With a jangle, he walked out the door, and Mona picked up the phone. Just as she suspected: Sierra was home, playing hooky again. “Sure, I’ll come watch the store for you, Mona,” Sierra trilled, and in fifteen minutes she bounced in the door, wearing a yellow T-shirt decorated with painted bulls-eyes over each breast, a cluster of colored beads in the center of each. Well, who knew, maybe she’d generate more sales.
At the firehouse, Mona pulled over to the side of the driveway so as not to impede the firetruck’s exit. There was hardly ever a need for firetrucks in this town, but after the fire at the farm stand, you never knew.
The firehouse was a large steel garage painted red, with a small unpainted building—the sheriff’s office—attached to it at one end, and between the two, a yellow door.
Mona jumped out of her truck and opened the door. The firetruck was in its usual place, but no one seemed to be around. “Hello!” she called, then opened the door into the sheriff’s office.
Luke Spinelli looked up from his desk. Behind him, on the wall, were two gunracks loaded with fishing poles and fishing gear. Luke pushed back his curly black hair streaked with gray at the temples, and his face broke into a grin. “Hey there, Mona, long time no see,” he said, touching the side of his beaklike nose, “since the bridge fell, I think.”
Luke had been sheriff for seven years, since he’d moved to Wild Mountain from New York after 9/11. He’d been one of the cops who’d gone into the World Trade Center and pulled out the bodies, dead or alive, and then received an early retirement from the NYPD. Luke was a nice guy, but he’d made it clear that he thought of Wild Mountain and his job as sheriff all as a part of his retirement package.
Mona folded her arms across her chest. She wasn’t here for chit-chatting, or to be charmed by Luke. “So, what’s this I hear about Gus Throckmorton?”
“Gus?”
“You think he set the fire out at Hemlock Hill?”
“Who told you that?” Luke looked around the room with a quizzical expression, letting his gaze linger on the fishing poles behind him for a moment, then reluctantly looking back at her. “Oh!” Suddenly, his face cleared into a look of understanding as he focused on something behind her.
She whirled around, and Cappy, his earring gleaming, stood in the doorway, a half-smile on his face. Some invisible message seemed to run like a current between Cappy and Luke, and Mona looked back and forth between them. “Have you arrested him?”
“That is confidential information,” Luke said, and raised an eyebrow at Cappy.
“I thought she ought to know,” Cappy said, “since she’s his next of kin.”
“What? I’m not Gus’s next of kin! Where’d you get that idea?”
“That’s what he put down on the paperwork.”
“Paperwork? So, you have arrested him?”
The silence again confirmed that this was true.
“Whoa!” Mona sank down into the chair behind her. “Gus is in jail?”
The room, with all its clutter, suddenly felt too small: Luke, a big man behind a large steel desk piled with used coffee cups and takeout bags (most of them, at least, labeled Mona’s Store), coffee-stained folders and papers in total disorder, a bulletin board stuffed with calendars and old dispatch orders, and, tacked to it, two worn baseball caps covered in fishing flies—all so familiar to her, and all, at this moment, totally repugnant.
“Well, yes.” Luke said with a pleasant and patient expression. Gus, who had been such a sweetheart in high school. Polite, respectful, so unlike most of the other boys, and always so thoughtful toward her. He always seemed to know without being told when things were rough for Mona at home. He would bring her little presents and treats that his mother had baked.
It was in college that he’d first been diagnosed. But his mother, Eleanor Throckmorton, so sophisticated and well-educated, refused to take him for mental health treatment. She said she “didn’t believe in it.” It was tragic, really. Miraculously, Gus finished college and got a job as a teacher. But then, when he “turned on, tuned in, and dropped out,” as he said, borrowing a term from the sixties, Mona had begun to wonder again, and worry about his state of mind. His parents were gone, and she was one of the few friends he still had from childhood and high school. So maybe she did feel responsible for him. And maybe he did think of her, Mona, as his next of kin.
“Do you want to see him?”
