 
# PLACES

Eight Place Stories

by Ralph Bowden

Copyright 2013 Ralph Bowden

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this ebook. Although this book is free, it remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy at Smashwords.com, where, over the next year or two, other works by this author will become be available. Thank you for your support.

I
Table of Contents

The Bohannon Cemetery

Pete's Place

The Keller Range Plant

McCutcheon Meadows

Cinderella Tank

St. Cecelia's Beach

Nelson Furniture Manufacturing Company

The Corinth

Author Notes

# The Bohannon Cemetery

"Here comes somebody," old Emmett Bohannon ("bornd Dec. 29 1839, Gone frm this wrld July 8, 1902") muttered. As patriarch of the place, it was his duty to keep watch.

"I knew as soon as them cows was gone, somebody would happen along," Versey ("Versey Smith Bohannon, Lvng wife of Emmet, Frm the Ld. 1840, To the Ld. 1899.") said.

The hiker, equipped with staff and small backpack, ambled slowly up across the gently sloping pasture to the old Bohannon cemetery. He stopped and looked at the gate for a minute. The Grantham boy, nephew of Emmett's great grandson, when he mowed the field back in May, had wired the gate shut to keep new cattle out. Not that cows came in much anymore anyway. Inside the fence, the place had grown up thick with sumac saplings and periwinkle, which cows didn't like. Years ago, they used to wander in and leave cowpies everywhere, even on the sunken places.

Wired shut or not, the ancient gate, weathered to a collection of rough sticks, was no real deterrent to a determined inscription-rubber like the visitor that had come along three or four years ago. But lush poison ivy cascading off the huge cedar tree that served as a gatepost made entrance treacherous.

"He's not comin' in," Versey said. "I can tell. He's just up here for the view."

Aunt Gertie ("Miss Gertrudy Smith, July 4th, 1837, July 8th 1890") came out now too. She had lain quiet for weeks – actually since the mowing, the last excitement. Being still wasn't like her. When alive, she always had to be going on at somebody, too busy correcting, instructing, nagging, bossing, ever to listen to them, or to notice the effect of her words – or to catch a husband. The only time she spoke up these days was when somebody new, from outside, arrived. "A visitor, then?" she croaked – she had worn her voice out in middle age, and couldn't expect it to heal now, even with prolonged rest.

"Nobody we know," Emmett said.

It was as Versey said. The visitor looked in at the three stones for a few minutes. Then he started to turn toward the western view, but stopped halfway.

"Look there," Gertie said. "He doesn't care about us. He's come up for that Rogers man," she snorted.

"Hush, Gert," Versey whispered. "Just because he doesn't speak with us doesn't mean he's away."

The visitor walked a few paces to the side along the rusty barbed wire fence, mostly exposed now because the Grantham boy had used Roundup on the Virginia creeper and blackberries – for no good reason except that his mother insisted a burdened fence showed a lack of care and respect. Where the old fence turned down the side of the Bohannon plot, a new, galvanized, chain link fence joined it to enclose another plot, almost as big, though only one stone resided: "Hershel Rogers: Husband, Father, Businessman. An Honorable Life Without Enemies, June 12, 1933 – April 19, 2004." The weeds around it were thigh high, obscuring the heaps of faded plastic flowers covering the massive stone base. Hershel's stone stood high and proud – or arrogant, depending on your point of view – above the weeds.

"Well, if Hershel Rogers is too good to speak to us, I don't care what he hears," Gertie went on, "and I'll speak my mind."

"We know you always do, Gert," Emmett grumbled, "but there's no point rilin' up the neighbors, where-ere you're at."

The hiker peered in at the stone, new, sharp, and shiny, except for bird poop. A setting sun design on the west side faced the real thing. He turned and looked to the west to enjoy the view for a few minutes. It was magnificent, especially now with the sun sinking and redding through a few sky wisps, on for miles over rolling hills, still mostly green but with a first touch of autumn.

Then he shuffled along the chain link around to the back of the Rogers plot.

"All right, what do you think of that, now?" Gertie fussed. "Having your picture cut on your stone by some new-fangled contraption," she said. "If that's not sinful pride . . . ."

"Now Gert, we know how you feel about it," Versey chided. "Of course, I'm inclined to agree for the most part, 'specially since he had such an unpleasant look about him."

"Y'all hush, now," Emmett said. "A man can't help how he looks."

The visitor smirked briefly at Hershel's high-tech lithograph, with its string tie and pretentious oversized hat, and the permanent, beetle-browed scowl. Then he turned around and looked east, to see what Hershel saw. A mound or knob rose above the pasture, scrubby rock land, eroded, stripped of its timber decades back and now supporting only cedars, stunted oaks and boulder outcrops, certainly no view to spend eternity contemplating.

"That's right!" Gertie crowed. "See? That's what his seed thought of him. Turned him around, they did. Served him right that he should look at what he left her."

"Now that's gossip, Gert," her sister said. "You can't trust what boys like that say. Gravediggers is liable to talk outlandish stuff when they work. Remember what they said about you?"

"That Jakes fellow always was spiteful to me! Of course he'd say things like that after I tried to set him right with his maker that time when he . . . . But them boys that put Hershel down, why, they knew about him! I'm sure they did."

"I don't know that," Emmett answered. "Didn't make sense to me. Give that woman a worthless knob in the middle of his property? Naw. Ain't no use to her or nobody, surrounded like that."

The visitor turned again to glance over at the Bohannon plot, as if pondering the relation between the new stone – expensive, substantial, and well-protected but obviously neglected – and the three fallen-over stones in the adjoining plot, covered with moss, the edges softened and the inscriptions blurred by a century of seasons.

"I think he's a Rogers," Gertie pronounced. "Something about the eyes."

"No, surely not. He didn't bring no flowers," Versey observed.

"Who brings flowers anyway, I ask you?" Gertie said. "When does anybody bring us flowers?"

"Our people are gone. Like us, but somewhere else," Versey said. "But Hershel Rogers has only been down, what, year and a half now? You heard it: they said his children are still here and own all this land – except the knob, of course."

"But have they ever been here to care for his place? She brought all them fake flowers right after. Carried on, made quite a show. But she hasn't been back since, you know. Once they read the will, she probably got a sight less weepy."

"Now Gert, we got no business talkin' about the dead that way. Disrespectful, it is." Emmett said.

The hiker walked on a few steps to where the Rogers chainlink joined the Bohannon barbed, stopped a minute, looked around, leaned his staff against the fence, unzipped and watered the fencepost.

"Well!" Gertie huffed. "Talk about disrespectful! He must be a Rogers. None of our kin would act like that. At least I surely hope times ain't come to such a pass."

"Well, I don't know," Versey mused, "men being what they are. But what I wonder about is why she should have been so affected if what they said was true. You know, about her doing him in like that for what she'd get in the will."

"Those fellas was talkin' through their hats," Emmett grumbled. "No woman's going to get her man to act up over her in bed just so's he'll have a heart attack and die. Now that just don't make sense either."

"Em! What a thing to say!" Versey complained. "And in front of Gert, too!"

The hiker was now making his way back down across the pasture.

"Well look at that now," Emmett said. "Goin' back the way he came. I should have thought he meant to climb the knob and just stopped by here to relieve hisself. Maybe he did come up to see Hershel or us."

Gertie sniffed a few times and started to fade, now that the excitement was retreating.

Emmett continued: "What I really can't figure is why Hershel Rogers should want to rest up here, next to us. Just because he bought the place ten years back from Vergie doesn't make it his home. You'd think he'd want to be downtown somewhere – whatever's there now – near where his children live, in his own churchyard."

Gertie came back at that, in tighter focus again. "'Churchyard?' You think that man had a church? I doubt very much that Hershel Rogers ever set foot into the Lord's presence. Didn't they say he was living in sin with her?"

"They just said he and her weren't married, Gert," Versey answered, "which is probably why she took on so. Married folk don't make such a fuss. Emmett didn't come up here but once in the three years before he joined me."

"Now Verse, I was sick and could hardly get out. You know that." Emmett went on, "But it does seem strange that he should fence off his plot right here, next to us. We're not his kin. He's got no real ties to the land here. They said he was from Texas."

"Well, it's probably the life he led," Gert said. "I expect he hadn't no ties to anybody anywhere. What'd they say he was? 'Dealer?' 'Horse trader?' That kind of folk are lucky to find themselves a plot anywhere. Of course, we couldn't complain."

"And can't, really," Versey said. "He's not bothered us. I think we should leave him rest and not gossip. He may have been an honorable and upstanding man for all we know."

"That's right," Emmett agreed. "I remember Brother Crawford, when he was puttin' me down, said something about the evil that men do in their lives shouldn't . . . something. I never did quite understand that. I wonder what he was going on about? Was he talking about the evil that I did?"

"Of course he was!" Gert said. "I heard it too. I think he meant that trade you did with his cousin. You know, the worthless bull that you said . . . ."

"All right, he was a little past his prime. But that's not 'evil' . . . . Ho, what's this now?"

The hiker was trudging back up through the pasture, this time without backpack or staff. He held, instead, a huge array of early fall pasture blooms, mostly frostweed, ironweed, and goldenrod, a blaze of white, purple and yellow, tastefully blended.

"Well I declare!" Gertie exclaimed. "Who do you suppose he's heading for?"

"Well Gert, maybe he's your man, finally, after all these . . . ." Emmett started to suggest.

"Hush, Em! That's mean," Versey said. "We'll just have to wait and see. But I, for one, expect and hope he's going for Hershel Rogers. Nobody knows or remembers us anymore, and there's no reason they should. It'd be nice to know that we have a neighbor somebody cared about."

"I told you I thought he was a Rogers," Gertie said. "I certainly hope he don't bring those things in here. I can feel the sneezes coming on already."

They waited as the hiker drew closer. At first, it looked as if he was heading for the Bohannon gate.

"He's coming here, isn't he?" Versey asked. "Wouldn't that be nice! To be remembered, after all these years."

"He's just taking the easy path, the old road that leads up here," Gertie said.

She was right. He changed course to the side and went around to Hershel's gate.

"I knew it," Gertie said. "Well, that's a relief. I wouldn't want those things in here anyway. If he had really cared, he would have brought decent flowers, not just those weeds."

The Hiker fiddled with the gate, and then pushed it open. He set down his bouquet, gathered up the plastic remnants, and made a pile of them in one corner of the plot. Then he carefully divided out a sheaf of his blossoms and laid them against the base of Hershel's stone. Gathering up the remaining stalks, he stepped to the barbed wire separating the two plots, pushed it down with his free hand, and swung over.

"Why, he's coming in here too!" Versey exclaimed. "Isn't that nice!"

The visitor divided the bouquet equally, laying them in the old hollows. Nobody said anything. When he was done, he stepped back to look, then bowed his head for a few minutes before leaving the way he had come.

When he was gone, Versey spoke first: "Well, now, what do you think of that?! I declare, maybe there are still decent folks left. It almost makes me want to come back."

"Well, . . . really . . . ." Gertie seemed to be at a loss, for once. Her scratchy old voice sounded a little moister than usual.

"What do you suppose that was all about?" Emmett asked. "Was he trying to say dead folks are all the same, finally, in the end? I guess that's so."

#

# Pete's Place

December 10, 1991, Saturday night, and Pete's Place was full, judging from the parking lot.

"There's a phone." Robbie pointed out the booth at the corner of the lot as he drove in. "Drunks keep pissing in it. Nobody uses it unless they're real desperate. Actually, I'm not even sure it works. Seems to me somebody came in last week and fussed at LaVerne about it being out. They got a phone inside behind the bar, but she doesn't let anybody use it. It's usually too loud in there to hear anything anyway."

"So you're saying I might not be able to call for help if you get so blotto as to be unable to operate your truck and deliver us back to Buford?" Farool said.

"Well, actually I was thinking you might want out in 10 or 15 minutes and need a ride back before I had finished my first beer. This place isn't like San Francisco where poets sit around and do whatever poets do."

"There you go, holding my background against me. Can I help my refined, sensitive, creative nature? Who's LaVerne? Lady of the bar, I presume?"

"Yeah. Sure is bitchy sometimes. But I suppose working at a place like this night after night would do that to you."

"Why that's very charitable of you."

Robbie parked his truck. He was having real misgivings about this. He was a regular at Pete's. Had been for eight or ten years. Anand Farool, he called himself, a name his guru had given him, had moved next door last summer, direct from California, for a 'poet in residence' job with the Harkin County school system. Robbie's kid, Seth, had initially befriended him. While Robbie himself had tried to remain aloof to protect his own good ole boy image, Farool had helped Robbie get a maintenance job with the school system. Robbie did owe him, so when Farool came over and reported boredom a little while ago, Robbie had suggested, as a joke, an evening at Pete's. To his surprise, Farool accepted the invitation and had ridden along.

The next surprise was to see the whole far side of Pete's Place solid black. Pete's had always been white. Oh, an occasional black guy might come in after work with a construction or road crew, and that was all right. But a whole group like this was new. It had never happened in Robbie's time.

The place was quieter than usual – the ominous quiet of tension, which you could feel.

George, on his accustomed stool at the bar, looked around when the door opened and greeted Robbie.

"Hey hoss, you're late." He lowered his voice. "Missed all the excitement. Ole Pete himself got up there a little while ago and made a speech 'bout how he wanted to make sure everybody felt welcome here, and how he had heard some mean things about his new policy of intergratiatin' the establishment, but he expected us all to be nice to them other folks. Why it just about made me wanta cry it was so sweet and brotherly. Then he says he had tried to get this great rock group tonight – another buncha coons," George whispered – "but they had cancelled out at the last minute, and he was real sorry, and he would try to get them back at a later date. Who's this?" George nodded to Farool.

"Oh, this is . . ."

Farool took over. "Tom Kennedy, Robbie's neighbor. Glad to know you." Farool shook George's hand, took the one empty stool at the bar beside him and started some easy chatter about how Robbie had said this was the best place to waste time on a Saturday night, and asking about what sort of fellow Pete was and if the house beer was worth drinking. Much to Robbie's relief, he seemed to fit right in. By the time Robbie had found a spot at the other end of the bar, Farool had ordered himself a beer and apparently engaged LaVerne with his fluid word gushing.

Robbie ordered a beer, and was then distracted by an acquaintance from his days as a house painter. After they had exchanged views on the decline of Pete's, and the probability of real trouble this evening with the disappointed black clientele, Robbie glanced back over toward Farool, and found LaVerne still standing in front of him, hands spread apart on the bar, listening intently, as was George. Farool was going on about something that Robbie couldn't make out. Whatever it was clearly held their attention, so much so that LaVerne was neglecting her customers at Robbie's end of the bar. Finally, their entreaties broke through, more or less. She went through the automatic responses, reaching for the glasses and drawing the draft, but her interest remained centered on Farool's continuing line, which seemed to fascinate her.

Finally, Farool must have realized that it was bad form to monopolize her this way, and got up and casually walked over to a booth where two women, in their fifties and rather hardened-looking, sat glumly smoking. Oh no, surely he wouldn't try to pick them up. Robbie didn't want to watch too overtly, but was certainly curious, and stole glances in that direction between plays of the basketball game on the tube. Within a very few minutes, Farool had slid into the booth with them, and they were all engaged in animated conversation. The women were actually smiling. It looked strange on them, as if their faces seldom had the opportunity to smile and they had almost forgotten how.

"That's your neighbor?" LaVerne asked Robbie on the way by with a tray of mugs. On the way back, she stopped an instant. "He says Pete is a 'pioneer in the realm of the human spirit,' and this place will go down in history as a new kind of 'temple to human oneness.' What do you think of that?" LaVerne looked a little smug.

"Well, that's only if there isn't a riot and we don't all kill each other first."

"Humf. Well, don't you start it." She glanced across the room. "Check out your neighbor now." LaVerne went on about her business.

Robbie looked around to see Farool over on the black side of the room standing at one of the booths with four large black men in it. They were beaming, showing off missing or gold teeth, as Farool said something funny and slapped his thigh. The men roared with laughter and approval. One of them shook Farool's hand and got up to offer him his seat, which Farool took.

Robbie rolled his eyes back to the tube. Farool just had no class or taste at all, it seemed. He would bullshit anybody just for the effect. Oh well, maybe that's what the world needed.

A few minutes later, Robbie noticed that somebody had fed the jukebox and called up some weird thing – was it Reggae? When he turned around to see what was going on, there was Farool with some black woman, twice his bulk, in front of the little stage in the corner, gyrating and wiggling to the music.

The middle of the room had only a few tables in it, which, if they were pushed to one side, would have made plenty of room for dancing if anyone was interested. Few people ever had been. Occasionally, a guy trying to pick up a girl might put something slow on the jukebox and shuffle around a little. Robbie himself had done that a few times. But now it looked as if Farool had started something. He wheeled by the table where he had been sitting with the black men and pulled up one of them and passed the woman to him while he grabbed another black woman from the next booth. She was really overweight and seemed reluctant to shake around publicly, but Farool gave her a hug and said something to her to make her laugh and soon the four of them were doing a kind of square-dance to the beat.

The two rednecks at the closest table looked disgusted with these goings on. There was no way they could stay cool and aloof with the bodies jumping around so close, so they finally got up to leave. Farool by that time had recruited the tough-looking white women he had sat with to what had become a kind of stomping snakeline. Robbie could hardly believe his eyes. Farool said something to the guys who were leaving. While you could tell they were trying hard to maintain their dignity, one of them lost it for an instant and cracked a smile, and then Farool passed one of the white women to the other and pretty soon they had joined in, and their table had been pushed out of the way to make room. What was he trying to do? This was clearly playing with fire. Somebody surely would refuse to be charmed by Farool and then all hell would break loose.

