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.

Chapter 7
Goodnight



All three of the ladies have a lot to say about what has just happened once Betty has explained the last few minutes to Doris. No one else bothers with the rest room. Instead, Betty turns the Chrysler back onto Route 7 and heads toward Rutland.
“Now as for you, Michael,” she says, thinking she is getting formal with me, “I suggest that for tonight, you come and stay with us at my house. It obviously isn’t safe for you to be out on the road after dark, young as you are. And in the morning, I’ll buy you a bus ticket to New York.”
What Betty doesn’t understand, I guess, is that she’s trampling on my plan by trying to protect me. I need to break out on my own, not with adult interference. Just like Grandpa Maurice.
We had a July Fourth picnic at the farm and, as he often does, Grandpa Maurice came. That was only three months ago, and school was out, of course, and I was home working on the farm. Mom had baked a half dozen pies for desert, and we grilled burgers and hot dogs and had a big tub boiling with fresh corn, and the table was piled with just-baked bread and butter from our own cows. The blue smoke rising from the grill hung under the spreading green canopy of the maple trees, and a thin plume of smoke rose from Grandpa Maurice’s pipe – he had asked if anyone minded that he smoked and no one did – and the pipe smoke drifted into the burger smoke and everything smelled delicious.
“What do you plan to do with your life?” he asked me after we had talked a bit about my days at Harwich.
“I’d really like to take over this farm some day,” I said. No one else was around at that moment, so I let out my deeper thoughts. “They want me to learn more about the world,” I said. “That’s why they have me at Harwich. But I’m pretty sure Dad knows everything you could possibly need to know about the world in order to get good cows to give milk and to make money from them.”
“He’s one of the best,” Grandpa Maurice said, drawing then on his pipe and nodding solemnly.
“So while I know they think they are doing what is best for me, it’s not what I want,” I said. I knew that this would play well with Grandpa Maurice. I expected the response he made.
“At some point,” he said, “when you are grown up, no matter when that happens, you will make such decisions for yourself.”
Well, that time has come. Betty, who I’m sure has a good heart, as Mom would say, is not going to choose my path for me. So I have to thank her for her suggestion but say I’ll be on my way tonight. I have no time to lose.
I say it just that clearly, and the car falls silent. I look out the window at the passing darkness. Roadside weeds and highway signs and corrugated steel guard rails flash by the Chrysler. Up on the hillsides – we are in Vermont, so of course the main roads all follow the valleys and have hills and mountains beside them – up on the hills, there are dots of yellow lights where there are houses or farms, but all else is black.
Finally, after a few miles, Betty speaks. “I’ll let you off in downtown Rutland, then,” she says, her voice sweet, not angry like I had feared it would be. “Close to the police station. You can try to get a ride from there, and if there are any problems, you’ll know where you can run for help.”

Chapter 6
A Close Call



I had used the computer at the University of Vermont library to go online so my story would be credible. I don’t know why I forgot it when I got in Mr. Ponytail’s car. I guess I was just surprised that I was actually on the road. But now I’m recalling the details that I tried to memorize this afternoon. And that’s good, because Betty, the big lady, wants to know where I’ll be working in New York.
“The Organic Grill in the East Village,” I tell her. This was the first place that came up when I Googled New York City Organic Restaurants. “It’s a small place, but my folks say it has a good reputation.”
Now the ladies begin to talk between themselves about various restaurants where they’ve eaten. I learn that Fran and Doris are in fact sisters. They live north of Burlington, and Fran works in Burlington with Betty at an insurance company.
The pizza is gone by the time we reach Middlebury, about 30 miles south of Burlington, and Betty decides it’s time to stop for gas and restrooms. She pulls into a Lukoil station with a mini-mart and gets out to handle the pump while Doris heads to the lady’s room. Fran and I are still in the back seat, and once Betty has the pump working, she taps on Fran’s window, asking for the pizza boxes. Fran rolls down her window and is just passing the box through it when Betty’s face – I can only see the lower half of it; she’s looking toward the back of the car – wrenches with fear.
“Damn!” she says, hushed. “It’s the Porsche! Get Mikey under the blanket. Duck, Mikey!”
I have never liked being called Mikey. Mike is bad enough. I much prefer being called by my name, Michael, and when I’m old enough, I’ll insist on it. But right now is not the time. I fall flat on the seat and Fran covers me with the blanket and rolls up her tinted window.
“Jesus!” Fran says in a harsh whisper. “It is that sports car man!”
I feel the top of my head against Fran’s leg and I feel that sweating, itching feeling I always get when I’m scared. Everything is quiet except for Fran’s breathing. I hadn’t noticed it before, so it’s probably because she’s scared, too. No wonder. Now I hear Mr. Ponytail’s voice.
“You gals seen my boy?” he asks Betty, still pumping gas. She left her window in front cracked, but his voice is still muffled.
“What did you say he looked like?” she asks. Her voice is higher than it was before in the car. High and tight.
“Oh, maybe a high school kid,” he says. “Not more than fifteen but probably fourteen. Dark hair and shifty eyes.”
“We’ll keep our eyes out,” she says. The nozzle on the gas pump clicks off with a thump, like the tank is full. I can hear her squeezing a few more drops into the car. Fran’s leg is hard, her muscles tight and shaking against my scalp. Now I hear Mr. Ponytail’s voice like it’s right inside the car.
“Hey, you lost one of your passengers,” he says. “Where’s the other girl?”
“Aren’t you the nosey cuss!” Betty snaps. “Say, what were you doing with a 14-year-old boy at a liquor store?”
“I’m a good Samaritan,” he replies. “Just giving a kid a ride, and he robs me blind. I want to get the law on him.”
“Well,” Betty drawls, her voice lowering so I almost can’t hear her. “Here’s your chance. That cop is just pulling in behind you.” I can hear her draw the nozzle out of the filler tube and clank it onto the pump stand. “Let’s you and me just go over and tell him what’s happened.”
“You butt out!” Ponytail snaps. “This is between the kid and me.”
In seconds, I hear the Porsche engine – you can’t miss that sound; almost like an attic fan or a big window fan – start up and then tires chrip as the car leaves the filling station.
Fran’s leg relaxes and I feel the blanket sweeping over my head and now there is light in the Chrysler. Just then, the passenger door opens in the front and Doris gets in.
“You’re next, Fran,” she says. “What are you doing lying on the seat, Mikey?”

