December 21, 1981

All her life Sylvia Everett Brown has had to accept things, to accept that she would be sent off to proper Boston schools, that her marriage would move her to Hiram Falls, Vermont to live with and in the house of her husband’s dreadful parents. She accepted that her father did not like her husband and, later, when he died, stipulated in his will that she was never to reveal her inherited wealth to Millard Brown who her father still did not trust.

She had to accept that she could not have children, that her husband lost interest in her and devoted all his time to running the bank and to strange night dealings in the study with men she did not know.

Then she had to accept that her father had been right.

And so she watched police haul Millard off to jail, went to Francis Lyman to arrange a quick divorce, sold the house – the monstrosity of a house Millard’s father had inherited – and moved to a small cape on Bickford Mountain, away from town, away from the whispers and stares whenever she walked through town.

She accepted the shame that came with having been married to a man who stole so much from so many. She accepted it because the shame was not, as the town conjectured, from anything she might have done to abet Millard’s schemes. No, her shame came for the fact that she had not even tried to learn what he was doing, had instead chosen to look away, ignore all of it, even Millard himself.

That was almost a decade ago. She has adapted. So has the town. No longer do they take notice of her step or point as she drives by. On the sidewalk, they nod, sometimes smile or give her a sorrowful look, as if thinking, ‘There but for the grace of god …’

She adapted. She reached out to a few acquaintances and made friends. She relishes her monthly visits with Ben Nash who takes care of her car. She often lunches with Vera or Carrie, and sometimes the three go to Jenna’s Diner where Lavender joins them even though Sylvia knows, without ever being told, that Lavender has no use for Millard Brown. Lavender has come to like Syliva, has even started poking her as only Lavender can do, one day saying: “You should have a British accent the way you hold that coffee cup. Is everyone from Boston like you?”

Sylvia laughed. “No, probably not.”

And there’s Doc and Flo and Gracie and David and even Rina Lapsa, the mysterious woman who lives on a cabin high up on Mount Riga. And she has Francis, too, her lawyer and confidant.

Sylvia accepts the solitude of her life, accepts that her aloneness is what her life has become. She is comfortable with that, though she knows something is missing and so sometimes goes for long drives, winding her way down the dirt roads, ending up at some backwoods diner where she eats an overdone hamburger and watches and listens to the other customers.

She does not fully realize why she does this. And she rarely remembers what she yearns for.

On this day, though, she remembers as she drives her electric green Rambler wagon on the snow-packed back roads, and recollects what her father told her long ago, “Sometimes, to find something, you have to stop looking.”

Sylvia takes her time on this day, even stops at the overlook on Lincoln Hill, her boots squeaking on the cold snow, to look at the panorama — the town, the river, the white-topped Adirondacks far in the distance.

She has made it back to town now. It is snowing again. She parks her car along the street and walks towards Fiengo’s Curios, watching the snow swirl on the sidewalk. She stops in front of the store and stares at the shop’s giant window, at the wooden box in front of it with its wooden lid and a bold white declaration painted on the side: Free Books.

Back when she lived in town she would sometimes walk down the hill late at night and lift the lid, comb through the books and take one to read. Sometimes she’d return it. Sometimes she’d add one of her own.

Sylvia stares at the box and does not move, does not reach out her hand to lift the lid, frozen there, maybe by the cold but not by the cold, but by the sudden realization, the oddness of which is jolting: I have never been inside his shop, she thinks. I’ve never been inside. I’ve never even met the man.

She opens the door, hears the bell on the door chime lightly. Immediately she is enveloped by the dry heat, the smell of books and books and more books — dry, dusty, pleasant, almost comforting on this winter’s day.

She looks around, her eyes trying to make order of the clutter, shelves of books everywhere, along the walls, aisles of them, some hanging from the low ceiling, shelves also crammed with records and kids’ toys and lamps. On a table in front of her are nearly empty bins of Christmas ornaments, odd-looking statues, a bust of Beethoven surrounded by copper Empire State Building replicas some tiny. She walks deeper into the store. A display of commemorative spoons. Porcelain figurines. A desk lamp with a gargoyle as a base. Stacks of old magazines. And books. Paperbacks, comic books, hardbacks some with cracked bindings by unknown authors.

She is halfway into the store now and sees the checkout counter with two stools in front of it, sees the antique cash register and stacks of papers and behind, a door to a storeroom, halfway open. A dim light shines on a dress rack near the door, and, closest, a bright blue dress, shimmering in the light. Before she can make sense of it, the doorway is filled with a silhouette: Fiengo. Old Man Fiengo himself. Why do people call him that? she wonders as he steps into the store. Perhaps it is his hair, his salt and pepper beard. Such a pleasant face, gentle face.

“Hello. Do you sell dresses, too?” she asks.

Old Man Fiengo looks embarrassed and begins to close the door.

“I’d love to see them,” she says.

He steps aside, swinging the door open with his arm, almost beckoning her in, and, as she enters, he flips on the light. Sylvia gasps. Dress racks cover two walls. They are filled with dozens of fine dresses. She walks past each one, gently touching their fabric — satins and silks, cottons and wools — she feels their quality, notices the stitching, much of it by hand she is sure. She separates the hangers so she can see the full fronts and backs of each dress.

She asks Old Man Fiengo if she could possibly try one on, in particular the one she first saw, the cobalt one, made of silk, with a Mandarin collar and a single yellow bird embroidered above the left breast.

Old Man Fiengo backs out of the store room and gently closes the door. The dress fits Sylvia perfectly. It makes her feel beautiful, young. She takes her gray-white hair out of its bun and drapes it over her right shoulder against the bright blue and opens the storeroom door. Fiengo’s eyes widen. He grins.

“Can I buy this?” she asks. She does not wait for his answer; she gets out her checkbook and, on the counter now, writes a check for $250, peels it off and hands it to him. ”I hope that is sufficient.”

“That is way too much,” he says, still staring at her, stretching his hand and the check towards her.

“Keep it,” she says, pushing back his hand. He moves to the cash register, pulls down the handle and sets the check in the drawer.

“How do you come to have so many magnificent dresses?” she asks.

Old Man Fiengo shows his surprise, not so much by the fact that he’s actually selling one of his dresses but by the question which he assumes even Mrs. Millard Brown should know the answer to. But, at that moment, he realizes she really does not know and really does want his answer.

“They were my wife’s.”

“And you bought them in hopes of keeping her,” Sylvia says, surprising herself that she has said out loud what she was thinking. She continues, leaping, unconcerned. “But that didn’t work, did it? And one winter’s night she walked out into the darkness and left the dresses behind.”

Old Man Fiengo is shaken because in all these years no one has ever said anything to him about his wife or her departure or even asked him about it. Even at the time, all those years ago, no one consoled him in his loss even though he knew everyone in town heard about it and talked about it but never said a word to him.

“That is right,” he says.

“What was her name?”

“Geneviève. I met her in Montreal.”

“I am so sorry that happened to you,” Sylvia says, pausing. “Sometimes we marry the wrong person, don’t we? It seems right at the time, seems right for a while, but then we realize deep down that something is wrong. Yet still we hang on because it is all we have.”

Sylvia is overcome now.

She feels things she hasn’t felt in years and watches herself spread her arms, move toward the surprised man and embrace him. He hugs her back, a tight, plaintiff grip, and she returns the strength of his embrace, and it feels so good to her, to him as well, to be held, to feel someone else’s body, so close, so warm, a feeling so absent for so long.

“I am deeply sorry,” Sylvia whispers as she releases her hug, feeling, as she does so, that something is different, has changed, has made her face flush. In that moment she remembers what she had forgotten, remembers what she has been missing, remembers what her father had once said. And she wonders again why she had not come into Fiengo’s shop years ago.

“My name is Sylvia,” she says softly.

“I am Vincenté.”

“It is nice to meet you,” they say, almost at the same time, he with an embarrassed smile as his hand instinctively brushes down the scattered white hair at the back of his head, she with a smile.

They talk for hours, like leaves falling from the trees, as they sit on the stools at the counter, she in her new blue dress, he getting her some tea, two cookies to share and a napkin.

Finally, out of things to say for the moment, they welcome the silence, sip their tea and look past the books, past the clutter, out the window of the shop, at the snow coming down much harder now sparkling in the shine of the street light, a blanket on their world.

It is the darkest part of the night, the time just before dawn. Hiram Falls is bone-deep cold. The wind swirls the falling snow up and down the street. Tiny twisters. Several street lamps flicker.

No one is about. Except for a man who glides more than walks, his feet leaving no impressions, no sign, as if he were the wind itself. He is tall and lean and wears a long, black oilskin coat open in the front, fluttering with his movement. He is wearing laceless leather boots that come nearly to his knees. He has no gloves but shows no sign of needing them.

He has wandered from a cave on the backside of Mt. Riga; has come down the mountain, across Upper Bridge to the shops of the lower village. He is settled now in front of Fiengo’s Curios, the wind gently waving his coat as he stares at the box marked “Free Books.”

Old Man Fiengo has been filling this box for years. It makes no sense, he knows, to give away for free what he had been trying to sell for a dime or a quarter or even one dollar. He did it first as a gimmick, as a way to draw people into his shop, but when the free books disappeared he got it in his mind that someone or some ones who couldn’t afford to buy them were reading them. It made Old Man Fiengo happy.

What Old Man Fiengo doesn’t know, and will never know even when, suddenly, his free books stop disappearing, is that it is this man and an older woman who take most of his free books. The man knows. He has remembered seeing the woman drop something into the box the other morning. He doesn’t remember when.

The man stands under the awning. The man who didn’t used to read, doesn’t remember whether he ever could, only knows now that he now can and hungers for the knowledge that comes from the words on the page.

The man has been all through the library, read hundreds of books in all the shelves — the books on science first, then novels and books of poetry, histories, books on mathematics and religion and gardening and animals, romance and humor and tragedy.

The man stands before Old Man Fiengo’s Free Book box with snow collecting on the shoulders of his coat now absorbs more than reads, finishes a book in the time it takes him to turn the pages, much like swimming with the minnows in Riga Creek or flying with the starlings at spring time, darting in and out of the aspens and birches and pines.