LaVerne came running by, looking concerned, and charged into the back room where Pete sometimes hung out with a couple of cronies. She emerged with him a few minutes later. Pete was probably sixty, with a huge belly that dwarfed his spindly legs and pin head. Robbie always thought he looked ridiculously beetle-like. His bushy gray eyebrows grew straight across and so low over his eyes that he had to tilt his head back to see out. He and LaVerne surveyed the growing crowd stomping on what had become a dance floor. Pete at first looked puzzled and confused. Robbie was sure he would put a stop to this. But then a broad grin broke out on Pete's face. He waddled out on the floor himself and joined in! Robbie shook his head in amazement. The jukebox tune finally ended a few seconds later, but immediately an integrated crowd gathered around to feed in more quarters, and the writhing and shaking and stomping was soon in full swing again. In a few minutes, Pete, red-faced and sweating, collapsed on a stool two away from Robbie, and bellowed at LaVerne to provide a free beer to every dancer. Had everybody gone completely nuts? Pete rarely showed up at all, and had a reputation for being a cheapskate who never gave anything away.

Robbie himself stayed at the bar. At least he wouldn't make a complete fool of himself jumping around like some maniac with all kinds of blacks and ugly women. He noted, with some satisfaction, that a few people had left, probably offended by the undignified scene and the new direction launched at Pete's. But in general, the crowd out on the floor stayed large and enthusiastic for over an hour, as they ran through the jukebox's limited repertoire. It all seemed rather high-schoolish to Robbie, and brought back uncomfortable memories of being left out in those years, particularly after he had dropped out of school.

Finally the dancing eased up, as people drank more and just plain tired out. Farool himself had left the floor and was making the rounds, chatting and drinking beer with people at various booths, black and white. Finally, he came back to the bar, introducing himself and spouting off his typical flood of words to everybody. Whether or not anybody had any idea what he was talking about probably made little difference. His upbeat and enthusiastic manner served well enough. And he was a good listener, too. If somebody else said something, he would take the thought up and carry it on and extend it in wild and entertaining ways. Clearly, this was a party animal, working in his native element.

"There you are neighbor. Hey, this is a great crowd." Farool slid onto the empty stool next to Robbie and stretched his arms in a grandiose gesture towards overworked LaVerne at the draft keg. "Oh most virtuous of women and light of my very soul, I beg of you, my thirst overcometh me. Prithee, LaVerne, sweet lass, mermaid of la mer beer, which gushes forth never-ending from yonder keg, pour out your salving balm on this parched tongue . . . "

LaVerne slid him a mug. "Pete says you're on the house for the rest of the night," she told him. She wrinkled her nose and winked as she rushed by with a tray.

Farool looked suddenly sobered by this news. "Really! Your man Pete is a spontaneously gen'rous gentleman," he remarked to Robbie.

"Never would of thought it before tonight. He's probably glad you loosened up the tension 'til folks had enough beer inside to forget all about it."

"Was that what I was doing?" Farool appeared surprised.

"Looked like it to me."

Then somebody came over and invited Farool to their table, and he was gone again.

*****

When Robbie and Farool finally left, about one, both were pretty wasted. Robbie had a lot of practice with the swinging door, but it whacked Farool twice before he made it through. Then he tripped on the threshold and finally had to crawl down the three steps to the parking lot to avoid falling. This experience brought his condition home to him.

"Heeeey, I guess I haven't had this mush in a long time. Mush! Yesh, on you hushkies. Or is it cornmeal? Whatever, I think I need a bit of air and some stable and absorbent soil to pee on. Like a giant diaper, the earth is, soaking up beer processed by humanity. I say, is that buggy of yours trained to find its way home, or does it require guidance?"

Robbie, struggling hard to show how sober and in control he was, managed to help Farool to his feet and then lurched toward his truck, using the few cars left in the parking lot for support.

"Hit runs just fine, why I can . . . "

Then they both spotted the sheriff's cruiser in a dark corner of the parking lot, near the public phone, lights off, but motor running.

The implications began to percolate through Robbie's fog. "Hey, thass not fair. Give a man a fighting chance, why don't he? Dep'ty's never done that before. Shit, what's he expect us to do, walk?"

"Well, as a matter of fact, I was leaning in that direction anyway, though actually I'm leaning in a lot of directions at once at the moment, and that might prove to be a problem. But it can't be more than about five hundred miles, can it? Surely, we could" – Farool fell against a car and hung on to the side mirror to avoid going down again – "maybe lope along on all fours and make it by Sunday morning – when I will become a Baptist and be washed of my sins in front of the whole sinless congregation."

"Ain't no way I'm gonna let some fat-assed cop keep me from my truck. My truck and me can make it through anything, and . . ."

"Ah, prudence! And what a marvelous opportunity to learn something of the law's intentions and practices. Oi!," Farool held up a finger, "I will speak upon the officer." He struggled to reset his feet under him and wobbled off in the general direction of the patrol car.

"Hey man, he'll bust you for public drunk!"

"Surely not. I'll wager he is a gen'rous gentleman like our friend Pete, as full of the milk of human compassion as I am of beer." He reached the cruiser, steadied himself on the spotlight, rapped on the windshield politely and called out "Ahoy, good sir, art thou within?"

After a second, the light inside came on as the door opened and a burly deputy stepped out. He shone a flashlight on Farool.

"My neighbor and I wish to express our deepest gratitude. Your timely presence has saved us from ourselves. Bad judgment it was on our part to consume to excess. Worse judgment would it have been to attempt to drive home. Now we shall walk and drink in the pure night air to clear our senses. Might I ask, sir, whether this represents a new policy on the part of the sheriff's office? That is to say, can we count on your presence at this time and place on future Saturday evenings? Such an assurance would do much to temper the untamed revelry which otherwise might burst forth into hideous highway carnage."

Robbie was crouching behind a car just near enough to hear Farool's speech. He could not catch what the deputy mumbled back at Farool, though he could imagine the stupid look on his face.

"Excellent!" Farool replied to whatever the deputy had said. "Surely it is a reasoned and wise policy. Please convey my compliments to the sheriff and assure him of my continued support at the next election. And let me emphasize that I say this not out of cynicism but of conviction. I personally will spread the word to my friends, the good patrons of Pete's Place, and exhort them to prudence, moderation, and respect of your authority. Again, may I count on your presence here a week from this time and place to back up my efforts?"

The deputy mumbled something unintelligible.

"I see. So your exact location at any time depends on calls to and dispatches from the sheriff's office. You cannot therefore guarantee exactly where you will be at any time? But are you generally assigned to a particular part of the county? How soon would a call, should I make one about this time of night, typically elicit your presence?"

More mumbles.

"Would such a call be regarded as a legitimate concern? For example, suppose I saw several obviously inebriated individuals such as myself and my neighbor," Farool looked around to try to spot Robbie, "preparing to take to the road, endangering themselves and possibly other innocent citizens. If I called the sheriff's dispatcher would I need to identify myself? Would I be cited for a false alarm if said inebriated individuals slipped through your most competent scrutiny by some chance?"

This time the deputy was almost audible.

"Wul, if youall was clearly intoxicated and turned in a frivolous call, we would be obliged to apprehend you on a charge of public drunkeness, and . . . ."

"Yes, certainly – and justifiably. Capricious occupation of law enforcement, willfully diverting it from the possible prevention of potential big-game crime would clearly be most reprehensible."

Robbie stayed crouched down behind the car. What the hell was Farool talking about? And how could he, drunk as he was, string long words together like that? Surely the deputy would haul Farool in for bullshitting him or whatever they called it in legal talk.

"I'm sure all concerned citizens appreciate your efforts, and I personally appreciate your candor. We will now be on our way . . . "

Fortunately, at that moment, the deputy's radio began squawking and he ducked inside the cruiser. Farool turned loose of the spotlight, and lurched from one car to another back toward Robbie's truck. Robbie, still trying to stay crouched down and out of the deputy's line of sight, slunk in the same direction, reaching the truck at the same time as Farool.

"Hey. Get in," Robbie called, sotto voce, and opened the driver's door for himself. Farool stood in front of the truck, grasping the ram's head hood ornament for support.

"Surely, you don't intend to direct this beast in your present . . . "

"Hell yes. You think I'd walk? All we have to do is wait 'til he gets a call to go somewhere else and leaves. Look, there he goes now." The cruiser's lights came on as it squealed out of the parking lot and headed down the road, blue lights flashing. "No sweat. We're going the other way."

"I forbid it! How could I ride, after all the sublime flatulence I passed at him. Were you not convinced of the folly?"

"Oh come on, get in. I'll take it slow and easy."

"And by the road the whole way?" Farool demanded.

"Yeah, sure."

Farool went around, got in and fumbled in vain for the seat belt as Robbie started the truck and pulled out.

Farool was uncharacteristically quiet. Robbie managed to keep the truck on the road for the most part, though it did sway and jerk in response to his coarse steering. Finally, as they approached the turnoff to Buford, Farool requested, "Perhaps you had better let me out. I fear I may foul your truck. Crawling in the gutter will purge my soul and revitalize my constitution."

Robbie pulled to a stop. "No way, man. If you're gonna puke, okay, I'll wait. You'd never make it the rest of the way."

Farool got out and promptly fell on his hands and knees in the ditch, retching and coughing. Robbie got out, found a more or less clean rag behind the seat, and went around to the ditch where he wiped Farool off and helped him back in.

By the time they pulled into Robbie's driveway, Farool was semi-conscious.

"I'll jusht shleep it off here," was all he could mutter. But Robbie dragged him out, hauled him across the yard to the back door, found his keys and, despite his own rough condition, somehow managed to open the door and get Farool to his bed. As he locked the door behind him and staggered across the yard to his own house, Robbie was dimly conscious of strange feelings. He had actually helped someone who needed it, someone worse off than he. The role was unfamiliar. He had played it several times in the service but it had not seemed as personally threatening then.

#

# The Keller Range Plant

The quality control conveyor at the Keller Range plant started at 7 a.m. sharp. Finished stoves jerked into motion. Lola turned on all four elements of the first one and set the tester on them in her practiced sequence, sidestepping to keep up with the next. It was a routine she knew well; she'd done it for three years before last December, when Sherri started and Lola had transferred to the touchup spray booth.

Mr. Coates walked by and stopped to watch as Lola checked the second unit. Without turning to look, she could feel his frown. He took his job as quality control supervisor seriously, never smiling, never joking around.

Little Jim scurried up and started making excuses. Lola couldn't hear what he said over the general plant racket, but she knew Little Jim. He'd been hanging on as foreman of the QC line with excuses for years. The conversation was probably going:

Mr. Coates: "Has Sherri called in?"

Little Jim: "She'll be here any minute. She told me her car has been iffy. Lola can cover."

Mr. Coates: "I thought she was on warning. Didn't personnel . . ."

Little Jim: "That's expired. She's been real reliable this last little while."

Mr. Coates: "Um."

Out of the corner of her eye, Lola saw Mr. Coates walk on past, toward his office up front. She knew what would happen now. Mr. Coates would call personnel and find Sherri had been late punching in two or three days a week all summer. He would sigh, but do his duty, calling in Little Jim, informing him non-confrontationally, non-judgmentally but firmly that Sherri needed a second warning. Little Jim would protest that Sherri was a really good worker, that her husband had been away recently, her kid had been sick. Excuses. Mr. Coates would listen, look serious and a little sad, but insist, and provide the warning form for Little Jim to give Sherri.

Later that morning, after Sherri finally showed up and Lola was back in the touchup booth, she saw Little Jim again, and knew it was happening according to her script. Probably between scenes two and three; Little Jim had seen Mr. Coates, but hadn't given Sherri the warning yet. He looked as joyful as a Calcutta leper. His bald spot glistened with sweat even though the plant was still cooler than usual. Clouds were holding back the Kentucky summer.

Husband Joe came around during break. Lola told him what had happened. He looked disgusted. "And I suppose Little Jim will wait until the end of the shift to do it. You'd think he'd want to get it over with. What's he care?"

"You don't see it? Plain as anything. He's stuck on Sherri. Always hanging around like he's waiting for her to come into heat."

Joe snickered. "That's my girl. Talking like some hussy. At your age. What would your Sunday school class think?"

"Well, that's really what it is. She has that available look about her, you know," Lola said.

"She is real cute . . . though sorta trashy."

"That's better." Lola changed the subject to Nancy and Sam coming over with the grandbaby that evening and the doll clothes she needed to finish.

Just before lunch, Lola caught sight of the electric fork truck from the warehouse zipping by the touchup booth. The new guy. Lola didn't know his name but remembered the gossip – that he'd landed this job through some relative on the board of directors even though he'd just got out of jail. She thought there was a wild, shifty look in his dark eyes. He wasn't much otherwise. Skinny, old acne scars, and needing a shave and a haircut – at least by Lola's standards. She peeked out to watch. The fork truck skidded to a stop by the QC line. Sherri looked around and came alive. Wild-Eye grunted and gestured. Sherri chattered, letting two ranges pass without testing, punching in the bypass code that she wasn't supposed to know – Little Jim had probably provided it. Then the line shut down for lunch, and Sherri and Wild-Eye rode off together on the fork truck – strictly against the rules.

At lunch, Joe was on a maintenance call. One of the punch presses was down. As top troubleshooter, he would be tied up until it was on-line again. Lola ate with Maria, the other girl in the touchup booth, and Phyllis, who had the station next after Sherri in the final QC test line.

"Little Jim is such a wimp," Phyllis complained. "He's not doing her any good, letting her get away with stuff like he does. Did you see her ride off with that creep from the warehouse? He's only been here a week. Didn't take him long to spot her. She told me she thinks he's a hunk."

"Yuk!" Maria stuck her finger down her throat as if to throw up. "She's a tramp. That's all there is to it. Just look at her! Bottle blond, all that makeup, and I'm sure she's had a boob job."

Lola didn't say much. She had standards about gossip. But she couldn't help wondering what Wild-Eye and Sherri were up to. When she finished her salad and deviled egg, she walked to the loading dock to check what it was doing outside (raining, lightly) and to look in at the warehouse. The three warehouse guys and Jerry, of security, were doing a hand of hearts, as usual. The two propane fork trucks were parked nearby, but no electric truck, and there was no sign of Wild-Eye or Sherri. If they had gone somewhere, Wild-Eye would have left the fork truck at the loading dock. So they were probably still in the plant. Maybe back among the warehouse racks? No, that would have meant driving by the hearts players. Jerry would surely have written them up for riding two on a truck.

Lola checked her watch. The line would start again in ten minutes, and she needed to use the ladies' room. She hesitated briefly, then turned and darted down the aisle beside the warehouse wall into a dark, unused area of the plant toward the old foundry. The EPA had declared the foundry contaminated ten years before. Rather than clean it up, the plant owners had sealed it off. The few cast iron parts they still needed for stoves could be imported cheaper anyway. The last time Lola was back here, the roll-up door had a padlock on each side. Now the door was closed, but the locks were gone. Squatting in the dimness, she saw tire tracks in the dust. That was enough. She scurried out through the derelict machinery to the light and noise of the main production lines.

Back at QC, Little Jim was at the control panel and sweating. It showed through his shirt. Phyllis stood at her station, just putting out her cigarette. But no Sherri, so the line couldn't start. She was already a minute late. Lola put on her respirator while wondering how long Little Jim would wait.

*****

The first chance Lola had to tell Joe, he was already in bed and she was brushing her hair.

"You know, Sherri was ten minutes late after lunch. I expected Little Jim to call me, but he found some excuse to work on the control program until she showed up." Lola paused. "Are you awake?"

"No."

"I wonder if Little Jim ever gave her the warning? She was first in line at clock-out, and then ran back toward the warehouse. Her car was still in the lot when I left. Oh, I never told you what I found out at lunch." Lola proceeded to report her investigation. "What do you think I should do?"

There was a long pause. "Do?"

"I mean, he's not supposed to have the keys to the old foundry, and neither of them was supposed to be in there – let alone what they were doing."

"What were they doing?" Joe asked.

"Well, I don't know. But she's messing up her life, carrying on with that guy."

"She's not your kid."

"All right then, what about the plant?" Lola asked. "She's breaking all kinds of rules."

"Rules are to keep people from getting hurt," he mumbled, clearly fading fast. "She's not doing anything dangerous."

Lola thought about that as she turned out the light and slipped quietly into bed. Joe had dropped off. Her good night kiss had no effect on the rhythm of his breathing.

*****

The next morning, Friday, Lola was waiting at QC, but Sherri came running in, red-eyed and scowling, with just a minute to spare. Lola wondered if Little Jim had put his teeth in this morning and waited for Sherri at the time clock with the warning form. Maybe her behavior with Wild-Eye yesterday had stiffened him. When Little Jim went through the booth during break, he looked chipper and chatted amiably with Maria about running off to the lake tomorrow. That could mean he'd unloaded his burden and was enjoying the relief. Or it could mean that Mr. Coates was out today, and he could put off what he had to do. Little Jim was a short-term kind of guy.

Joe arrived ten minutes before lunch. He didn't have much to do. All the presses and conveyors were working for a change. He was gloating to Lola about his good fortune when the electric fork truck came by.

"Uh-oh, here he is again." Lola pushed up her respirator and peered out of the booth. "Just like yesterday." Joe's face wore the blankness that always meant he had no idea what she was talking about. "Remember, I told you last night about how they . . ." But she could see he didn't remember anything, so gave it to him again, a truncated version, while she went through the routine of putting up her spray gun and respirator.

"The foundry? Why would they want to go back there?" he asked.

It always amazed Lola how Joe, who could just look at some machine and intuit its innermost intricacies, could be so naive. She looked out again just as the lunch whistle blew, and the QC line jerked to a stop. Sherri and Wild-Eye were already leaving on the fork truck.

"Sex, drugs, or both, I expect."

"Really? You think so?"

"I think we ought to tell Little Jim. If he doesn't want to do anything, at least we've done our part."

"Now wait a minute. Is that the guy they said was just out of jail? Something about aggravated assault or second degree?" Lola hadn't heard those details.

"Okay, maybe we should call plant security. Use your radio. Say you saw somebody headed into the foundry. You don't need to say who you are."