Chapter 5

Shaking the Tail



As the tail lights of the Porsche disappear in the darkness, the big lady driving the Chrysler starts her engine. Now is my chance. I scurry, still crouched, behind the berm up to the highway. Then I stand up, brush off my clothes and try to act as though I’ve been waiting there all along. Behind me, to the south on the highway shoulder, is a sign – Speed Limit 50. I am still within the glow of the fluorescent parking lot lights and so is the sign, but we’re just at the edge of darkness. I wait and hope: Please turn my way!
My plea is answered. The Chrysler’s lights sweep across the lot as the car backs away from the building to point south. Suddenly, I’m staring into high beams, blinded. I swing my right arm out, thumb raised.
And the Chrysler, moving slowly, passes me by! My heart thumps. I’ve felt this way before – not often, but once or twice is enough. The list is posted on a Harwich wall – members of the honor roll; captains of the eighth grade ski team; officers of the ninth grade class. I expected to be selected for all and I made none of the lists. My chest caved in just as it’s caving now. Except this time, I’ll be alone here on the side of the road. Somehow, I trusted these older ladies to get me beyond the Porsche and the Ponytail. And now . . .
I turn to watch the Chrysler disappear down the highway. Suddenly, I see brake lights. The car is pulling over to the shoulder, not 200 feet past me. And now, in the darkness above which the sky, cloudless and moonless, is beginning to reveal the pin pricks of starlight, I see backup lights. The big lady is coming toward me with her friends.
My backpack was at my feet. Now I swing it up on my right shoulder, hoping my guess is right. Just then, a semi-trailer that I hadn’t noticed heading south rushes past me and then the Chrysler. It rocks the air, a shock wave that knocks me sideways and probably shakes the Chrysler. But the car continues in reverse and stops directly in front of me. The rear window rolls down and a woman – middle aged as I had guessed; maybe thirty-five – looks at me with a scowl on her forehead. Her hair is brown with short bangs. Her cheeks are fat bunches, her mouth is small and round and her teeth at first glance appear to be oval.
“Where are you going?” she asks.
“Rutland,” I say. I don’t move toward the car. I don’t want to jinx the ride that I’m not certain will be offered. I hear a voice from the front seat say: “Ask him!”
“Are you the boy who was riding in that sports car that just left here?” she says, her eyebrows increasing the seriousness of her scowl. She could be asking whether it was I who just tracked the mud in the living room or just ate all the cookies in the jar. She could be Mom.
“Yes,” I say. I’m not going to offer more until she asks. I don’t know where this is going and I have a long night ahead of me if I don’t get a ride right now.
The window on the front door rolls down, and I glance inside. The woman nearest me is a bit younger than the woman in the back seat but looks like she could be her sister. The driver – the big woman, short blond hair, also a fat face – leans forward to look around her passenger at me. She is scowling, too.
“Why did you get out of the Porsche?” she asks.
I’m accustomed to telling the truth, so it comes out naturally. “The man driving the car wanted to buy beer and drink it with me,” I say. “I didn’t want to.”
“Get in the back seat,” the big woman says. “We need to talk about this.”
I unsling my pack and pull the rear door open. The lady in the back seat is sliding across to the far side, so there’s room for me. When I close the door, the Chrysler starts to move. I can smell the pizza as we head south in the darkness. The lady in front of me is holding the two boxes on her lap.
“Doris, hand that top box back to Fran,” the big woman says. “Fran, give our guest a slice, will you? You do eat pizza?” she says, turning her head toward me but still looking at the road.
“Yes, Ma’am,” I say. “But I’m not too hungry.”
“Nonsense!” the big lady says. “Give him a slice, Fran.”
Fran tries to open the box in the dark back seat but she’s holding it backward so the top opens against her. There is an explosion of hot pizza smells and I feel the saliva flowing in my mouth. When she finally gets the box turned round, she extracts a slice, puts it in a napkin and hands it to me. It is hot and smells very good.
In the front seat, Doris has handed a slice to the big woman, who looks like she could eat an entire large pizza herself. Then Doris takes a slice and begins eating.
