The Sun, the Moon, and Maybe the Trains

by Rodney Jones

  The sun had not yet made it over the mountaintop as I crossed the West River in a light patch of fog just north of Greendale Road. The road into Ludlow was a steep climb and every bit as steep down the other side. I’d never done it with a wagon. Judging from the looks of the road, I’d guess not too many had.

  Just over the top was a trace that followed the ridgeline south. It crossed over a rock ledge a short distance from the road. Standing upon those rocks, a man could see past the Connecticut River and into New Hampshire. I’d never made the trip without at least a brief stop there, that day being no exception.

  I tied the brown to a sapling, climbed up on the rock, and sat to enjoy the wide-open view to the east. The sun was well up, but still a few hours shy of noon. I couldn’t hear a thing up there that God himself didn’t put there. A large bird soared high over my head—a bald eagle. I had my eye on it as it circled in an upward spiral, but then it flew so high I lost it. I didn’t know what it was about being in a place like that, but I sometimes got to feeling that nothing really mattered beyond that moment. It wasn’t like hopelessness, but more like acceptance—everything was fine, always was, and always would be, and there wasn’t much point in worrying about it.

  I was sitting there, looking for that assurance, and who should enter my mind but Tess. All of a sudden I was thinking, “Wouldn’t it be nice if she were here sharing this with me? Would she get it, the same as I do? Does she ever take moments like this for herself?” I wondered if perhaps she was wondering the same about me, right then. Tess got into my head, got a solid purchase there before I realized it, and I found it hard to be anywhere else. Then, I realized just how crazy it was to be dwelling on a gal who might as well have been on the moon. I’d never see her again. The only place she would ever exist was in my head.

  I got to my feet, took another look at the wide expanse below, then climbed up on the brown and continued on my way downhill, mostly easy going until I reached the edge of Ludlow. And that was where all the wild switchbacks were. It seemed I covered a mile just to get a few hundred feet lower.

  Ludlow was a good-sized village, almost as big as Rutland and with about everything that Rutland had: shops, schools, churches, an inn, a gristmill, and a sawmill. It even had its own library, which I planned on visiting later that day. To me, it was the perfect town.

  It was a well-known fact, too, that Ludlow was stricken with an overabundance of females. Fellows in the surrounding communities were all aware of that; word got around. There were supposedly three gals to every two fellows there, which I heard was somewhat bothersome to the womenfolk, creating a competitiveness that was unseen elsewhere, but viewed as a blessing by the men in the area. The “boils,” as I recall Tess saying… “gals and boils.” It hadn’t always been that way, though. The war was to be blamed.

  The shop where I was headed was at the east end, down the river from the sawmill, just a bit outside the town proper. I arrived a little before noon to find the lathe idle. I gave the foreman one of the spare cogs from the mill and told him how many were needed. He studied it for a moment, then promised them in four hours. I couldn’t have wished for better than that.

  I went back into town to the library, a small one-room building on Main Street. I spent the afternoon looking over a sundry of books. I didn’t count, but I’d guess there were two thousand books, maybe more, all in the one room.

  The librarian was a gray-haired lady wearing a gray dress with a little yellow O print reminding me of Froot Loops. She let ten minutes pass, then rose from her chair and approached me as I pulled down this book and that, trying to decide upon one I’d want to spend time with.

  “Is there anything in particular you’re looking for, young man?”

  I told her I had only a few hours. She asked where I was from, about my family, and what school I’d attended. She said she knew my teacher, Miss Stevenson, then pointed out a few books she thought might interest me, including a new English translation of a book by a French author, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I was fascinated by the illustrations: sea monsters and a curious-looking vessel that traveled underwater. I made myself comfortable in an armchair and began reading the story. I was so intrigued after six chapters that I didn’t want to leave the story unfinished, so I signed my name to a sheet of paper and left the library with the book under my arm.