Nothing that he reads, though, brings him closer to knowing who he is and why he is there, standing in the silence of the snowfall in the bitter cold that he does not feel.

Under the streetlights’ dim illumination, the man lifts the cover on the wooden box resting on the table under the awning in front of the store. There, at the top, is a small book bound in leather, wrapped tightly with a leather strand tied in a careful knot. It is a handmade book.

He unwraps the leather string, opens the book, and tries to make out the lettering. It is called script, but he does not know that. For several minutes he tries to understand the letters, the words. Finally he makes it out, “January 1, 1918. 4 degrees. Cloudy …” He knows it will take him time to decipher this book. He carefully closes it, wraps the leather string around it and tucks it in his pocket as he closes the box softly. He drifts away in the wind.

No one sees him.

Nestled between three mountains and straddling a sometimes raging creek, Hiram Falls is a fictitious Vermont town where everyone has secrets. Some are discovered, some shouldn’t be and some, if revealed, will hurt those held most dear.

In Hiram Falls weirdness blends into humor, tragedy sparks kindness, everyone knows each others’ business until they realize they don’t. Hiram Falls has a dark side, too, the part no one likes to acknowledge: intolerance, theft and violence.

Hiram Falls has an epic feel and spans more seven decades. The story begins in the 1918 pandemic and chronicles the evolving life of a small rural town with long-buried secrets that finally come to light. Told from the interwoven perspectives of various Hiram Falls citizens — including several strong-willed women, a savant auto mechanic with a damaged brain and a man who does not know who he is.

The intertwining storylines explore how the town has been propped up, unbeknownst to many, by a nefarious, generational land grab scheme perpetrated by a corrupt bank president (and, later, his son) with help from an ex-con (and, later, his son) with a facility for arson, extortion and violence. Over decades, they force farmers and indigenous people off their land, a cycle that affects everyone in Hiram Falls in ways they both can and cannot feel.

In the 1970s, a new owner of the local newspaper —a young man who has returned to his hometown — and one of his reporters discover and expose what has been done to the town and, in the process, realize they both have feelings for each other that each is hesitant to pursue — for very different reasons.

The novel explores the space between knowing and not knowing, the weight of family legacy and the search for answers to questions that are sometimes not even known.

This novel emerged from character sketches I wrote for live shows put on by the Vermont Stage Company. The reaction was so enthusiastic and affirming I dove deeper. The novel was born.

I have been blessed with an amazing number of people who have helped: reader-editors — four of whom have been with the project since the beginning; a professional editor (and NYTimes Bestseller List author); a host of Abenaki elders; the Vermont Arts Council and several donors who have helped offset expenses. I also had at least one new reader for every draft.

My intention is to share any proceeds from this project with three non-profits:

• Vermont Stage Company. This nonprofit professional theater group has been instrumental in the creation of this book by staging character sketches that led to the novel. By this December (2024) they will have staged seven stories. (The latest are two new characters that may figure in the sequel.) I am indebted to their support and the audiences’ enthusiasm for my work.

• The Media Factory. This Vermont nonprofit provides citizens studios, equipment and access to media and public airways. Over the years, I’ve worked extensively with this organization and think highly of the vital work and access they provide.

• The Young Writers Project. I founded this organization in 2006 with an unsolicited grant from the Vermont Business Roundtable with the aim of providing young people a platform to develop voice and improve their writing skills and to help teachers teach writing better. I have passed the organization onto new leaders and it is going strong.

Feel free to donate to these fine organizations if you appreciate my work.

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Friday, Jan. 1, 1892, 4 below, cloudy
 
The boys was up in the woods today cutting mill logs. Took both teams and the long saws. I baked five meat pies, two apple pies and fried some donuts. Cleaned, trimmed and filled the lanterns. Swept the kitchen and parlor. I checked on the animals; the horses were restless. Ma stayed in bed again today. Seems like she’s not getting any better, if anything she’s worse.
 
It’s the new year so I decided to start my journal in this new book Ernest gave me for Christmas. God bless him. I love the nice leather cover, with its fancy tie, and soft, fresh paper. He fashioned a new quill for me out of a goose feather. Writes smooth. He got me a new bottle of ink, too. It thrilled my heart when he came with it, my only present.
 
I should say that my name is Carrie Alice Bickford. I am 17. I live in Lyndon, Vermont, up the mountain from the ville and not too far from the forks of the Passumpsic River. I stopped going to school two years ago when Ma first started getting her spells. At least that’s what she calls them. Pa said she got consumption when she went down near St. Johnsbury to help her cousin. He says she’s lucky; could have been worse, but she’s never quite been the same.
 
There are seven of us in this house, Ma, Pa, my four brothers – three older and one younger -- and me, though sometimes, when the boys get into the cider and get all up with their cunning jokes and speeches and all, it feels like 60 of us crammed in here. They spend most of their time in the woods or in the fields or in the yard cutting or splitting logs or going to town to the mill or to sell stuff or do whatever it is they do down there.
 
It’s nice that they’re out of the house most of the time. Quiet. And every once in a while, I can sneak a little time to read one of the books Ola brings me home from school, and I get to imagine, just for a moment, what a life would be in England or Italy, or down south on the Mississippi. I like novels best, but poetry sings to me. Sometimes stanzas of Dickinson just leap into my mind:
 

"Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne’er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need."

 
How’s a woman who never ventures out of her home write like that?
 
We got two teams of oxen, horses, some sheep, chickens and a cow who’s a good milker when she’s fresh. We grow hay, oats and eating corn, potatoes and root vegetables, berries and a summer garden of greens, even a row of flowers. Mostly it’s me that does the garden and house chores now that Ma’s not well, but sometimes I can get the boys to weed the potatoes or pick the beans or sort for the market. But mostly it’s just me. And these endless chores.
 
 
Saturday, Jan. 2, 1892, 10 above, cloudy
 
Ernest came to visit today. Oh, joyous heart, he lifts me so. He came up about half past 4 and stayed through supper. The boys and Ma like him. Pa doesn’t say much one way or another. Ernest and I first met as strangers in October but now I hope never to part. I wonder if he can say of me as much. Maybe. I think so. I hope so. His family is new to town, from Derby, raise work horses in the valley. They graze some of them up near here. Or so I learned this fall.
 
I was scrubbing the floors one day and looked up and saw three brown mares near the garden. I ran out and got the lead into the barn. Had to use an apple but it worked. The others followed her in. Not long after, I seen him come up the road standing, proud-like, on his wagon, the reins gently in his hands. He was beautiful, no two ways about it, standing there, wind blowin’ his hair.  
 
“Seen three horses around here?” he asked when he pulled right up in the yard. I took him to the barn. He was surprised I’d been able to get them inside. “No need to be surprised,” I told him, though I was so flustered I couldn’t even look him in the eye.
 
We didn’t say much as he hitched them single file to the back of the wagon and started to head out. He then turned and asked if he could come calling some evening. He didn’t wait for my answer.
 
 
Sunday, Jan. 3, 1892, 20 above. Snowing.
 
The snow began early this morning, before dawn. I was up getting stove wood, and it came in fine, fine flakes, like it was going to last forever, and it made the whole world go quiet. I stood, logs in my arms, and put my face up to the sky. It felt nice, kind of tickled.
 
After breakfast, I got Ma settled and then we took the wagon down to church. I love church. Not sure I’m all that religious and what, but it sure is nice getting out and seeing some folks. I keep hoping to see Ernest, but he don’t come. Just not his thing, he says. I’ve tried to talk him into coming anyways, just so we can see each other, but he says he just doesn’t like it. Besides, he usually gets some outside work on Sundays, and his Pa says he can save some of the cash he earns.

Monday, January 4, 1892, 18 above, cloudy.
 
We got about 10-12 inches of snow before it stopped early this morning. Boys were lagging so I went to the barn, milked, fed the animals, collected some eggs. The horses were a lot calmer. I think they get all worked up when the weather comes.
 
Pa and the boys went back up to the woods today. Ola stayed back. They were breaking out a new road to a stand steep on the ridge. Said they was worried he might not move fast enough if he had to. Ma slept off and on today. Made her some tea -- chamomile. rosehips and lemon balm with a little peppermint; Ma swears by it. I had to hold her head up so she could drink some. Seems like she’s hotter than she was. And she’s not eating. Says her head aches so much she about can’t stand it.
 
I was halfway down the stairs when it just overcame me. I leaned up against the wall and felt everything pour over me, like how can I bear this, how can I bear it if she leaves us? Oh, God, I’m not supposed to think this way, it’s you that decides these things, but I don’t know what I will do if she leaves us. I mean even when I’m in the kitchen or the barn or in the garden, even when she’s up here, I can feel her, I can feel her keep me going.
 
I was glad Ola was in the house. I helped him with his spelling and reading. He was fussing over a booklet of Dickinson’s poems, same book I had, and I told him she was magical and he should listen to her words. I read him some.
 
Ola’s the only one still schooling. He complains about it, but I miss it. It got me out of the house. I had friends. Like Liza and Clara and Tessa. I don’t ever see them anymore. I used to imagine myself going to normal school to become a teacher in St. Johnsbury or Burlington, or, maybe, even go to the university like Joanna did. Is there something out there for me still? Got to be. Got to be.
 
After lunch Ola helped me dress out one of the lambs. Skinned it, butchered it, wrapped it all into nice packages and set them in the ice house under the sawdust. Ola’s first lamb, though I had to do the killing. But he did good. He’ll know the next time. Saved a haunch for a stew later. Potatoes, beans and carrots are holding up. Firm. Dry. No mold. House was so quiet today even with Ola. He’s the quiet one, the sweet one. Out the windows the world is white, a blanket of white as far as you can see. Oh, I wish dear Ernest would come.


Tuesday, January 5, 1892 10 above, lovely.
 
Ola had to go back to school today. He was none too happy about it. Boys didn’t make it any easier on him, them acting so special and all, like, who needs it? Pa gave them what for and told Ola to get a move on if he was going to make it down the hill in time.
 