The big woman has eaten half of her slice when she says: “My name is Betty. Betty Thornton. What is yours, young fella?”
“Michael Benoit,” I say between bites.
“That’s a good Vermont name,” Betty says. I can hear in the way she says Vermont – VahMONT, she pronounces it – that she is local. “Where you from?”
“Northeast Kingdom,” I say, not wanting to get too specific if I can help it. The Kingdom is the whole quarter of Vermont north of St. Johnsbury. It’s mostly farms and forests and very small towns, too small for anyone to know their names. Harwich is on the edge of the Kingdom, not quite an honest part of it. Most people who know Vermont will have heard about Harwich, I’ve found. But I’m not from there, only go to school there – or, I should say, went to school there until tonight – so I’m not lying when I say Northeast Kingdom.
Betty won’t settle without getting more information, though. “You go to school there?” she asks. “Let me guess. Tenth grade,” she says.
“I quit school,” I say in all honesty, because as of tonight, I have.
“You don’t look like a dropout,” Fran says. She has turned in her seat belt half way toward me. The pizza box is now resting on top of a big blanket folded into a square between us. She’s just nibbling on her pizza. “You look like one of them kids from the prep schools.”
“You’re right, Fran,” Betty says. “He looks like he’s from Boston or maybe New York.”
“No he doesn’t,” says Doris. “He’s too cute to be a city boy. He’s from VuhMONT, all right, aren’t you, Mikey?” Fran gives Doris a hard look but then smiles at me.
“We were wondering, Honey, about that man in the sports car,” she says. “D’you know him?”
My mouth is full of pizza, so I just shake my head. “Just hitchhikin’,” I say, dropping the “g” so I’ll sound more like the Vermonter that I am. I hadn’t realized I’d lost my local accent already. But when you live twenty-four hours a day with foreigners, you begin to speak their language.
“Why you going to Rutland if you come from the Kingdom?” Betty asks, reaching into the box beside her for another slice of pizza.
I have the answer ready. I practiced it all afternoon while I was sitting in the library at the University of Vermont in Burlington. “Actually,” I say, “I’m just going through Rutland. “I have a job lined up in New York, working in a restaurant.”
“How did a hick from VuhMONT get a job in New York?” Betty laughs.
“We sell our milk – part of it – to the organic cooperative,” I tell her. This is true Vermont farms do a good business catering to the organic restaurants in New York. “My folks thought it would be good experience for me rubbing shoulders with the city folks for a while,” I add. This is only partly not true. They sure thought it would be good for me to live with city folks at Harwich. But I’m not comfortable straying too far from the truth. Lies will catch up with you, always, Mom says. And she always knows when I am fibbing. I never get away with it. These ladies could be Mom’s sisters, the way they talk and think. So I know I’d better keep close to honest.
“So you’re a farm boy,” Betty says. “Well, then, you should know enough not to take a ride in a fancy sports car. Do you know the man told us you stole something from him?”
“Why would he say that?” I ask, stunned by this news.
“He wanted us to help him find you,” says Betty. “He asked if we saw you on the highway or around the liquor store.”
“What did he say I stole,” I ask.
“A gun,” Betty says, her voice growing stern, like Mrs. Hurley, our grade school principal back home when she was angry with you.
Instantly I’m getting a sick feeling in my stomach, and it’s not the pizza. I’m wondering if Ponytail actually has a gun in the Porsche.
“We had to get a look at you before we offered you a ride,” Fran says, serious as can be. “We didn’t like the sports car man. Didn’t trust him. But we also were worried if you really might have a gun. Do you?”
I arch up against the seat belt and reach in the pocket of my blue jeans, and Fran rears back, like a dog that thinks a man is going to hit him. I pull out the jack knife.
“I was told I should carry this while I’m hitchhiking,” I say. “But to tell you the truth, I’d be afraid to use it, even in an emergency. I wonder why that man said I had taken a gun.”
“He was angry, I can tell you that,” says Doris. “We didn’t trust him, so we thought maybe you were in danger.” She finishes her slice of pizza and takes another from the box. “That’s why we backed up after we passed you. You looked okay.”
“Thanks,” I say.