"They know me." Joe was being pulled. Lola knew he was no coward. There were dozens of times in their twenty-five years together when he had stood up and spoken his mind and taken a stand for what was right, even when it would do him no good. Why was he backing off here?

"Seems to me it's meddling."

"What makes it meddling?" Lola asked. "Wouldn't you do something if you saw somebody robbing a bank?"

"Sure."

"Whether your money was in that bank or not?" she pressed.

"Sure. It's a clear violation of the law."

"But the EPA says it's poison back there," Lola pointed out.

"That's baloney. Maybe if they lived back there for years and ate the dirt, but . . ."

"If they're taking drugs, that's against the law," Lola said.

"Yeah, and adultery is too in some places, though not in Kentucky. But nobody besides them is involved."

"So it's just other people. No matter how they hurt themselves, you don't care."

"Well, actually, not much when it's their own doing. I do feel some for her kid and husband, but it's not for me to rat on anybody." Joe got up from the stool and stretched. "We'd better get in line for the microwave."

Lola gathered up their cooler and followed. She wasn't finished, though, and maneuvered Joe to a table for two in the corner of the break room. Before he could start talking about fixing fences tomorrow, she jumped in.

"You think it would be ratting to turn them in?"

"What? Oh. Well, sort of."

"But somebody is sure to write them up before long. If we could give Sherri and him a warning before, it would be doing them a favor."

Joe made a face as he swallowed some of the warmed over spaghetti Lola had brought. "You can if you want," he said.

That wasn't what Lola wanted. "Well, suppose it wasn't the factory. What if you saw a couple rolling around, you know, in a school yard somewhere, and doing drugs?"

"These aren't kids, and they're not doing whatever it is where anybody can see them." Joe countered.

"Really, they are still kids, in a way. They've never grown up and learned responsibility."

"Maybe. But that's not our job. We put in our time, remember? What's it to you? Sherri ever done anything to you?"

"No. I don't think we've ever had occasion to speak since I showed her how to do the element test. It's not a personal thing. But it just seems to me somebody needs to stand up against bad behavior. If everybody just looks the other way all the time the whole country will fall apart. . . . I think we ought to go check on them. It's nice out today. If they've gone off somewhere, I'll just forget the whole thing. It's none of our business what they do somewhere else."

She gathered up their plates, hustled around with the cooler, and was ready to go fifteen minutes before the whistle. She was afraid Joe might find some excuse to beg off. He did have that resigned 'in service to Lola' look, but seemed to have accepted her deal.

They walked back toward the warehouse the way she had yesterday, by the loading dock. It was beautiful out, clear, cooler and drier than it had been all summer, and everybody was outside in the recreation area, pitching horseshoes or socializing at the tables under the big oaks. Nobody would willingly go into the dingy, filthy old foundry on a day like this. But the electric fork truck was nowhere around the dock or in the warehouse. She pointed Joe down the aisle next to the warehouse. Neither of them said anything until they reached the roll-up door, and saw the missing locks. Joe checked the floor with his penlight. The tracks were plain. He turned to Lola and asked, softly, "So what now?"

"We wait until they start out and then just happen to walk by."

"'Just happen to walk by?' Nobody comes back here. This line hasn't been used in years."

"Couldn't you say you were looking to scavenge a motor or something off the old conveyer here?" she asked.

"I'd rather not . . . uh-oh." They heard something inside the door, and then it started to roll up quickly. Lola dove behind a control panel, the only available cover, and only big enough for one of them. Joe had no way to get out of sight. The last she saw, he had taken her suggestion and was leaning over the conveyor with his penlight to look at something. She heard the electric truck come through and then stop for Wild-Eye to roll the door down.

"Hey! What's going on?" Joe asked. He would have to, given the situation. If he hadn't said something, Wild-Eye would have suspected a setup. This was going better than Lola could have planned.

"Just giving the lady here a little plant tour, man." Lola heard the sneer in Wild-Eye's explanation.

"Foundry's off limits. How'd you get the key?" Joe answered.

"Hey, man, I got contacts in the plant. I wouldn't say nothin' about this, if I was you." The fork truck buzzed loudly and was gone. Lola emerged to find Joe standing there, hands on hips looking after them.

"That punk! Threatened me! You heard that?" He reached for his radio.

"What are you doing?"

"Calling security."

"No, wait. You don't need to get involved."

"He threatened me!" Lola knew how Joe was when crossed. Stubborn and pig-headed like a man.

"Wait, damn it! It's none of your business. 'Meddling,' remember? 'Ratting?' Let me do it my way. Come on now, walk me back. The line'll start up in three minutes."

Joe growled, but put up his radio. Before they reached the QC area, Lola suggested, "Maybe you better go on to your shop. I was at the ladies' and didn't see you, Okay?"

"I don't see why we can't just . . ."

"That's all right now. I'll take care of things and you won't have to meddle." It sure was convenient having Joe's own words to use on him.

But just what would she do? If she turned Wild-Eye in now, the first person he would suspect was Joe. She couldn't make Joe Wild-Eye's target when he hadn't wanted to be involved in the first place. But beyond that, there was still the basic issue: was it meddling and ratting? And was Joe right? Here she was, an ex-mother – well, not really, but a mother who had no more chance to be a mother, the central core of which, after all, was telling others what to do. But didn't plant rules have some of the same force as law? Weren't they for the community good?

Joe didn't show up at break time. Lola looked out and saw him working a hundred feet away on the drive controller for the final assembly line. If she knew him, he had forgotten the whole thing, and was happily immersed in circuit boards and overload relays.

It wasn't fair that women had to wrestle alone with all the important human questions.

#

# McCutcheon Meadows

Ed first noticed pink ribbons on some bushes one afternoon in September when he and Marge came back from one of their occasional trips into town. Neither of them had seen surveyors, but a week later, stakes appeared along both sides of the road out front, with lot numbers on them. Big lots. The stakes were far apart. There was nothing he could do, though, until real estate signs appeared one frosty morning a week after Thanksgiving. Marge saw them when she went out for the mail and told him. He dashed out to get the number and called the real estate agent. Old Mildred McCutcheon had finally died and the estate executor was liquidating assets. Five acre tracts, "mini ranches," the agent said. "Priced to sell. A great deal. I'd be glad to take you out there. Are you from around here?" Ed wasn't about to tell him anything, and banged the phone down.

He sat and fidgeted at his desk for a few minutes trying to sort out the implications until the Waller woman dropped off her boy for his piano lesson with Marge. To escape the noise, he suited up – it was the first really cold weather of the season – and went out to the greenhouse. With no sun to collect, it was little warmer inside than out. He mixed sand and some of his best screened compost and tried to plant arugula and chard seeds in paper cups, but kept knocking them over with cold fingers. Trying to work was stupid when all he could think of was what the agent had told him.

He went out to check the fence, one of his daily routines. Since he had finally decided to go vegetarian a year ago, the fence had little to do but discourage deer. Ed stopped, leaned on the crooked locust post he had dug in 25 years ago, and watched the little creek that ran under the fence wire. A thin crust of ice clung to the mud and dead leaves along the edge. No telling what would become of the creek if developers started clearing the woods for "country estates," the other term the agent had used.

And the spring. It wasn't really theirs, of course. Leo McCutcheon had helped Ed build the catchment dam and lay pipe to it, 300 feet up the slope on Leo's land. Leo was a good neighbor, who had let Ed harvest firewood, mushrooms, and ginseng in his woods. But he had died 20 years ago. A developer would surely bring city water in to where they could buy a tap. Wonderful. Who wanted to drink city water, with its chlorine and fluoride?

"Shit," Ed muttered, as the consequence chain lengthened. Everything would fall apart now, the life he had built over the last 25 years.

Scenes from those years drifted by. Planting the fruit trees and stirring up Bordeaux mixture, the first strawberries, mulching and tending the asparagus beds, building the greenhouse onto the barn, experimenting with different kinds of compost bins, saving seeds, building the sunroom on the house for Marge's studio, the pain of overhearing Walter and Arthur complain to Marge about their "Neanderthal" lifestyle, the boys leaving for Vanderbilt, Walter first, and Arthur the next year.

Ed roused himself, jumped the little creek and continued along the fence. It wasn't long. Three acres didn't qualify as a "mini ranch," though they still largely fed Marge and him. Fences might keep deer out, but they were no protection against the encroaching "great American lifestyle," a disease, an epidemic of mass excess. He'd explained it to his students. Perfectly legitimate to point out social and economic trends in history classes, but parents complained that their impressionable darlings were being fed "liberal propaganda," and that young asshole who took over as principal apparently agreed. He "rotated" Ed out of the department chairmanship and then encouraged him to retire in ways that became increasingly obvious. Ed eventually had enough and quit in a loud and public fit. Nobody supported him, though.

The first "sold" tag, across the road and down two tracts, went up in December. Part of the old pasture. Two others, out near the intersection with the main road, appeared in early January. Those were level tracts, mostly open and easy to build on. On either side of Ed and Marge's land, the tracts were steeper, almost all wooded, and more challenging, though they had a striking view of Shadow Mountain's long ridge line. Maybe those tracts didn't sell because they bordered on Ed and Marge's old place, the original farm house, surely an eyesore to anybody buying in the new upscale subdivision. "McCutcheon Meadows," the sign out on the main road called it.

The rest of the winter, nothing happened. By early March, Ed had managed to push the whole issue to one side, at least part of the time. But then on March 21, Marge came back in from the mailbox with a report. "There's a big white station wagon with a 'First American Real Estate' sign on the door. Couple people tramping around over there."

"Where? Next to us?"

"Yes. North side. Maybe our yard will turn them away. It's really pretty shaggy. I know you don't care, but . . ."

"What it needs is a couple junk cars and a trailer," Ed growled. He certainly wasn't about to haul out the mower for the sake of the neighborhood. Back when they had kept a sheep, there was no need to mow. Having a lawn that needed mowing was stupid.

Sure enough, a week later, the dreaded 'sold' tag appeared on the sign next door. Ed spotted it from upstairs, the north end of the loft, Arthur's end, when he went up to raise the storm window for the season. He told Marge. Neither of them said anything for the rest of the day.

The following Sunday afternoon, while Ed was on his computer firing a letter to the editor blasting a reactionary columnist, he heard something turn in the driveway and looked: a big, black Hummer with lots of chrome. A man and woman got out. They were young and looked as if they had just come from church. Kids waited in the back seat.

Ed heard Marge at the front door. She greeted them and invited them in, being gracious and pleasant. She would know, after 40 years, not to call Ed out to be sociable.

"They're not your kind of people," she told him later. Obvious, of course. "Or mine, for that matter. He manages his father's GM dealership on the Athens highway. She runs around with the two boys, 9 and 12. Soccer, little league, some kind of martial arts classes, guitar lessons and so on."

"Where do they live now?"

"She didn't say. I suspect it's downtown somewhere. The kids go to Twelve Apostles school."

"And I suppose she'll run them in every day in that tank. Must be 17 miles one way. Idiots! Got no business living out here. I hate to think what kind of house they'll have built."

"He said they have a company and local contractor lined up. Log construction, he said, for a 'rustic look.'"

Ed made a gagging noise. "'Rustic look' my ass. Factory, precut kit. Fake. Excuse me while I throw up."

"She said they wanted more room for the kids to get outside. You could give them that, at least."

"Outside for what? They'll just set up an ATV track through their woods and a target range with one of those plastic deer . . . . Did they say anything about our spring?"

"No. They probably don't know about it."

Ed made a mental note to ask Sam, an activist lawyer friend, about the spring and rights to it.

*****

Marge and Ed heard the big truck arrive at 8 a.m., April 1. She'd just come into the kitchen to fix her oatmeal. Ed had been up since six, and was about to go out and set stakes in the garden. They froze for an instant at the sound. Then a quick look out the window confirmed the worst. A minute or two later, the bulldozer was backing off its trailer.

"Well. Happy April Fools day," Ed said. He went out to the garden.

At lunch, Marge fussed at him. "I know you're upset at what's going on over there. So am I. But that doesn't mean you have to be such an old bear. How are the peas doing? And the potatoes?"

For her sake, he managed to talk garden for a few minutes until the sound of the bulldozer shutting down brought back the immediate issue.

"That thing has been ripping up trees all morning," Marge reported. "Already, the light in our front yard is different."

"What's he done with the trees?"

"Pushed them into a pile just on the other side of those pines you planted along our north property line. You suppose they're going to burn the pile?" Marge asked. "Right there?"

Ed jumped up. "If they singe so much as a needle of my pine trees . . . ." He stamped out to the road. The bulldozer operator was eating lunch in his truck and listening to country music. He didn't turn it down or get out when Ed approached.

"What about that log pile? Are you going to burn it?"

"What?" He finally turned down the radio. Ed repeated, and added. "My pine trees there would light off if you try to burn those logs."

"Naw, it's too wet. They'll let the logs dry out first. Maybe when they come back for landscaping."

"Be sure to pull the pile back from my trees before you . . ."

"Won't be me, probably." He turned his radio back up, signaling that the conversation was ended from his point of view.

Ed walked back to the house, seething. Snotty punk.

*****

After the bulldozer, which was gone by evening, nothing more happened for a week. The waiting ate at Ed, though. It was like waiting for a predicted earthquake or avalanche and kept him cranky. Marge seldom complained, exactly, but she did occasionally try to bring him out of it.

"For heaven's sake, even if all the tracts sold and everybody put up big, ugly mansions and drove Hummers, that's not going to affect what we do on our land or how we live."

"I know that," he snapped. "But who likes to have stupid neighbors who represent the worst in this sick and degenerate culture?"

"Well, maybe our example will change their values. Look on it as an opportunity to improve the world."

"Yeah, sure." Ed knew he shouldn't be so negative, and knew he wasn't much fun to be around, but couldn't shake off the morose mood. The reality of what was happening continually sucked on his thoughts.

Over the next few weeks, Ed began to notice himself becoming forgetful. Little things at first, like going in to brush his teeth after breakfast, and finding the toothbrush wet from brushing a few minutes before. One sunny morning two weeks after the bulldozer, he set out to milk the goats at six, and made it halfway to the barn before remembering they hadn't had goats for over a year. That really rattled him. He didn't tell Marge.

*****

May 2nd, a large bucket loader arrived at seven and started work carving a basement excavation out of the hillside, probably 100 feet beyond the log pile. Ed went out to watch for a few minutes as it ripped at the rocks and dirt.

Marge was up when he got back. "Have they moved their log pile yet?"

"Moved? What? Do you suppose they're going to burn it? They can't burn it where it is! It'll light off my pine trees."

He went out and flagged down the loader operator to warn him to move the log pile before trying to burn it. It seemed he'd done it before, sometime, or dreamed he had.

After weeding and mulching the garden all morning, Ed came in at noon. The loader had just shut down for lunch, and Marge was winding up her group piano class. After the children left, he and Marge walked out to the road and looked over at the huge, gaping hole in the slope next door.

"Damn near a quarry," he said.

"At least they didn't have to blast."

"I wish they'd haul off those logs. I'm afraid some idiot will try to burn them right there. I'd better warn that yoyo driving the loader."

Marge looked at him a little funny. "Didn't you do that this morning when you went out?"

"Oh. Right. But this looks like a different guy; I think they must have switched off sometime since. Well, maybe the other one told him." It was a really lame cover.

That night, as Ed tossed and tried to relax his restless legs, all he could think of was how his little island of sanity would be drowned as a sea of everything stupid and pernicious rose around him. Strange thoughts mixed with not quite dreams that he forgot as soon as he was aware of having them. Being unable to grasp and track what was going on in his head terrified him.

*****

Construction went ahead with no letup all summer. Every day, the noise of trucks, air compressors, nailers, concrete finishers and saws, battered Ed. His thoughts became ever looser and less connected, as if the noise was destroying his brain circuitry. He could feel the disintegration progress, though he struggled to hide it and hang on.

Marge noticed. "I know you're not a talker, but these days you never say anything. Can't you even grumble and complain?"

The truth was, he couldn't afford to say much for fear he would expose himself. At first, he tried to tell himself he was just in a rut, and not exercising his brain in new channels. That was bad enough for someone who'd always been able to learn whatever he needed – from masonry to computers. But if he was honest, he knew it was more, and worse. He couldn't read and concentrate or focus. The news didn't make sense any more. Who was this Putin fellow? Where was Yeltsin? Sometimes he would fade out and forget why he was so upset. While he always came back after such episodes, he was terrified that the next time he might not.

What to do? The responsible action, Marge's certain recommendation, would be to go to some neurologist, suffer through a battery of tests, be told he had Alzheimers, and go on pills for the resulting depression. Marge would become his caregiver. Could anything be worse? Well, yes: being institutionalized after he got so bad Marge couldn't handle him. Why should this be happening now? He was only 63. His father had died of a stroke at 80, but was clear-headed until the last, despite a horrible diet and lifelong smoking. His mother had lasted on until 88, also clear as a bell until pneumonia took her away. But neither of them had to suffer the stress of having their world and values attacked at close range.

*****

The finished house was absurd. Nothing 'rustic' about it, despite the 'log' exterior. High, two story, pretentious and complicated, with lots of stupid dormers and roof angles, no attempt at any earth sheltering or solar potential. There were only two small windows on the south side looking toward Ed and Marge's.

Three security lights lit the whole neighborhood like a Walmart lot all night. Even darkness, along with the woods and land, was destroyed.

The family moved in October 1st, though the landscaping wasn't done yet. They established a routine. The garage door rolled up at 7 every morning. He left for work in his Cadillac. She left with the kids in the Hummer.

*****

Ed headed out to the barn about six, well before the October sunrise. This was it. He wouldn't forget what he was about this morning. There would be no drifting off, wondering what had become of the goats or chickens. Just to make sure, he had written out instructions when planning this, and clutched the note in his hand now.

He read the first line as soon as he was inside the barn and out of sight from the house, in case Marge was watching. She knew about him, he was sure. He had slipped up too many times recently, repeating himself and asking things he should have known. But this morning, he was on top and in control.

"Loft. Retrieve gun."