The rest went on up to cut more logs up the ridge. Ma seems worse today. Kept as quiet as I could and did the washing and mopped the kitchen floor. Spent time sewing up the boys’ clothes. Don’t know how they get so many rips. Don’t seem like they pay it no mind, like I got nothing else to do. Made two dried apple pies and baked six loaves of hard bread. Came out good.
 
I feel tired tonight. My hands are so sore I can barely hold the quill. And I got so many thoughts wandering around my mind. Ma. Those cunning boys always wanting this and that. Ola. Pa saying nothing about anything, why doesn’t he talk to me? Sometimes I just feel like grabbing my coat and running out the house and down the hill and into the ville to hop some coach somewhere and get out of here. I love them all, God knows, and I know my duty, but just, just, just once can I take a deep breath? Can I see something new? Can I be me? Would Ernest come with me?


Wednesday, January 6, 1892, 20 above, snowing.
 
Ma was worse this morning. I heard her coughing during the night and got up. Came down to find Pa rumbling around the stove. Told him I’d take care of it. Made tea, eggs, grilled some bread, pulled out some strawberry preserves. Pa ate, but Ma was having none of it. Pa said he’d go down and get Doc Abrams if she wasn’t better tomorrow.
 
Oh, I wish Ernest would come visit. Good Lord, I wish he’d come.
 

Thursday, January 7, 1892. 15 above, clear.
 
Came down this morning to find Pa staring out the window into the darkness. Pa has a way of saying things without words, and I could feel the sadness, even a little fear, in his eyes. I made him some eggs and warmed some meat pie. Wrapped him up some hard bread, jerky and dried apples and helped him out the door to make the trip for Doc. He turned and gave me a hug. I couldn’t remember when he last did that.
 
The boys was all quiet when they came down. They seemed to know. Ola was all dressed, which was something of a miracle; that boy can’t find two shoes even when they’re right in front of him. He was out the door before the boys could even get a go at him. Charlie told me he’d be driving the main team with Manny and Vernon, that they’d be nearby going after house wood.
 
Pa returned with Doc Abrams near 1 o’clock. Said Doc had been way over on the other side of East Burke at widow Harrington. Doc is a sweet man and gave me a smile when he come in, but there was an edge to it, a little worry. He took off his coat and boots, put on some house shoes and went on up to see Ma.
 
Pa went out to the barn said he’d attend to the chores. When Doc came back down he told me she probably has the gripp, which was not good given the consumption she battles. He asked me how I was feeling. “Fine,” I told him. “I’ve been fine. Just blue, that’s all. Just blue.” He smiled. “I am sure that, dear.”
 
I fixed him some coffee, and he asked me to go get Pa. He told us we all had to make sure we washed our hands and the dishware extra. He said this bug was nothing to be trifled at and that we needed to see an improvement in next day or so. I was set to take her some tea, but Pa said he’d do it. And that was that. Doc gave me a packet of powders, said they should help, and I should continue to give her the herbals. “Get plenty of water in her,” he said, “and she needs some broth, too. Fresh broth.”
 
Pa came back down and the two left for the Millers’ down in the ville. My friend Liza was overdue. I hope everything goes alright. Still can’t believe she’s married and now about to have a child. My Liza. I miss her.
 
I went to the barn and got one of the chickens hanging, skinned it and brought it in for soup. I kept quiet as I could and checked in on Ma several times. She was sleeping. That was good. Set to more of the sewing. It was near 3 when I saw Ola coming up the road a smile on his face. Staring out the window, I felt such a sadness that I couldn’t understand and tears just rolled out.
 

Friday, January 8, 1892. 22 above, changeable.
 
My prayers were answered. Half past 3 there came Ernest riding up in his sleigh wagon. We went on up the road to the clearing on the mountain. We stayed past sunset. I knew we shouldn’t stay so long, the boys would be hungry, and he knew, too, but I talked him into it. Seems like I feel so different with him, like everything is in control, like a weight off my shoulder. Things seem possible. I told him I want to go back to school. I want to learn and learn. I want to do something. I don’t know what, but something. And he tells me that he wants to move to the city, maybe all the way to Burlington, open a shop, do some of his leather work, but live where there’s people. And music and theater and dancing. “Imagine that,” he said. “Imagine that.”
 
In the clear, crisp dusk, we watched a hawk circle above us, and the sky turn all deep blue with just an orange slit in the west, we two all snug in our hearts under the wool and the hides. We didn’t even feel the cold as we made our way back home everything so bright, white, blue.
 
The boys was right ornery and plagued me with their talk and snickers.  I told ‘em, “How hard is it to move the stew pot from the pantry to the stove? How hard is it to put a few logs in the fire box?” I went out to get the stew and saw Pa, holding the lantern, standing beside Ernest’s wagon, talking, but talking at him. Ernest turned and got back up on the wagon, snapped the reins and was off. Pa came in. “Ernest won’t be staying for supper.”  It’s all he said. Made me so mad, I thought I was going to bust. Boys had sense enough to keep quiet, and we ate in silence. And even with them all around me, I felt loneliest I’d ever felt, and the magic of the sunset was gone. All gone.
 
 
Saturday, January 9, 1892. 30 above, clear.
 
I got up early Pa came down filled with sleep, still in his bedshirt. “Fever broke,” he said, touching my arm and giving me a hint of a smile. “Fever broke.” Boys came down one by one just as normal. Ola said he didn’t want to go to school no more, the boys asked if they could just work half the day, and Pa just stared at them. “Learnin’ to be done,” he said. “More logs to pull.” And out they went.
 
I swept the floors. Cleared the ice from the cistern. At lunch time, I warmed some tea and soup and took it up to Ma. She was awake, sitting up. She even used a spoon herself.
 
After a bit, she turned and told me she was proud of all that I had done. “I wish I was healthy again,” she said, “wouldn’t be such a burden on you, doing all that you’re doing.” I wanted to tell her how I was feeling, how desperate I was for her to get well and free me, how guilty I felt for feeling that way, but, I don’t know why, I just couldn’t tell her that, like something had changed between us.
 
But then she said, “Don’t worry no more, Carrie.”
 
I told her I wouldn’t, that I was glad she was better, that we all had been worried.
 
“I don’t mean that,” she said. “No I mean, don’t worry about Ernest. Your Pa will come around. And don’t worry about all these chores and your schooling and where you’re headed, girl. I’ll be back up. You’ll see. I’ll be back up. Bless you, child.”
 
I melted into her arms. Oh, be it so, be it so.
 
 
Sunday, January 10, 1892. 42 degrees, partly cloudy.
 
Sometime in the night, the warm breeze brought the thaw. The yard was all a mess of mud. After breakfast, I took some tea to Ma and then we piled onto the hay wagon to go down to church.
 
As we pulled up, the sun came out, for a moment, all spring-like, and we made our way in. I wasn’t even noticing until I sat down and there he was, just two pews up. Ernest turned and smiled, all confident and warm and his bright green eyes all watery and then he turned back, I guess not wanting to make a spectacle of it all.

(Note: This piece was a character sketch presented on stage by professional actors in Vermont Stage Company’s annual production of ‘Winter Tales’. The reception from this and the first story, ‘Carrie, 1918’ spurred me to begin work on my novel, Hiram Falls. This piece was edited to reflect changes developed in the overall story since 2018 when this was first performed. The audio is the author’s narration.)

December 24, 1947

Doc Fowler knows it’s foolhardy, even as he hangs up the phone call from Vera, the town operator, even as he goes in the darkness to his bureau to get his long johns, even as he hears his wife, Flo, stir and rise up from the bed and flip on the light.

“What are you doing?” Flo says.

“Vera called. She said Ernest Eastman went to the Emersons’ house to say Carrie was real sick and could they get a call to me.”

“Good God, it’s howling out there,” she says. “He walked all the way down to Emersons’?”

“I know.” Doc says. “Must not be good. I need to head up there. The Nash will never make it; I’m gonna take the sleigh.”

“It’s not a night fit for horses either,” she says. She mutters something under her breath but he doesn’t hear it, too busy getting on his wool pants and shirt. Flo puts on her robe and slippers and heads downstairs. Muttering.

“Damn fool,” she says.

“I heard that.”

“Well, you are,” she whispers back up to him. “And be quiet. We don’t want to wake up David.”

They know this routine. Flo goes down to fix a pot of coffee, gather some food, find his coat and hat, an extra blanket, maybe, while he goes into the office in the ell to get his medicines and bag and whatever else he might need. For 22 years they’ve been doing it, at all hours of the night and day, every day of the week.

Doc is 47. Tall and wiry, he walks as much as he can — to town, to patients nearby;  when he has free time he chops his own wood, works the garden with Flo, cares for the horses and rides them as often as he can. He’s a doting father and, when he can, takes David for some kind activity, fishing, hiking, skating, whatever he has time for. Doc knows physical work. He grew up on a small farm on Bickford Mountain, where his Dad and Mom still live.

His mother was the one who encouraged him to leave the farm, to go to university. She didn’t want him to go to war. One brother was enough.

He’d always been interested in science, in being a doctor, so it was an easy decision for him. Not so for his Dad. He trimmed the herd, brought in some boarders to help with chores and still hasn’t forgiven his son for leaving the farm.

Doc went to University of Vermont, then stayed on for medical school. In 1925, he took over the practice of Doc Abernethy on the edge of the upper village in Hiram Falls. To lure Doc Abernethy to Hiram Falls, the town had pooled resources and given him a house with a barn, carriage and horse team. So that was passed onto Doc Fowler. Much appreciated. He’s got a new team now; two young mares raised by Ernest Eastman. They are fine, confident horses.

Doc looks out the window and sees the snow coming down hard. This storm means business, he thinks. He feels a knot in his stomach.

In the kitchen, Flo fiddles with the radio but gets mostly static until she finds the farmers’ station and the weather. The monotone voice tells her what she already knows: the storm is going to last a while. A single, overhead bulb illuminates the room. The yellow walls make it seem warm. She likes the new lights and is glad they finally got electricity. And a phone. Both have made her life, their lives, easier. Some people in town and almost everyone outside of town don’t have either. Like Ernest and Carrie.

I wish he’d wait ’til daylight, she thinks.