It is always difficult to bear the end of anything. This weekened, we saw evidence that the sailing season on the Chesapeake Bay is waning. More boats left the marina in Cambridge, Md. and more slips were empty on Sunday afternoon.
A neighbor told me he was leaving his boat in the water for the winter, but he went to the fuel dock to have his holding tank pumped dry. He said he won't be sailing again.
Friends on another dock emptied their boat. Next weekend, they will take their boat to another marina to have it hauled for the winter.
On Saturday, we finished a job I had started earlier in the week, putting new hinges on the dozen storage bin doors that were freshly painted. But then we cast off Robin's dock lines and in 12 to 15 knots of wind had a small sail downstream on the Choptank River.
Just before we left, a fellow passing along the dock mentioned the fragrance in the air. The wind was from the south, an unusual direction in Cambridge, and it was carrying the aroma of a crab plant a half mile upwind.
The dock lines on the starboard side were straining, the wind blowing Robin away from the finger pier. To port, there is only one piling anywhere near Robin's beam, so in order to escape our slip without being blown into the adjacent one, we had to keep the starboard bow and stern lines taut until the final second.
I decided that Monica, on the bow, should toss her line into the water because the piling to which it is tied would be too far for her to reach safely. This was a dumb decision, as I noticed immediately when, in the cockpit, I steered Robin past that piling.
Upon our return, there was a significant danger that, as we backed into the slip, the tossed line would catch in our propeller.
The solution, I decided, would be to steer the bow into the empty slip upwind of our slip. Then Monica could pick up the floating line and put it in place on the piling. That would make it possible for us to back into our slip safely.
With the mainsail up and the genoa rolled out, we sailed out the Choptank to a point where it widens to about two miles. This took us about ninety minutes, enough time for Monica to prepare our sandwiches.
I had hoped to sail a bit farther out into the broader river, but there was a fleet of boats drifting or anchored across the navigable portion of the river, apparently fishing, and they were so densely packed that I decided sailing through them wasn't worth the bother. We came about and began beating upstream against the wind.
The air was cool -- in the high 50s or low 60s -- and the wind chill was significant. If you sat in the protection of the dodger but exposed to the sun, you could stay warm.
It was about three o'clock when we returned to our slip. The discarded dockline had sunk in the water, posing no real threat, and we were able to back into our slip without incident.
Monica thinks our sailing season should have ended then, and it mayhave. I just have a hard time giving up the hope of leaving the dock one more time.

