
We met back at our room in the morning.
“I have a surprise,” Will said. “Nutley is coming with us.”
I nearly gagged at the thought. John Nutley, a tenth grader, is a very nice kid, better than the average Harwich snob. He has one problem, and no amount of complaining seems to have any impact. Nutley has the worst body odor on the planet. The thought of being confined with him in Crawford’s Subaru for nearly an hour almost derailed my scheme.
“Can you insist he take a shower first?” I asked.
“You live with cows, for God’s sake, Benoit,” Will said. “I know what that smells like. It blows in here from the Harwich pastures, Man. Nuts doesn’t smell any worse than that.”
“You won’t do it then I will,” I said.
“Good luck, Puke Man,” Will said. “How’s a guy who hurls on command going to convince a guy who only smells rotten to change his ways?”
Will was right. I learned recently that you can raise your lunch – if you’ve had enough of it – just by visualizing your esophagus and stomach and causing them to ripple upward. The trick has earned my quite a reputation in the Harwich underworld. It has also won me a few admirers, so I wasn’t quite sure what problem Will thought it posed in getting Nuts to bathe.
I left the room and, climbing the stairs to the tenth grade corridor, I found Nutley’s room and knocked on the door. It opened, and I smelled him before I saw him.
“Nuts, Will wants you to take a shower before we go to Burlington,” I said.
“Can’t do it,” Nuts said. “No time. I was just coming down to your room. I need to be in the city by nine o’clock to catch a ride at the University. Gonna see my girl in Hartford tonight.”
“She’d be happier to see you if you bathed, Nuts.”
Nuts’s round face slumped. “You really think so?” he asked. “Maybe I’d better stop off at home when I get there for a quick shower. Can’t do it now, though, or I’ll miss my connection.”
Nuts picked up his bag and followed me back to my room. Will was ready, so we turned around and headed to downtown Harwich. The academy, which has been around forever, occupies what had been a farmstead north of town. The old farmhouse, built more than one hundred years ago, is the headmaster’s home. The barn that is attached to it – big and white – was remodeled a few years ago and has all the administrative offices. There is a gymnasium that looks like a barn that was donated by some wealthy alumnus. There are several “cottages” that serve as classrooms for the 120 Harwich students. And there are four colonial-style houses – two story with finished rooms in the attic – that are the dormitories. They sit part way down the hill toward town from the headmaster’s house, and each has a name. Ours is Purity. There are also Wisdom, Honor and Faith.
I know. Kind of makes your skin crawl.
Will led the way down the hill. We looked like any handful of kids hitting town on a Saturday morning, and the fact that we went to the barber shop probably would make people like Heathridge smile with confidence in the younger generation whose values they are shaping.
In fact, the barber , Claude – he is of French-Canadian heritage as am I – has a quite different idea about the values the young men of Harwich should embrace than Heathridge and his friends. Claude believes Harwich is a bit too restrictive, and he sees his role in the town as the source for we kids of that which Harwich will not provide.
One of his gifts is a garage for Will Crawford’s car. Maybe gift isn’t the right word. Claude, a stocky man in his forties with a thin, dark moustache and a high forehead bordered in dark, wavy hair, collects more than barbering fees in his shop.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” Claude said when we came through the glass door of his storefront shop with an 802 phone number lettered on it. “Haircuts today?”
There was no one in Claude’s shop. The television was running. Cable news was playing, as it always is. The floor was swept and he was relaxing in his barber chair, the remote for the television in his hand.
“Why you need that thing?” Will asked, pointing to the remote. “You never change the channel.”
“Oh, I certainly do,” said Claude. “Only when you Harwich men are present do I limit the programming to that which will contribute to your social and moral improvement.”
“You are a man of great scruples,” Will said, snatching the remote from Claude. He tapped a couple of keys on the remote and the Jerry Springer show came on the screen. People were screaming.
“Don’t you see? I am here to save you from yourself,” Claude said, climbing down from his barber chair. He is shorter than I, although he is taller than both Will and Nuts. “Who’s first?”
“I need the garage key,” Will said. “We’ll be taking the submarine for a ride.”
“I think Mr. Nutley could use a trim first,” Claude said, waving Nuts toward his chair. “Empty chair, no waiting. Step right up, Mr. Nutley.”
“Sorry,” Will said, “Mr. Nutley is on a tight schedule. He has to catch a ride south in Burlington in an hour.”
“In that case,” Claude said, stepping across the linoleum tile floor, waxed as shiny as a skating rink, to his antique brass and marble cash register. He pressed one of its buttons to send the cash draw sliding open with a “ding”. He reached in the drawer with his thumb and forefinger as if selecting a pickle from a glass jar. Turning, he handed a common door key to Will. “Leave it on the doorsill as always,” he said.
I’ve driven tractors on our farm since I was ten, big Case tractors that tow hay balers and rakes and wagons in which we load the hay bales to haul them to the barn. I consider myself a pretty accomplished driver. Will could be driving a formula one car, he’s so smooth. After he opened the garage door, he backed the Subaru onto the side street next to the barber shop. He has tinted all the windows in his ride – he calls it the pale yellow submarine – tinted them dark so no one can see who is driving. He eased the car down to Main Street, which is parallel to Route 2, which bypasses the town. At the edge of town, where Main Street bends over to Route 2, he slowed and checked for traffic and then, obeying the speed limit, got up to cruising speed.
We were free.
I had grabbed the back seat, hoping to keep my breakfast down. I knew that if Nuts was in the rear, he would spend the next hour leaning over the seatback to talk with Will. Will gets along with the upper class guys like he was one of them. I don’t think it is the fact that he has a car. There is just something about him that they see him not as a ninth grader but as an equal.
Anyway, by choosing the back, I could keep my distance from the stink, and Nuts would occupy Will with endless chatter. The subject of this day could be categorized as: “What’s wrong with Harwich.” I didn’t have much to say. To me, there is nothing wrong with Harwich. There’s just something wrong with me being at Harwich.