Flo is a best friend of Carrie. They went to school together, shared dreams together and she was Doc’s first patient: complications with her third child, a girl. He was summoned to help the midwife. Flo went with him. Ernest was in such a tizzy, she sent him out to the barn to tend to his horses and then played with the two young Eastman boys. Everyone knew, when they thought about it later, that nothing good would come that day and so, in the years since, Carrie and Ernest have kept that child alive in their hearts but put their love into their sons and each other.

From then on, Doc made it a habit to drop in and see Carrie from time to time, knowing she still carries the grief of losing that little girl and of 1918, of course, when most of her family died in the epidemic, she all alone with her brother trying to push on.

Doc never bills Carrie and Ernest. He doesn’t hardly send anyone bills. People pay him if they can, don’t if they can’t. Sometimes they give him meat, or syrup, or a bag of potatoes, or some freshly caught trout. Sometimes they’ll show up to ask if they can do some work around the yard. Ernest comes by from time to time to tend to the horses — to check on their hooves or put on new shoes or repair a saddle or halter. Two years ago, after the second of Doc’s team had to be put down, Ernest came riding in with the two young mares. “Least I can do,” he said. There was no arguing.

Flo stares out the window and sees Doc back the Nash sedan out into the drive so the carriage can get out. He doesn’t get far before the wheels start spinning. He fills and lights the lanterns on the sleigh, gets the horses out of the stalls and hitches them up and puts the heavy blanket into the seat. The sleigh was a fancy thing in its day. All black canvas with a long sloping roof and open front, it’s gotten a little worse for wear, a little frayed. But its runners are true, its brakes strong, so Doc knows it’s up to it.

“You’re foolish,” Flo tells him as he walks in. “This is no storm to be chancing a house call up the mountain. Radio says it’ll be like this all night and most of tomorrow. Christmas day.”

“Ernest wouldn’t have gone down to Emersons’ in the middle of the night to call if it wasn’t important. Hell that’s not the kind of thing you do in a storm if you aren’t worried.”

“Be careful will you?” She hands him a canvas bag with a sandwich, several apples and a Mason jar of water. They hug. “Give my best to them.”

The horses are hesitant at first, but Doc coaxes them out the drive, onto the road and into the wind. It’s biting. The snow stings his cheeks and collects quickly on his beard. Maybe I am foolish, he thinks.

Doc’s not used to second thoughts. But lately he’s been having them. He’s been out straight — so much illness around — and he’s exhausted. He shakes the reins, more out of encouragement than direction and slides himself deeper into the corner under the canopy, out of the wind. The lanterns don’t help much; he can barely see beyond the horses’ haunches as they finally gain a rhythm as they go down Main Street. The town looks magical with its new electric street lights, so peaceful and quiet, the storefronts and houses all in shadows obscured by the snow. Soon they cross the bridge and begin heading up hill.

Bickford Farm is almost six miles from Doc’s house and is high up on the ridge. It’s a haul in a car, much less a sleigh. Doc settles in and pulls the blanket up over his back, over his wool hat and wraps it around him. The warmth feels comforting. He leans his head against the canvas canopy. The gentle pace of the horses rock Doc back and forth, back and forth and soon Doc feels his eyelids droop and then he’s asleep. Just like that.

So he does not notice as the team misses the corner turn onto Bickford Mountain Road; he does not see the team follow the road up to the right and on up Mt. Riga. It’s an easy enough mistake to make in the daytime, much less on a snowy night. The horses trudge along, heads down, making headway up the sloping, winding road in the opposite direction than intended.

Doc opens his eyes with a start. The sleigh has stopped. Snow swirls around the horses. Wide awake, alarmed, he snaps the reins, but the horses stay put. And then he sees it, sees him, a stranger standing between the two horses, stroking the snow off the brown mare’s eyelids. He turns and looks right at Doc. The sleigh lights flicker on his face: a young man of 25 or so, black hair, no hat, no gloves, a hint of a smile. There is something vaguely familiar about him.

Doc is perplexed. “Who are you?” Doc asks, out loud.

The man looks startled at first. The grey mare on the left bounces her head up, but the man holds her steady.

“Where am I?” asks Doc.

Later, when Doc thinks back on the moment, he’ll realize that he doesn’t see the man’s lips move, doesn’t hear his voice, but he experiences a conversation nonetheless.

“You’re on Mt. Riga,” the man says. “You fell asleep and didn’t make the turn to Bickford Mountain.”

“How do you know that?”

The man doesn’t answer right off. He swings himself up on the grey mare, just as smooth as can be, and turns the horses and the sleigh around.

“Got to get you to Carrie Bickford’s house,” he says. “She’s not well.”

Doc’s mind is racing, his thoughts a jumble.

“How do you know that?” he says.

“Pull the brake on a bit,” is all the man says. He pulls the brake back a bit, just enough to keep the sleigh from sliding into the horses but his mind scrambles for some sort of explanation, an answer, because it makes no sense. How did I get here? he thinks, Who is this man? Why does he not speak? Why doesn’t he just come into the sleigh to keep warm?

“Mister,” Doc yells. “Why don’t you come in here, out of the snow?”

But there is no answer. Just the sound of the wind and the runners on the road. A gust of wind swirls the snow into Doc’s face, freezing his eyelashes shut. He removes his glove and presses his warm hand against his eyes to melt the frozen lashes; blinking, he can see again. He tucks his gloveless hand under the blanket.

“Mister,” he yells again. “Come on in here. It’s way too cold for you out there.”

The man does not respond. I know everyone in town, Doc thinks. I’ve been to their houses or they’ve come to my office or I’ve seen them at school or in the diner. But I don’t know this man, though it feels like I do, or should. And why does he call Carrie by her maiden name?

The wind drives Doc to tuck further into the corner of the sleigh, his head pressed against the canvas, out of the wind.

Minutes pass into an hour; the road grows less steep. He knows where he is now, sees as the horses make the turn to Bickford Mountain. The man is still on the grey mare. As Doc feels the gentle rhythm of the horses’ pace, rocking, rocking, rocking, he falls asleep again, does not see the sky growing lighter, does not notice as they pass the Rickers, the Pinkhams, the Emersons and make it to the long drive to Bickford Farm. The horses turn in, instinctively, eager, remembering the way horses can remember where they were born and at that moment, Doc opens his eyes. He checks his watch. Good God, he thinks, ten to 7. I left four hours ago. How is that possible?

Then he notices that the man is gone.

The horses stop at the post in front of the barn and carefully, gingerly, Doc unwinds his stiff body and slides down from the sleigh. It is painful to walk. With his left hand resting on the back of the brown mare, he gimps his way to the front and pats the horses, clearing the snow from their eyes and heads. There is no snow on the back of the grey mare. He looks down the drive but there’s no sign of the stranger, no footprints.

Ernest comes bursting out, putting his coat on as he runs. “Doc, oh my God, Doc,” he shouts, “I was worried you might not make it. You’ve got to get inside. Carrie’s fever’s gotten worse. Go on in. I’ll get the horses into the barn.”

Doc walks into the warm kitchen and rubs his hands together above the cook stove. The house is strangely silent. Carrie and Ernest’s two boys have grown and left, tending to their own farms up north. He takes off his coat and boots. With a kerosene lantern in his left hand, his medical bag in his right, he climbs the narrow stairs to the main bedroom.

The smell hits him as he enters; the room is warm, too warm, and stuffy. He feels Carrie’s forehead; she is burning up. He tries to rouse her but can’t. Her breathing is raspy. Uneven. He goes to the windows and opens them wide and rushes downstairs to find some washcloths. Ernest comes back from the barn.

“We’ve got to cool her down, Ernest; get these wet with some cold water and bring them up. Wait, get some snow, too, in a bowl. I’m going to give her a shot of penicillin. I’m not sure what exactly she’s got, whether it’s the grippe or what, but this is a new drug, and if anything’s going to work it’s this. But we need to cool her down. And we’ll need to get some water in her, too.”

Doc and Ernest sit by her all morning, taking turns applying the wash cloths to her forehead. Occasionally Doc wraps some of the snow in cloth and places it under her arms, on her ankles and wrists. Ernest and Doc don’t talk; there is not much to say above the worry. The hours crawl. Finally, near 1 o’clock, she opens her eyes. She struggles to speak.

“Doc,” she says, “so good to see you.”

Her fever has broken. Doc and Ernest help her up in a chair, get her to drink some water while Ernest changes her sheets and bed clothes. Back in bed, she sits up and begins to cough.

“Get that stuff out of you,” Doc says. The color is returning in her face. She smiles and looks out the windows; frosted around the panes, the heavy snowfall still visible.

“I don’t know how you made it up here in this weather,” she says. “It’s a miracle.”

“Indeed,” says Doc, “your husband raises some fine horses.” He starts to tell her about missing the turn, about the man, but he thinks better of it, so unsure he is of how to explain it. He stays for several more hours, gets her to take some soup and some of Rina Lapsa’s medicinal tea she mixes up for him to give to patients. He gives her some aspirin, too. Mid-afternoon, he decides to head back.

“Your boys coming down for a visit?” Doc asks her.

“They hoped to, but I don’t know; the weather may make travel impossible for a couple of days.”

“They know you’ve been sick?” he asks.

“No. I don’t want to bother them.”

“Well,” Doc says, smiling, “looks like when they do come, they’ll find you among the living.”

Carrie smiles. “Merry Christmas,” she says. “And I bet David can’t wait for you to get home.”

“That’s true. Made him a sled this year. Can’t wait to give it to him.”

Out in the yard, the snowfall is easing. Ernest helps Doc into the carriage and hands him the canvas food bag with some muffins added.

“Made ’em myself,” Ernest says, and then, handing him a small flask. “A little fuel for the trip.”

Doc takes the flask. “It was a good thing you went down to Emersons’ to get a call to me, Ernest. You and Carrie should get a phone and electricity when they bring the lines up here.”

Doc snaps the reins gently and the team pulls the carriage out the drive and down the road. He looks out at the view down the mountain, marveling at the beauty, embracing the satisfaction of Carrie’s recovery. But he feels the twinge of the stranger, the rescue, of having fallen asleep, of not knowing. Doc keeps picking at his puzzlement all the way down the mountain, unsure what to tell Flo. Maybe I shouldn’t, he thinks. She’d probably say I was losing my mind.