Chapter 4

Suppose You Were Wrong



Where I am lying is a corn field. I can’t see it because of the shadow of the berm, but I can feel the stubble of chopped-off corn stalks. I’d know it anywhere, the way the stalks jab up into your soft parts – your belly and thighs. I’ve played hide-and-seek in our cornfields on the farm enough to remember.
I can’t see the front of the liquor store from here, so I can’t tell what Mr. Ponytail is doing. All I can see is the dark back wall of the stores and, above it, the glow of those big fluorescent lights over the parking lot, like a white halo above the building. There’s a separate cloud of smoke rising from the back of the pizza shop and the smell of food spreading from it, a good smell. But I don’t want to stay here all night. I need to move to a position where I can see the store front.
The berm – it’s about four or five feet high – seems to go all the way around the parking lot, almost up to the highway. If I stay low and peek up over the top a few times, I can probably get in a position to spy on the Porsche. I didn’t plan to be crawling around in a corn field. I hope I’m not getting my clothes too dirty. The ground seems dry, not muddy, so maybe I can just brush myself off later. Here goes!
Moving to my right, I can now see the top of the side of the building – if I remember right, the end that has the beauty salon. What I couldn’t see back there in the dark are the weeds – Queen Anne’s Lace and some other leafy plants – growing atop the berm. The corn stalks are jabbing my knees as I creep low. A tractor-trailer just went by out on the highway. It was a Wal-Mart truck heading north, to Burlington. I can hear the whine of its tires fading as it moves away. Now a car just whooshed past the parking lot. I can see the beam of its headlights, white on the pavement, and the red dots of its tail lights as it moves south, beside and behind me.
Peeking up over the berm, I notice that I am now close enough to the road that I can see along the front of the building. The Porsche is still on the far side of the lot, and there are a couple of cars in front of the pizza shop and the Laundromat. I don’t see the ponytail anywhere. Guess he’s still in the liquor store.
But wait, the driver’s door of the Porsche is open slightly, and there is a case of beer on the pavement beside it. Where’s Ponytail?
Now Ponytail comes out the front door of the liquor store, holds it open behind him with his right hand and looks to his left and then his right, toward where I’ hiding. Now he’s going back into the store, letting the door shut behind him.
Another car is pulling into the lot now, an older Chrysler. Three women – middle-aged, I think – are getting out, not walking too fast because they’re talking with each other. I remember our pond ducks walking the same way and quacking to each other as they waddled toward the water.
Just as the ladies get to the pizza shop door, Ponytail comes out from the liquor store. I duck, slowly so as not to be too noticeable. He was behind the women from me and I’m pretty sure he couldn’t have seen me. In the dark, I hear a car door shut – slam, really. Then I hear wheels spinning and gravel spraying, which is a surprise because this parking lot is paved in asphalt. Maybe it was some sand left over from last winter when they spread it on the snow. Now I hear an engine winding up. I know the sound of a Porsche, so I know it’s Ponytail. And now I see him accelerating south on the highway, like a race car leaving a pit stop. When he shifts gears, his tires chirp. Boy, he’s in a hurry.
But that’s good. Maybe I can get a ride from those ladies if they are heading south when they leave. I’ll just have to stay low and crawl closer to the roadway behind this berm and keep an eye on their car so when the time comes, I can stand up and stick out my thumb.
Or maybe I should be thumbing north. I’m beginning to wonder whether this was such a great idea, leaving Harwich. It’s not too late. I could get a ride back to Burlington and take a late bus back toward school. No one would know, not even Will.
I’ve been thinking about going away for a long time. It has seemed like the best move I could make. At some point, you have to take your life into your own hands. I’ve heard Grandpa Maurice say that. He says he never would have had such an exciting life if, when he was only a bit older than I, he hadn’t taken his big step.
I don’t know exactly when that was. Grandpa Maurice is Mom’s father – Maurice Patenaude is his real name. He’s one of my favorite relatives. I love it when he stops at the farm – usually around July Fourth – every summer. When I was small, he would pick me up at the picnic table we had set up out under the big maple trees on the lawn beside the house and he would put me on his knee and tell me stories. His were the best stories.
“I don’t suppose I’ve ever told you about the time . . .” he would begin, and for the next long hour, I’d listen to his adventures on the great sailing boats where he has served as a mate. A mate is an important person on these boats. He is Number Two, right next to the captain.
Often, Grandpa Maurice’s stories are about near-disasters. Like the time they realized at the very last minute that the mast – the tall pole that holds up the boat’s sails – was probably taller than the bridge they were trying to sail under. The captain told Grandpa Maurice to climb up to the top of the mast and keep an eye on the bridge. Grandpa Maurice said he was actually looking down onto the bridge when he reached the top of the mast, more than one hundred feet above the water. He called down: “We’ll never make it,” and the captain reversed the boat’s engine.
It was too late, my grandpa says. So all he could do was reach out and push against the steel of the bridge truss and hope the mast didn’t break.
“If my hands weren’t so strong from so many years of hard work, on the farm and at sea,” he told me, “the mast would have hit the bridge and broken.”
Instead, he was able to protect the mast until the captain got the boat running in reverse.
Whenever he’s told me a story like this, Grandpa Maurice has ended by saying what a wonderful adventure it was. And then he says he never would have had it if he had settled for the life that others had chosen for him.
For some reason, as I’m thinking about him, I can smell the bath soap Grandpa Maurice uses – Dial. I would be falling asleep in my bed at Harwich, thinking of his stories and smelling his soap and feeling the rough stubble of his beard which he used to rub against my cheek when I was little and hearing his voice – it sounds like music being played, rising and falling and growing hushed one minute and commanding as a judge the next – and I would imagine my own big step, some time in the distant future.
Maybe that’s why I supposed this journey I’ve set out on was the right idea. Now, crouching in the dirt and corn stubble, I wonder whether it was wrong all along. But then I think about how hard some jobs on the farm can seem at times, so hard you think you can’t work any more or your arms will fall off. And then you work anyway and, without you noticing, time passes, the work is done and your arms are still hitched to your shoulders.
So I’m hiding out from one ride. I’ll get another one, maybe from those ladies in the Chrysler. I see them coming toward the door with a couple of pizza boxes. I’ll just move closer to the road and be ready.
But no, I hear a racing engine and, looking back to my right, I can see the Porsche headlights slanting across the highway toward the parking lot as Ponytail downshifts, revving his engine. I duck. He comes to a skidding stop near the Chrysler and jumps out. Once again, I notice that he is wearing no socks on his feet, only those loafers. He’s really odd.
The ladies are moving slowly out through the door, still talking. They don’t seem to notice that Ponytail is stepping toward them. He raises the palm of his right hand, like he’s telling them to stop. They turn toward him and I can see he’s talking. His right hand is gesturing north and south toward the road. I can’t hear his voice, but I can see the ladies listening and then, the biggest one – she’s holding the pizza boxes – shakes her head and tries to move toward the Chrysler.
Ponytail wants to talk some more, and the big lady looks back at him, still walking toward her car, still shaking her head. The three ladies pile into their car, but they don’t go right away. Instead, they watch Ponytail walk toward my end of the building then pick up his pace to a trot. He circles in front of me, maybe 50 feet away, but I’ve scrunched down in the corn stalks trying to be silent, and sweat is breaking out on my forehead and my scalp is itching.
Now I hear Ponytail’s steps moving to my left, toward the rear of the building and the shadows. I don’t move at first but then slowly raise my head so that I’m looking through a stalk of dry Queen Anne’s Lace.
It is a minute later when Ponytail comes out from behind the far end of the building, next to the liquor store, and trots to the Porsche. He sinks down into its driver’s seat, closes the door and starts his engine. The ladies are all looking at him, the one in the passenger seat now holding the pizza boxes, the big one in the driver’s seat and the third one in back.
Ponytail looks in his rear view mirror. If he looked carefully, he would see the top of my head and my eyes peering over the berm. He puts the Porsche into reverse and backs slowly toward my side of the parking lot, actually behind the Chrysler, and then slowly pulls out onto the highway, driving north.
Is this the last I’ll see of him?