For me, writing is sort of like looking for the bathroom at night in a strange house when the lights are off. I've never actually had instruction in writing. Instead, I've tried to learn by feeling my way in the darkness, by reading "good" writing and by seeing what approaches in my own work elicit reactions, either positive or negative, from readers.
Yesterday I was thinking about what I should do next in life. Since it's the wrong time of year to sail across the Atlantic, my focus was on finding employment. I'm pretty sure I could get a job at Home Depot or pumping gas. But I kept coming back to writing as the thing I really want to do.
This led me to consider beginning a new writing project. There are many, many stories I'd like to tell. And yet, it occurred to me that perhaps it is time I figured out how to turn on the hallway light so I wouldn't spend too much time stumbling into the furniture.
This thought steered me back toward the things I've already written that have not yet found a publisher. Wouldn't it be great if I could have a writing coach examine the work and tutor me?
Well, you are the designated coach, if you want the job.
From today on, I'm posting a chapter a day from the two books, one book at a time, until for each book I've posted about half the book. I'd like to ask you to read the chapters and then tell me in detail or in general what works and what does not. Is there something that causes you to read on? Where are the points when your eyes cross and you can't go on?
The first offering will be from the youth novel I call Leaving Harwich. I'll put my email address at the end of each chapter so you could, if you wish, respond directly. If you agree, I will then post your responses in the blog.
This coaching is serious business. I won't learn anything from flattery. Please keep such comments to yourself. It is sufficiently difficult to be a critical reader of one's own work. What will really help is thoughtful criticism from you. Thanks to any and all who might pitch in.
And now, Chapter 1 . . .