Ed found the rifle case where he had hidden it in the loft behind some hay. Marge had probably forgotten about the old deer rifle. He hadn't used it in years. He pulled it out and confirmed that he had cleaned and loaded it. But then he lost his way. Why was the hay still here? It was a fire hazard. He should fork it down. He could use the extra mulch soon and . . . no, he was losing focus, and referred to his instruction list again.

"Get gas can."

That was downstairs, next to the tiller. It was almost full.

"Have matches?"

Yes. He had actually remembered them earlier, when lighting the burner on the stove to boil his breakfast egg.

"Out back. Into woods."

He carried the gas can and rifle out back of the barn, keeping it between him and the house. He passed one end of the garden and spotted a cabbage that needed picking. He started to set the can and rifle down and do that.

No! With effort, Ed forced himself back on track and continued straight into the woods, which still provided good cover. Only a few leaves had started to turn and fall. He trudged up along the pipe to the spring, working his way around the back of the neighbor's 'mini ranch' mansion. It was a struggle to fend off sidetracks here, like checking the spring and looking for mushrooms. At one point, he set the can down and leaned the rifle against a tree and was about to grub around in the leaf litter to see how the ginseng was doing, but something wasn't right. This wasn't deer season yet. Why was he here with a rifle? And carrying gas around?

It came back again. Ed kicked himself for being an old fool and read the next instruction.

"Set up behind shagbark."

He moved on toward the vantage point he had scouted out and prepared.

The last line read, "Wait until they leave. Then finish things."

#

# Cinderella Tank

When the municipal water line came through on Harbor Road in 1934, the old tank on the hill behind "Fessler's castle," as it was called locally, was no longer necessary. It had served as a kind of standpipe. Water collected from the roof of the castle was pumped up to it to provide the pressure to flush the toilets and fill the bath tubs.

The tank, drained and cut out of the system, gradually fell into disrepair. Screening at the top corroded away and leaves blew in the vent spaces between the walls and the conical roof structure. The roof itself sagged more every year and the shingles on top wore down to no more than tarpaper tabs. The old walls held up, though. They were mortared native stone, probably two feet thick at the bottom and at least a foot at the top. The cylindrical tank was about 30 feet across and at least 20 feet high.

Local boys found the place irresistible. The tank was hidden in the woods on a hill 200 feet above and behind Fessler's castle. The stone projections on the outside of the walls were climbable, at least to the daring and skillful. Inside, the walls were mortared smooth.

One of the first adventurous, daredevil kids who had discovered how to climb the outside, had pushed the old screening out of the way and thoughtlessly dropped or carelessly fallen inside. His buddies panicked. Some tried to find a vine or a rope to rescue him, but they either found nothing suitable or couldn't climb up the tank to provide it to him. They were also afraid of being punished for trespassing – the property line in the woods above the tank was fenced and clearly marked – and assumed somebody else would rescue him and take the rap. The trapee therefore spent a frantic, tearful, and cold overnight in the tank while his parents fretted and called out the police and fire departments to search until one of the guilty accomplices confessed.

Local parents demanded then that the tank, as an "attractive nuisance," be securely fenced and secured. Old Gilbert Fessler, the grandson of the robber baron who had built the castle in the early years of the 20th century, had died a few years before, and the estate was in the hands of a receiver, who, after suitable legal pressure, had reluctantly agreed to take the demanded action.

The job was poorly done, however, and local kids soon discovered ways of climbing a tree by the new fence and dropping over. The tank was indeed an attractive nuisance. Neighborhood boys insisted on breaking in. It was a challenge to their nature. The receiver hired a caretaker/guard for the whole estate and posted ever more signs threatening ever more draconian prosecution for trespassing. But every effort to secure the place became another challenge to neighborhood boys. They soon discovered that the guard was passed out drunk by noon most days and seldom came up through the woods to check on the tank even when sober. So long as tank visitors didn't make too much noise during hours when the guard might be awake, they could use the tank freely. The necessary stealth just increased the tank's appeal.

Climbing the tank became a kind of initiation test for local boys, who established ranks according to how fast the climber could reach the top. The well-known story of the first kid trapped in the tank encouraged followers to bring ropes along. There were many instances of boys at the top playing the game of pulling up the ropes and extorting promises, threatening to leave those inside trapped. It was a great venue for practicing the skills of treachery, deceit, and sometimes diplomacy.

Neighborhood guys used the tank as a secret hideaway and base, a kind of lair in which to plot their subsequent adventures. Those adventures sometimes included enticing girls to the tank. Pre-pubescent groups of adventurous and curious boys were known to lead unsuspecting (or perhaps not) girls to the challenge of the tank; taunting, daring them to scramble up the walls and down inside onto the years of accumulated leaf litter to play "Doctor" and explore their gender differences. Older boys with more hormonally-driven motives would sometimes carefully prepare the tank with blankets and pillows, beer, and cigarettes, and entice their girls to the tank, hoping to use it for forbidden trysts and passion. Scheduling the tank's uses sometimes became a problem. One could not simply hang out a "do not disturb" sign without guaranteeing that heads would appear around the top of the tank peering down to inspect what might be going on inside.

The tank was thus a neighborhood institution for youth of all ages and genders. Paths led to it from Harbor Road up around both sides of Fessler's castle, and also half a mile through the woods from several access points on Bay Drive above. Everybody growing up in the extended neighborhood knew of it. Most parents did too, and every time they managed to intercept fragments of youth gossip and stories of nefarious activity at the tank, they rose up indignantly and insisted something definitive be done. But nothing ever was. A series of receivers, bank estate managers, and real estate management companies found themselves responsible for the un-saleable Fessler property. They paid for liability insurance, but without, in most cases, appraising the insurance agents of the tank problem.

But youth, as a generation or two rolled by, became more engaged with video games, rock music, cell phones, and text messages. Prowling stealthily through the woods to climb fences and scramble up old stone tanks no longer appealed. Even younger kids with little to do during summer tended to stay inside with their increasingly enticing electronic goodies.

The tank was thus gradually abandoned by its traditional clientele and turned over to nature. Its roof sagged and leaked a little more each year, the leaves inside composted down to rich organic litter, the fences rusted away, and vines and moss covered the stones. Birds found many places to build nests. Wasps, mud-daubers and insects of all kinds loved the tank as it disappeared into its environment.

Then, Gino Salvatore discovered it in 2009.

Gino was an artist and architect, out of work. No sensible person would hire him because of his wild, fanciful, and impractical visions, and his reputation for being, frankly, impossible to deal with in most respects.

He could, however, be amazingly persuasive, indeed mesmerizing, to rich, older, women. For one thing, he was devastatingly handsome, a classic Latin lover type. Possessed of a silky baritone, he sometimes broke into Italian as if forgetting himself in the heat of a compelling artistic inspiration. The effect, under the right conditions, was powerful.

In July, 2009, Gino managed to get himself invited to the summer estate of Margaret Franklin, the recent widow of Dr. Albert Franklin, a noted Manhattan neurologist. The Franklin "estate" was a pseudo villa on the harbor shore just below the old Fessler's castle, which, on the up side of Harbor Road, cast its baleful and deserted presence out over the harbor and several newer, smaller, but still substantial and exclusive harbor shore properties.

At the beginning of Gino's second week in residence, Mrs. Franklin had business in the city and left him to entertain himself for the day. He was restless. The creative juices were building up in his soul, stirred partly by his carefully concealed contempt for the architecture of the Franklin "villa." Fake styles of any sort outraged his aesthetic sensibilities.

At breakfast on the veranda – it was a beautiful day – Gino happened to look up and was struck by his view of Fessler's castle. It was hideous, and architecturally even more contemptible than his host's villa. It rambled over the hillside mixing one faux style after another, from Medieval to Italian Renaissance to Scottish Baronial. It polluted the visual landscape from all over the harbor and cried out for immediate demolition.

After breakfast, he got the basics from old Manny, Mrs. Franklin's groundskeeper. Yes, the castle had always been there and empty for as long as Manny could remember, well before the Franklins built their villa and the rest of the harbor shore properties were developed. Nobody could do anything with the place. It was built solidly into the hillside, and was by now quite unlivable without extensive and prohibitively expensive remodeling and upgrading. Even tearing it down would cost more than the resulting bare and steep property would bring, despite the view and the tony neighborhood.

Gino could barely restrain himself and set off to explore the property. The huge, carved and blacksmith-banded oak front doors were chained and locked. Signs were posted everywhere warning of cameras, armed guards, and attack dogs, though the place was obviously deserted. There were some signs of half-hearted vandalism, but the windows were ornately barred and even the service doors were well-secured. Gino had no interest in exploring the undoubtedly execrable taste represented by the decaying interior anyway, so he made his way around the outside to the back. He climbed the hill above the spires, gargoyles, and castellated turrets. The site, with its commanding view of the whole harbor, took possession of his artistic soul. Could this whole hillside be refashioned into a major work of environmental art?

And then he stumbled on the tank, its fence rusted and falling down, moss growing on the stone walls between the tangle of vines that had taken over the whole thing. There was no sign of the old roof, which had fallen in completely. Gino had no idea what it might have once been or that it was in any way connected with the monstrous abomination on the hillside below. This was totally different. No criminally misguided architect had planned this. It was primitive – or even extra-human, archeological evidence of something mystical, profound, and pure in its unpretentious simplicity. An ancient and majestic structure that nature was in the process of devouring and returning unto itself, as nature was designed to do.

The spiritual vibes were overwhelming. The old tank affected Gino like a newly discovered Mayan site, an ancient, forgotten mystery shrouded by centuries of jungle. This is what should stand out grandly on the hill and overlook the harbor. Gino's vision began to take form, like Creation on the first day.

The rest of the morning, he tramped all over the old Fessler property, familiarizing himself with terrain and views. Coming down for lunch at 2, he dug out a sheet of his sketching paper and began a map of the place, which he took back up with him after quaffing two glasses of Mrs. Franklin's fine Cabernet, and gobbling an apple and a baguette with _fromage_. All afternoon he looked, explored, visualized and sketched.

When he picked up Mrs. Franklin at the train station at 6:06, he was gushing a stream of half Italian visions that would remake the whole harbor environment, give it an artistic focus by transforming the old Fessler property into a monument to the power of the environment. The centerpiece, the shrine, would be the ancient structure he had found deep in the woods high on the hill.

"But what about the castle itself," she asked. "I've always thought it was an ugly old thing. Don't you think it's ugly?"

This elicited a passionate torrent from Gino. The castle, of course, must be obliterated.

"But as I understand it, old Fessler spared no expense in building the place, and they excavated deeply, and had armies of workers here for years pouring the foundations. Somebody told me once it would take a bunker-buster bomb to demolish the thing. And we couldn't have it tumbling down on San Cristobel" (Mrs. Franklin's name for her own villa estate). Gino might have been willing to countenance that, but couldn't afford to say so.

"Well, then, it must be covered," he pronounced. "The best way would be for vines to absorb and mask it. We must plant the most aggressive invasive species available, to swallow it whole. Nature should turned loose on it to attack and consume the vile thing."

"But it's all concrete and stone, Gino. Your invasives might cover it, I suppose, but it would take millennia for any biologic action to break down all that masonry."

"Fine! Let the process begin here and now, as our statement for the future," and here Gino switched over into one of his authoritative-sounding Italian diatribes, complete with elaborate inflections and gestures that left Mrs. Franklin both concerned for her safety – Gino was driving her Lincoln Town Car – and in the dark, since her Italian was limited and she had no idea what he was talking about.

"But Gino, that's all fine, and I too would be glad to have the old place gone or covered up, but exotic invasives aggressive enough to do that would spread and take over the whole neighborhood. We can't have that. I wouldn't want your bamboo or Brazilian peppers or kudzu leaping Harbor Road and infesting my property. And the neighbors would sue. You know what they're like. Why not just a huge canvas, artfully placed over the old castle and acting as a kind of apron or stage for whatever it is you've found up in the woods. That Frenchman – what's his name, Christo? – does things like that, doesn't he?"

This grabbed Gino. Yes! A canvas! Christo used acres of synthetic architectural fabric to drape landscapes or create fences. But a real canvas could be painted. Gino could see himself designing and painting a huge abstract mural which could make the message explicit, though of course in symbolic language. Draped over the old castle, it would direct visual attention to the focal point, that incredible squat cylinder. Gino still hadn't conceived of it as just an old water tank.

The rest of the evening, he and Mrs. Franklin worked out the practical necessaries. Or rather she did. Gino was concerned mostly with the canvas, and sketched furiously, trial after trial. From his point of view, the biggest problem was deciding on the canvas design. It must convey his message, but in subtle tones that would be both gripping to the eye and accessible without being blatant. The surface would undulate, of course, as it passed over the irregular shape of the castle and the hill behind it. How could the art on the canvas work with the high and low points to contribute to the message?

Meanwhile, Mrs. Franklin wondered what would be involved in getting permission to cover the old castle, the potential tourist attraction value, real estate business incentives, and possible grant funding for the project. She liked Gino. He was interesting and flattering to have around, and his project here was indeed exciting. But she was also realistic enough to know better than to commit much of her considerable fortune to his project. No, she argued, her children would not stand for that. The money would have to stay in municipal bonds and conservative mixed stock funds.

Many challenges emerged out of their mutual thinking, such as how to support the canvas across the long spans between the towers and pinnacles of the castle, the main roof ridges, and the hill behind. Hollows in the canvas would collect rain water. The weight of it would rip out the canvas. Either the hollows would have to be carefully planned and reliably drained or some kind of understructure would have to be built to give the canvas its own, hollowless, shape. Would the current owners or responsible parties, if they agreed to the project at all, allow the castle to support that understructure? Could they be persuaded to let the castle's awkward high projections be removed? Would they insist on access to the castle under the covering canvas? Surely they had their own hopeful plans for the castle and the property despite the fact that generations of such hopeful plans had all failed.

Mrs. Franklin, after a strenuous day in the city and an evening of Gino's intensity, retired at 11:30. Gino was a night person generally. His accumulating inspirations on this night in particular kept his steam close to the high pressure limit until about four, when he crashed on the couch, dropping his pen and latest sketch on the carpet.

Mrs. Franklin was naturally up and doing well before Gino. She gathered up the latest of his sketches and the earlier crumpled and abandoned inspirations, and made four or five phone calls to arrange a meeting with the current agent listing the Fessler property and the bank officers who were responsible for the property management. The former was so desperate to move the property that she latched onto the wild-sounding project enthusiastically. It would publicize and draw attention to the property. The bank contact was considerably more skeptical. But here too, the property had been moldering on the loss ledger for so long that he ultimately agreed to hear details. While Gino snored away on the couch, Mrs. Franklin checked with the local Chamber of Commerce and tourist bureau. Both were encouraging. Then she went on line and looked up contemporary environmental art projects all over the world and printed out documentation that might bolster the case for this one.

Finally, about 11, she decided to personally investigate the structure high above the castle that had so inspired Gino, who was still asleep. Mrs. Franklin was in her early sixties, and not a vigorous outdoors person. She was afraid of bees and other stinging insects, snakes, the possibility of falling and woods hazards generally. So she recruited Manny to come along.

At first he had no idea what they were looking for in the woods behind and above the castle, even after she showed him Gino's latest sketch. It finally came to him, though, half way up the hill beside the castle, as he stopped to let Mrs. Franklin rest.

"Oh, I know! It's the castle's old water tank. I was up there myself as a boy fifty years ago. It's still there? Well, yes, I guess it would be. Stone construction, after all. And he finds all kinds of artistic and environmental meaning in it? Ach. Each to his own."

The tank, when Manny led them to it, did not particularly impress Mrs. Franklin, though she knew Gino well enough to see how it might grab him. Manny muttered and grumbled.

"It was covered at one time. Looks like the roof's fallen in. There is a way to climb up there on the rocks that stick out, but the vines are so thick now you could probably climb them easier, I'd guess, if anybody cared. And you say he wants to make this a kind of beacon or lighthouse for the harbor? Mmhf."

Gino was finally awake – groggy and taciturn but awake – when Mrs. Franklin returned. He gradually revived as she told him of her success in arranging a meeting with the principals responsible for the Fessler property, and the positive reception she had from others. When she told him that what he had seen was in fact the Fessler castle's old water tank, it took him a few minutes of ranting in Italian to decide that this base nature just reinforced his initial impression of its special character. It was a Cinderella story, wherein something humble – a servant, in effect – ultimately outclasses its master. They had tried to hide it away up there, as the ugly duckling, until it emerged as elegant and totally in harmony with nature, unlike the gross and crudely ostentatious castle. When Mrs. Franklin happened to mention Manny's misinterpretation of Gino wanting to turn the old water tank into a harbor beacon or lighthouse, he was stunned, but recovered quickly enough to appropriate the idea as his own. "Why, yes, I'd been thinking of that very thing, a light to the whole harbor. And it would only be right, after all those years hiding in the woods behind the monstrosity out front."

So the project to rehabilitate the old tank to honor art, cosmic justice, and the environment, was off to a booming start. Gino, the artistic maestro, got to stay rent-free at Mrs. Franklin's through the summer and into the early fall, as he settled on the design of the huge canvas. Mrs. Franklin found a fenced-off parking lot at a currently shut-down factory owned by the husband of one of her bridge club members. Once the canvas arrived, Gino was out there in the hot sun of late summer, day after day mapping out and filling in the huge mural. Whatever else might be said of Gino, he was a hard worker when inspired by his own visions.

Mrs. Franklin had contacts in her fashionable and wealthy community, and in the city, where Dr. Franklin had been a notable philanthropist. Instead of trying for a grant, she sold the ropes that would hold the canvas in place; each would be named after a donor. The bank and real estate people agreed that the attention stirred in the artistic world to the old Fessler place would aid its ultimate sale prospects. Lawyers for the bank worked out a deal with the attorney representing the non-profit Mrs. Franklin organized as a production company. They agreed that the property would be reserved for art, and not shown to prospective buyers for three years. The production company would agree to publicize the project in national and international art periodicals and arrange maximum exposure. After three years, the property could be shown, but the canvas would stay in place until a sale closed. The bank agreed that the highest projections from the castle could be removed temporarily, and a canvas support system could be attached and supported by the castle. The production company hired an engineer to work with Gino on the details of preparing the site and spreading the canvas.

