“Only the garage. But I yelled for her in there, and she should have heard me. Unless she’s hurt somewhere, Sonny! What if she’s fallen down or what if she’s lost?”
“Are her boots in the house?”
“I don’t know. I never thought to look.”
Dawson headed into the house, with Cassie close behind. He knew where Shelby kept her warm clothes, and he hurried to her room. The closet door was open and the Bean boots were gone. “I think she’s gone outside,” he said as he came back across the kitchen, “unless you know her boots are somewhere else.”
“They should be in her closet. But why would she do that? Sonny, she could be in the woods or on the road or anywhere!”
“Jeez, Cassie, she’s not a three-year-old.”
“Okay, but where is she then? If she slipped and fell, she could be over the bank or anywhere! Or if she lost track of where she was, she could go further and further from the house.”
Dawson went out the kitchen door and walked the interior length of the sheds. She was not in the ell. He stepped outside and surveyed the entire yard. If he were Shelby, where would he have gone? The plowed parking area would offer the least resistance and fewest obstacles, but she obviously wasn’t there. Would she travel down the driveway? That seemed too precarious, and she had no reason to head for the road.
“Does she use a cane?” he asked as Cassie came up beside him.
“I’ve never seen one. You know, Sonny, I don’t see how she could go very far. She still uses the walker at night if she’s been on her feet too much. I don’t think she could walk on rough ground for very far.”
Dawson glanced at the barn. “Would she go into the barn?”
“Maybe, but weren’t you working in the barn?”
“Yes, but I was only in the part the ell opens into. I wouldn’t have seen her if she didn’t use the ell.”
“I just can’t see her taking this path. It’s got too many curves.”
Dawson looked out toward the woods on the far end of the yard. “She’d have to climb the snowbanks to end up out of the lot. I think we should check the barn.” He turned and walked the narrow path, his heart beginning to pound. What if she wasn’t in the barn? What if someone had come to the house, realized how vulnerable she was, and had taken advantage of her? He hurried the last few feet to the barn door and ran inside. The room to his left held the dulcimers and was where she had been practicing with Shane. He pushed the door open and looked inside. The setting sun left an eerie red glow on the walls and surfaces of the center workbench. The dulcimers sat alone against the wall, and Shelby was nowhere in sight.
He pulled the door shut and went to the middle workshop. The same red glow filled the empty room, but Shelby was not there. He returned to the foyer, feeling frantic now. Cassie had gone upstairs to check the apartments, but there was absolutely no reason why she would have gone up there. He stepped outside in the waning light, his heart pounding in his throat.
Headlights bounced into sight at the top of the driveway, and for a moment Dawson feared it might be Shane. But Blake’s blue truck came around the corner, and Dawson ran down the path to meet him. “Blake, Shelby’s missing. We think she’s outside somewhere.”
His brother looked down at him and shrugged. “She was in the barn the last time I saw her. I let her in there myself about an hour ago.”
“Where did she go?”
“How the hell should I know? I ain’t her baby-sitter. She wanted in, so I let her in.”
Dawson turned back and retraced his steps to the barn. He knew she couldn’t be in the room he had been in. He returned to the room on the left and went inside. The red glow was fading now, and he turned on the overhead lights. From where he was standing, he could see the entire room except for a small area blocked by the center workbench. His eyes rested on the snowy fields outside the big windows. Would she have tried to walk the snowmobile paths they had taken with the horses that day? His heart began to ache at the thought. Oh, God, where was she? He crossed the room to make one last check, on the chance she had fallen and was out of sight.
He saw the toes of her Bean boots first, and his heart leapt into his throat. He ran around the bench in time to see her head come up in the manner of one startled out of a sound sleep.
“Shelby!” He dropped to his knees beside her and reached out to touch her shoulder. She stiffened in alarm, confused by what was taking place, and moved away from him. “It’s Dawson,” he said, realizing she had no reason to understand why he was touching her. “We couldn’t find you! We thought you were lost!”
“I wasn’t lost,” she mumbled, half-awake and still confused.
Dawson laughed. “That’s true. You knew where you were.”
“Shelby!” Cassie came up behind him, followed closely by Blake. “You were here all the time? Ohmigod, I was so scared!” She knelt down beside Dawson to give Shelby a hug.
“Whoa, what’s going on?” Shelby was smiling and frowning at the same time. “Oh, man, am I stiff.” She winced as she tried to move from the hard floor.
“What is going on?” Shane’s stern voice cut across the room. He strode across the workshop to stand looking down at the three on the floor. “What happened?”
“They lost her,” Blake said with a snort. “Come on, Sonny, let’s get the hell outta here.”
“What’s he talking about?” Shane’s cold eyes were fixed on Dawson.
“Nothing. She came in here on her own and fell asleep, that’s all. It took us a while to find her.”
Shane moved in and knelt before Shelby. He said something to her that Dawson could not hear, then slid his arms under her knees and behind her back. She reached up and put her arms around Shane’s neck, gasping with pain as he lifted her up from the floor. Dawson was impressed to see how easily he rose to his feet with her weight in his arms; it was obvious he had done this many times before.