She balled her fists and willed herself not to cry. “Yes, but first I want to know why. Why do you think Gus did it?”
Luke cleared his throat. “He was overheard making threatening statements about lesbians and the select board. Mumbling about evil and punishment, and so on.”
“But Gus always talks like that.” She turned toward Cappy and opened her hands. “You know that, Cappy.”
Cappy sighed, and said, “Yes, but that’s not all. I found some evidence.”
“Evidence? What do you mean?”
“Footprints that match his shoes.”
“So, he was walking around the site. So were a lot of people.”
“And some objects of his.”
“Objects?”
“Luke calls them ritual objects.”
“What?”
“I saw fires like this in New York,” said Luke. “The arsonist would place these religious symbols all around the site, to be burned up with the fire—but because they were clay-based, they would withstand the fire.”
“Are you saying Gus put clay religious figures in the fire?” Cappy sat down beside her. “These weren’t clay. They were stone. Little stone figures, vaguely triangular in shape, but with some rough carving representing the human form.”
That did sound like something Gus had. A stone he’d given her, in fact, fit that description. Maybe this had something to do with Anu. “But Gus finds those ancient stones and uses them for prayer, not for cursing anyone.” She didn’t know that this was precisely true, but it made sense.
Luke looked at Cappy again, then back at her. “Sorry, Mona, it fits the profile.”
“Okay, I want to see him now. Is he here?” She looked toward the doorway that led to the back of the station and the two little cells that were rarely used.
Luke nodded and stood, and Mona followed him through the doorway.
When she turned the corner, the cell, a tiny room behind bars just past the water cooler and coffee station, looked empty. When she reached the bars, she saw him, sitting quietly on the bunk. Gus, his long hair and beard matted, was shaking his head, and seemed to be whispering to himself. A strong smell of disinfectant contrasted with his dirty and crumpled appearance. Beside him on a bench were a paper cup and a half-eaten sandwich.
“Hiya, Gus,” she said in a hushed voice.
He looked up at her, then quickly turned his gaze back to the wall. “Mona’s here,” he said with his flat inflection. “I can go home now.”
Mona turned and raised her eyebrows in a question to Luke, who was standing behind her, looking important or compassionate or something.
He shook his head.
“But can I get him out on bail?”
“No, we have to hold him for twenty-four hours. You can come tomorrow at noon.”
“Okay, I guess you have to stay for the night, Gus,” she said. “I’ll come get you tomorrow.”
“She’s not going to be pleased,” Gus said. “As a matter of fact, she is rather displeased right now.”
“I know, nobody wants you to be here,” she said, playing along. “It’s not about me.” He was still staring at the wall. “She’s displeased about the lesbians.”
Mona winced and directed a pleading look at Luke, who shrugged and spread out his hands. This seemed to confirm their notion that Gus was antagonistic to lesbians, but was he really? And what would a night in jail do to him? Would he get up on a soapbox and start preaching, would he get violent and rant and rave? Or would he just lie down and go to sleep, grateful to have a warm bed and a couple of meals for a change? The
latter, she hoped.
When she got back in her truck, Mona looked at the building. Gus shouldn’t be in there, but Luke obviously thought he was guilty, and it didn’t help Gus to make all those peculiar statements about lesbians. She’d have to find out who’d really done it. What about Johnny? Johnny knew something about the fire. At least that’s what his letters implied. She would meet with him tomorrow night and find out.
28
MONA STOOD IN FRONT OF THE OUTSIDE BULLETIN BOARD, a storm center of papers and notes and photos in pinks and blues and whites that were yellowed with age. The wind blew again, cutting up from the river and scarpering down to the parking lot, and the sun played tag with the clouds. A day of sharpness and light, shadows and angles.