Leaving Harwich

Chapter 3

Stepping Off the Edge





Just like Will, I never felt beneath anyone, either. I did see when I arrived at Harwich that some of my classmates were more boys than men, but I guessed that the explanation was that I had the benefit of growing up on a farm, where adult work is more a part of everyone’s life, regardless of age. So there was a period when I first got to Harwich when I stood back and tried to understand the youngsters around me. I came to the conclusion that old people are no smarter than kids. They just have more experience.
I don’t think the guy driving the Porsche is any smarter than I am. But he may know more, so I’ll just listen. It will be hard. He is asking me questions already as he steps on the gas and sprays gravel getting back on Route 7.
“What you going to Rutland for,” he asks.
I’ve thought about the answer all day. I knew I had to have it ready.
“My older sister lives there,” I say, and I leave it at that.
“What’s her name? Maybe I know her.”
I’m not prepared for this question, but it’s easy enough to answer.
“Linda,” I say. It’s about now that I notice there is some kind of odd radio mounted in the dash with a small screen where numbers flash rapidly. It’s some kind of scanner, but the volume is turned down so I can hardly hear it.
“Does she have a last name?” He looks over to me, smiling in a funny way I don’t really like.
“Clarke,” I say. That’s really her name. Linda Clarke. And she’s a nurse, but she works at the hospital in Barre, not Rutland, so I’ll have to be careful with my answers. I’d better change the subject.
“Nice car, Sir. What year is it?”
“I bought it new last year. You ever driven a Porsche?” He steps on the gas hard as he says this, shifts down and passes three cars even though the headlights of oncoming traffic is up ahead on this two-lane highway. I feel myself pressed back into the seat. Then the Porsche darts back into our lane, like a roller coaster car yanked sideways by the rails. He doesn’t wait for me to answer before he throws out another question. “What do you drive?”
I guess he hasn’t figured out my age if he thinks I drive anything. I’d better answer straight so I don’t dig myself a hole of lies.
“Right now, only farm equipment. I don’t have any wheels right now.” I notice that we are doing 75 miles an hour in a 50 mile-an-hour zone.
“So you’re a farmer, huh?” he asks, glancing over at me, looking me up and down casually. “You have your own farm or work for someone else?”
“I work the family farm,” I say, trying to keep it honest but short. I’m not feeling comfortable with Mr. Ponytail. I notice that he has a gold watch on his wrist with diamonds in the face. He also has a diamond stud in his right ear. His face is clean-shaven. There are deep creases that cut his face from beside his nostrils down below the corners of his mouth. His lips are thin, and when he talks, the right side of his mouth opens more than the left, almost as if he were sneering. His eyes may be blue or may be gray, I can’t tell in this light. His voice is a bit high for a man his age, almost squeaky.
“I’m guessing you’re eighteen, maybe nineteen,” Mr. Ponytail says. “Am I right?”
“You’re close,” I say.
“You going to college while you’re farming?” he asks, easing off the gas and slowing closer to the speed limit as he glances in the rear view mirror.
“Not yet,” I say. He appears content with that answer, and his thoughts seem to drift away. In the silence, with the Porsche’s engine humming quietly behind us, my own thoughts turn inward, too.