Shane turned to brush angrily past Dawson on his way to the door, but Shelby told him to wait.
“Dawson?”
“What?”
She turned toward his voice. “Thank you. For worrying.”
“Sure,” he said irritably. He wanted to deck Shane for his rudeness, but instead he took out his anger on her. “Let’s go, Blake. We’re done here,” he said and marched out the door.
Chapter Fifteen
March, 1988
Grant dropped Larry off at the latter’s house and drove across town to his parents’ home. They waited while he used their shower to clean up from his day in the woods, then the three of them drove to the former one-room schoolhouse on Chatham Flat. It was the night of town meeting, and they were going to the chicken pie supper that preceded town meeting every year. Irene McIan left her apple pie in the kitchen and joined her husband and son at one of the long tables that filled the room. The place was buzzing with conversation as the tables filled and people shouted greetings across the room. Town meeting was a major event in Chatham and so was the traditional supper. The ladies of the church on Chatham Flat sponsored it every year, and it was a fitting beginning to an evening of civic participation.
Grant sat and absorbed the excitement around him while surveying the crowd. Corey was here sitting with Wes; Allen and the little girl must be somewhere about. Blake and Sonny Penfield sat across the room while their mother worked in the kitchen. Cassie was in there with her sisters and several of her aunts. Leon and Cynthia were seated at the end of Grant’s table; Larry and Suzanne would be joining them soon. Wymans and Phllips’s and Beaumonts and Craes were everywhere.
Grant watched Cassie laugh with her relatives in the kitchen; apparently her stomach was in the way in the crowded little room. He wondered if she knew the truth about Shane yet and how she was taking it. He glanced at Sonny to see if he was watching her too, but he had his back to the kitchen and was talking to Teddy Boardman’s parents. Grant let his eyes wander across the crowd again until they encountered Corey’s. Her aqua-blue eyes were fixed on him,
and she smiled when their eyes met. He smiled back, then looked away. He saw no point in making Allen worry.
A group of high school girls began to bring out the food, served family-style on the long tables. They carried pots of coffee and tea and pitchers of milk to each table to fill each cup, while individuals spooned out their own servings of potatoes and squash and peas from bowls in the center of the tables. Oven-hot casseroles of chicken pot pie topped with biscuits were circulated next. By tradition, each table had a designated host or hostess to dish out the pot pie, and at his table his father was the host. When the main course had been eaten, the girls came back carrying trays covered with an assortment of pieces of pie.
Town meeting began at seven-thirty in the high school gym. Chatham Regional High School was located in North Chatham, and a caravan of cars made the trip from the Flat. Grant and his parents sat high on the bleachers along one side where they could look down on those seated in folding chairs on the gym floor. Ladies pulled out their handiwork to help pass the time. Grant’s mother was crocheting a baby sweater for his sister’s latest offspring, and her hands diligently worked as she listened to the meeting. Grant’s father sat with the Town Report in hand and read each warned article as it came up for a vote.
The meeting was relatively quiet this year, with no controversial issues, unlike some town meetings Grant remembered. His favorites were the ones that brought people to their feet to challenge statements made by their neighbors. But this year even the chronic complainers had little to say, and the budgets for the town and the school district passed by voice vote without a hitch. Elections for town officers would take place the following day by paper ballots secretly marked behind the curtains of little booths and deposited in boxes under the constable’s watchful eye. Then, unless something unusual occurred, the town would function smoothly until March 1989.
The week of town meeting was the traditional time to tap out, and Grant and Larry held true to tradition. They carried their hand-cranked drills into the woods and began to drill their holes. They tapped carefully, noting scars on the trees where taps had been put years before. They avoided those spots as well as the area directly above them, for they wanted fresh wood with nothing to inhibit the upward flow of sap. They drilled the hole, then removed all shavings and hammered a plastic spout into the hole. These were the spouts with attached droplines they had previous hung on the trees, and as they moved along a network was formed in their wake. The drop lines stretched outward from the trees and joined to one of the larger mainlines. The lines, in turn, worked their way through the woods, sloping downward toward the large-diameter lines into which they all fed. The sap that appeared as discreet drops coming from the taps formed a trickle in the connecting lines and a steady stream in the large mainlines. It poured out into the gathering tanks at the foot of the hill, looking like clear water and nothing more. But it held anywhere up to four percent sugar and had the potential to make syrup with a flavor like no other.
Grant’s truck now carried a large portable tank with a built-in funnel on top and a hose at the bottom to empty it out. A portable pump would suck sap from the gathering tanks at each site and send it up into the portable tank. Buckets could be emptied into it as well, as the truck traveled along the side roads. The only bucket they would not empty was the one Larry traditionally hung on the telephone pole outside his brother’s house.