A concert of African drumming, a lawnmower for sale, a lost cat named Mr. Peach, a yoga class that would save your soul, a girl named Ophelia who would babysit anyone, a boy named Rothead who would repair your canoe or take out your trash…how long had it been since she’d cleared this board? The drum concert had been last month, and the cat had been lost since February. Whose idea had it been, anyway, to put a bulletin board out here, exposed to the elements with only a thin ledge of a roof above it? It had probably been here since the 1800s. Back then, Hatsy LaDue would have come out and cleared off the old wanted posters. Wanted, she thought, remembering the song, “All I Want is You.”
She began to rip down the old notices, not even bothering to take out the tacks, and crumpling them into a plastic bag. A piece of lavender paper with feathered edges caught her attention, and she stopped. Something was written on it in hand-lettered calligraphy: “A thousand half-loves must be forsaken to take one whole heart home.” –Rumi.
What did that mean? What was a half-love? Was it like what had happened with Cappy? She’d been in love with Cappy, or thought she’d been, and she had all the accompanying aches and pains and yearnings to prove it. Those deep eyes, that compact body, the way he could stand perfectly still and emit such energy.
Of course, she hadn’t had to hear him complain about how she used the toothpaste, or witness him throwing the phone at the wall or yelling at the kids, or be around him for any of those ordinary, day-to-day things. Because he was married to someone else. That made him safe. Perhaps that was a half-love.
And Johnny O. Why hadn’t he gone to medical school? When they moved to Rutland, she’d kept asking when was he going to apply. She’d sent for applications to all the top schools—Yale, Dartmouth, NYU—all the places he’d said he was interested in.
But he kept avoiding her questions, coming up with excuses. This one was not good enough, this one was too hard to get into, that one was too focused on research. Finally, he lumped them all together into one big negative. “Becoming a doctor is hazardous to your health,” he proclaimed. “The health system is fucked up, the requirements are ridiculous, the hours inhuman.”
“And, of course,” she had added with a smirk, “you couldn’t get through medical school with the amount of hash you smoke.”
“What?” he’d screamed, his face transfigured, that vicious look in his eyes. “Take that back!”
“I’m not going to lie.”
He slapped her in the face, hard.
She was stunned, incredulous. “You hit me!”
“So, apologize,” he growled, with that thunderhead of an expression.
“Me, apologize? After you just hit me?”
And then the knock-down drag-out fight began in earnest, because he really did knock her down and drag her out the door, hitting her and screaming at her to apologize, and finally, she’d said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” and truly, she was sorry, because she couldn’t believe this had happened to her, to them.
Mona had clung to the notion that someday, Johnny would change, that he would apologize for his behavior and become the loving, affectionate husband she’d always imagined. She could love him then. She couldn’t, she’d finally realized, love him wholeheartedly the way he was. That was a half-love.
A giant red SUV and Sierra’s old green Volvo pulled into the parking lot almost simultaneously. Alice Spinelli and Sierra got out of their vehicles, and stood smiling and talking. How did they know each other? Oh yes—Sierra’s mom was involved in the church.
Mona turned back to the bulletin board. She continued taking down the old notices, but more slowly now, and put back the lavender paper. A thousand half-loves must be forsaken to take one whole heart home. Was she keeping Frank as a half-love, so she didn’t have too much to lose? Frank had left, just like Johnny, and he hadn’t called. But, really, he had called, and he said he’d emailed. And Frank had come back. Frank was a different man. He wasn’t violent or abusive. Could she let go of the half that was holding back? She took a deep breath to still the fluttering in her chest.
Alice, in a long blue cape, and Sierra, limp curls waving in the wind, slapped their palms together in a double high five, their laughter breaking into the restless air like a simple arpeggio in a complex Beethoven symphony.
Something was changing. Someplace in her body where a tightness lodged, like a twisted piece of rope with frayed ends. It seemed to be unraveling or dissolving, and was being replaced by something else, an openness, an opening. The love that had been squeezed in half was softening and growing, and becoming a whole heart—a heart that would take her home.
