“Us country people,” Selma went on. If her daughter-in-law was leaving, then, by cripes, she’d leave with some of the advice Selma had been dying to give her. “Us country people can go off to the city. We can learn to dress in city clothes, and learn to order out of fancy menus. We can hold down city jobs, and we can even learn to talk a different way. I seen it happen with folks from here a thousand times. But you people,” Selma said, and Charlene was quick to catch the derisive tone. “You people come here to the country and you walk around like chickens without heads, and you can’t tell a buttercup from a marigold. You can’t tell pine from spruce. But you got all kinds of advice to give those of us who can. And while you’re looking down your nose at us, we’re looking up. We’re reading the sky for signs of rain, or snow, or counting the rings around the moon. You take away every single thing man has invented in the last two hundred years and us folks here in Mattagash will go right on ahead and live out our lives. We might miss some things, but we’ll survive. It’s people like you, city people, who’ll be banging your fists on the sides of the ark.” Selma put on her coat. Her hands had begun to shake, so she quickly gathered up her balls of yarn, one the soft gray of the sock’s body, the other a mixture of red and yellow and green that she had used as a decorative trim around the top. Selma’s mother had taught her how to knit. Selma’s mother had carded her own yarn. Selma’s mother, to her dying day, had never once walked into a store and bought yarn from over a counter. Now women were buying all kinds of stuff at Woolworth’s in Madawaska, Maine, and there was talk of plans for a huge mall, bigger even than the mall at Bangor, to be built in Caribou, sixty miles away. Selma had seen a proposed sketch of it in the Bangor Daily News, complete with dangerous potted trees and a trickling little waterfall.
“This here is a pair of socks I made for Davey,” Selma said. She balled them up and tossed them onto the sofa. “I don’t suppose he’ll need them down there, working inside all day long, in that factory. But if he ever does, he’s got them.” She waved a good-bye at Charlene, who had stopped in the midst of wrapping a candy dish to listen to her mother-in-law’s lecture.
“You never liked me, did you?” Charlene asked, and Selma paused, stared down at the cardboard box of cooking books and recipe files, packed for a journey.
“You’re the one with all the big answers to everything,” said Selma. “I’d expect a city girl like you would already know the answer to that.” She opened the kitchen door and peered out into the dazzling white yard. She could see the cold rise up, in wavy lines, like a living thing. She reminded herself that she must stop by Wilma Fennelson’s house to borrow a container of whipped cream for that Frozen Cherry Salad, one of the assorted twenty to appear at the Thanksgiving co-op dinner. Wilma bought things in large quantities—toilet paper, bleach, cans of milk, packages of yeast, cake mixes. Selma suspected it was the spinster in Wilma Fennelson that tended to hoard things, but having her for a next-door neighbor was as good as living next to a twenty-four-hour A&P.
“There ain’t a sign of snow in that sky,” Selma said, and bobbed her chin at the firmament. “We’ll see you tomorrow,” she told Charlene, who was still fingering the candy dish. Selma went on out to her car. She could have told Charlene that she, too, had some questions that she’d like answers to. She’d like to know why, in this new day and age, mothers and fathers had to live and then die so many miles from their children and their grandchildren. She’d like to know what had happened to the family unit, and those long evenings spent at home, singing the old songs, telling the old stories. She’d like to know why her son Bennett had killed himself. And Selma Craft would like to know who on God’s green earth had come up with some of the unnatural notions folks held these days.
“Indoor trees,” Selma thought as she started up her car. “What’ll they think of next?”
***
Davey Craft kicked one of the huge tires on his skidder and watched as a clump of black ice dropped from the hub. Bobby Fennelson had towed it out of the woods for him, and now it sat on the hill below his house, lolling like an orange insect on the riverbank. Davey was almost relieved that the old river had frozen over and could now carry the skidder’s weight, should it find itself scuttling about down there on the ice. Just the night before, with the inevitable move back to Connecticut shaping itself in his subconscious, Davey dreamed that he had pushed the skidder over the hill. It went, all slow motion, flattening the hazelnut bushes and bouncing over rocks hidden in the snow. Davey had stood on the bank, without coat or gloves, a wind full of ice and rain beating against his neck. He had watched the orange-assed skidder spin soundlessly on the blue ice of the river, had heard the ice break into long spider-leg cracks, and then the skidder went down, an orange rock sinking, disappearing, until the ice healed nicely over it again. Such was the drama of dreams, but Davey was nonetheless relieved that the ice could now hold a pulp truck loaded with logs, just in case an erratic impulse grabbed him. It was the same feeling he got sometimes while sitting in church, a terrifying realization that he had the power to stand up suddenly and shout obscenities at the multitude. He was always relieved to find himself in control, to sit quietly in his seat and let those dangerous impulses roll by.