By the time they get to the valley, it’s almost dark and Doc has decided to set aside all the strangeness of the night, to let his reasoning mind embrace what, for the moment, his imagination can’t explain. He thinks of Carrie, safe now, and of reaching home. And then he thinks again of David, of Flo, picturing them in the kitchen, Flo getting Christmas supper all ready, David asking her for the millionth time when his Dad will finally come home.

“Any moment,” Flo is probably telling him. “Any moment.”

Just then, just as he passes Old Man Fiengo’s shop, he sees something out of the corner of his eye, sees something move. It can’t be, he thinks. It is. It’s the man, the stranger. Doc sees him there leaning up against the wall between Fiengo’s and the barber shop. Smiling. Doc pulls hard on the reins, stops the sleigh and leans forward to get a better look. But there is no man. Just shadows. Doc laughs to himself. “Jeezum. Maybe I am losing my mind.”

He turns, grabs the reins and snaps them. “Giddy-up. Let’s get home.”

(Note: This is the fourth character sketch from my novel, Hiram Falls, presented by professional actors in shows by Vermont Stage Company in its production of ‘Winter Tales.’ The sketches led to creation of Hiram Falls, the novel. The audio is my narration.)

December 21, 1972 

Lavender Libby always gets right up in the morning but this morning she lingers, trying to catch the unease that has overtaken her in the cold winter darkness. It’s not a dream, not some jiggery nightmare that sticks with her all day. It’s not that Syd couldn’t come over last night for dinner and a snuggle. It’s something else. Like someone’s watching her. Or listening in. Or talking about her.

Ah, feck. She says, throwing off the sheets and getting up. Lavender is 5’4” tall and solid. Big-boned, as they say. Sweet. But not always. She’s not someone to mess with. Even at her age. An attribute honed by managing the Hiram Falls Lumber Mill for 27 years, coping with loggers pissed at the price she set for their wood all the while them yelling like they were still out in the woods. “Go elsewhere,” she’d say. But they never did and eventually they’d calm down and end their charade.

Lavender is free of all that now. One day seven winters ago, she discovered something she shouldn’t have and, worse yet, she couldn’t talk about it with anyone or even say why she was so pissed off because that’s a secret too big for her to set free. So she walked out, telling Tim Whalen Jr. to send her last check in the mail.

And the next day she went to work with her daughter, Jenna, namesake of Jenna’s Diner. The baking queens. Jenna with her donuts. Lavender with her muffins and pies though it’s her pies they like most.

So here Lavender is in her kitchen, all dressed, her long lavender hair tied in a French braid, taking each of the muffins out of the pans and laying them in the slat-wood boxes her Dad made long ago. Each holds two dozen; each box can be stacked on another without touching the tops. Today: peach, apple and, for the lunch crowd, Leek Parmesan which, if you haven’t tried one, is to die for. In the last box she puts 24 balls of chilled pie dough, each wrapped in wax paper.

Outside now, she loads the back of her l961 special order lavender Rambler wagon, turns and looks up to the stars, takes a deep breath and figures it’s 7 degrees with no snow coming, despite the wind.

As she coaxes her beast of an automobile into first, she again feels a catch, a tweak, somewhere under her ribcage. Ain’t I a mess this morning? she thinks.

At the end of her drive she and the car slip-slide onto the dirt road all packed with snow and ice and sand and snow and ice like it is this time of year and will remain so until the daffodils finally poke up through the oak and maple and beech leaves in a grand showy illusion that it won’t snow again.

Lavender drives down the hill like most of us drive down a hill we’ve travelled every day for more years than we can remember –– too fast and not paying attention. She’s thinking about the day, about the meeting of the Holiday Committee, God bless their souls, where she and Syd and Jenna and Doc Fowler and Tim Whalen and Vera Nash and a few others in town with businesses or wallets or both meet in secret and decide who’s in most need of a food basket or some toys or both because their lives have gone haywire.

She’s thinking all this just when it happens. Coming out of the corner above Helen Thompson’s place, her headlights land on a man standing in the middle of the road, right smack in the center, 100 feet, 90 feet, 80 feet ahead, just standing there, wearing a long black oilskin coat. And no hat. In the moment between her heart leaping up through her nostrils and her brain telling her foot to slam on the brakes she wonders who it is and what the feck he is doing there. Her car is skidding now, the tires furiously trying to bite down on the snow ice dirt road but can’t, and Lavender downshifts into panic. Feck Feck Feck I’m gonna hit him, she thinks, until, at the very last possible moment before inevitability turns to reality, the man moves. Sidesteps right the feck out of the way like a fecking bullfighter. Lavender watches him go by, slow motion like, his grey eyes locked on hers, him smiling, as the car and Lavender pass him and the car finally shudders to a stall. Lavender leaps out to give the man what for, to tell him what an idiot he is, when THWUMP! And she hears a thump whump crash so loud, so deep it goes through her, nearly knocks her over, and she turns to see a giant tree fallen across the road 50 feet ahead, it’s giant branches still throbbing, and she turns back to where the man was standing, to where he was fecking smiling but he’s gone. Not there. Vanished.

She walks over to where he stood. Not a trace. In the road, no footprints. Snow bank undisturbed.  “Hey!” she yells, just to let the air out of her lungs. “Where are you?” Silence. Her anger dissipates. Replaced by worry. Confusion. “Hey! You! You OK?” Silence.

She stands in the cold silence a few seconds more. But the man is really not there at all. Almost like he hadn’t been there at all. So Lavender walks back to the car, tentative now, wondering what just happened, wondering if she is losing her fecking mind, thinking about how she’s been seeing things lately, hearing things, like the other day when she walked into the barn and saw one of her old horses standing in the stall and then looked again and the stall was empty. Of course it was; the horse has been dead for 20 years.

She gets into the car, starts it, puts it into reverse and spins back up the road all the way to Ned Bartels’ barn, where she turns around to go to the diner the long way. When she gets there, she calls Tim Whalen Jr. He’s asleep.

“Sorry to roust you, Tim,” she says, even though she’s not sorry at all. “This is Lavender.”

“I know who it is for gosh sakes. Everything OK?”

“No. Helen Thompson’s fecking elm tree came down across Lincoln Hill Road. If I’d been a few seconds sooner would have come right down on top of me. Get the forest crew out there lickety split, because someone’s gonna come barreling down that hill right into it.”

Say what you will about Tim Whalen Jr. and how he runs the Lumber Mill but he’s the best fire chief Hiram Falls has ever had. He jumps out of bed into his overalls the moment he hangs up. He tells his wife, Suzie, who’s also the dispatcher, to get the forest crew up there as soon as they can, that he’s on his way with one of the mill trucks and a handful of chain saws and some fluorescent signs.  “No siren, Suzie.”

Lavender hangs up and flips on the Diner’s ovens and the fry-a-lator, gets out the pie fillings she’s cooked the day before — more flavorful on the second day — and starts rolling out the pie dough on the steel table.

Jenna comes in.

“Morning, Ma.”

“You’re even later than I am this morning.”

“My aren’t we in a good mood?”

“Agitated.That’s all.”

They work in silence. They know how to do that. Jenna rattles around doing what you do to get ready for the likes of the Hardy Brothers and the Norton twins, the loggers and mill workers and carpenters and plumbers and farmhands and a host of others with big appetites who are too lazy, too lonely or too inept to make breakfast themselves. “Maybe they just like the fecking food you cook,” Lavender said one night when Jenna was feeling tired and cranky.

The ovens hot, Lavender slides in all the pies and sets the timers. She breaks the silence.

 “Strangest thing,” Lavender says. “Came around the corner above Helen Thompson’s place, and there was a man just standing in the middle of the road. Imagine that. Almost hit him. And when I stopped to see who it was and find out what the feck he was doing standing in the middle of the road in the middle of the night, I heard a crash like you can’t believe and you know what it was? That old elm of Helen Thompson’s cut loose; fell right across the road. It would have killed me if I hadn’t stopped.”

“Who was the man?”

“That all you care about? I mean, aren’t you glad your Mom wasn’t killed?”

“Yep. But you’re here aren’t you? Who was the guy?”

“I don’t know. Never seen him before. And here’s the really weird part. He disappeared. Gone. Poof. Just like that.”

“Hmm.”

“Looked all over for him. Not a trace.”

“Maybe it was Ben Nash’s little pal?” Jenna says with a laugh.

“Oh, hush. That man’s brain is all fecked up from his accident. Besides, we aren’t supposed to know about that.”

 “Hmm. You call Tim?”

 “Of course,” Lavender says. Then she smiles. “Nothing could be finer than to wake that man up in the middle of the night.”

“You still pissed off at him?”

“Try working for him for 27 years.”

 “Hmm.”

The two are silent for a while more. Jenna rolls her Mom’s story over in her mind. It unsettles her. Worries her. “You sure you saw someone, Ma? That doesn’t make any sense.”

 “I told you, I saw someone. Standing in the middle of the road. Plain as day. He was fecking smiling at me. Then he disappeared.” I shouldn’t have told her, Lavender thinks.  Now she’ll think my brain is getting as fecked up as Ben Nash’s.

After a while, Lavender says, “You remember we got the Holiday Committee coming this morning, right? And tomorrow’s cooking day.”

“Oh, yah. I went down to Brickman’s last night; the turkeys are in and they’ve already started the cooking in their fancy-dancy new ovens. We’ll do our usual, the stuffing and veggies and relish and pies and muffins. Got enough for 72 this year. Patti and Rina and Grace are coming in to help us. We’re all set. Which pies you want for the meeting?”

“Wild blueberry.”

“Hmm. Guess Syd must be coming.”

“Hush you.”

“How you two getting on?”

“Fine.” Jenna waits for more in the silence, but Lavender volunteers nothing.

Syd is Syd Coyne. Lavender’s pal. They’ve been going out ever since Syd’s wife left him a few years back to find her bliss elsewhere. She didn’t even leave a note. Just packed her bags and left while Syd was at work. What pissed Syd off the most was that she took their brand new Waring blender.