By mid November, the completed canvas was in place and Mrs. Franklin arranged a grand opening for donors, the art world, and the press at her villa. It was an unusually mild and clear evening. Gino, deeply tanned and bursting with himself, took early visitors out into the harbor on Mrs. Franklin's cruiser for the best view of his creation, which was indeed striking. As the sun sank, the tank light illuminated the whole harbor. (There had been some complaints about that from other harbor residents. The Coast Guard complained too. A final agreement on what hours the light could shine was still to be arranged.) Later, Gino guided guests by a whole wall of photographs documenting before and after and all the stages in between.

It was quite an event. The roofless old tank, still covered with vines and moss, and un-retouched except for the addition of its light, became a celebrity, honored far and wide. The local historical society affixed a plaque documenting its origins and functions. Low birth and undistinguished early decades were no hindrance to its accession to status and glory now.

#

# St. Cecelia's Beach

The beach at St. Cecelia's State Park was always best in winter because it was reliably deserted. I didn't care about sunbathing, swimming, surfing, beachcombing, or ogling the bodies. I came here for solitude, and just the beach ambience, whatever the weather conditions. St. Cecelia in winter could be cold, stormy, mild, sunny . . . anything was possible, even occasional snow and ice. It didn't matter. The spirit of the place, when I had it all to myself, had calmed my stress level and comforted me through many trials, losses, and failures over the years.

The campground back in the piney woods was also reliably deserted in winter. The park ranger station was only open two hours a day to register campers.

I had to honk. The ranger had fallen asleep leaning back in his chair, his feet up on the desk, his mouth open.

"Day pass?" he asked, groggily.

"Camping. Three days."

He looked at my ordinary mini-van. It wasn't an obvious camper, with a high top or tent or cargo rack on top. I had frequently slept in it, though, lived in it for as much as a week at a time when reviving my ability to cope with a world that I often found alien.

"There's no water," he warned me.

I nodded. "Power, though, right?" That's all I cared about.

"Yes. Ten dollars a night."

The off season rate. I paid, cash.

"There's nobody else. Pick your site and register it in the mailbox."

"Thanks." I drove in, and found my usual spot at the far end of the loop, actually at the far end of the little dead-end drive off the loop, the most isolated spot, the farthest from the toilets and bath houses, which of course were shut down for the season. There were a few porta-potties spotted around the camp.

I plugged in my extension cord, locked the van, and hustled out on the quarter mile woods trail to the dune boardwalk. It was already late in the overcast December afternoon. I'd have no more than half an hour to commune with the beach.

The trail needed maintenance. Pine branches swatted me in the face, and puddles soaked my shoes quickly. But the day was relatively mild, and still. Often, you could hear the surf crashing from my remote campsite, but today only the lightest breeze wheezed through the tall pines, and the ocean was at peace. I hoped to absorb some of that, without WiFi or even reliable cell phone reception. I had told nobody where I was going, and if anybody tried to reach out and touch me, they would fail. That was the whole point.

The sea might be at rest and the breeze weak, but salt air reached my nose while I was still well back in the pines. I stopped a moment to savor it. It was one of those smells that calls up all kinds of memories that aren't memories, exactly, but impressions, déjà vus, urges, joys and fears. So much of my life had been shaped on or near the land/sea transition that just being here exhumed me, myself, concentrated and stripped down or filtered out.

The lines of dunes had shifted since last time, two years ago. They had rolled back toward the pines. Did that mean the beach had widened? Or had the sea eaten it away? Probably that. The distance between the dunes and the water's edge was fundamental. If the water's edge moved in, so would the dunes.

The boardwalk started as soon as the pines stopped. So did the signs with their prohibitions: stay off the dunes; protect the sea oats, fragile native grasses, and wildlife; no firearms; no alcoholic beverages; all animals on leash and to be cleaned up after; don't litter; take out everything you take in. And so on.

I was taking in only a flashlight. No food or drink, no children, lotions, toys, or beach furniture, no reading matter, no electronic book reader, no camera, no cell phone or tablet. I had stripped away so much "civilization" I felt light on my feet, which hardly touched the weathered and splintery boardwalk planks. Sand covered those planks as I approached the dunes, but the boardwalk hand rails remained unburied enough to keep me headed toward the verge, where land and sea met.

Topping the dunes, the horizon opened out. There it was, the earth's watery cover, treating the beach gently this evening. The tide – only a foot or two here – was out, widening the flat beach considerably. The high tide mark was at least 100 feet in from where the ripples now petered out into foam and sank into the sand. That sand was smooth as far as I could see in either direction, with hardly a break anywhere from seashells, flotsam, trash, seaweed, crabs, clam squirt holes, or even birds. There were a few sandpipers down the beach, scurrying along, racing the advancing and retreating swash. And here and there a gull stood placidly on one leg, probably lulled into lethargy by the sleeping surf. Not enough breeze this evening to make it worth lifting off or to allow soaring. Covering the sky was a solid gray cloud bank, darkening to the east. To the west, I could make out no trace of a sunset. These clouds were thick and in control of the sky and what light remained.

It was just what I needed. Almost nothing going on as far as I could see. Which, from the dune top, was quite a ways, out to where the sea dropped over the earth's roundness and gray sea merged into gray sky. There was one ship, way out, but it was too close to the edge of darkness to tell what it might be, and too far away to make any difference even to me, hungry as I was for solitude. As long as I had the beach to myself, with no sign of current human habitation, my space boundaries were satisfied. Yes, far to the north, a gradual curve brought distant lights into view. But the population needing those lights were separated from St. Cecelia's beach by a major inlet. They would not bother me.

I sat for a few minutes on the partially buried boardwalk handrail enjoying the comforting distance to everything but the quiet slap-slap of the nearby ripples as they died on the sand. It was so quiet. Hearing is amazing when it doesn't have to compete with civilization. Every little squeak of the sandpipers – or possibly other, smaller birds I couldn't see – registered clearly. The sounds, the distance, and the presence of the enormous sea, so ancient and eternal, so full of life, started to drain away my fussy little human concerns and merge me into a larger reality, like the sea itself.

*****

Back at the van, some minimal housekeeping: plug up the lamp, space heater and hotplate, heat up a can of soup, and unroll and prepare my sleeping bag. The warmed soup – not very good directly from the can – stirred some bodily functions requiring a portapotty, fifty or sixty feet away. Stepping to that, I heard nothing and saw nothing outside of the brilliant light tunnel the flashlight carved in the dark. There could have been hordes of monsters, terrorists, murderers, and the like lurking in the blackness on all sides. But isn't all life like that? We see only what our local lights show us. All the rest is outside our direct perception. Our only knowledge of it comes through the suspect media glass, darkly, distorted, extracted and dumbed down. I was glad enough this evening to ignore what the van radio might have brought me, and to zip myself into the sleeping bag at what was probably no more than 8 p.m. No point in checking the time, either. It was dark. I was tired. Eager to let sleep anesthetize me.

The main things I was tired of were my thoughts, but they refused to be quieted. At first, I tried to visualize them as a whirl on a spinning flywheel, gradually slowing down and dying in the absence of input energy. It was impossible to deprive them of sustenance, however, and the whirl did not slow. Of course it was all in the past now. There was nothing I could do to change anything. But something there is in the mind of man – and of God, too, if He is in our image – that can't let go. Nor can we stop regretting the past and worrying about, fearing, or anticipating the future. It's all pointless, as sages and philosophers have taught us for millennia. But I was not entirely convinced. True, past actions cannot be changed, but our interpretation of them can, and that can bring comfort or anguish to those of us in the present who can't let go. And of course the future deserves thought so as to determine what we want to happen and how to realize it.

Philosophy aside, my thoughts centered on whether I was really alone and anonymous here at St. Cecelia's. The same quiet that let every bird chirp register on the beach, let every falling pine cone and rubbing or snapping branch jerk my ears around here in the campground. Most wildlife should be asleep for the winter, and silent. Deer, however, and owls and some other birds might be up and about. How about bobcats? Coyotes? Possums? Wild dog packs? I didn't know. There were no rangers on duty to ask.

Nor was there any law enforcement. The last ranger truck had come though about five, as I was housekeeping in my van. I assumed the ranger closed and locked the campground gate as he left. I was therefore sealed in for the night. Were I to suffer a heart attack or stroke, they would find my body sometime. The gate, however, was not more than half a mile from where I had settled in. Local toughs could easily drive to it, park, and walk in to see who might be foolish enough to sit, as a duck, for their depredations. I did have a handgun in the glovebox, but I was not about to sleep with it under my pillow. That would be too close to lethality. It would also compromise the sense of solitude I craved.

The other issue was who might wonder where I was, how intensely they might wonder it, and what investigation they might initiate to find me. It would have been possible. A few people knew I had previously come to St. Cecelia's beach. While I had been careful to wind up any unfinished business that might impel people to look for me, and had subsequently slipped away without saying anything to anyone, someone might notice my absence. They probably wouldn't do anything, though. As a divorced male with no family nearby, no girlfriends or best golfing buddies, no one depended on me, and I could disappear for a few days without anyone caring. I was a contract employee, and the nature of my work did not require close supervision as long as the end result came in on the bottom line. After a week or ten days incommunicado, questions would arise, of course, but I surely could satisfy my current needs before then.

The whirl kept spinning, but I eventually managed to drift off anyway. Just knowing the beach was nearby helped.

*****

Sometime in the night, I snapped awake. Suddenly, fully, for no reason I could identify. Out of the van's tinted rear window, I could see the half moon up through the pine trees, but the light was not hitting me in the eyes. There was not the slightest breeze, now. The pine branches framing the moon were motionless. It was cold in the van. I could see my breath in the moonlight. I had turned my electric heater too low to come on, but was still comfortably warm in the sleeping bag. I listened and heard even less than I remembered when I first turned in. What had waked me? Not a dream. Not any sound that I remembered. Not a lightning flash. None of the traditionally recognized senses told me anything. But something in me knew: my boundaries had been breached. I was no longer alone.

What and where was the intruder? I waited, eyes and ears open and tuned up. After probably ten minutes of nothing but background white noise, no changes in the ambient light, and only a slight slippage of the moon through the pines, I concluded my awakeness must be a random firing in my brain, a synapse spasm, a nerve cramp, or something equivalent. I shifted around in my sleeping bag and tried to let go again.

My eyes had just closed when a stripe of light, not bright or quick, swept across my lids. This was no brain twitch. I sat up and looked out and around. My swivel stopped at the portapotty. There was a faint glow from the vents at the top. So, someone else was here after all. I had heard or seen no vehicle, but they could have hiked in, I suppose, or come in a boat. St. Cecelia's beach was on a narrow barrier island with a navigable bay between it and the mainland. I hadn't been to that side in several visits, but remembered a dock over there.

Somebody who might attack me probably wouldn't stop to use a portapotty first, but just to be on the safe side, I wriggled out of my sleeping bag and reached up front to the glove box. The courtesy light in it blinded me momentarily, but I had grabbed my Service .38 and shut the door in no more than 3 seconds. Looking back toward the portapotty, the vent glow was still there. Chances are the person would not have noticed my brief light.

A minute later, the door opened and whoever it was emerged, following a weak flashlight beam. The light receded out to the campsite loop road and disappeared. Looking very closely, I thought I detected a faint glow through the trees and brush from one of the campsites, as if there was a tent set up there with a lamp in it.

A disappointment, I suppose, to have my absolute solitude compromised. But my supposed need was, after all, pathological. "Get over it," I told myself. Humans are designed to co-exist. Even me.

*****

Waking at barely morning, I found myself doubled up and shivering in my sleeping bag, which was rated only to 40 degrees. It was much colder than that in the van. I reached one arm out quickly and turned on the heater. It roared purposefully, but its output took a while to penetrate the bag to my body. By the time the van was warm enough to crawl out, condensation fogged all the glass. I found and put on clean underwear, and my flannel shirt, overalls, and boots. Grabbing a jacket, I slid the door back and dashed to the portapotty. On the way, I looked toward where I thought I had seen the tent glow last night and confirmed a small, yellow pup tent. No nearby vehicle.

Back in the toasty van, I prepared the simplest of breakfasts. The milk had an ice skim on it and the banana was almost black, but the cereal was untouched by the cold. I made do.

The sun was up and the sky a pale, humid, early morning blue when I emerged again, in a toboggan, a scarf, and gloves. The beach. The beach. I needed to be there for the morning view, and hustled along the path.

The surf sounded more active this morning, and I looked forward to absorbing some of its energy into my jaded spirit. Emerging from the pines, however, I noticed a person sitting on the dune-top boardwalk rail where I had taken in the evening scene yesterday. The person was small, either not fully grown, or, more likely, female, though there was nothing about the dress to indicate either. A tassel-less toboggan and gray scarf hid any possible hair and all face but eyes. Was this the tent dweller, who had beaten me to my morning on the beach?

Clearly, the person was enjoying the view, as I had, and partly out of reluctance to intrude and partly from my reluctance to interact, I considered turning around and going out to the beach by some other route. There wasn't much choice, though. If I went through the pine woods to the right of the legitimate boardwalk, I'd have to blaze a path not only through the woods but across virgin dunes in violation of the clear prohibitions, which I respected. I could walk back to the campground road and go out through the gate to the access road beyond. It paralleled the beach from the other direction. That would be a considerable walk, however. By the time I reached the beach there, the sun would be fully up and no longer casting the long dune shadows I was hoping to experience. The presence of the road was also offensive. Even if there was no traffic on it, the potential was there at any time.

I waited a few minutes to see if the person would move on to the beach. Most people would, and she (if that's who it was), was well equipped in boots suitable for beach walking. But she did not move. I would simply have to go by, and walk up the beach far enough to find solitude.

She heard or sensed me through the boardwalk as I started up toward her, and looked around. I could see no expression, wrapped as she was in the scarf. Possibly she was interested in solitude as much as I and resented my presence as much as I resented hers. I would respect that, and limit any interaction to the civil minimum.

She looked back out to sea as I approached, a good sign. Maybe I could get by with no more than a grunt. But five feet out, she turned again. No smile or expression on the few square inches of face I could see, but she did ask, "That your van?"

I nodded. "That your tent?"

"Yeah. What time do they come around?"

I assumed she meant the ranger, checking the campground. "I don't know. Just got here yesterday afternoon. The office is only open two to four."

"Um." She didn't seem about to say anything else, so I went on by, down the buried board walk to the beach, and turned right on the hard sand where the tide was coming back in. I was relieved. She wasn't a talker. Nothing about what a fine morning it was, how cold it was, or questions about what I was doing here. In the brief few seconds of our conversation, I had gathered no idea of her age, accent, attractiveness, or anything else. That was fine. All I needed to know was that she showed no more interest in me than I in her. Our mutual solitude seemed assured.

I hustled along, hoping to find a high dune from which to watch and feel the morning come on. I passed several because they were too close, and I would see her if I looked back. The one I finally settled on was probably half a mile from the boardwalk, and not as high as I would have liked. But it provided some privacy. The spot I chose to sit was just on the edge of the shadow cast by the nearby higher dune. As the sun rose, I watched that shadow retreat from me, surprisingly fast, thanks to the low angle.

It was cold, though. The sand I sat on was icy, and sucked heat out of my bottom in a few minutes. I took in the view, the ocean, near and far, and the horizon, a crisp, fogless line this morning where the sky met the sea far out. Last night's ship was gone, and I could sweep almost 180 degrees of uninterrupted horizon. Nearby, surf was somewhat more energetic than last night, but few waves generated any significant foam or crash. The weatherman would probably call this a 1-to-2 foot sea, fast chop rather than swells. The onshore breeze was clearly out of the north, and brought the surf in obliquely, so it rolled along the sand as it broke. Somewhere out there, more storm activity must have stirred things up. The water was gray, despite the blue sky, though as the sun rose higher, the sea would surely respond and reflect.

When my frozen behind could take it no more, I stood. Looking back toward the boardwalk, she was gone. Far down the beach beyond, there was a speck, marching quickly in the other direction. Excellent. We had divided the beach between us.

I needed to march quickly, too, and stir some blood, so I headed up the beach, trying to still my brain and channel my senses to appreciate the sights, smells, sounds, and feel of this, my native environment. I observed how the water my weight squeezed out of the sand returned into my footprints, the way the swash patterns changed between one wave and the next, how the little shorebirds seemed to know exactly where to sample the sand and the pattern of beak holes they left and the next wave wiped out. But beyond this kind of analytical observation, I reveled in the integrated sense of the whole experience. Some people get their highs climbing mountains or sheer rock faces, exploring caves, or hiking great distances through rugged country. Mine come from the subtleties of this usually benign merger of land and sea. Not always entirely safe, of course; there is no more violent place than the beach in a hurricane, and no more destructive phenomena than a tsunami. But danger is not normally built into enjoyment of the beach.

I walked for probably four or five miles, until the state park ended and private development took over the sand. Rows of huge three- and even four-story mansions with sea views abruptly replaced dunes. They were virtually all empty now, and 'For Sale' signs decorated probably a third of them. I could spew gallons of vitriol over this kind of desecration, and the sick values and economic incentives behind it, but there was no point. I simply turned away from the abomination and headed back where I came from, slower. It was better to appreciate the positives protected by the state park than to fume over the grossness of the free marketplace.

The sun was high, now, in a brilliant blue sky, but had done little to warm the air. I kept my hands gloved, though I did sample the water temperature once (considerably warmer than the air), and once even stopped to rescue a small crab that seemed to be in distress of some kind. I couldn't tell – was it sick, old and dying, or just disoriented by repeated lashings from the surf? I used a shell to move it up-beach, temporarily out of the surf, hopefully to recover. The tide was still coming in. It would be high by the time I reached the boardwalk.