Davey kicked another tire, and then fingered its big chain, links the size of doughnuts. He leaned back against the heavy winch, crossed his arms, and closed his eyes. From beyond the river he could hear the northern raven sound its anxiety notes. He was having a little anxiety of his own. He would miss it, when all was said and done, and he was safely at a new job with the Ronder Plastics Company. He would miss the open air, the sound of other men, other machines at work, the flat steady wings of a bald eagle overhead at lunchtime. It would take some adjustments at first, Charlene was right about that. But the Ronder Plastics Company had been known for over twenty years for their high-quality electric curlers. Davey wouldn’t be working with the curlers at first, it was true, but would begin with the color-coded clips in an effort to learn the business from the ground up. But in no time, his father-in-law had assured him, he would find himself in the very department where all the excitement was, with the boys who made the inner core of the curler.
“It’s a high-energy inner core,” Charlene’s father had told him on the phone. That was the night he and Charlene had come home from the hospital knowing that Tanya would live, that she was ill, yes, but she would live. That was the night, in the wake of such good news, Davey had been willing to work with the color-coded clips forever. “Our Ronder Style Setter is a real seller these days,” Sidney Hart had continued, his voice ringing importance all the way from New Milford, Connecticut, the thick sound of traffic in the background. The rat race in the background. “Now, the Style Setter has four small, ten large, and six jumbo curlers, all with that high-energy inner core I was telling you about. We’re talking about a ninety-second heat up. The unit comes with a nice little travel pouch and twenty color-coded clips, but I guess you’ll learn all that once you start. Before long, you’ll be able to do this job with your eyes shut. Just like the rest of us.”
Davey opened his eyes and looked up at the hazy sun that hung past noon in the sky. Sundogs, he noticed, had positioned themselves on each flank, ice crystals in the upper atmosphere. Colder weather would be coming, if that was possible. A soft yellow sheen swept over the yard and then spread itself evenly on the field across the road. Wind had blown the last snow off the tops of the white pine and the black spruce, turning them green again. A spray of mountain ash berries, crusted with ice and missed by the birds of autumn, still clung blood-red to the mother tree. It appeared to Davey, judging from his panoramic view of Mattagash, that nature had been doing a little color-coding herself. Yes, he would miss it, but the day would roll around—when he’d built back his nest egg, when the kids were grown—that he might find fifty acres or so, a good spot to build a camp on the Mattagash riverbank. And he would come back to Mattagash again, for long summers
of retirement. Or maybe in the fall, when one could find no greater color-coding on earth. And it didn’t matter this time what car he was driving when he came. It didn’t matter how much cash he had in the bank. David Craft had learned some things during his Mattagash exodus, some very important things. Money can buy an awful lot. Money can even buy some people happiness. But, for Davey, happiness was his children, his wife, the things a bank can’t take a mortgage on. The things a bank can’t take away.
Davey kicked the steel-tipped toe of his boot against a different tire and loosened another clump of dirty ice. It was a bright yellow toe rounding out a maroon boot, easily seen when a man is at work in the snow, or sawing among the green of a fallen tree’s branches. A cautionary toe. A lumberjack’s boot, something he would no longer need at the Ronder Plastics Company. He was about to abandon the skidder, to pop his head inside the door and ask Charlene how the packing was coming, when he saw Booster Mullins’s big maroon Bronco, its yellow plow looking a bit cautionary itself, signal a quick turn into his yard. Dorrie was in her constant spot as driver, her stomach pressing against the steering wheel. “Do you suppose her belly ever gets chafed?” Billy Plunkett once asked the crowd at The Crossroads when the subject of Dorrie’s compulsive shopping trips came up.