**


I was finishing my breakfast one morning two-and-a-half years ago and Mom was at the sink, washing dishes, when Dad came into the kitchen and sat down at the table across from me. At first, he didn’t say anything. He brushed some crumbs off the red-and-white checked vinyl tablecloth and into his hand, then deposited them back on the table in a small pile. He had just finished the morning milking. Normally, he takes a nap until about nine o’clock, since he starts his day at quarter to four. Before the nap, he often makes himself a slice of wheat toast on which he melts some butter, and he eats the toast with his second cup of coffee of the morning. The toaster is on the table, and this morning, the loaf of store bread was there, too. After a minute or two, he put a slice in the toaster, and then he looked at me and smiled.
“Mom and I have an idea we’d like you to think about,” he said.
Mom turned from the sink and she smiled, too.
“We think it would be a great thing for you, now that you are almost a teenager, to get a real education at a fine, new school,” Dad said. “Have you ever thought about what it would be like to go to Harwich?”
Harwich is about twenty miles south of the farm. There aren’t any local kids who go there, but we all know about it. The Harwich teams play our teams in some sports. The ski team competes against the locals. That’s one way I had met some of the Harwich kids. You’re not supposed to pass judgment on other people, but some times you can’t help it. I thought the Harwich boys were snobs. They all had the best equipment, the latest fashion in ski clothes and they didn’t mix much with the rest of us on the mountain. They also did very well in the races.
Yes, I had thought about what it would be like at Harwich. I didn’t see much point in it, particularly when you were born on a farm and your last name was Benoit. I knew that when cars were headed for Harwich, they all had out-of-state license plates. And when the results of our athletic meets were reported in the Free Press, I noticed that all the Harwich names were from your usual assortment of English and Scandanavian families. They made you think of blond hair and blue eyes. There were no brown-eyed French Canadians that I ever heard of attending Harwich.
“Sure,” I said, not looking directly at Dad but concentrating fiercely on finishing my cereal.
“Good, then you probably know that Harwich is one of the top-rated prep schools academically,” Dad said, picking up his sales pitch with the same enthusiasm that fills him when he’s talking about the special Holstein cow he just bred to a prize bull.
Dad’s business isn’t just selling milk, although the big truck with the stainless steel tank stops by every afternoon and takes on the couple hundred gallons that we’ve milked that day. He always says you can’t be just a farmer to succeed nowadays. You have to be a salesman, an investor, a mechanic. He’s teaching me all of that and I’m teaching myself, too. I look at every car and truck magazine I can to learn mechanics, just as an example.
His big business is in breeding his herd. He keeps track of the cows and bulls all over New England like some people – Claude, the barber, for example – follow baseball and football statistics. Dad can tell you how much milk each of hundreds of cows spills out in a year, and he can tell you which bulls are their fathers. So in the end, when he breeds a cow, he can pretty much promise that its calf will also be a big milk producer, and other farmers have come to rely on Dad for the calves that will improve their herd. He gets a good price for his calves.
I didn’t respond to Dad’s comment about Harwich, pretending I was rushing breakfast to make the school bus, so he went on.
“What the boys at Harwich get,” he said, pulling his chair closer to the table and leaning forward on his elbows, “isn’t just academics. They get an understanding of the larger world out there, something you would never get if you stuck around here for high school.”
Mom came over to the table, drying her hands on a dish towel – I remember the scene clearly more than two years later – and settled down sideways in the chair beside me.
“What do you think, Michael?” she asked.
I was trapped, like a butterfly with a pin through its thorax. I could see in their eyes how much it would mean to them for me to agree to go to Harwich.
“You can be honest with us,” Dad said. “We know what we’re suggesting is a big change, and change can be hard.”
“Really, Michael, what are your thoughts?” Mom prodded.
I hesitated, but I had some pretty specific thoughts racing through my brain and I couldn’t hold them back.
“I want to be a dairy farmer,” I said finally. “I’m not sure Harwich would make me a better one.”
“Dang!” Dad said, his smile broadening. “I told you we shouldn’t be showing him the good life too much, Mother!”
A wave of relief washed over me. They’re not serious, I thought.
I was wrong.
If there’s one thing you learn growing up on a farm, it is that every member of the family has a duty to making the whole operation work. You start by sweeping out the barn. It’s not make-work. It is work that needs to be done, and you – small as you are – are capable. Then you learn to milk the cows, to carry in the feed, shovel the manure and so on, until when you’re as grown as I, you know pretty much everything it takes to keep the cows healthy and the milk flowing.
So Dad and Mom had arrived at the point in the selling of Harwich Academy that it was time to suggest that my duty, at age 12, was to assume the burden – not the pleasure but the responsibility – of going away to school.
“The world is changing quickly,” Mom said, scooting her chair closer to me. “Everything you need to know to be a good farmer you won’t find in the hundred and eighty acres you live on.”
“No one in the Benoit family has ever been to college,” Dad said, not pushing Mom out of the conversation but meshing his words with hers like the teeth of one gear fitting between the teeth of another. “You should be the first, and the best way to do that is to get a head start at a place like Harwich. If you are going to be a good farmer – if you are going to succeed at any thing in life – you will need what they will show you.”
I could feel a weight settling on me, like when you’re holding a 50 pound sack of feed for the cows and someone lays another sack on top of it. You stagger a bit before you are balanced, before you can walk.
“We hope you will think about Harwich,” Mom said, reaching over and patting my left shoulder gently. Dad took a bite of his now-cool toast and nodded.
“You’re a bright young man,” he said. “Give it some time to settle in.”