Thinking of the boardwalk brought back thoughts of the person sharing the beach with me. The boardwalk was roughly in the middle of St. Cecelia Beach. A major inlet bounded her end. Unless she stopped somewhere, we might well meet again at the boardwalk. To avoid that, I climbed a high dune and scanned the beach ahead. There was no speck, no sign of any human. She may have given up earlier, from the cold, perhaps, and returned to her tent. In fact, with any luck, she might have packed up and hiked or paddled off before the ranger came around and required her to register.

I continued on to the boardwalk and went back to my van in the campground. The yellow pup tent was still there. Okay. I was determined not to think about it. Not my concern. After a simple lunch and a stretch-out rest to warm up with the heater, I intended to go back and do the other end of the beach.

My plans, however, ran awry. I fell asleep to the comforting, isolating roar of the heater. When I woke, I checked the van's radio clock, and found it was nearly 3. The sun was still shining brightly, but the angle was well down. I hurried straight for the beach, hiking briskly.

The tide should have been receding, but a stiff onshore wind was keeping it to the high tide mark, leaving no hard-packed sand to walk on. The soft sand above was more tiring. After 20 minutes, I began to question my plan. My initial pace sweated me up inside my jacket. The moisture seemed to suck out the bodily heat generated by that same pace. I had not pulled on longjohns this morning. My pants were reasonably heavy, but open at the bottom around the boots. Cold breezes kept coming higher up my legs. If I had some cord, I might have cinched the pant legs tight, but this was a remarkably clean beach, with almost no wash-up trash – one of the reasons I came here.

I lasted an hour, probably no more than half way to the inlet, before yielding to realities. I needed to get out of the wind, so cut over an old, unauthorized dune path to the access road and along it to the head of a trail that would take me back through some pine woods to the bay side of the narrow barrier strip. Walking was easy on the mulched path, and the dune ridge and trees cut the wind. Though the sun was quickly sinking and had never done much to thaw the day anyway, it felt warm here in comparison with the beach.

The salt meadows that opened out in front of me as I left the pine trees were also a kind of land/water transition. But this environment didn't have the same effect on me as the beach, where land and ocean confronted each other directly. Yes, the water on this side was still salt, or at least brackish, but it was enclosed, rather than free. Land had captured it, tamed it, stripped its potential to roar and pound. In a hurricane or storm surge, of course, the water back here could rise and assert itself over the land, but without the drama of surfside.

My trail wandered along the edge of normal high tide, between solid land and salt marsh. Today, with the onshore wind preventing normal drainage, water was high and there were squishy places where the maze of marsh channels almost touched the trail.

Probably a mile from the access road, I came to a boardwalk pier that extended out into the marsh, intended as access for bird watchers. The marsh was a rich environment for water fowl of all kinds, though I saw few today. Those that could migrate had already left for the season.

I walked out the pier several hundred feet before a small pavilion and floating dock ended this incursion into the marsh. Pulled up on the dock was a two-person, open-water kayak, turned over and chained to a post. It would have been half a day's paddle to here from the nearest landside put-in I knew about. Not that the bay, once it opened out beyond the salt marsh, was wider than maybe a mile, but there was no road making the land side accessible. The old kayak was scraped and dinged. The person sharing St. Cecelia's with me was probably an experienced kayaker and camper.

The sun was now well down. Shadows had lengthened and merged. It would be dark in the pine trees and a considerable distance to my van. I turned and headed back along the boardwalk pier quickly, kicking myself for not bringing a flashlight. Just as I reached the trail again, the person emerged from the pine trees, head down, following her weak flashlight. She jumped a little when she caught sight of me, hardly 20 feet away.

"Oh."

"Your kayak?" I said.

"Yes. It's still there?"

"On the float, turned over and chained to a post," I said.

"Oh," she said again, and I could see she was deciding whether to take my word for it or go check for herself.

"You headed back to camp?" I asked. "I've no light."

"Come on," she said after a moment, turning and setting off into the pine trees. Her flashlight was pretty dim, but I could follow her along on the trail without much trouble. When we reached the campground, I peeled off with a "thanks for the light," the only words either of us had spoken on the hike in from the pier. Our compatibility struck me as a little funny, that neither of us had the slightest interest in communicating with the only other human available. Perverse, perhaps, but it suited me, and evidently her too.

*****

The onshore wind that had picked up in the afternoon strengthened and roared all evening, shaking the van, even in the pine woods. It was still bitterly cold, as it had been all day, and the heater worked hard to keep the van comfortable. When it occasionally cycled off, I could hear the surf roaring. The lamp flickered as I sat and tried to read. All I could think of was what the beach must be like. Finally, about 9, I decided to look. If it was beach power I needed to revitalize myself, there should be plenty out there now.

This time, I slipped into my union suit before dressing in my pants, boots, flannel shirt, and heavy jacket. Before wrapping up in my scarf, I warmed it and the gloves and toboggan in front of the heater. I left the lamp and heater on, slid the door open a crack, and squeezed quickly out.

I trotted out past the portapotty and found the path to the beach boardwalk. My flashlight seemed an offense to the environment, the way it cut through the natural darkness. It also kept my eyes from adjusting to the dark. So once out of the pines, I turned it off. Surely I should be able to see all right in the ambient light. I had to stop, though. It took a few minutes before the dim dune shapes emerged out of the virtual black ahead of me.

The surf roar here was steady. Individual crashes were so many and frequent that they blended into something like the sound of a jet engine at two feet. There should be enough power on this beach to charge me for the rest of my days in a few minutes.

I made my way out the boardwalk to the dune top and sat on the rail as I had the first night. Peace was the motif then, and I had appreciated it. This was a far different scene. I had to hold onto the rail to keep my position against the wind. The beach was blasting spray and sand at me, as if to drive me back. I could hear and feel the mixture impinge on my jacket. I pulled my scarf closed to a slit and even then only dared open my eyes briefly. The sky was absolutely black, and so was the sea which joined it seamlessly. Neither emitted any light. The only faint glow came from the land side clouds behind me, reflecting distant town and highway lights. I could make out great billows of foam lifting off. The beach was taking a terrible beating. No wonder it moved around, and the dunes drifted from season to season.

After five or ten minutes trying to feel as rugged and strong as the environment, I turned to look back to see tall pines whipping around and streams of sand blowing landward off the dunes. I also saw a pinpoint of light on the trail coming out to the boardwalk.

It took me a minute to recognize it as my beach sharer's feeble flashlight, not nearly a darkness scalpel like mine. She was coming out as I had, drawn by the same power, probably. Going on and leaving, out of respect for her solitude and mine, was out of the question. I could not venture any closer to this roiling and violent surf. I was not ready to go back yet, either, so we would just have to put up with each other's presence.

She, too, shut her flashlight off after reaching the boardwalk and made her way slowly toward me. I had a hard time seeing her dark shape even though I knew where she probably was. She wouldn't be able to see me before practically stepping on my boots, so when she was still ten feet away, I whistled, thinking it might carry better than any shout would in all the noise.

It must have, for she stopped and turned her flashlight on me. I stood, as if to relinquish my spot. After a few seconds, she came on, probably thinking to go past me and out onto the beach. A few feet beyond me, though, the wind blasted so hard she had to grab onto the other side rail for support. She turned back to sit on it, across, and just a little ahead of me. Adjusting her scarf to a slit, the way I had, she sat there and took in the scene, ignoring my presence, as I tried to ignore hers. But just knowing someone else is in your space, no matter how isolated they are by conditions, destroys one's sense of solitude.

Conditions for being in this place – broken solitude aside – soon became intolerable. The sand and spray intensified. When hard little pellets, buckshot-like, of sleet joined it, the environment just became too hostile. I didn't need that kind of power. Surf was one thing. It was unique to a specific place, the beach, my beach. There was nothing unique about common sleet, and I wasn't adequately prepared. My clothes quickly began to crust up. I stood and headed back down the boardwalk. Once in the pines, I looked back. Dark as it was, I could barely make out the dunes, much less whether anybody was perched on top. Not my concern in any case, so I headed back toward the campground. I had to turn on my painfully bright flashlight to make my way quickly along the trail, looking forward to de-icing myself in my warm van.

As I came around the bath houses, my flashlight swept briefly across the yellow tent ahead. Something was wrong. I stopped and brought the light back to look again. A large pine branch had crashed down on it, broken end first, skewering the tent in the middle and crushing it. Had this just happened? At least I knew she wasn't in it when it did, a lucky thing.

I was torn. In one sense, it was none of my business. She was out here on her own, after all, with the risks inherent in that. But it was likely to become my business. When she came back and found her tent in such a state, she would need help. Would she ask for it? If she was like me, she'd be very reluctant and would explore all other options first. There weren't many. She might be able to salvage some stuff from her tent, but shelter was the real issue. The bath houses were well secured for the season, and the portapotty was a joke, well ventilated as it was.

Should I be a good Samaritan and go back out to offer help, or wait until she asked for it? She might try to tough out conditions on the dunes for a while yet, to prove herself. But the weather was quickly getting worse. Even in the campground under the pines, a mixture of sleet and snow was coming down fast, blown by a fierce wind. It was only a fraction of that coming off the ocean, but it was bad enough.

I turned and headed back on the beach trail, but had only gone a hundred feet or so before my light swamped the weak little flashlight coming at me.

"Hey," I shouted, over the wind. "Your tent's a mess. Branch came down on it."

She stopped for a minute before hurrying on past me without saying anything. I trotted along behind. When she saw her tent, she ran to it and first tried to pull out the branch, but it was firmly buried in the soil under her tent and didn't budge. She knelt down and unzipped the crumpled end to look inside. I also tried pulling the branch out, with no better luck. Then I pointed my flashlight in the tent while she fumbled around, pulling out a kind of duffle bag and a small cooler. I could see the sleeping bag was skewered to the ground and ruined.

She stood up and looked around, as if expecting to find someplace to regroup.

"There's nothing but my van," I said. "I've got room and spare blankets."

I could feel the reluctance, as she stood there holding her duffle bag and cooler for a moment.

"Come on out of the weather," I said, heading toward my van, fully prepared to have her not follow. But she did, and jumped in close behind me. I had left the lamp and heater on. Inside, out of the wind, felt warm, though it was probably only 55 or 60 degrees. I turned the heater up, stripped off my jacket, hat, scarf, and boots, cracked the door and shook the ice off them outside. She did the same. There wasn't much to say, and neither of us said it. The first words from either of us was her comment, "The beach was incredible."

"Yes it was," I agreed. "Amazing power."

She squatted there by the sliding door for a few minutes before digging in her cooler for an apple.

"I've got stuff we could heat up," I remarked. "Hot soup?"

"Sure. In this?" She reached around onto the front seat and handed my food box back.

The rest of the evening followed this pattern: absolutely minimal words concerning the immediate situation only. No more observations regarding the beach and nothing concerning her tent, Kayak, plans, herself, or what she was doing here. I'd certainly never run across somebody like that. All I could guess was that she was here for the same reason I was. But the range of conversation was so limited, I didn't feel like asking and told myself I really didn't care. To be honest, though, that wasn't quite right. Sure, I wished she wasn't here in my space. But I knew that was selfish. The guilt that always tags along with self-indulgence dug at me.

As for who she was, I learned nothing. No name, no origin. Nothing. I'd guess she was early to mid-thirties. Small, lightly built. Short, dark hair. Olive complexion. Perhaps Latina? No great beauty, but not ugly. I wanted not to notice these things, but overcoming the standard male conditioning is almost impossible.

Of course she learned nothing of me either. Again, not even a name. She showed no sign of being afraid of me or uncomfortable in sharing a van with me, but it certainly wasn't her choice any more than it was mine. We shared a can of soup, some green tea, an avocado and a couple of energy bars she had. Then it was time to turn in. The van clock said 10:20. Outside, the wind had dropped dramatically, but I could see snow coming down hard on the windshield, sliding to the bottom and piling up. I pulled out two extra blankets I had and handed them to her. The heater was keeping the van pretty comfortable now, so the blankets should be enough. She wrapped up in them crosswise between the two sliding doors. I cut the light, slipped out of my outer pants and flannel shirt, and crawled into my sleeping bag in my union suit.

*****

When I woke again, the light was weird. I couldn't tell if it was moonlight or first daylight, but in either case something wasn't right because the light was coming from below instead of above. Then I realized the snow was reflecting up whatever ambient light there was, moon or morning.

I also realized it was cold in the van. The heater was not on. I reached over to run up the setting, but it didn't turn on. Power must be off. How was my guest doing? I raised up enough to look at the lump of blankets.

"Hey," the blanket lump said. "Cold. No heater?" I could hear the shiver in her voice.

"Power's off," I said. "The breaker may have tripped from all the wet. Maybe I could run the motor, though it would take a while."

After a minute, she said, "How is it in your sleeping bag?"

"Not too bad."

"You got room?"

I was a little shocked, but our communication so far had been on the most basic level of immediate human need. That's what this was too. It would be the quickest and simplest solution to our problem.

"Come on," I said, unzipping the bag.

The blanket pile squirmed up alongside. The body inside wriggled out like a moth from a cocoon, and slipped in beside me. I zipped us up and pulled the blankets over us. She was small, and there was plenty of room. She was cold, though, and shivering violently.

"Sorry," she said.

She passed some of her shivers to me, but within a few minutes we had pretty much equalized and could wrap around each other without recoiling. Our mutual shivering wound down to isolated spasms, and then stopped. I felt her body relax and her breathing sink into sleep.

Well. So much for solitude. Would we be able to recreate it in the morning? Or would all kinds of cultural complications interfere? I tried the spinning whirl visualization again. The last thing I remember was being surprised that it worked almost immediately.

*****

The next time I woke, it was definitely morning. The sun was well up, and outside was very bright, thanks to the snow cover. My guest was still heavily asleep in full body contact with me, though through my long johns, and whatever she had on, probably the same. She was slid down so far, all I could see was the top of her head. Very strange to be sleeping with someone I knew absolutely nothing about. Even commercial sex with a prostitute usually provides more opportunity for personal interaction. Of course, that's not what this was. I had no interest in sex with this person. I'll have to admit the warm body contact was nice and possibly could be arousing under other circumstances. These present circumstances were by no means right, however. Too much baggage, too many hangups. I had come to the beach for the solitude to resolve problems, not to acquire more.

Immediate issues were pressing. I needed the portapotty, but it was cold in the van, colder still outside. I had only my union suit on, and the prospect of wriggling out of the sleeping bag where a warm body was wrapped around me presented all kinds of disincentives. I had to face the bladder, though, and do what I had to. My guest came to a little as I squirmed around to the zipper side of the sleeping bag and let myself out. Pants from yesterday were still damp. I had to scrounge up a grubby spare pair, and a different flannel shirt and sweater, since the jacket from yesterday was still damp too. I didn't bother with socks, or lacing up my boots for the short run to the portapotty.

On the way back, I stopped at the power box where my extension cord was plugged in. I pulled the plug and reset the breaker. It held. I blew on the plug and tried to wipe possible moisture off with my sweater, before plugging it back in. I heard the heater in the van start up. Maybe it would hold, maybe not. I dashed back to the van, slid the door, and jumped in. She was awake now. I saw a mop of dark hair, and between it and the sleeping bag edge, dark eyes peeked out. She wriggled away from the zipper side and started to throw it back to invite me in. But I had clothes on now.

"Oh," she said, when she realized I was not coming back and why. The disappointment in her tone was clear. I felt it too. But the heater was quickly warming the van and there was really no good excuse to resume our body contact.

"Couple inches of snow out there," I commented. "Lot of ice under it. Clear, cold, no wind." I felt the dark eyes watching me intently.

"The beach will be amazing," she said.

"Sure will. Do you have any dry clothes?"

"Maybe in the duffle."

I pulled open the bag and felt the underwear on top. "Seems dry. What do you want?"

"Shirt, pants, socks. How about warming them on the heater first?"

I found a flannel shirt like mine and dry pants, though I had to root around in some underwear first. This was rather intimate. Despite having spent the night with her in a sleeping bag, I harbored a little old school reserve that younger people probably wouldn't recognize.

While her clothes warmed, I found dry socks for myself, put them on and laced my boots.

"Breakfast?" I asked.

"There are some more energy bars in my cooler. I'll take one. And help yourself, though what you've got is more wholesome."

I handed her a bar and took one myself. They were almost frozen.

"What about your kayak?" I asked.

"Nothing I can do about it," she said, as I handed her the warmed clothes. "Time to check out the beach."

I made coffee and gobbled some cereal as she finished putting together a cold-weather outfit and ran to the portapotty. She was back quickly and drained the cup of terrible coffee. I added a second sweater to my ensemble, a dry towel for a scarf, an old flop fisherman's hat, and gloves. We left together, wordlessly, trotting out the path to the beach.

It was indeed a fabulous sight from the boardwalk dune. She sat on one rail. I sat across from her and we just looked, still wordlessly.

Ice and a little snow coated the dunes and their grasses, which had collapsed under the weight. The tide was nearly high and where the surf ran up to the icy sand, it steamed into a line of fog all up and down the beach. The ocean looked exhausted after yesterday's exercise. No more chop. Slick swells – no more than one or maybe two feet high, and widely spaced, several seconds apart – slid in and broke on the sand lazily. There was a light offshore breeze, enough for gulls to swoop, dive, and rise again steeply against a sky that was still pale morning blue. No clouds anywhere over the vast sweep of the horizon. Nothing else either. No ships or boats. No people. No vehicles. It was already too late in the day for any sunrise color, and the dune shadows were short. I had looked at the clock as we left. Nine thirty. We had missed what would have been the intense glory of the post-storm sunrise, but it was still pretty impressive. To me, at least, and, I gathered, to her. After a few silent minutes, all she said was "wow," quietly.

"Yeah," I answered. After a few more minutes, I was conscious of the cold rail on my bottom, and the need to be moving. "Walk?" I said, and held out my hand.