Pocketknife




I got out here, standing on the shoulder of a Vermont highway right before dark, just about the same way I get out of bed in the morning. Starting my day doesn’t involve a decision, and neither did this. You lie there, flipping from side to side, trying to preserve the pleasure of your bed’s comfort against the demands of your bladder. You turn this way and the other between the cool sheets like you would turn the dial of a combination padlock left and right, then suddenly the tumblers fall in place and, click – the lock opens. You are rising. One moment, you’re down. Then you’re getting up.
That’s how this escape came about. One minute, I was locked into my life as a ninth grader at Harwich Academy. The next, I’m standing on the side of this road with my thumb cocked at ninety degrees to my fist, indicating I want a ride, any ride. I didn’t really decide to do this. But it had to happen as certain as sap runs up the trunk of a tree in spring. And now that it has, I know I’ll probably never go back.
It doesn’t hurt that this is a perfect October Saturday night. It was sunny all day with only a few clouds. Where I’m standing now, on Route 7 in the commercial spread south of Burlington, is high ground. I can see the Adirondack Mountains to the west on the far side of Lake Champlain. The sun has just set behind the mountains – they are purple silhouettes now – and the few clouds above them are glowing some shade between orange and pink. It will be dark in a half hour, but I should have a ride by then.
Route 7 runs north and south along the lake at the western edge of Vermont. The next big town south of here is Rutland, and when I get there, I’ll have to make a decision. Keep going south and the next stop will be New York City. Turn left and I’ll go to Boston. I’ve been to Boston lots of times but I’ve only been to New York once, on a family trip. That was one of the few times my parents were able to leave the farm overnight. Keeping a herd of dairy cows is a full-time job and if you do it well, you don’t want to leave the livestock with anyone else. My dad is one of the top dairy farmers in Vermont and he and Mom almost never travel.
You might think that because I’m standing on a roadside begging for a ride out of town that I’m not like them. You’d be wrong. I’m not looking to travel. But I am definitely looking to make a change. Mom and Dad think Harwich is the best thing that has happened in my life. They never really insisted that I go away to a boarding school. But I knew how much it meant to them, so I agreed to enroll. It wasn’t what I wanted to do with my life. I want to be a dairy farmer like Dad. But they work so hard and there isn’t much they ask of me. So two years ago, I moved into a Harwich dorm room.
Now, I’m moving out. I didn’t tell anyone what I was doing. I got a ride to Burlington from Harwich this morning. In my backpack, I have some cash, a couple of changes of underwear and socks, another pair of trousers and a shirt and a fleece jacket that I can put on when it gets colder tonight. And I have a book I’ve been reading, about a boy named Philip who is younger than I am but who seems to find himself in a situation peculiarly similar to mine.
I have a jackknife in my pocket, just in case. It’s something Will Crawford suggested on the ride to Burlington. He said you never know what or who you’ll run into hitchhiking. I just told him I was going to be thumbing my way back to Harwich later in the day, but he didn’t like that idea. He told me to look in the glove box of his ten-year-old Subaru.
“There, that’s it with the yellow lanyard,” he said. “Just keep it tonight and return it to me tomorrow.”
So I took the knife and put it in my hip pocket. I suspect it could be more dangerous to be armed with a weapon someone else could use against you. But it made Will feel better.
Where I am now is a good place to get a ride. I’m outside a chain restaurant. People will be coming and going from the parking lot, and when they leave, they will be stopping before turning onto the highway. There is an island with shrubbery across the front of the parking lot. Cars enter the lot on the far side of the shrubbery from where I’m standing. They leave in the opening that is near me, and they have to slow or stop to watch for the oncoming traffic. That gives them time to see me and check me out.
I don’t look too dangerous, but I think I look older than I am. I’m a little taller than most of my Harwich classmates and my dad says all those years working on the farm has given me the build of a man. My beard has started coming in, too, and I didn’t bother to shave this morning.
I don’t think most people would give a ride to a kid. There’s too much trouble they could get into. At least that’s what my Uncle Steve told me. I used to hitchhike back to the farm when I’d stay late at school for basketball practice. Uncle Steve never liked me doing that. But of course he’s old and he was never one to take a risk, Mom says. He lives in a home he and Aunt Mildred built down the hill on a piece of the farm property closer to town. He almost never leaves the house now that she has died. He fixes computers in the living room – there are computers all over the place, on tables and shelves – and the room is as quiet as the library basement, quiet and dark and Uncle Steve is quiet and nothing around him moves any faster than he does, as if the whole place is afraid sudden movement will stir up trouble.
Anyway, I don’t think I look too much like a kid, so I expect that getting a ride will be no problem. And my voice started changing a long time ago and it almost never cracks now, so if I talk softly I think anyone would be surprised to learn that I’m in the ninth grade.
But you never know. One thing I don’t want to do is have to tell a cop who I am. Hitchhiking is illegal. If a cop sees you and guesses you’re a juvenile, you’ll probably be taken to the station and asked questions. And right now, about a half a mile north on the road, there is a police car making a U-turn. He’ll be headed back this way in a minute, so I’ll have to duck behind the shrubbery before he sees me. There are a dozen cars between the cruiser and me. I’ll keep my thumb out a bit more just in case one of them is heading my way.
There are street lights here, and they are reflected blue-white on the sloping windshields of the cars as they approach. Everyone has their headlights on and between the glare of the lights and the street light reflections that sweep up the windshields in ice-colored waves, you can’t see into the cars so you can’t see the faces of the drivers. I try to look directly into the windshield of each car on the driver’s side, just in case they are looking at me. One thing I’ve learned at Harwich is you should look strangers in the eye. They don’t teach this, but it became obvious the first few weeks I was there, when I knew no one, that looking people in the eye made them take notice of you.
And it is working now. The second car up – a silver Porsche Carrera – just pulled onto the shoulder and is coming to a stop beside me. The window on my side is rolling down smooth as melting ice.
The man is middle aged and has his blond hair pulled back tight in a pony tail. He is wearing a dark green sweater over a blue shirt with a button-down collar.
“Where you headed?” he asks.
“Rutland,” I answer.
“Good. I could use some company on the ride down. Hop in.”
I swing my pack off my shoulder and, feeling first for the jackknife in my pocket, reach for the door handle.
“Thanks.”