**

Mr. Ponytail breaks the silence first.
“Say, I have an idea,” he says in that squeaky voice of his. “Let’s get some beer for the ride down to Rutland. What do you think?”
I must have just stammered. The suggestion came at me on a blind side, like a hand you didn’t see reaching for the ball just when you’re set to shoot a basket. But I’ve finally found my voice.
“I’m not much for beer,” I say.
“Haven’t tried it yet? Too bitter for you?”
“No, it’s just that . . .”
“Hey, you probably haven’t had the good stuff. There’s a liquor store a mile up the road. I’ll pull in there and get us a case. You’ll see. It’ll be fun.”
I should have said right then that I was only fourteen. That sure would have stopped him in his tracks. But I didn’t think of it. In deciding to break away from Harwich, I had never considered that I’d find myself in this situation. Now I am thinking desperately of a way to respond that won’t reveal the truth that I’ve been conveniently hiding. But my brain is locked shut.
And now the gravel is crunching under the Porsche’s tires and the beams of the headlight are lost as they swing in under two big white fluorescent lamps that arc out over a small parking lot, where a couple of cars are pulled up near a glass storefront with neon signs for several brands of beer. We have been traveling into the farmland south of Burlington, but just now we are pulling to a stop in a small strip mall. The liquor store is at one end – the near end heading south – and beside it are a Laundromat, a pizza shop, both open, and a beauty salon that is closed.
“You stay in the car,” Mr. Ponytail says. “They shouldn’t see you inside the store. Might want to card you. Oh, and if you get out of the car, it has this fancy alarm that will go off. So just stay put and I’ll be right back.”
So he’s saying I’m a prisoner. No way do I want to be in this Porsche when he returns with a case of beer. If I’m here, I just know the trouble will really begin. I watch him get out and, after shutting the door, click his key fob, causing the headlights to flash against the store front and something to beep under the hood. As he pushes through the glass door into the store, I notice that he is wearing loafers with no socks. Pretty odd, I think, even as my brain is racing.
If I open the door to make a break, he tells me an alarm will sound. I can see him going toward the back of the store. There is a man in denim overalls and a plaid shirt at the checkout counter. Mr. Ponytail disappears behind him.
This is my only chance. I look to the left and to the right. It looks like I can dash from the Porsche to the right side of the liquor store and run behind it. The alternative might be to try to get into the pizza shop. But if there are no customers, Ponytail might find me there and force me back into his car.
I’m losing time. Make a decision, Benoit!
I’ll go for the back of the store, just run like blazes.
My left hand has the backpack straps. I’m hooking my right hand fingers into the door handle – it’s shaped like a clam shell – and my right shoulder is against the door. I have to bang it hard and go, like blasting through a slalom gate on skis, if I’m going to get out of here before the alarm brings him running out of the store.
Okay! Go! The door flies open. Everything is quiet, no alarm. The jerk lied! Lied to keep me trapped! I could tell he was bad news. But I’m still running and cutting behind the liquor store. I have to dodge around a big, green Dumpster. There’s a lot of light here beside the store. But now it’s dark out back, just a small bare light bulb over an unmarked back door.
Gotta keep going, though. He’ll be looking for me if he took the pains to try to trap me in the Porsche. There are no trees to hide in back here, so I’ll keep going. All the rest of the stores have no lights out back. But there is a big mound of dirt, a berm, between the pavement back here and the fields beyond. The berm goes all the way around the strip mall. I can crouch behind it and hide there until he leaves.
The smell of dirt and trash. I breath it in, lying flat on my stomach in the dark. This is not part of what I imagined when I thought of leaving Harwich.