When the portable tank was full, they would return to Grant’s cabin and empty the sap into storage tanks at the top of the hill. The tanks would gravity-feed down to the sugarhouse as needed when the valve into the preheater was opened. For the first few days or so, they would gather but have little to boil, as the flow would be minimal. Then, as sugar season hit its stride, they would have to boil every day in order to keep up.
They traditionally gathered sap in the morning and into early afternoon. Oftentimes, a thick layer of ice floated in the tanks and buckets from the overnight freeze, and this they removed and threw away. The ice was strictly water, the heavier sugar having settled into the fluid below. By freezing, the upper level of water separated itself, leaving a more concentrated solution under the ice. Any water they could dispose of this way meant less boiling to concentrate the sugar and, thus, a lighter, higher grade syrup. While all grades had the same amount of sugar content in the end, the grade “Fancy” could only be applied to the light-colored syrup. With its delicate amber color and subtle maple taste, Fancy commanded the best price and was most in demand by tourists. Most Vermonters, on the other hand, preferred the richer flavor of the medium and dark, a result of longer boiling time and greater caramelization. In time, Grant and Larry would make all grades, but in the beginning their emphasis was on light.
By the second week in March, they were going full steam, both literally and figuratively. They gathered early in the day and began to boil in mid-afternoon. Feeding the wood into the roaring fire in the arch was hot, exhausting work and they took turns as fireman while the other watched the pans. Boiling sap down to syrup is a precise art, for if it is too thin, the sugarmaker is cheating his customers and if it’s too thick, he’s cheating himself. Grant and Larry decided to forego the old methods of checking by “aproning” or seeing if the syrup was thick enough to flow from a paddle in a continuous sheet. Instead, they used a hydrometer that told them precisely when the sugar solution was at the proper concentration. Then the man watching the pans opened the spigot and let the boiling syrup out of the pan into a bucket lined with filters. The final product was canned while it was still hot from the evaporator, a job Suzanne usually did for them. On a good night, they might drain both storage tanks by ten o’clock and have the fire cooled down by midnight. Then, they would drag themselves to bed and be up at six the next morning to start all over again.
Cassie came into the woods one day when they were still tapping trees at Dayton’s farm and brought them hot cocoa and a bag of homemade cookies. They took a welcomed break, and Cassie stayed for a while to talk about town meeting and the weather and the coming of spring. She smiled shyly at Grant and asked if she could come to the sugarhouse some evening when they were boiling. He said, “Of course,” and told her to bring Shane and Shelby as well, and she nodded and said she would. The first time she came, however, she came alone, and Grant had a feeling she wanted to talk. But the boiling took all his attention, and when three of his friends came in, she said the high heat was making her uncomfortable and she left.
The second time she brought Shelby and Shane at their request. Larry took over feeding the fire and Suzanne watched the temperature in the pans while Grant took Shelby aside and described the scene to her. He explained about the floats that regulated the flow of sap into the system and how the preheater took advantage of the steam trapped within it to heat the cold sap coming in from outside.
“There are pipes under the hood that carry the sap back and forth over the steam before it comes out and runs into the back pan. So, when it hits the back pan it’s already warm and doesn’t slow down the boiling. The back pan has two sections with a small opening that lets sap flow from the first side to the second and when it’s in full swing, there’s a density gradient set up by the incoming sap that pushes the sap that’s getting heavier through to the other side. It loses more water on that side and then flows through a pipe to the front pan.” While that explanation went over Cassie’s head, Grant could tell that it made sense to the trained scientist in Shelby.
The front pan had three sections, he told her, and the same process continued there, with sap becoming denser and denser as it moved from one section to another until the last section held the syrup. When it was exactly at the right density, as indicated by its temperature and the hydrometer, a spigot on that end let the syrup out into a bucket with a filter to catch any impurities, like the natural minerals present in sap and any ash that might have come up during the firing of the arch.
“It looks like a locomotive to me, Shel, “ Shane told her. “It’s about fourteen
feet long and what, six feet wide?”
Grant nodded.
“The front pan has no cover, but the back half has this shiny tin tent with a big round stack coming out and the steam is pouring out of the top. The front is steaming like crazy, too. Sometimes you can’t even see across the pan. And when Larry opens the doors underneath it, you can see the flames. It’s like a boiler on a steam engine. All cast iron with doors on the end.”
Shelby was grinning. “It smells wonderful, and it sounds neat, too. Awfully warm, though.”
“It feels real wonderful when it rains in here, “ Larry said. “The roof is metal, and when it’s cold outside the steam condenses and falls back down on us in drops.”
“But most of it goes out the cupola,” Grant put in. “Although it does feel like a sauna.”
“And where is your wood?”
“Everywhere,” Grant grinned, “but we keep the area behind Larry full so he can just feed the fire by turning around grabbing handfuls. We use slabs from Royal Chilcott’s mill, the outside pieces of logs that have the bark on them, and we also burn anything else we can get our hands on that will catch fast. Pine’s okay because we don’t have to worry about creosote build-up at these temperatures.”
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