That ravaged morning I wanted to make love to my wife. As I kissed her good-bye I felt her desolation. Felton’s death was lodged like a fish hook inside us.
I drove to Holly’s, out of Stowe and its neat line of houses, and up the mountain road into the dying leaves and my shallow dreams of family life. As I pulled up I glanced at my face in the rearview mirror. I thought I could see someone else lurking behind my eyes, laughing at me. I stepped out of my pickup into the cold and felt like someone had punched a block of ice into my lungs.
Holly saw me walking up and opened the door.
‘I got some fresh coffee on,’ she said.
‘Then I better help you drink it.’
Her house smelled of freshly baked bread. Holly kept it immaculate. It instilled a sense of ambiguity in me. It was a home, something I once knew, and inasmuch as that comforted me, it also tormented me with my loss.
Marigold and Joyce were sitting in the living room. They got up when they saw me walk in.
Marigold offered me her cheek.
‘Hello, Uncle Shepherd.’
‘We going out today?’ Joyce said, standing on tiptoe so I could reach hers.
‘If you want to.’
‘Mom wants to go shopping,’ Marigold said.
‘Well let’s talk to her about it. Now where’s this coffee?’
Holly poured me a cup as my nieces chattered to each other. Marigold was nineteen and Joyce seventeen, and they both had a freshness to their looks that made them seem out of place it the modern world. They’d inherited Holly’s beauty, but Marigold had darker eyes than her mother and Joyce a rosiness to her complexion that made me think of apples at harvest time. My sister was a dark blonde with deep brown eyes. Both Marigold and Joyce resembled her, having her small and delicate nose. But Marigold had black hair, while Joyce was a brunette with blue eyes she’d inherited from her father, who was a handsome man. I’d always suspected that Dwight Fisher had run off with another woman. Rumours had circulated about his behaviour when he disappeared, and I tried to keep them from my sister’s ears. I’m not sure how much she heard, but I think gossip is harmful.
My own resemblance to Holly was a comfort to me. I looked at her and thought how we had the same colour eyes. Since Felton’s death I felt as though I’d lost my family. Mary’s isolation added to that. My grief was briefly lifted on those visits to Holly. But I wasn’t the man I used to be, and I felt like an outsider. The tragedy had turned me grey, and I’d often look at my face in the bathroom mirror on rising as if I was staring at a stranger and think my beard was the colour of ash. I seemed without colour, grizzled, as if some part of me had been erased. And I took solace in the hues of the countryside and in my nieces.
For a while at times with the death of my son I felt my world had turned to ash. I took warmth from my nieces and stepped outside the black and white film I lived in at home when I visited them. They allowed me to think of the future.
As I looked at them I thought how these young women would have families and children in a few years, and I felt my loss tug at my heart. I dislodged the pain with a preoccupation I’d developed in the past year. I’d begun to feel responsible for my nieces, and I wondered how they would be employed when they were older.
I owned a hardware store in Stowe, and although I worked fewer hours in those days, and let my staff make decisions a few years ago I wouldn’t have felt comfortable delegating, I worked as much as my grief would allow. Marigold had got good grades at school and was studying biology at the University of Vermont. She wanted to become a vet. Joyce had done less well and was looking for work. I’d just lost a member of staff at the shop, and I thought about offering Joyce the vacancy.
‘How’s the job search going?’ I said.
Holly grinned.
‘You mean you haven’t told him, Joyce?’ she said.
‘Mom.’
‘She’s got a job.’
‘Working in the Peoples’ Bank, thanks to my math grades,’ Joyce said. ‘At least I was good at one subject at school.
‘That’s not true, Jo, you were good at science,’ Marigold said.
‘Not as good as you.’
‘Will you two stop it?’ Holly said. ‘I’m just delighted she’s got work, and at a bank, don’t you think, Shepherd?’
‘That’s great news, Joyce.’
That afternoon we went into Stowe, and I helped Holly shop at Shaw’s. We bought fresh lobster and chicken, and she stocked up on cans of vegetables and pasta.
‘My car will be out of the shop in two days,’ she said as we loaded my pickup with the bags.
‘In the meantime if you need me to run you anywhere.’
‘Thanks, Shepherd. How about coming back and sharing some of the chicken with us?’
‘Sounds too good to resist.’
Back at her house, Holly chopped the chicken up and cooked it in a tomato sauce as I talked to the girls. We had it steaming hot with winter squash. As I ate I felt redundant as an uncle in a way I couldn’t define.
I left after lunch and stopped on my way home to walk in Mount Mansfield State Forest. My visit had left me feeling unsettled, and I wanted to find out why. I began to wonder whether I secretly resented Holly the children she still had. And I thought of Mary alone, at home. I walked without looking where I was going. The woods felt like a womb.
As I entered a clearing I saw a man in threadbare clothes sitting on a log. He looked like some forest dweller who lives on berries and plants and is wild.
I’d wandered quite far in before I spotted him and was overcome by a sense of intrusion. He seemed to be hiding. Beside him was a fire and the burnt out remains of food. I could smell recently cooked meat.
I was about to turn away to leave him to his solitude when he raised a hand in greeting. I walked towards him.
There was a moment before I spoke when I felt this young man had some wisdom that I sought, as if my trip into the forest had a purpose beyond my desire to dispel my troubled thoughts. He had unkempt hair and fair features, a handsome face beneath the beard, but there was something about his looks that echoed in me in a sympathetic way and made me feel my walk into the forest had found its purpose in another human being.
‘I didn’t mean to intrude on you,’ I said.
He stood up, wiped his hand on his faded corduroys, and extended it warmly.
‘If I had any turkey left I’d offer you some. I’m not a bad cook.’
‘Wild turkey?’
He smiled. It was a warm smile that lacked all guile, and I instantly warmed to him.
‘I didn’t buy it from a store.’
‘Are you living out here?’
‘I am, Sir.’
He said it with pride, pulling his shoulders back as he did.
I looked beyond him to the reds and golds in the trees.
‘It will be hard for you in a few weeks; winter’s coming on.’
‘I’ll make do; I’ve lived outside in seven feet of snow before. No need to worry about me.’
‘Food will be scarce.’
‘I know where to find it, and as I say, I cook well, that’s what I was trained to do.’
‘You’re a chef?’
‘I am, Sir. I worked in some of the finest restaurants in New England, worked out on Cape Cod. I make the best sauces, and now I rustle up some meat and plants. Say, why don’t you come back and visit me, and I’ll let you sample what I’m talking about? Nothing better than fresh food caught outdoors.’
‘I can’t argue with that.’
I recalled the many barbecues I’d made and the fresh game Mary and I used to take on our walks with Felton.
‘I know these woods well. I walk here often,’ I said. ‘You must feel solitary.’
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