When Lavender heard Syd’s wife left him, she took him a wild blueberry pie, his favorite, and soon the two were dating, much to the town’s delight. They never thought much of Syd’s wife. But they never stayed the night at the other’s house since neither liked to talk in the morning and neither liked to hear someone else’s weird noises coming from the bathroom first thing in the day.

One late night, returning from Syd’s house, Lavender drove by Orion Black’s place and noticed that all the lights were on. She thought it odd. Odder still was that they were still on the next night, too. So Lavender stopped. She had known Orion since school days, knew he lives alone, so she didn’t think twice about pounding on his door in the middle of the night. She heard him shuffling around, bumping into a table and then a chair, swearing, and finally coming to the door in his PJ’s.

Lavender thought he might have gotten into the cider, but what she discovered was that Orion was as blind as a shovel. He had no idea his lights were on. And Lavender discovered that no one knew he was blind except the delivery boy at Brickman’s Market. So Lavender decided right then and there that she’d make Orion a meal each week. And one morning, after fishing, she and Syd stopped by with a basket of almost still wriggling brook trout and Lavender fried them up in lard with some ramps and garlic and dill and pepper and the three of them agreed it was the best breakfast ever.

And that got Lavender to thinking: How many other people in town were blind, or were in trouble or were down on their luck and needed a little joy? And before long she started the Holiday Committee with the aim of filling the bellies of the hungry in town at their loneliest time of the year. And each year she makes sure that everyone keeps it quiet and that no one knows who is behind it all.

So here it is 10 a.m. sharp, the breakfast crowd gone, and Jenna flips the diner’s sign to closed. Syd arrives, gives Lavender a kiss on the top of her head and joins the committee hugging the big round corner table that looks out over the falls of Hiram Falls, today all sparkling from the mist that’s coated the hemlocks and pines and oaks.

The committee members insist on whispering even though the diner’s empty. One says Quincy Miles Babcock’s leg has fully healed and he’s back as lead sawyer at the mill. Everyone’s pleased to cross his family off the list. And Eva LaBonne has gotten married again but the new one is actually gainfully employed and adores each of her four children.

They are distressed to hear about others not so lucky. And soon they’ve reached 72 so the meeting shifts to logistics. Tim Whalen Jr. confirms he’s got a dozen volunteer firemen – sworn to secrecy – to do the deliveries and to make sure to leave the baskets on the porch or at the front door and to knock and skedaddle so the recipients aren’t embarrassed.

All that settled, they swoop into the blueberry pies, each wondering how anything could taste so fresh and so wonderful in the winter.

Lavender isn’t thinking about the pie. She’s been wanting to tell everyone about how she nearly got killed by an elm tree this morning, about the man standing in the road who disappeared. But she doesn’t. Not with Tim Whalen there. They might think I’m losing my marbles, she thinks. And maybe I am. Maybe I am. Or maybe it’s just a miracle. Lavender is unaware that if she had said something, Doc might have told her about his experience with the man long ago. Or Vera might have told them how she saw the man, the man Ben’s been talking to all these years, and now she knows that her husband isn’t going crazy.

But Lavender doesn’t say anything and as the still-warm pie melts in her mouth, she thinks of Anya Lapsa and how surprised she is going to be tomorrow as she stares out her curtainless window in her tiny house on Mt. Riga hoping the car coming in is her husband finally come home. But instead a pair of strapping young firemen will hop out, set on her stoop a big box of food and a bag of presents all wrapped for her boys, and they’ll drive off into the winter’s night before she even gets to the door, just as her boys come bounding down all excited to see a bag full of presents with their names on them.

Note: This was the third character sketch from my novel Hiram Falls and was presented on stage in 2019 in performances of ‘Winter Tales’ by The Vermont Stage Company. The audio is one of the live performances by actor Bob Nuner. I’m posting it here to give you a sense of the tone of the upcoming novel, Hiram Falls. For the story of how this photo helped me re-start the writing of the novel, click here.

Willie’s kitchen is nearly dark, the cold January dusk overtaking the room, overtaking Willie as he sits in his chair beside the wood stove. The fire is down to embers. Willie is sleeping again. It’s his after-lunch routine now: drift in and out of naps, dream, awaken, remember, sleep again. Used to be he’d catch a nap after lunch — 30 minutes tops — and then bound out to the barn or the fields for one chore or another. Not now. He is awake again. A memory overtakes his mind.

The Tunbridge Fair. September long ago. At the cow barn by the bridge, he was gazing in at the clusters of cows and heifers and families getting ready for the judging. Deep into the barn was Lucas. And Gert. Lucas, barely a teenager, all decked out in his white pants and shirt with a black bow tie and a number pinned to his chest, brushing out the cow’s tail one last time, trying to look all calm, in control. Gert reached out to fix Lucas’ hair. “Ma!” he snapped. She looked over at Willie and winked.

Oh, how he misses them.

A rush of wind rattles the window. It’s too damned quiet, he thinks. Too damned quiet. None of Lucas’ and Pam’s boys rushing around underfoot. No Pam telling them to take their energy outside. No Lucas coming through the doorway after milking wondering what was for dinner, or going on about his plans for the lower field.

No! he thinks. No! Don’t be going there.

He snaps on the light on the reading table and sees the plate with a piece of sour cherry pie, minus a small bite, the fork on top. Barb had brought it a few days back. Why the hell does she use margarine? he thinks. He knows it’s long past time when he can say anything about it, what with her coming up once a week for the last two years bringing him a casserole or pot of beans or a pie or some groceries he might need. Gert’s best friend; did the same thing after Gert passed but not this long. Guess she needs company as much as I do, he thinks.

He rises from the chair, stiffly, carefully, his body trying to adjust to the notion of being upright, of moving forward. He reaches over for the pie plate, walks over to the trash, slides in the pie and puts the plate and fork in the sink along with the others.

He flips on the kitchen overhead. The light pierces off the white walls, all bare except the one by the kitchen table. Here’s what’s on that wall: An old wall clock with a second hand—his mother bought it with some of the sweet corn money when he was a teen; still keeps time to the minute. On the left are dozens of photos from over the years, some tacked, some held by yellowing Scotch tape; his father in the barn with him and his brothers; his Mom in the garden; Gert picking apples—her smile so sweet; Lucas and Pam on their wedding day, the banquet out in the orchard; school pictures of their boys, all gussied up; and his favorite, he and Lucas side by side in the barn, him looking over at Lucas’ wide grin, cows staring in the background. On the left is a bulletin board jammed with notes and reminders curled towards the tacks, unheeded and forgotten. Under the clock, front and center, is the calendar, stuck on May from two years ago, the May when everything went wrong.

He looks down at the kitchen table. It is stacked with mail and threatens the small space where he eats; flyers from the hardware store, newsletters from the Farm Bureau and the milk co-op; catalogues for tractors and seeds and even women’s clothing; sales appeals to him and Pam and Lucas and, even, Gert. How can they not know? he thinks.

It ticks him off. It ticks him off that he’s let them collect there, let them pile up because of his own inertia, his own laziness. He looks up at the calendar. It gives him a twinge every time. The first May after Lucas and Pam took over the farm; the first month he was finally able to walk since his accident that winter, that freak moment when he slipped on the black ice outside the barn and fell so hard, so completely, it crushed his hip, leaving him unable to do the milking, do the chores, run the tractor, do anything; the injury that forced Lucas and Pam to agree to take on the farm full-time.

After Doc Fowler had delivered the news that it would be two years or so before Willie’d heal fully, he and Lucas and Pam had sat down and decided. Lucas was excited. Pam, a town girl, wasn’t as sure but she was all in if Lucas was. And she was. She learned how to bring the cows in, how to milk, how to run the tractor just in case Lucas needed help. All while dealing with the three boys. And doing the meals. A wonder that woman.

Willie opens the door to the mudroom, puts on his hat and gloves and coat and walks into the barn. The chickens squawk and scatter. He’d bought a dozen from Frenchie in late September, more for something to do than anything, an amusement. Each morning he wanders around the barn trying to figure out where they’d laid their eggs this time. Willie’s breath looks like he’s smoking. Ten below. He opens the barn door, gingerly climbs onto the ATV, starts it up and blasts outside. The snow is packed; it’s been cold and dry for a week. The headlight pierces the black, reflects off the snow as he heads out on the old cow path, almost by instinct, wind against his cheeks. It feels good. He heads to the lower field and follows the edge of the woods before curling back. Then, suddenly, he realizes he isn’t where he thinks he is, the darkness playing tricks, and he is exactly where he didn’t want to be, didn’t want to go, didn’t want to see. But there it is: the bull’s pen, the gate still open, even now, two years later. The memory floods his mind; unprepared, he can’t push it back. It’s like it’s all happening again, right in front of him.

It’s May 30th. 5:30 p.m. Late sun. He’s on the ATV — against Doc Fowler’s orders — his hip screaming, out looking for Lucas who hadn’t come in after milking, hadn’t checked in to see Pam at the stove fixing the three boys their supper. “I’ll check on him,” he’d told Pam ignoring her protests. In the barn he’d seen the cows still lined up for milking. He got onto the ATV and headed out thinking Lucas was in the fields, but then he saw him, piled in a heap near the gate of the bull’s pen, gate open, bull nowhere to be seen. He knew right away what had happened. He cursed his son yet knew he'd done the same thing countless times, gone into the bull's pen alone, gone in to fill the water bucket or put more grain in the bin. Why the hell did we keep that one? he thought. Knew right off that one was no good, the eyes, the wild eyes. Lucas had insisted. Wanted the meat. “Worth more than if we sell it,” he’d said. And there he was, his dear son, all crumpled up, not moving, right by the open gate.