  That night at home, I kept the lamp burning longer than usual and read some more. I was just about stunned to read that Captain Nemo’s submarine was powered by electricity. I didn’t know of anything in my time that was electric. Most people I knew had heard of it, but couldn’t tell you the first thing about it. I couldn’t help but wonder how Mr. Verne had come up with such an idea. I’d read at the front that the book was first published in France in 1869. I found it curious, too, that he had a warship in his story called The Abraham Lincoln. But it was Captain Nemo’s submersible, Nautilus, that most fascinated me.

  How’d he know machines like that could be run by electric? I began to wonder if maybe the same thing happened to him as what had happened to me. Perhaps writing stories was his way of getting it off his chest.

  I put out the lamp and closed my eyes. Just then a barred owl hooted, sounding like it was right outside the window. I’d never heard one as close as that. It’d do its short series of hoots, pause for what seemed like a minute, then add another series of hoots. I thought of Tess, she and I roasting hotdogs in the night, the owls we’d heard up on the mountain calling back and forth. I’d become quite fond of that memory. I had this crazy idea that Tess was out there somewhere at that very moment, thinking of me. I developed the habit of thinking our thoughts were somehow synchronized—I’d be thinking of her because she was thinking of me, and vice versa.

  The Saturday of the barn dance finally arrived. My uncle joined a crowd of men mingling outside the barn, Zach Heming among them. My aunt wandered off toward a small group of women chatting in the shade of a big black oak. I noticed Miss Stevenson, my old schoolmarm, among them. I probably shouldn’t say old, her being in her late-twenties. She never married, though, and I couldn’t figure why; she wasn’t hard to look at and was smart as a trap. Zach’s sister, Martha, busied herself arranging flowers on the tables that’d been rigged up for the occasion. She was my age and had been my neighbor since I moved to Greendale. She always seemed shy, as if avoiding notice as much as she could. I’d heard she suffered cruel jokes from the local boys throughout her childhood, being built as stout as she was and having a nose a bit on the large side. Added to that, she was slightly cockeyed and never seemed to look directly at the person speaking to her.

  I walked over, stepped up alongside her, and asked if she was excited about gaining a new family member. She hesitated for such a length of time, I wondered if she’d heard me. “Oh, yes, Polly. I don’t know where my head was. Yes, I suppose I’ll be an aunt before long. I mean, well, you know what I mean.” She blushed.

  “I know what you mean, Martha.”

  “Yes, of course. I guess I haven’t really gotten used to the idea that Zach will be moving out.”

  “Well, he ain’t going far.”

  “It still seems… I don’t know…”

  “I remember when J.W. moved away. I didn’t know I’d ever get used to him being gone, but I reckon I did.”

  She nodded. The hint of a smile came to her lips.

  “You mind having your first dance with me tonight, Martha?”

  She pulled a yellow primrose from the vase in front of her and shoved it back into a different spot. Without turning, she said, “That’d be fine with me.”

  I glanced over at a table set up for tea and punch, then asked if she’d like a refreshment. She shyly declined.

  “I’m gonna hold you to your promise,” I said, offering her a smile.

  “Promise?”

  “The dance.”

  “Oh.” She brought a hand to her mouth, then turned away and went back to fiddling with the flowers.

  I stepped
over to the crock of punch and dipped out a glassful.

  “How are you doing, Mr. Bartley?”

  I turned. My old schoolmarm stood to my left. She wore the same dull-gray dress I remembered her wearing at school, and her hair was pulled back in her usual tight bun. Her brown hair, streaked with gray, was closer to matching her dress than I remembered.

  “I’ve been fine.”

  “And your aunt and uncle?” she asked.

  “They’re usual well, ma’am.”

  She spotted my aunt among a small group of ladies gabbing in the shade alongside the barn. “My, that is the most beautiful dress your aunt is wearing.”

  “She’ll be pleased to hear that.”

  I told her about the book I’d borrowed from the library in Ludlow and that the librarian had mentioned knowing her.

  “Oh, Miss Fisherman. She was my schoolteacher here in Weston. She taught in the same building where I’m now teaching. They have a very nice library there, don’t they?”

  “Yes, ma’am, they do.”

  She helped herself to a glass of tea, and then the dinner bell rang.