mondoug@verizon.net

Just spent two days aboard Robin, painting in the saloon and working on replacing a switch that, when stepped upon, causes the anchor to come up from the bottom. Neither job is completed, but that some times is the way boat work goes.
It was ideal weather in Cambridge, Md., and the work was mindless, if not without demands on certain muscles not normally engaged. That was good, because I needed a mental blank slate. This week, Lyons Press decides what to call the book that I call Swimming in the Shadow of Death. I've been asked to come up with five alternatives to that title.
Selecting a book title is not the option of the author, ever, as far as I know. I like my title. It is alliterative, doesn't start with the word "the" (a personal issue for me) and relates directly to the story.
But I know nothing about book marketing, and the title is the primary tool that can be used to market a book. So I'm glad there are experts working on this. My main concern is that the book be published and read.
I have more to say, and I'll say it tomorrow. But right now, the World Series is on and I must bear witness.

The Burlington Island Race was cancelled last weekend due to a forecast northeaster. I walked Thelma down to the river end of the street at about the time the race would have started and was greeted by the sight of spinnakers flying -- and I use the word in its aeronautic sense -- downstream. Some other club was not quite so timid as we, I guess.
That's okay, because of course the Mariner sat on the boathouse apron, relieved of its rust-pocked centerboard. Now the Mariner is on its trailer up in the back lot, as if it were prepared for winter. And the centerboard is off in a corner of the apron where it will offend no one.
Still, there are a couple of weeks left before the moorings are pulled, so it is still possible that we'll get to sail her this year.
On the book front, I'm almost done editing the manuscript for Swimming in the Shadow of Death and will ship it to Keith Wallman, my editor, probably on Monday.
Also, I got a review of the youth novel, Leaving Harwich, that was at once both scathing and promising. The review is by a literary agent who represents best-selling authors of youth novels, so her comments are important. I will attempt to understand them and to see whether I am capable of addressing her concerns, with the goal of getting her to represent the book.
Sailing a Mariner is a forgiving experience. Trying to get published is not. One's skin must be thick and wear-resistant.