He got down from the ATV, ignoring the searing pain in his hip as he hobbled over, got down on his knees and checked for a pulse that wasn’t there. When he checked again, desperate, he saw the wounds and knew. He struggled to lift his son, his arms nothing like they used to be, his legs with little strength at all as he dragged him to the bed of the ATV, slip-sliding in the mud, finally getting him onto the back and then racing to the barn where he covered him with burlap Blue Seal bags. He limped inside to get Pam. She was moving like she always did at dinnertime, filling each plate with food and plunking it onto the table, and she, holding the third boy’s plate, stopped and looked at Willie, frozen in horror at his expression, at the blood on his shirt, and dropped the plate, a loud clatter on the floor, and rushed to him and then past him and out the door to the barn and that's when they all heard her wail.

Willie knows now the memory has overwhelmed him, that he can’t stop it this time, so he gives in, lets it in, lets it take hold.

The burial in the family plot up back, the silence in the house that followed. His neighbors coming up to help out. Ernest leading the plowing and planting and later the first cut. Carrie and Barb making meals and planting the garden as Pam took over the milking and chores with help of her brother, Tom. Frenchie keeping the equipment running.

Then, late in August, after the second cut, Pam came in from the barn, the boys off somewhere in the woods, shaking her head saying, “I can’t do this anymore, Willie; I can’t do it.”

They’d talked and cried and talked some more around the kitchen table. “I’m sorry Willie,” she said. “I can’t be running this farm and taking care of the boys and keeping my spirits up all at the same time. Not sure I could do it even if you were healthy. Everywhere I look I see Lucas. In the barn, in the fields, in the kitchen, the bedroom. I’ve gotta be strong for these kids, Willie. I can’t do that here, can’t do it like this.

“My Mom and Dad say they’ll have us at their place. I’ll get work in town somewhere. But you have to promise me, Willie, promise me that you’ll come down regular and visit. The boys’ll need you. I’ll need you.”

He promised.

A date was set and came for the auction, the day when everything, simply everything, was all loaded up onto strangers’ trucks and vans and trailers and hauled away. The 73 cows went first in a fleet of 18-wheelers with fancy labels on their cabs. Then all the equipment that had helped them milk and care for the cows, plant the timothy and clover and alfalfa and winter rye, cut and rake and bale all the acres of hay, chop the corn and bring it to the silage pit, all loaded onto flatbeds and pickups. All gone. And the auctioneer took his cut out of the pile of cash and handed over the rest along with the bank checks, and drove away with a wave out the window leaving Willie in the barn doorway, the sun settling behind the trees and him standing there unable to stop the crying.

In the cold, in the dark, sitting on the ATV staring at the bull’s corral illuminated by the headlight, Willie feels the tears running down his cheeks, feels the deep hollow inside, feels the memory finally fade. If only I hadn’t busted my hip. If only I had made Lucas sell the bull. If only, if only, if only…

He catches himself. Finally. He wipes his eyes with his sleeve, starts up the ATV and flies across the field to the barn. In the house he goes over to the calendar, takes it from the wall, goes to the wood stove, stirs the coals and tosses it in. He watches as the pages curl, smoke and then catch; he adds a few logs and closes the stove door.

He walks over to the trash can, slides it to the edge of the kitchen table, reaches his giant hand behind the pile of mail and in one long motion sweeps the whole lot of it into the bin. “There,” he says out loud. “Hope some bills are in there, too.”

He looks at the clock. It’s 5:30. Eerie, he thinks. He opens the fridge and pulls out some milk and Barb’s tuna casserole and sits down at the kitchen table. A glass. No plates. Just a fork. He stares at the casserole. Nothing appetizing about it at all. Nothing. He stares at it, fork in hand, and wonders how he got to this point, only 63 years old, finally healthy again, just sleeping, eating casseroles, playing with chickens. What would Gert say? he thinks. What would Lucas say?

He wonders, again, whether it’s time to sell the place. Move into town. Be closer to the boys and Pam. He enjoys the visits, but always there. Not here. He misses them. Misses all the chaos and laughter, all the banter. But he misses the work, the animals, the purpose.

He downs the glass of milk, gets up and puts the casserole back in the fridge. Untouched. He sits down in the easy chair and pulls out the paper. Yesterday’s. It always makes him feel good to read the news a day late knowing that nothing was so calamitous that it ended the world.

It seems only a moment later that he sees the headlights move across the kitchen wall and then hears the sound of tires crunching in the cold snow as the car goes past the house and parks in front of the barn. He goes to the mudroom and sees another car come in. Outside, he looks down his long driveway; one more car coming in. What in tarnation? he thinks.

Pam gets out of the first car. Her three boys follow and bound towards him. “Gramps! Gramps!” they scream. Pam carries a basket and a smile. “Hello, Willie,” she says and gives him a long hug. “We thought it high time for us to come here for a visit. High time.”

It makes no sense to him. For a moment, he wonders whether it’s a dream. The kids rush into the house. The doors on the second car open revealing Pam’s brother, Tom, and his wife, Penny. And out of the third come his neighbors, Carrie and Ernest, and from the back, Barb, sweet Barb. Each carry baskets. “How ya doin’?” asks Ernest, his oldest friend, a school classmate.

What are you all doing here? Willie asks.

“This, Willie, is Saturday supper on wheels,” Ernest says, “but we’re staying to eat it with you whether you want us or not.”

“And we have some news we want to talk to you about,” Pam says.

Inside, the kitchen is jammed. Pam shoos everyone out and turns on the stove to warm things up. Willie stays with her.

“How are you doing?” she asks.

“Fine,” he says.

“Really?”

“I’m gettin’ by,” he says. “Gettin’ by. Truth be told, I don’t have enough to do. But how are you doing?”

“I’m OK, Willie. OK” She turns to look at him. “It’s nice to see you. Here. In this kitchen. In this house. It’s easier than I thought it’d be. I can feel him here, Willie, but it’s OK. It’s OK.”

She turns back to the stove and busies herself, almost like she’s never left. Soon she’s scooping out beets and carrots and potatoes into bowls, handing them to Willie to take into the dining room. She gets Carrie to cut the still-warm bread and Penny to put the butter out and Barb to pour milk in all the glasses and Tom to carve the roast. Then, like that, they are all seated at the long, dining room table.

“Say grace, Pam,” Willie says.

Pam clears her throat. “Let us give thanks for the food and company. Let us remember all those who’ve passed before. And let us embrace life’s surprises.”

The room erupts again with chatter, how cold the weather’s been, doings in town, new foals up to Bickford Farm.

“How’s the hip?” Ernest asks.

“Fully healed,” Willie says. “A little stiff when I get up in the mornin’ or out of that damn chair. But the pain’s gone.”

“What’ve you been doing with yourself?” Carrie asks.

Willie hesitates. “Been cutting a little wood for sugaring; may tap a few trees this spring. Been napping a lot; so, I guess not much.”

Lucas Junior looks up. “So, is ‘not much’ what a cow farmer does when he doesn’t have cows?” Only his brother Jacob laughs.

“Guess so, Junior. Us old farmers don’t quite know what to do with ourselves. It’s not easy to figure out what you can do when you can’t do what you’ve loved doing.

“And what have you been up to, Junior?” Willie asks.

“I made the 8th grade basketball team. I’m a starter,” he says. “Maybe you can come to one of the games, Gramps.”

“Maybe I could,” Willie says. He watches as Lucas Junior, head down now, pokes his food with his fork. Junior looks just like Lucas when he was that age. “It’s nice to have you here, Junior. And you other boys, too. I know how difficult it’s been. I know it’s not easy to come back here.”

After a bit, Tom breaks the silence by clearing the dishes; others follow. Soon the pies are laid out: apple and his favorite, sour cherry. Made with butter. By Pam.

“Before we have the pies,” Pam says, “we have some news, Willie. And an idea.” Everyone is quiet. “A couple of weeks ago, brother Tom was told he’s gotta leave his farm down in the valley. As you know, Tom’s been renting all these years, and some city fella bought the property out from under him. They’ve got three months to vacate.

“You know as well as I that farmers don’t have the cash kicking around to put a down payment on a farm. So it’s been pretty grim for the last few weeks.

“Then we had this idea. And the more we talked, the more I realized just how much I miss this big, drafty, old house, how much I miss working on a farm. How much I miss you. And as much as I love my Mom and Dad their house is no way big enough for me and the kids.

“So we wondered whether maybe you’d like some cows and some people around. And seeing how this house is so big and goes on forever we thought that maybe there was room for me and the boys and even for Tom and Penny, too, at least until they can find another house to rent.

“Maybe we can make this a farm again, Willie.”

“Now that you’re better,” Tom says, “we could run it together.”

Willie doesn’t know what to say. Or even how to say it. He stares straight at Tom; he knows him, knows what kind of farmer he is. Then he looks at Pam and then each of the boys, ending with Junior.

“You can teach me all you know, Gramps,” Junior says.

“That I could,” he says, with a hint of a smile. “And maybe this would be a good thing. Let me think on it. … Now how’s about us getting’ to them pies while they’re still warm.”

Ben Nash looks up from the pit, from beneath the car, and doesn’t know what to answer, doesn’t really understand the question even.

He knows Richard Foster’s face. Has seen it before. He thinks. Reminded, he remembers that Mr. Foster is the new owner of the newspaper, the North Country Gazette, the paper that arrives at his garage every Thursday that he opens, at lunch, to look at the photographs because he can’t make sense of the words.

Reminded, he remembers that Mr. Foster is from far away, from a large city. Reminded, he remembers that Mr. Foster has someone in the press room deliver end rolls to him, free giant rolls of white paper to spread out on his workbench so he can carefully lay each part, each nut and bolt and spring and gasket and washer onto the paper in the order that he removes them so he knows how to put it back together again.

And here is Mr. Richard Foster the newspaper man standing above the pit looking down at him.

“You want to do what?”

“I want to do a story about you, Ben. I want to do a story about your recovery, about your coming back to work. A holiday story, Ben. A story that will help people feel good.

“Would you like to do that, Ben?”

Ben doesn’t know what to say.

“I guess so. But you should ask Vera.”

“I already have. She says it’s fine with her, Ben.”

“Okay, then.”

In truth, Vera Nash had been a little cautious about it.

“He forgets things, Richard. Sometimes he doesn’t remember something he said a minute before. And some things he says don’t make any sense. Like the man who keeps visiting him.”