She took it before I realized what I had done, and we started off down the beach on the thin line of hard sand just below the high tide line. She kept my hand as we walked side-by-side, adjusting our paces and strides to each other. If anything, this was stranger than pooling our bodily warmth in a single sleeping bag. That was born of necessity and no other options. There was no real need for this now. But it felt natural. This time, we were pooling our mutual appreciation of the empty, winter beach. It was a narrow passion, far out of the main stream. In a way, it was not too surprising that we both had it. We were both here, after all. What else could have drawn us? Whoever else we were individually, we had the beach in common, and for the moment, that was enough.

#

# Nelson Furniture Manufacturing Company

Swoozey gave up for the night. It was full dark now. Traffic had petered out to hardly anything along this rural route, and nobody'd pick him up this late, looking like he did. Time to find someplace to hole up. His feet were soaked and sore. The old boots leaked, and his worn out socks just bunched up and rubbed the blisters raw. Going any farther was out of the question. This was old farmland, and there should have been barns, sheds, or chicken coops, but he hadn't seen anything for the last couple miles. Last night, he'd slept in a culvert, which wasn't bad, but he needed a bridge or something to get under now, since it had been drizzling or more all day.

A car went by. Swooze didn't even bother to stick out a thumb. Ahead, its lights showed a weedy old road with a rusty sign over it leaving the highway on the right. It had to lead to something, and from the looks of the road, whatever it was would prove to be abandoned.

Swooze limped toward it. The sign was pretty bad, but he could make out some of the letters at least. "Nels . . Furniture Manuf. . Co . . any, Inc."

Okay, that might do. Pretty clear nobody had been this way for awhile, so Swooze turned in and almost immediately ran into a high chain link gate. It had been bent and dented by cars or trucks bashing it. They hadn't got through, but the hinge side post was bent over enough that it had pulled away from the wire fence mesh on that side. Swooze thought he could probably squeeze through. Was it worth it? He could see nothing beyond where the road headed down a little and merged into the blackness. If it was an old factory of some kind, maybe there'd be a guard shack he could hole up in. So he took his backpack off and set it through the gap before wriggling through himself.

The old blacktop was so broken up and crumbly that tall, woody weeds with prickery stalks and bristly seed pods grew up through it. Swooze made his way along, feeling with his feet. The only light bounced off the bottom of the low clouds. It probably came from the motels and quick stops of the interstate intersection which he'd been hoping was closer than it proved to be. Back on the road, he'd been hearing interstate traffic ahead, to the south, for the last couple miles, but it still wasn't close. Sound carried too well in this kind of still, wet, October air.

It might turn cold any time. Swooze should have been in Florida by now, and would have been if that guy in the last town hadn't offered him a job helping him clear out and tear down his old barn. It'd been all right for a couple days, but by the third day the guy was getting bitchy because the work was going so slowly. "Aw, shit, I'll just burn it down," he'd finally decided. Swooze was glad enough to be on his way again with $85 in his pocket for food.

The weeds pulled at his sweater and backpack, which he had to carry high. He still couldn't see anything ahead. Chances are they'd torn down the old furniture plant long since. There might still be something lying around he could get under, though, so he pushed on through the weeds and brush.

Finally, up ahead he could make out some kind of looming structure, blacker than the surrounding blackness. Big, not just a little ramshackle shed. Surely there would be a covered loading dock or walkway, an outbuilding, maybe, even just an overhang. The drizzle was starting to thicken up again into real rain.

The roadway seemed to veer right, around the building, probably to a parking lot. Surely there would be a front door, though. Swooze cut off the disintegrating blacktop and pushed toward where he guessed it might be, hoping for a porch of some kind. He tripped over a curb and then his feet found a solid surface on the other side, a wide concrete walkway, he guessed, and clear, with no weeds or brambles. It was hard to judge distances in this darkness. He hadn't thought he was that close to the building, but suddenly he practically bumped into it at what was surely the main entrance.

No porch, but apparently no door either. So Swooze stepped inside, out of the rain. This was probably a kind of lobby, or reception area. Fine. Too bad he had no light of any kind. The last time he'd pulled out a cigarette, his lighter didn't work. It was real dark in here. Looking around, he could just barely make out what appeared to be an opening to a slightly lighter area, probably a doorway out into the plant. He could only see it looking to the side, a trick he'd learned back when he was working on the ore boats on the Great Lakes. Sometimes it got pretty dark out on the water, and the only way you could spot a light through the fog was not to look at it.

Swooze managed to open his backpack, eat a couple candy bars, and spread out his two blankets on the old carpet. He had no idea what time it was, but he was tired, his feet hurt, and it was time to be off them. On the floor, he felt around in his immediate vicinity, but found only some old papers, nothing that would do any better than his backpack as a pillow. This was hardly the Ritz, but Swooze had slept in worse places. He pulled off his boots and soggy socks, massaged his feet, lay back and soon drifted off.

Sometime later – he had no idea how long – he must have rolled out from under his blanket. The cold air on his feet and legs had waked him. Outside, the rain had stopped, but it was still pitch dark. He could see sky through the front opening, and clouds scudding across it, but that was all. There was some breeze, even in here, and it was colder than when he'd come in.

Before groping around to straighten his blanket and wrap up again, he had to get up and wiss. That's probably what helped wake him, too. Stepping from the main entrance he could see a little more. This really was a big old factory. Odd that it had just been left like this.

Drained out, Swooze went back to where he had left his blankets. They weren't there. Nor was his backpack. On hands and knees, he groped around the whole area where they had to be, finding nothing. It made no sense. Shit. They told him at the VA rehab place that's what would happen if he ever went off his meds. "Disorientation syndrome," they called it. He'd either forget where he was supposed to be going, or, if he remembered that, he'd get lost trying to get there or trying to get back. Twice, he'd gone AWOL, not because he wanted to, but because he didn't have a clue where his unit was. Things just didn't work right when he was having one of his spells. He didn't hear voices, like some of those other nut cases, but he couldn't count on anything making sense, and sometimes things that did make sense turned out to be his imagination. Episodes like this led to paranoid panic attacks, and increasingly bizarre behavior that finally got him a medical discharge.

Once out of the service and rehab he'd improved on meds, enough to hold a job and lead a normal life for a while. But a 'normal life' sucked. It was almost as bad as the military. A steady job, a girlfriend, and a kid with her felt like the brig. He was a free spirit, a travelin' man, not the type to be tied down. So he'd left, three years ago. The meds ran out soon after, but the shrinks were wrong; he'd been fine ever since, though there was definitely something wrong here. He knew he'd left his blankets and pack somewhere ten or twelve feet in from the front entrance. He could be a little off, maybe – it was very dark, after all – but not that much. He had to find his stuff or he could forget sleep, cold as it was.

So he stood up and shuffled all around where he knew he'd come in and settled down. He was careful. His bare feet were sore enough without being cut up stepping on broken glass or anything sharp. Using the open front door as an orienting lighthouse, he spread out gradually in a kind of grid, as best he could tell, covering every part of the room, even places where he knew he hadn't left his stuff.

The room was quite large. It had probably served as a product showroom as well as a lobby. Outside of the few papers on the floor, some rumpled-up places in the carpet, and bare spots where the carpet felt as if it had been ripped up off the slab, he found nothing of interest as he shuffled back and forth from wall to wall. The opening he'd seen where a little light came in seemed to be the entrance to a hall rather than a doorway to another big area with windows. He could see nothing down it except the faint light where the hall probably turned toward a window. Swooze didn't need to explore that way. His blankets and backpack couldn't have run off by themselves.

Or could they? The hall seemed to be the only other way out of the lobby or showroom where he was. If some creature, like maybe a raccoon, had carried off his stuff, that's the only route they could have taken. Swooze was standing right beside the front entrance when he stepped out to wee, and would surely have noticed anything coming out carrying his stuff.

The only other possibility was that whatever or whoever had gathered up his stuff was still in the room and moving around to avoid his search. But he would have heard any movement, and why would an animal do that? The few candy bars in his backpack would be the only attraction, and he would certainly have heard them being ripped open. All right, so it didn't make sense. Maybe he was having one of his spells. He'd just have to sleep it off and wait until morning to spot his stuff. No sense getting all up tight and losing it over anything right now. He was freezing. Maybe that was the problem: cold brain.

He had to find a way to warm up. The only possible cover would be some carpet. He shuffled to where he had remembered finding ripped up edges. Ripping up another large chunk wasn't hard. The old carpet was pretty rotten. He rolled a smaller chunk into a kind of pillow. Backing up to one of the inside walls away from the front door and breezes, he bedded down again. The carpet cover was stiff and heavy, but big enough he wouldn't roll out from under it. It took a while to drowse off, but eventually, when he heard nothing but a few lazy-sounding late-season crickets and the distant interstate traffic, he slept.

*****

First light woke him. The first thing he saw, right where he'd left them, were his backpack, boots, and blanket. How he had missed them in the dark last night was still a mystery, but he wasn't about to dwell on it now. Outside, the sun was up just enough to turn receding clouds pink. It would be a clear, cold day. Swooze was barely warm enough under his carpet, and reluctant to get out from under it, but he was thirsty and needed to look around for some clean rainwater to refill his empty water jug. His feet, though, were stiff and sore, worse than the night before, and the thought of pulling his probably still wet socks back on and stuffing his feet into his boots was something he couldn't face. Maybe he'd explore a bit inside on the carpet first. There was the hall he'd noticed. He stepped along it and looked into the first office that opened off it.

The place wasn't badly vandalized, probably because it was so far out in the country and pretty well fenced off. Most of the office furniture was gone, but a broken down chair still sat on the stained and faded carpet. A window looked out front on the weeds he'd pushed through last night. In the distance, probably almost a half a mile away by the road, he could make out the gate where he had come in.

The second and third offices were similar. The fourth, though, must have been the head honcho's. It was bigger and had a window to the side as well as front. But the interesting thing about it was that someone was or had been living here. Whoever it was, probably a bum like Swooze, had left a sleeping bag that didn't look too bad. The backpack was the kind with a frame, like serious hikers used. There was a pair of decent hiking boots, too, and an assortment of clothes – a jacket, folded underwear, even socks. Dry, clean socks! They looked real good. He tried on one of the boots. Maybe a little big, but that was okay. And in a cardboard box in the corner of the room was an assortment of canned food, a box of cereal, and a big bottle of juice. Cool! Beer or some hootch would have been better, but actual food was all right. Who was this guy, and where was he now? Where had he gone without his boots and jacket? Could Swooze get away with helping himself and sneaking off quickly?

That might be risky. The guy could be a hunter with a gun. Of course a hunter might only come out on weekends, and Swooze had the impression it was now Wednesday, or maybe Thursday. He looked closer at the sleeping bag. There was mouse poop on it, and some big old dead bugs, not squashed. It hadn't been slept on for possibly a week or more. Still, the owner might show up at any time and be pissed to see Swooze carting off his stuff. Maybe it would be better to check out the area first. He would need to borrow the socks and boots for that, though.

He quickly put them on and headed back down the hall to where a door on the other side looked as if it might lead out into the plant. But it was locked. Swooze went back to the lobby, hid his stuff under his carpet blanket, grabbed his water bottle, went out the front door and headed right, through the wet weeds, around the plant building. It was cold. Swooze wished he had borrowed the jacket too, but this shouldn't take long. He just needed to go around the plant quickly to make sure there was no easier, back route into it, no well-worn paths somebody might come along at any time, no camping trailer with a caretaker or guard living in it, that kind of thing. And he still needed water to drink. A nice clean puddle would do.

There wasn't much on this side. Turning the corner, the blank concrete block wall continued with only some small windows well off the ground. Swooze was looking for a downspout from the roof that might still be running from last night's rain, but there was nothing like that.

The back of the plant, though, had much more to look at. There were a couple of weird conical towers on legs high enough for a truck to run under. Big ducts from the plant back wall led to the tops. Probably sawdust collectors. Various other ventilation ducts exited the building, and pipes ran back to tanks. And finally, there was a downspout, emptying into a culvert. It was still dripping fast enough for Swooze to get a drink and fill his bottle.

Next to the downspout was a loading dock with various rusty old junk on it, probably stuff pulled out of the plant when it closed down. The two roll-up loading dock doors were down and locked.

So far, Swooze had seen no paths, dirt bike trails, matted down weeds, or anything that might suggest recent human activity. Rather, vines and brush were taking over everywhere as you would expect. The place hadn't been shut down that long, judging from the overgrowth. Probably not more than three or four years.

He turned the corner beyond the loading dock and found a regular metal door standing open, probably the main employee entrance. He stepped inside and looked around at the cavernous interior of the old plant, where flexible sawdust pickup ducts dangled from a tangle of overhead beams, ducts, and pipes. The machines had all been moved out. Great big concrete floor. It seemed a shame that it wasn't used for something. There were a few wet spots on the floor from roof leaks, but basically, the building wasn't bad. With a little work, it could be turned into a great skating rink. Again, no sign of vandalism or any other human activity.

Rather than continue his search outside, Swooze went in and wandered around, finding the old locker room, bathrooms and showers, what had been a snack bar before the vending machines had been pulled out, an area with high shelves that looked as if it had been a warehouse for lumber or finished products, all the kind of typical industrial stuff Swooze remembered from when he'd worked briefly at the auto parts plant in Milwaukee. Trash barrels were mostly empty. Sinks and toilets in the bathrooms had been drained when the water was shut off. There were no signs of any activity since the place closed. This would be a cool spot to camp out for a while, if only he knew about the guy using the front corner office.

Swooze headed back toward the front, past offices probably used by people in maintenance, shipping and receiving, and so on. He found the main door between the plant and the administrative offices up front, the one he thought he'd found before in the hall. It had been locked on the hall side. But it opened easily enough now. He checked the hall-side handle. It wasn't locked. Opening it from the plant side must have unlocked it.

He headed back down the hall to the big corner office, looking forward to some breakfast, since he'd checked the place out and found no one around to complain. But the office was empty. No sleeping bag, backpack, clothes, or food box. What the hell? This was the right office, wasn't it? The windows looked out on what he remembered seeing before. The stuff must have been there earlier. He quickly checked the office next door, and there was the stuff, arranged just as he had seen it before in the corner office.

Was he having one of his spells again? Or was some wise guy jerking his chain? Moving stuff around, hiding it from him when he wasn't looking?

Swooze was pissed. If some phantom of the factory was sneaking around here playing games with him, he must be crazier than a coot, and Swooze wasn't going to worry about him. He knew about crazy people. Most of them were too screwed up to be dangerous. If this one was too timid to come out and show himself, well, fuck him.

He quickly put the jacket on, gathered up the sleeping bag and clothes and what cans and foodstuff he thought might fit, rolled everything into the backpack, hoisted it up and headed around to the lobby toward the main entrance. He was leaving.

Except that the main front entrance door, a big glass panel, was now shut. Firmly. Swooze shook it, to no effect. He couldn't see a deadbolt or lock. Had it blown shut and been caught by something in the base hinge or the closer at the top? There was no question it had been open last night and earlier this morning. That's where he'd been in and out a couple times.

He headed back down the hall to the offices. Surely some window would open. No. All sealed tight. Where was that broken chair he'd seen there before? Could he use it to smash out a window? No sign of it now. Well, there was still the plant back door he'd come in a few minutes ago. He found the door from the hall to the plant, went through and trotted back across the plant floor toward the corner door. But now it was shut and locked.

He was locked in. There was no question now about hallucinating. This door had been open and he had come in through it earlier, just as he had come in the open main front entrance last night. These facts were certain.

Swooze was now seriously pissed. He kicked at a pile of old rags and trash beside the door. It didn't fall apart and scatter as easily as it should have. The light was poor, but Swooze looked closer and found he was seeing a half-decayed body, shriveled, but with raggy clothes and hair, and bare feet.

He couldn't scream. He turned away and ran back to the hall door. It was now locked. The only windows back here in the plant were too high to reach. He looked around for something heavy, something he could use to smash down the door. But all loose stuff had been moved outside to the loading dock. He ran to the locker rooms, where he thought he remembered frosted casement windows that he might squeeze through.

There were two. Chicken wire was embedded in the glass, but the window locks and operator cranks worked! He opened both panels of one window, threw the backpack out and managed to squeeze through himself. It was a six foot drop to the ground. As Swooze reshouldered the backpack, he called out, "Screw you, motherfucker!" He headed around the plant to the driveway and ran through the weeds out toward the distant gate.

It didn't seem to get any closer, though. The brushy land he ran through seemed to stretch away in front of him. He looked back, and found the old factory was as close as ever. He was conscious of his feet hurting and looked down and saw that he had his old boots on, and he wore no jacket. Reaching around to feel, the backpack was his old, damp, torn-up cloth model.

#

# The Corinth

To some people, a certain special place is essential to their karmic comfort. My friend Harold Underwood was like that. His special place was the school/church we had both attended growing up.

Built by the county school system in 1930, it served as a two-room school for many years. The elementary classes, 1-6, were in the basement, and grades 7-12 were upstairs. Neither division ever had more than 20 students at any one time. There was a coal stove upstairs and another downstairs, a hand pump over the well outside, and a privy in the back corner of the lot.

A little group of country Baptists paid a nominal rent to the school board to use the building on Wednesday evenings and Sundays. They called it the Corinth Baptist Church, and by association, the school was informally known as the Corinth school, and the building itself simply as "The Corinth."

Harold and I both had been going to the Church with our families for several years when we started first grade at the Corinth in 1940. We walked together the half mile (a little more for me) to school every morning and back every evening. We were the oldest in our respective families. As our siblings – my two little sisters and Harold's three younger brothers – grew old enough to start school, they joined us.

I took on the role of time-keeper, first for Harold, and then also for our younger siblings. I would leave home on the dot at 7:16 and reach Harold's by 7:22. Standing in the road out front, I would holler for Harold. "Come ON, Harold. We'll be late." Actually, I always built 5 minutes into the schedule to allow for his chronic slowness. He hadn't learned to tell time until just a year before we started first grade, and never did seem to realize that it rolled on at a steady pace whether he did or not.