The northeaster has passed and sun shines on the Delaware River this morning. I drove to the waterfront to check the Mariner and found that the rusted steel centerboard hadn't floated away from where we left it on Wednesday. With fair weather forecast for most of the week, I may get back to grind off the steel shims that kept the board from dropping out of the trunk. Then it will be ready for re-installation.
But that won't happen before I get my current job finished. I'm "polishing" the manuscript for Swimming in the Shadow of Death. I'm about one-third the way through the 95,000 word document.
Keith, my editor at Lyons Press, mentioned that I might want to change some of the sentences structured in the passive voice to an active voice. It has been a very, very long time since I was schooled in grammar, so I had to Google active and passive to figure out what he meant.
In a passive sentence, the action happens to an object or a person. In an active sentence, the person or object takes the action. I'ts the difference between saying: The ship was sunk and The ship sank.
I did recall, once I investigated, having been told (passive) by an editor many years ago to quit using passive sentences. They are too ladylike. They lack force, he said (active).
In my search for passive sentences to convert, I'm finding that the story is really pretty gripping. That's pleasing. And Keith was right. The rewrite is improving the prose.

With attention being paid to the Mariner, the cupola project has been delayed but not forgotten. On Wednesday, I talked with a representative of United Rentals, a company that rents all sorts of lift equipment. I've decided, on the suggestion of my friend Fowler, that it might pay to pay for a machine to lift the whole, 440-pound structure and place it on the roof rather than assembling it up there myself on a ladder.
To determine the weight, I disassembled the bottom of the cupola -- the part with the windows in it -- stood on the bathroom scale and held one side and then one roof panel. Each side weighs about 75 pounds. Each roof panel weighs about 33 pounds, or 108 pounds total per side. Multiply this by four and round up to the nearest ten and you get the total weight.
Yesterday, I was about to go to a builder's supply store and buy some coil -- the coated aluminum that will become the red roof of the cupola. But a phone call delayed me. So the purchase has been postponed until today.
The next step is the fabrication of the metal roof. That will be a slow process because the fit has to be just right.
Once I get a quote from United, I'll schedule a day to rent. Then, just before that day, I'll take the whole structure outside, piece-by-piece, and reassemble it at a spot where the lift equipment can reach it.
I was surprised to find that United doesn't care that I've never operated a lift before. They will rent just about any piece of equipment that I ask for. That's a little scary.

Someone -- probably the last owner, who was an engineer -- apparently had a problem with the Mariner's centerboard wobbling. Up near the top of the board, in a place that almost never is exposed below the hull, they attached four small plates. The plates probably were meant to take up space in the centerboard trunk -- the enclosed slot in the bottom of the boat up into which the centerboard is raised to give the boat a shallow draft or to improve downwind speed.
The problem they apparently did not anticipate was that once the paint flaked off of the iron centerboard, the iron would rust. And the rust would cause the iron to expand. And the four little plates then would be pushed against the inner sides of the trunk, gradually making the board more and more difficult to raise and lower.
So it was that today, when with the help of John Morrison and Doug Cunningham, I set out to inspect the centerboard for the first time and had the boat raised on the waterfront hoist, the darned board wouldn't come down at all.
It was cold early in the morning, so John and I didn't make it to the waterfront until well after 10 o'clock. (I didn't check the time.) Doug met us there by coincidence, and together we brought the boat to the hoist, rigged the lifting sling and raised it to hover above the trailer.
We soon discovered our problem, and we worked through lunch without stop, wrestling with the board -- which weighs hundreds of pounds -- to no avial.
We used a sledge hammer but even that seemed unable to coax the board into dropping out of its slot.
Late in the afternoon, I called Stuart Marine in Maine, explained what was happening and asked for suggestions.
"Do what you are doing," said Dave, the man on the other end of the phone.
Having been given license to treat the poor Mariner as we already were doing, we really let the sledge hammer fly. In about 15 minutes, the board was out of the boat and lying on the ground.
It does not look promising to get the board repaired and back in the boat in time for the Burlington Island Race on Saturday. My only hope is that the northeaster that is promised for the next two days will cause the race to be postponed.
By next spring, I see a new board from Stuart in the Mariner's trunk. That may be the soonest we will get to sail her, and that's okay.