In the Bronco with Dorrie, and sitting in that constant spot of her own on the passenger side, was Davey’s cousin Lola. They had not been to visit since the little altercation with Charlene over the hunting incident. Now they seemed ebullient with forgiveness. Dorrie swiftly wound her window down and beamed at Davey.
“Look what we brung for Tanya,” Dorrie said, and thrust a fruit basket, still bearing its little green IGA sticker, out the window. It was topped off with a large red bow. Lola frowned. It was the third fruit basket they’d bought for Tanya in as many days. Dorrie had eaten the grapes and the kiwis out of the first two while Lola was running various errands. Lola had been forced to keep a tight watch on the third one. The IGA would run out of baskets otherwise.
“We got us the scare of our lives last night,” Lola said, leaning forward. “I heard on my police scanner that an ambulance was on its way to Mattagash for a man and a child, and I just stood there in my kitchen and started screaming my head off.”
“What happened?” asked Davey.
“You ain’t heard?” Dorrie said. She reached out a fat hand and fluffed the red bow up a bit.
“I jumped out of bed the minute that scanner went off,” Lola continued. Couldn’t Dorrie keep her big mouth shut, just once, and let Lola tell a story? “And when I heard that report come in, I picked up a bowl of pretzels sitting on the kitchen counter and I smashed it on the floor.”
“Ain’t that the prettiest bow?” Dorrie asked Davey. Lola leaned ahead farther, her forehead pressing against the rearview mirror.
“That’s when Raymond got up out of bed and asked me if I’d gone crazy. ‘Raymond, honey, that ambulance is got to be coming for little Tanya,’ I said to him, ‘and I bet the man they’re coming for is Davey.’ Don’t ask me how I knew, I just did, and I kept right on screeching.”
“Yeah, but you were wrong,” said Dorrie. “Remember that time you dreamed Raymond was hit by some trash from outer space?”
“That’s back when all that satellite stuff was falling out of the sky,” Lola said, defending her visions.
“She always gets the wrong vibes,” said Dorrie, and began to flush her muddy windshield with a spray of blue washer fluid.
“Raymond broke his foot a month later,” Lola reminded them.
“Sure, but you dreamed that trash hit him on the head,” said Dorrie. “Wasn’t it a big tire or something?”
“Who,” said Davey, “did the ambulance come for?”
“Where on earth have you been that you ain’t heard?” asked Dorrie. “It’s all over town.” But then she remembered that Charlene and Davey Craft, by their own desires, had never bought a membership into the Gossip Club of Mattagash, Maine, which had now branched and cobwebbed its way into other states, even other countries.
“I just knew something had happened to Tanya, her being so sick and all, and I just assumed you’d gone and done something stupid to yourself because of it,” Lola went on. She wished Dorrie would stop the whirring noise with the damned windshield cleanser button. Davey was Lola’s cousin. You would think Dorrie might shut up, there in the wintry driveway, while Lola bonded with her kin.
“Ladies, please,” said Davey. No wonder they tired Charlene. “I been up in the woods since daylight. Now will somebody tell me?”
“Well,” said Lola. A thwacking started up. “Turn off them wipers while I’m talking, would you please, Dorrie?” Lola asked. She gave her friend a taut little stare. It was Billy Plunkett, years ago, who had called Dorrie and Lola the fiddle and the bow. Not only were they built that way, Billy explained, Dorrie being bulbous and Lola rail thin, but they had similar functions. “All the gossip that comes out of Dorrie’s mouth is stuff Lola told her,” Billy said to the nodding heads of his male audience, at the Acadia Tavern in Watertown.
“I’m just washing the windshield,” said Dorrie.
“And I’m just talking,” said Lola. She rarely rebelled against Dorrie, but on that particular morning, with Davey so noticeably impatient, it appeared that the bow was growing weary of its partner. The bow was ready to do a little fiddling of its own.
“Conrad, the little Gifford boy,” said Lola. “He accidentally shot Billy Plunkett.” The wipers stopped thwacking. The windshield was now splayed with mud. “Billy’s dead,” she added. “Ain’t that the worst you ever heard?”