  Eating was an informal kind of thing. Folks sat wherever they could. Some tables were out in the open, and a few benches were in the barn, but mostly people sat leaning against a tree or on a boulder or a nearby stone wall. I had my eye on a spot near the open doors of the barn where I could watch all the comings and goings. That was where I was when Zella Shaw walked by carrying a plate of food. She wore a red dress with what looked like snowflakes printed on it. I said hello to her. She stopped and looked down at me. It wasn’t snowflakes, but a mix of little white dots and fleabane. Either way, I told her it was a real nice dress. She asked if I was planning on asking her to dance.

  I said, “Sure, I am.”

  She sauntered on into the barn and took a seat on one of the benches set up outside the grain bins. I glanced her way now and then, wishing I was a fly so I might light near her, unnoticed, and get my fill of her.

  A little while later, the sun dropped below the mountaintop, and the whole yard fell into shadow. Mr. Watkins got a big fire going out behind the barn, and Hubert Madison took up his fiddle and began playing a jig, high-stepping it into the barn as he sawed away at the strings as though his trousers were ablaze. A number of folk were already inside, stomping and clapping in time with his full-steam, sparks-flying tune. A few other fellows and I followed him in, mimicking his steps, and other musicians joined in with a banjo and a mandolin. My neighbor, Sam Snyder, raked a washboard. The dancing began in full.

  The Watkins’s barn was among the biggest in the valley. Oil lamps hung from two large oak beams running the length of it, supporting haylofts from gable to gable. The raw, broad-plank oak floors had been swept clean, leaving a wide strip down the middle for the dancing. If a person were to stand directly in the center and look straight up, he’d be looking up inside a ten-by-ten-foot cupola straddling the peak of a gambrel roof, a good thirty-five feet overhead. The evening light filled the cupola with long, narrow bars of gold, which gave the barn a warm glow. Soon though, the roof, the cupola, and everything above the lofts were hidden in shadow.

  I found Martha at the back of the crowd gathered around the perimeter of the dancing and led her in toward the middle. I sensed her nervousness toward the beginning, but less as we neared the end of the song. I insisted we give it another go, being we didn’t get the benefit of a full song that first time around. She was sporting, and so we danced, our hands becoming moist with sweat as we circled left and circled right, do-si-do-ing to “Turkey in the Straw.” Afterward, as I was escorting her back to the onlooking boodle, Mr. Watkins’s son, Ruben, stepped up and took her off my hands.

  I looked around for Zella and saw she was headed into the dancing with another fellow. Oddly, I wasn’t so much envying him, as I might’ve one time done. I was picturing myself walking out there with Tess’s arm looped through mine. I could imagine the stir she’d cause, just her being herself. In my mind, she had a smile on her face. It seemed only natural that she’d enjoy barn dancing. She’d be quite the hoot, I was thinking.

  I spotted Sallie Mosier laughing about something with two younger gals, one being one of her four sisters and the other, one of the Miller gals. A few moments later, Sallie and I were out among all the other folk joined in on a céilidh, which was a good part of what folks did at those things. Next, I caught Zella between dances, and we had a turn at it. It used to be that when dancing with her, I’d half the time feel as if I were ready to fall over, and the other half as though I were made of wood. I didn’t feel any of that. Maybe I had just given up caring what she thought.

  Then, the strangest thing happened. She looked at me with those Norwegian-blue eyes of hers and gave me a smile like I’d never before seen on her face. It wasn’t a quick-to-come-and-go kind of smile, but the long, slow, little by little kind that could soften butter on a winter’s morn. She asked if I’d dance again with her. I, of course, said I would and did. It was highly unusual, a gal asking a fellow to dance, but coming from Zella, who’d certainly never be shy a partner, made it that much more so. We danced. I’d look at her, she’d smile at me as though it couldn’t be any better, and sometimes she’d laugh as though I was tickling her. I had about as much fun dancing with her as I’d had with all the other gals combined.

  Afterward, I asked, “Would you care for a glass of punch?”