On Sunday mornings and most Wednesday evenings, my father would sweep out the pickup truck, load my family and Harold's in, and drive us all to church. For weeks at a time, the Corinth was the only place Harold and I traveled to. Especially in the early years, while WWII was raging, we had little first-hand experience with the outside world.

We weren't aware of our restricted life, however. We had a radio, and got a weekly newspaper to supplement our education. We did what kids always did at the time: chase around outside, climb trees, tease, fight and get into trouble, shirk chores, and so on. In the fall and spring, we did a lot of this after school in the school/churchyard with the other kids and away from parents who might demand homework or chores. Harold was always the last to leave. He spent more time in and around that place than the rest of us. Even on Saturdays, he would often try to get me to go with him to the Corinth. He seemed drawn to it, as if that's where all life was.

One Saturday – I guess we were 9 or 10 – he went to the building by himself. I had other things to do, and wouldn't go. About an hour later he showed up where I was working on my bike, trying to patch an inner tube. He was breathless and sounded conspiratorial.

"Hey, I found a window that's not shut tight and locked," he said. "We could get in!"

"So? Don't we spend enough time in there as it is? We've got Sunday school and church there tomorrow."

There wasn't anything in the building that I cared about or hadn't seen, but Harold was motivated. "Come on, we could hide Miss Swarth's paddle! Or listen to Mr. Jackson's records." Miss Swarth was our downstairs teacher, who occasionally wielded her instrument of corporal punishment – once, the year before, on Harold himself. Mr. Jackson, the upstairs teacher, played records of popular crooners and jazz bands to his students during recess when they couldn't go out because it was raining or too cold. I think it was his way of fulfilling the music education requirement. The records weren't anything that excited me or Harold either, so far as I know, but the adventure of breaking into the locked Corinth on a Saturday had grabbed him. I went along, bringing my father's tire iron to help pry the window open.

It was a basement window and inside of some bushes, so we could open it and crawl in without being seen. Once inside, I was nervous, and anxious to be out and gone again as soon as possible, but Harold wasn't satisfied to hide Mrs. Swarth's paddle or play a couple records. He wanted to dig into everything. After 40 minutes, I couldn't take the tension. I showed Harold how to put the window back down the way we'd found it and left, relaxing only after I was well away from the place.

Several hours later that afternoon, Harold showed up in my yard again. He was pale and trembling. "The window broke as I was putting it down. Glass all over inside. She'll know!" He was referring to Miss Swarth, whose paddle we had secreted away in the back of the coat closet upstairs.

"But they won't know who," I pointed out. "Nobody saw you, did they? All you have to do is find a way to put the paddle back tomorrow morning before Sunday school."

"I hid her grade book upstairs in the pulpit. A joke, you know. On Brother Caleb too."

There was no chance of retrieving and returning that without being seen.

"Harold, you jerk!"

"You won't tell, will you?"

I didn't. We were vigorously interrogated by both teachers – Mr. Jackson had noticed his records were out of order – and by Brother Caleb and one of the deacons. I denied any knowledge, lying for Harold's sake. But he broke down utterly into a blubbering puddle of guilt, part of it because he was lying to save me. His punishment was to confess publically, before the congregation and the combined school divisions, the error of his ways.

Harold went through other emotional traumas associated with the Corinth. He wasn't the greatest student, and after we moved upstairs, Mr. Jackson threatened to hold him back between 7th and 8th grade unless he shaped up. The fear of flunking 7th grade really grabbed him and threatened his self image. He tried. I helped him with his studies as much as I could, and he moved up into 8th grade with me and one other kid, Molly Smith.

Two years later, Harold, like me, began to turn onto girls. There wasn't much of a field to choose from in our school, where the total upper division included about 12 girls, spread out over 6 grades. Molly was just too gross. Her big sister, Susan Smith, and Christine Bowen were attractive enough to stir boy urges and fantasies, but they were both a year ahead of us, and so probably out of reach. Harold was desperate, though, and managed to convince himself that poor Alice Jackson, in the grade behind us, would turn out to be a real doll when she developed some. She was still completely shapeless, but at least as desperate as Harold, and as soon as he showed her the slightest interest – by teasing her about her bobbed haircut and trying to steal the peach her mother had packed – she launched an aggressive attack. Harold was totally thrown off guard when she managed to maneuver him into some bushes and tried to kiss him. He told me all about it as we walked home after school, all the intimate details about how she still tasted like the peach and smelled like something he didn't recognize. "And her mouth was wet, you know, and sort of cold like a dog's nose. Of course it wasn't very warm out, and I was probably cold too. But her body was hot enough, and I think she actually does have some titties. I could feel them when she pressed against me. How do I know when I can get away with feeling her up?"

As if I was an expert. "It sounds like she's pretty horny and ready any time. You ought to wait for a day when your hands aren't freezing, though."

I heard all about Harold's adventures with Alice for a few days until she must have decided he wasn't worth her efforts. Again, he was clueless. And crushed. "Was it something I did wrong? She was pushing her tongue in my mouth and I sort of bit it, I think. She was still breathing hard, but that stopped the kissing. And then this morning she wouldn't even look at me."

Harold had other amorous adventures, later, with Martha Grogan, in the same grade as Alice. She wasn't nearly as assertive, but communicated better and taught Harold a lot about girls and other stuff. I got it all second hand from him. My own adventures in the girl department were mostly with a cousin of mine who came to live with us for a few months when her mother got sick. She didn't go to school with Harold and me.

Harold had no life apart from the Corinth. While his school work was barely adequate, he was pretty good at memorizing Bible verses and won a couple prizes right before he was saved and baptized, between his junior and senior years, in the creek right beside the church. The whole experience for Harold was indeed transformational, as it's supposed to be. His senior year, he swore off girls and cleaned up his language, dropping words that Martha had taught him. I was the slow one in church, and held off the spirit for another year.

We graduated together. I got a part-time job at a farm supply store down town and took classes at the trade school in construction. I bought an old Dodge for $15 to commute. For the summer and fall, Harold worked at a sawmill just up the road. Then he enrolled in the nearby state university in the spring term. I say 'nearby,' but it was actually 23 miles away. He bought an old bomb of a Ford and commuted to classes, taking education courses. Almost every evening he would come over for me to tinker with his car to keep it running. Harold had no skills at all with tools and machines, but he was enthusiastic about his courses, which surprised me. I didn't understand at first.

"You're taking what? 'Classroom methodology?' What the heck is that?"

"You have to know how to keep order before you can teach them anything. These days, you can't just use the paddle, like Miss Swarth."

"I wonder how long the old bat will hang in there?" I said.

"Long enough for me to replace her, I hope."

"You really want to be a teacher, Harold?"

"That's the plan. And with any luck, I'll take over at the Corinth. It'd be great. I could live at home and walk to school."

Living at home was an anti-dream for me. I couldn't wait to leave. But Harold wanted to come right back to where he'd grown up and continue with as many of the routines as he could. He was faithful with his family at the Corinth Church every Sunday, and even volunteered to teach Sunday School to the little kids. He dropped in to visit Miss Swarth and Mr. Jackson often.

Harold's plan worked. He did his practice teaching with Miss Swarth and got certified. He'd already arranged things with Miss Swarth, who wanted to retire. She wrote him a glowing recommendation, and the school board hired him to take over the lower grades at the Corinth school. I had an apartment downtown by then and only came home sometimes on weekends. When I did, I found Harold happy as a clam, living at home. He told me all about his students, their personalities and difficulties. The school and church were his life.

But then Harold's dream began to fall apart. At the end of his second year teaching, the school board decided to close the school and bus the few remaining children into town. The board offered to sell the property to the Corinth Baptist Church, but their members had been aging and dying until Harold's family were most of the congregation each Sunday. There was no way the church could buy or take on the responsibility for the building.

Harold was devastated. "What am I going to do?" he asked me. "The place is part of my soul! I was brought up, saved, and Baptized there."

"So was I, Harold, but it's time to move on. The old dump is falling down, isn't it?"

That didn't matter to Harold. He tried all summer to keep the church going, even preaching some Sundays himself – he was a deacon now – and leading the Wednesday night prayer meeting. But it was hopeless. When the school board announced they would put the place up for auction in September, Harold was frantic. He pleaded with them to wait while he scrounged up a down payment on the original asking price and found a bank that would take the mortgage. He bought the place, closing October 1.

I was working for the county as a codes enforcer when Harold bought the Corinth building. I hadn't seen him for a couple months when he appeared at my office door with the news. My first words were, "What for?" Actually, I said some introductory words questioning his sanity, but "What for?" was the real issue. "You can't use it for anything the way it is. It wouldn't meet requirements for any occupancy."

I don't think Harold had thought yet about what he would do with the Corinth, but, stung by my attitude, he announced that he intended to personally upgrade and remodel the place, and live there himself. I doubted that Harold could do anything of the kind. He had never shown any hands-on aptitude. But I agreed to help him get started.

We went out there together two days later. I spotted all kinds of problems. Even Harold could see that the building needed major repairs. The roof was in bad shape. Many of the old wood window frames were rotten around the edges where they met the brick veneer. The chimney mortar had disintegrated and the bricks above the roof were just sitting there. A few had blown down. There was evidence of extensive termite damage to the sills and joists. There was no indoor plumbing, and the electrical service was out of date and inadequate. The old coal stoves were rusted through and unsafe.

More puzzling was the school board's survey. The property, of about an acre, was clearly bounded on the frontage side by a country road. A creek bounded the property on another side. Well-established fences bounded the property on the remaining two sides. The fences were obviously old, and good surveying practice would normally have been to recognize them, the road, and the creek as the property boundaries.

For some reason, however, the surveyor's ribbons and stakes were way off. It looked as if the property was isolated from the creek. Most of the creek-side yard and part of the driveway was cut off. Most importantly, the water well that had served the church and schoolhouse for thirty years, was now about a foot outside the church property. Harold had the surveyor's plat, but he hadn't looked at it when buying the church because everybody knew where the boundaries were and always had been.

"Something's wrong, here, Harold," I pointed out. "You've got to talk to the surveyor and your neighbor."

A week later, Harold stopped by my office again with the whole story.

"I called the surveyor, Jack Osander. He told me that it was Vernon Jones' fault. You remember him. He owns the farm around the Corinth. Old Vernon was real friendly at first. He and Jack sat down and Vernon brought out his jug and they had a fine time swapping stories. But when it came time to survey the property, Vernon got real ornery and brought along his shotgun. He insisted that his father, who originally donated the land to the school board, had stepped off the tract with the head of the school board. It was not to include the yard on the creek side. According to Vernon, the school board and the church had quietly pushed out the boundary to the creek just after Vernon went to jail for bootlegging and his father died. But Vernon had gone to school at the Corinth in the early days and remembered where the original boundaries were. He insisted that's where Jack put them."

"Harold, you know what an old drunk Jack is and what a lying, grasping, cranky bastard Vernon Jones is. Of course he'd do that. You're going to have to hire an independent surveyor and have him go out there when Vernon's away. Then you'll have to hire a lawyer to file a deed of correction and get the school board to sign it."

We agreed to meet out at the property again the next Saturday morning.

When I arrived at ten, Harold was outside frantically running around the old Church. He was so mad he could hardly talk.

"Look what they've done!" He screamed. "Windows shot out, bullet holes in the front door. . . . look here," he pointed at the wood framing on one side of the door. "That's a shotgun blast! And what's this?!" Harold pointed at a new fence, half completed across his side yard.

I tried to calm down his raving without much luck. What stopped it was the sound of Vernon's Jones' tractor approaching, chugging along outside the new fence, towing a wagon with more fence fixins.

"Now just what is going on!?" Harold screamed at Vernon, who shut down his tractor.

"You got a problem?" he asked, just as snotty as could be.

"What's this fence?!" Harold shouted.

"You don't want my cows wandering over onto your property, do you?" Vernon sneered, pulling out his copy of the plat. Clearly, he intended to turn Harold's side yard and driveway into grazing land, which meant that cows, with their flies and smells, would be 20 feet from Harold's side door.

"What about my well?" Harold asked.

"My well, you mean? Pawpaw drilled it just before donating the property, and made sure it stayed on his side of the line."

"But the school and church have always used it!" Harold screamed.

"Hey, I'm not charging you for that. That's all in the past." He glanced over at the building. "Why look there. Your windows are busted out."

"Yeah, it's all shot up! Windows, bullet holes in the door, buckshot all around!"

"There was a pack of wild dogs run through here last night," Vernon said. "Already killed a couple goats at Uncle Silas's up the road. Buncha boys was chasing them down. I told them to be careful."

"Who? Give me names! I'm swearing out warrants!"

"Ain't no telling where bullets are like to fly when you're trying to gun down a pack. Go ahead, call in the sheriff. Nothing he can do."

Harold looked like he was about to explode. If he'd had a gun, I know he would have shot his neighbor right there.

"Come on, Harold. We need to think this through." I took his arm, which was trembling. At first he shook me off, but when I walked back to my county codes truck, he followed and got in the other side.

I counseled Harold on immediate, practical issues. I told him I knew Vernon was lying about the well because my Daddy had drilled it for the school board a year after the original transfer. I told him too he should clear anything valuable out of the building and store it in his father's barn. Then, he should let me get him a job on a construction crew, both to learn something and to determine if that was indeed a new career calling.

"But what about the church? It won't be worth anything if he puts up that fence."

"You can't stop him until you get a new survey."

I also counseled Harold that he would have no end of troubles owning the Church under the circumstances, and that once the survey issue was cleared up, he should put it on the market.

"No! Huh uh. Absolutely not. That place is mine! It's my moral duty."

Harold took my advice on the survey. He hired another surveyor to do the job right, and by winter Harold had won, though it cost him – about as much as he made in the two months he lasted on my friend's construction crew. He had to admit I was right there too; construction was not his calling.

He would not put the place on the market, though, and insisted on keeping up his mortgage payments. That meant he had to apply to the Board for another teaching job. They found him one mid year. It was down town, a seventeen mile commute in his old Ford. I tried to convince him to move in town to a duplex I knew about, but he insisted on living out at his parent's place, so he could walk over to the Corinth in the evenings to check up on it. He had to be near that place.

The few times I saw Harold over the next two years, he looked glum. Nothing was going right. His mother was now bedridden and needed a lot of help. His younger brothers had left and his father was talking about selling the old place and moving in town where living would be easier. Teaching one grade in a regular school was no fun. The old Corinth, with nobody there, was falling apart. More and more windows were breaking or being shot out. Harold did his best to board and patch the place up, but his plywood fell off and the old roof leaked worse in each storm.

Then things started to pick up. Harold learned that Vernon had just died and someone outside the family had bought the farm. Harold looked the person up and found him genuinely neighborly. Harold started taking courses towards a degree in educational administration, aiming at a principalship somewhere.

In the spring of the second year after Harold bought the Corinth, he started dating, of all people, Alice, whose tongue he had bitten in the bushes beside the old school. She had graduated from college the year after Harold, and landed a good job as a book keeper. These were the mid 50s when new college graduates could be assured of opportunities, and were not saddled with debt. Alice never had filled out, was still desperate, and once again quite taken with Harold. She knew of, and was willing to accommodate, his fixation with the Corinth. She often went out to it with him and helped him patch, trim, and mow. They removed the fence and had picnics in the side yard, fished in the creek, and wandered around inside, remembering. Being saved still hadn't completely worn off Harold, so I don't think they did anything sinful there, though Alice probably tried.

In May of 1956, Harold and Alice announced their engagement. The wedding would have to take place at the Corinth Church. That was a given. Harold convinced old Brother Caleb to come out of retirement and do the honors. The church inside was now in sorry shape, though, so Alice insisted the ceremony should be in the side yard. The two of them worked like beavers to trim the bushes and cut the grass. It was a perfect June day, and the event, with big old poplars and sycamores shading the yard and the creek running by behind, was memorable. I stood with Harold, who was weeping like a kid along with his new bride. The fact that his marriage was being celebrated at the old Corinth church/school surely loosened his tears.

Harold's mother and father moved to town soon after the wedding so Harold and Alice could live at his old home. Any other young couple would have thought of the Corinth as a millstone. Alice may have resented it sometimes, but was willing to keep quiet out of loyalty to Harold. It was certainly a big project for them over the next five or six years. Fortunately, Alice's family had money, and her job paid well so they could afford to have the place gradually fixed up. I helped by pointing them to reputable tradesmen and contractors. Alice and Harold waited to start a family until they could move in to what had finally become a livable and unique dwelling. I was there when Harold, a newly appointed principal, carried in his first-born, followed by movers. Never was there a more radiant and satisfied look on any man's face. His dream was fulfilled. His anchor was down for good.

"It's roots," he told me. "Other people do without them, but I can't. Mine have been here for 20 years, and won't let me go."

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# Author Notes

I've assembled three short story collections. The first, THE HITCHHIKERS, includes eight very different hitch hiking stories, all character- and situation-driven. The second, FIRST STORIES AND A VW BUS, is a self-indulgent little book of memoir fragments, with stories such as _First Boat_ , _First Date_ , _First Career_ , and _Volkswagen Bus, September, 1992_ . PLACES, as you know if you've read this far, is a series of place-driven stories, where what happens is subservient to the place where it happens.

I typically write short stories while waiting for a new novel to ferment and bubble up (some would say 'fester and ooze out.'). Once begun, the novel takes over and I can't write anything else until I see how it turns out. At last count, 18 novels reside, largely unread, on my hard drive.

Like the stories in this collection, my novels are all quite different. While I have a whodunit, a romance, a murder mystery, and a couple that might be considered thrillers, most of my novels are sans or trans genre. They are simply long (in several cases over 100k words) stories. Place and environmental themes are prominent in several.

If any of the stories in this or the other short story collections speak to you, check samples of my novels. I plan to distribute them all through Smashwords, though it may take me a year or more. Please be patient.