29
THE DAY THE GRASS TURNED GREEN, Frank shifted his bike into fourth gear and pedaled onto Beaver Brook Road. Bea Vargas had said that in Vermont, there was one spring day when the grass turned green. The day before, all was brown…brown and drab and gray, like it was all winter. But, she said, you have no idea. Unless you have tried to start your car a dozen times when the thermometer read twenty below and scraped the frost off your windshield every morning for weeks and months at a time, then pushed the snow off with a broom for the next two months, then raked the snow off the roof of your house, and then, after a thaw, rammed your chassis into a mud rut and spun your wheels for half an hour, and finally, in March, when the sun came out in a flash and the sky turned blue, you thought, aha! Spring! But then there was another snowstorm, and everything stayed brown and gray and drab. Unless you’d been through all of this, you didn’t know the meaning of the day the grass turned green.
Frank had never been in Vermont so continually in any season as he had this year. He’d been in Wild Mountain now for practically the whole of March and April, and now he knew. From yesterday to today, the world had been transformed.
He pumped harder up a hill, and the valley opened up in a dazzling display of soft mist and emerald green. Fields like an undulating patchwork, pale yellow-gray layers of corn stubble, humid clouds above, and in between the recently-plowed sections, the most vivid green energy of life. The houses and barns nestled into the folds as if they’d grown out of the soil itself, out of the magic of the land.
How could he, Frank, not succeed at anything he attempted on a day like this—especially something as basic as restoring the historic bridge at Wild Mountain? How could anyone oppose the covered bridge on such a glorious day? The breeze billowed in his face, and he pumped the pedals, faster and faster up the next hill, then glided down the other side, a sleek animal in tune with the world. This was power. He had the power of his body, the power to cycle for hours, the power to win over these recalcitrant hicks who didn’t want to pay another ten cents or whatever it was on their taxes to keep the character of their own environment. This sacred environment.
He approached the Perry farm, the barnyard on his right with its mud and rocks, its languid cows and massive Take Back Vermont sign, and Edson, Charlie’s son, standing in front of a hay wagon. Large and stocky, in baggy jeans and a John Deere cap planted over a long, blond ponytail, Edson stared at Frank.
Frank squeezed the brakes with his biking-gloved hands, glided to a stop in front of Edson, and sucked in his gut under the turquoise spandex. The last time he’d talked to Charlie, he’d thought he was making some
headway. Might as well try with Edson. He lifted his designer sunglasses. “Sacred,” he said.
Edson narrowed his eyes and clenched his fists. “What the hell, you think you can just ride in here and rag on my dad’s farm?”
“Whoa.” Frank stepped back. “Who’s ragging? Hey, I’m here to celebrate, to congratulate, to glorify this whole place. I mean, do you know how lucky you are to be born in this fabulous spot in the universe? And look around you. No billboards, nothing to mess up the air and the trees.” Out of the corner of his eye he spotted the colossal letters of Take Back Vermont spray-painted on the side of the barn. “Well, unless you count your sign over there.” At this, Edson lurched to attention, but Frank went on. “And the covered bridges of Vermont!” he rhapsodized. “My God, there are less than a hundred of them left, and the value of these indigenous relics is untold!”
Behind Edson, like some prehistoric figure of doom arising out of the slime, appeared the hunched form of Charlie, the feathered ends of his gray beard bobbling over his knees. He glared at Frank, saying nothing, then hacked and spit a large gob onto the mud.
Frank took stock. Bad vibes. Not the time to lobby. Before Edson or Charlie had a chance to say anything more, he waved and pedaled away in a flash, Greg LeMond at the starting gate. These locals could be intransigent, but at least he was making a dent.
An hour later, he crossed the finish line: the parking lot at Mona’s Store. He locked the bike at the rail, took off his helmet, peeled off his gloves, and walked up the steps to the porch, then turned around to face the river. Sparkling and clear, the water crashed over the rocks with the urgency of spring.
“It doesn’t mind about us,” a familiar voice murmured, and Frank started. Mona, wearing a bright green sweatshirt and a mysterious smile, had just stepped out the door.
“It?” he said, smiling at the unexpected pleasure. He thought he’d have to woo her again, but here she was, approaching him.
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