“And then he went and shot himself,” said Dorrie. Never mind if Lola was mad. There were two corpses, after all. What was wrong with friends sharing?
“What!” Davey exclaimed. He felt the muscles at the base of his neck cramp with anxiety. “Oh my God,” he said.
“Dorrie, I was telling this,” said Lola.
“Well, go on and tell it,” said Dorrie.
“You just did,” said Lola. “How can I go on and tell what you already told?”
“Oh, don’t be so childish,” said Dorrie. The wipers started thwacking again.
“I told Raymond I ain’t a bit surprised something like this happened,” Lola said. “Something like this has been coming for a long time over at Pike Gifford’s house.” But Davey had turned his face away from her. She had lost Davey, thanks to Dorrie’s damned interruptions and now the incessant thwacking.
“Where there’s booze, there’s a short fuse,” Dorrie rhymed. “That’s what I always say. And for once, Prissy Monihan is right. If it hadn’t been for the dad-blamed Crossroads, this probably wouldn’t have happened.”
“Oh my good God,” Davey said again. He thought suddenly of Tanya, sick still but safe in her soft little pajamas with the blue teddy bears on them. Now someone else’s child was dead. He thought of Lynn Gifford, whom he knew only from a quick hello. Her demeanor seemed tough and hardened, it was true, the mark of doing time in some prison without bars, the tough mark of street people. Yet she lived in a house, right there in Mattagash, not very far from Davey’s own little house. So why had this happened, how had this happened, right under everyone’s nose, right under the enormous, smell-all proboscis of Mattagash, Maine?
“Billy and Pike had been drinking as usual,” Lola said. “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if she was too.”
“That poor kid,” said Davey. The fruit basket seemed suddenly fragile, helpless in his arms, like a baby.
“Well, anyway,” said Lola. She leaned back against the seat. She would wait until their next stop, which would most likely be at Marion’s house, sister to Dorrie. The minute Dorrie started her warm-up, Lola intended to just go ahead and blurt out the news herself. Territorial bonds had already been broken. Dorrie wasn’t content to pee upon her own fire hydrant. She had to go and drench everybody else’s,
too.
“I can’t tell you how relieved I was when Wilma Fennelson called and told me the ambulance was on its way to Pike Gifford’s,” Lola continued. “Wilma’s got herself a police scanner too, and she picked up the very first call. I guess I must have slept through it.”
“Wilma’s a spinster,” Dorrie said. “She ain’t got nothing better to do all day than sit beside that scanner.” She started the Bronco up in a big roar of noise and gray exhaust. Davey stepped back a bit. “There’s one of them things, what they call a kiwi, right in the middle of that basket,” Dorrie said. “You tell Tanya to get well soon,” she added, and gave the Bronco a bit of gas. It spun first, the wheels singing wildly, then caught a solid strip of packed snow.
“Look at all them kids Isabel has got,” Lola was saying. “And she ain’t ever missed a call on her scanner.”
***
When Davey stepped inside his house, he saw Charlene standing at the kitchen sink, her face pale, a hand in front of her mouth as she quietly bit at a fingernail.
“You’ve heard?” he asked, and she nodded. She had heard. She had already phoned Lynn Gifford to offer help in any way it might be needed. Maisy, Lynn’s sister, had thanked her for calling. Charlene didn’t know Lynn, but she had come to believe that nothing could be more horrible than losing a child, and that had happened to Lynn. Now they were sisters. For so many days Charlene had been absolutely certain that she would be the one. It seemed that the gods had spared Tanya, but in that sparing, the shadow of fate had fallen upon another child. Charlene Craft felt, in some inexplicable, foolish way, responsible.
“My God,” said Davey. “Billy Plunkett’s dead too.”
“Conrad thought he was shooting his father,” Charlene said, and her eyes teared. “There must have been something we could have done.” Davey shrugged. He wondered what it would have been. It wasn’t just in Connecticut that folks could live side by side for years, their lives never touching. Even in small towns, people get so busy that the tiny roads and narrow paths leading to their neighbor’s house become like interstates and six-lane freeways. Cities or towns, Davey knew, it doesn’t matter where you live if you live unseeing, if you live uncaring, if you live just to live.
The Weight of Winter Page 36