  “I was just thinking that,” she said. “All this dancing, whew… sure makes you thirsty.”

  The refreshments were not far from the fire. I saw Zach there in a semicircle of men and figured they were likely discussing his house plans. Zella poured us some punch and led me away from the crowd, into the open barnyard. I thought that was rather forward of her and was slightly nervous about it. I looked around to see if we were being watched. I was relieved she didn’t venture beyond the eyes of the folks gathered around the fire.

  “Isn’t it the loveliest night?” she asked. “Look at all those stars. There must be a thousand.”

  I looked up. I could see the Milky Way stretching from one end of the sky to the other, so magnificent. I didn’t correct her, but I knew the stars numbered in the millions. My eyes moved from the sky to Zella. Her eyes reflected the fire behind me, but then shifted away as mine met them.

  I looked up again. “They say our sun is a star no different than all those.”

  Her head again tilted back. She gave the stars a chance and then turned to me, smiled, and said, “You must think me a coot, John.”

  “Oh, no, no. That’s what I read.”

  Once more, her eyes turned to the night sky. “That can’t be right, John. Who’d write such a silly thing?”

  “Well, I don’t know that anyone knows for a fact, but this British scientist—Higgins, I think it was—he thinks it’s so.”

  “Well, if the sun is a star, would that mean all those stars are suns?”

  “Seems only fair, I reckon.”

  “Why would God make more than one sun?”

  She hardly gave me a moment to consider it before she piped in with not so much an answer as an opinion. “No, He made all those tiny stars at night, and He made the sun during the day. He made only one sun, John, only one. I believe it says so right in the Bible.”

  Why would God make so many suns? To give all his children something to look at at night? Seemed like an awful lot of work. A couple of more moons probably would’ve sufficed and been far easier, too. I thought about what Zella had said. God working night and day, the stars at night, the sun at day.

  I snickered. “Zella, God couldn’t have made the sun during the day, ’cause there wasn’t any day until the sun was made.”

  A few moments passed, and then she began to laugh. “I never thought of that. I suppose He must’ve made the sun—” Her smile fell away. “We maybe should be getting back to the dancing. I see my pa a-yonder, looking this way.”

  I turned in the direction of the barn. There was Zella�
��s pa and, standing next to him, gesturing with his hands, was Hugh Stewart. Hugh glanced my way, then turned back to Mr. Shaw and said something more. As we walked back to the barn, Zella excused herself and went off toward her pa.

  I danced with Sallie’s little sister Rosella, Miss Stevenson, Zach’s gal, Polly, and then had a dance with my aunt. We were saying our goodbyes when I caught a glimpse of Zella on the dance floor with Sam Johnson. She met my gaze and held it for more than a moment.

  I heard my name, turned, and there was my uncle, standing at the entrance of the barn, waving me out. I caught up with him as he was walking my aunt to our wagon and asked if I could have a few minutes more. He gave me a curious look, but then told me to be quick because they didn’t want to be sitting in that wagon any longer than necessary, “the mosquitoes being what they are.”

  I rushed back into the barn and waited until the song ended, then caught Zella’s attention as she was leaving the dancing area. “Zella, I enjoyed your company tonight, and well, I just wanted to say as much and bid you a goodnight.”

  “That’s real sweet of you, John. I’ll be looking forward to the next time.”

  I would have liked to said more, but I had no idea what. I gave her a nod, then turned and headed out toward the waiting wagon, feeling lucky and grateful. As I was walking past the fire, Hugh Stewart stepped into my path.

  “John Bartley.”

  “Hugh.” I stopped and locked eyes with him. “Is there something you need to tell me? I’ve got folks waiting over yonder.” I pointed past him. My aunt and uncle were well beyond earshot.

  “Just a bit of neighborly advice.” He glanced over his shoulder, then turned to me and smiled. “I’ll just say I wouldn’t be gettin’ too friendly with Zella if I was you.”

  “That what this is?”

  “That’s about it.”

  “You courtin’ her?”

  “Let’s just say I might, and I’m not too fond of the likes of you having first dibs.”