And that’s when Vera told Richard Foster the story about Ben seeing The Stranger, the man no one knows, the man only Ben sees. Or so it seems.

Vera tells Richard this:

“Ben says the man comes and visits off and on. Says he appears out of nowhere and they chat and then the man asks him questions about his past that Ben can’t remember. One time, Ben said he thinks the man tells is trying to find his own past.

“The first time it happened, Ben came home all rattled, said it scared him. But when I asked Lloyd about it, you know Lloyd Libby his helper, Lloyd said he didn’t see a thing. Just heard Ben scream, went in and Ben was just standing there his wrench on the floor.

“The more times he told me he saw the man, he calls him Mr. Stranger now, the more worried I got, so I took him down to his doctors in Burlington. All they could say was ‘the mind is a mysterious thing,’ and said his having an imaginary friend wasn’t that uncommon with an injury like he had. They gave him some pills but they made him all drowsy so he stopped taking them. I don’t blame him.

“While I’ve come to ignore his stories about the stranger man, I am not sure your readers would understand Richard. Some might even make fun of him.”

So Richard Foster doesn’t mention anything to Ben about Mr. Stranger, and it doesn’t come up. Until the end of his interview.

Richard had spent several hours with Ben, watching, listening, asking him a few questions, mostly about cars, so’s Ben doesn’t get all agitated and frustrated like he does with some of Richard’s other questions.

In the afternoon, after Lloyd Libby has gone home, Ben walks over to his workbench and stops, staring at the far end.

“Afternoon,” Ben says to the edge of the bench.

Richard Foster is momentarily confused. Then he remembers.

“He said good afternoon to you, Mr. Foster,” Ben says.

Richard Foster doesn’t know what to say. So he says nothing.

“Don’t you see him? He’s right there, leaning up against the bench.”

“He can’t see me, Mr. Ben Nash. He can’t hear me either,” the stranger says.

Richard mutters something about needing glasses, and Ben looks at Mr. Foster and then back at the end of his work bench.

“I know. I know.” Ben says.

“You know what, Ben?” Richard asks.

“He told me that other people can’t see him. Can’t hear him either. At least not usually.”

“But you can, Ben.”

“Yes I can. But Lloyd doesn’t. And Vera doesn’t believe me.”

Ben turns back to his bench, to the pieces of the carburetor all laid out nice and neat on the white newsprint.

“This is a from that 1918 Nash Quad over there in the second bay,” Ben says. “It’s a beauty. War surplus. Clyde…Clyde…Oh dang, can’t think of his last name.”

“Emerson.”

“Yes, Emerson. Clyde Emerson. Clyde Emerson. He said the thing hasn’t run right for months and last time he ran it he lost the top two gears. So I’ll tackle the transmission tomorrow.”

Richard pauses, then asks: “Is the man still here, Ben?”

“Nope. Said he’d maybe come back later.”

…

There is no mention of Mr. Stranger in Richard’s front page story on Thanksgiving Day. The headline is simple: “Ben Nash: Miracle Mechanic Returns to Work.”

It starts like this, though Ben has to have Vera read it to him:

“A year and a half ago Ben Nash, owner of Hiram Falls’ Nash Motor Cars & Repairs, came within an eyelash of death in an accident on the River Road. For months he lay in a coma at Fanny Allen Hospital in Burlington. After he awoke, he had to relearn everything: how to see, how to hear, how to speak. Physical therapists helped him learn how to walk and eat and use his hands.

 “Now Ben Nash is back at it, fixing cars and trucks with such speed and skill that it is a wonder.

“‘Ben amazes me,’ said Dr. Robert Fowler, one of Ben’s first customers when Ben returned to work two months ago.

“‘His head injury was life-threatening,” Dr. Fowler said. “It is a wonder that he survived. That he was in a coma that long, that he was able to re-learn all those things we take for granted — how to think, how to communicate, how even to get dressed — that’s just amazing.

“But that he was able to return to being a first-class mechanic, well that’s nothing short of a miracle.”

The article goes on to describe how customers drive in, and Ben asks them to keep it idled or to step on the gas or to take him for a drive down the hill and back and by the time they return to the garage he knows exactly what is wrong and how to fix it.

“‘He’s got a sixth sense,’ Clyde Emerson told The Gazette. ‘He just got that Quad of mine up and running inside a week. I’d had it in the barn for a year. He rebuilt the engine, the transmission. He said he would have done it quicker if he’d been able to get parts quicker.

“‘I simply don’t know how he does it.’”

Everyone in Hiram Falls reads the story. Everyone in Cumberland County reads the story. And people start to wave to him as he and Vera walk to and from the garage each day. Some even stop him on the sidewalk and chat. It is almost like the reading about it, learning what really happened to his brain, having things out in the open like that made it alright, somehow, to talk about it or even talk to with Ben himself, which most people hadn’t had the nerve to do. Now they don’t feel all squirmy when they bump into him.

Ben likes the attention. But sometimes they ask questions that confuse him. At least now people in town understand why he suddenly says goodbye and walks away.

The story is picked up by the Montpelier Bureau of the Associated Press and is soon carried in newspapers all over the country. When it appears in the Kenosha News in Wisconsin it is read by Charles Nash, chairman of Nash Motors Company.

 “Get Richard Foster on the phone,” he tells his assistant. “And find out how many of our cars this guy has sold.”

His assistant returns a short time later. “Mr. Foster is on line one. And that Vermont fellow has sold 38 cars in three years.”

“Thirty-eight? Good gosh. In Vermont? And for almost two of those years he’s been recovering from a car crash?”

Charles Nash sees an opportunity. He speaks with Richard Foster. He speaks with his staff. A visit is planned.

So in the second week of December, they set out in a caravan: A large truck hauling two Nash models and a Rambler. Following the truck is a Nash Ambassador wagon filled with a photographer and two executives. Charles Nash and a few executives are chauffeured in the lead in a 1932 Nash 1080 with spoke wheels and whitewalls. They drive all the way from Wisconsin, stopping at other Nash dealerships along the way.

“A good way to spread some cheer,” Charles Nash tells his staff. Everyone is glad to get out of the office, out of Wisconsin. Everything slows down during the holidays anyways.

When they finally get to Hiram Falls, they drive right up to Ben’s garage. Ben is confused by it. A bit frightened. He is glad Vera is there. She reassures him. She’d been telling Ben about it for the last several days.

“The head of Nash Motors Company? Coming to see me?” Ben had said again that morning. “Why?”

But Ben had forgotten.

Charles Nash hops out of the car, his slick city shoes slipping a bit in the snow, and introduces himself. He extends his hand to Ben who is frantically wiping his hands with his blue rag and then on his overalls before taking Charles Nash’s hand and giving it a firm shake.

“Nash, huh?” Ben says. “Are we related?”

“Could be, Ben, could be.”

They chit chat a bit and then Charles Nash tells Ben he wants him to diagnose some cars he’s brought along. On cue, the three cars are rolled off the truck; two are left idling, the third won’t start. Charles Nash and the entourage watch as Ben Nash circles each car, listens, opens the hoods and then reaches in the driver’s side windows and shuts them off. He tries to start the third car and then gets out. The photographer has been going wild.

“You’re taking a lot of pictures,” Ben says. He turns to Charles Nash: “You came all the way from, where was it again?”

“Wisconsin.”

“You came all the way from Wisconsin with three broken cars? Just to see me?”

“Yep.”

“Well then.”

Ben tells Charles Nash and the men and woman with him what is wrong with each car, what he would have to do to each to get them running right and how he’ll do it.

“I may need a few parts though,” Ben says, looking at Lloyd Libby.

“Don’t worry about that, Ben,” says one of the Nash executives. “We have all the parts you should need right here in the truck.”

“Imagine that,” Ben says, smiling. “Maybe you should stay. Save Lloyd all those trips to St. Albans.” The group laughs.

“Well we’ll leave you to it,” Charles says and the entourage drive down to have lunch The Hiram Falls Tavern.

When they return, Ben is out front, each car back out on the freshly plowed lot, all fixed.

Ben is smiling. “Where’d you eat?”

“The Tavern.”

“That’s too bad. You should have gone to Herb’s Diner.” Ben walks over to the cars and says, “I got each of these cars running as smooth as a flat piece of slate. Have to say, though, they were tricky. Now I know why you brought them to me.”

Charles Nash starts each one of them up. He opens the hoods and listens to each. His engineers huddle alongside of him.

“What do you think?” Ben asks.

“I think they sound perfect,” Charles Nash says. He then lets Ben in on a secret: His own mechanics had done something to each of the cars so that they weren’t working right.

“We do this all the time when we’re hiring new mechanics,” Charles Nash says. “It’s a way to see through all their bullshit to determine whether they actually know what they’re doing.

“But for you we made the problems in these cars as tricky as we could. And you figured them all out, Ben. Just like that.”

Ben doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand why anyone would make a car not work right. On purpose. After he says that to Charles Nash, Charles shrugs and puts a hand on Ben’s shoulder.

“Ben Nash you may be the best mechanic I’ve ever run into.”

“Well, I don’t know about that. But they’re running good now,” Ben says, his smile betraying, in the corner of his lips, his lingering confusion.

They start to say their goodbyes, but Ben tells them they can’t get on the road unless they taste the best pie in Vermont.

“It’s Thursday,” Ben says, beaming, “Lloyd told me. And that’s the day Lavender Libby bakes wild blueberry pies for the Diner.”

So they all walk down the hill to Herb’s and sidle up to the counter and fill a couple of booths and eat every last piece of young Lavender Libby’s wild blueberry pies and with some strong coffee that braces them for the walk back up to the garage.

In the cool, crisp air, they say their goodbyes and Ben watches as first the two cars and the truck head down the hill and out of sight. Vera gives Ben a hug.

Two weeks later, Ben is featured on the January cover of Nash Motor’s monthly magazine. The company sends him a check, ten copies and a note from Charles Nash, President of the Nash Motors Company.

Vera reads it to him.

“Many thanks, Ben. I don’t know when I’ve enjoyed a trip so much and you were right, that blueberry pie was magnificent. But so are you, Ben. So are you. And I wish you and Vera Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Each of the next four years, Ben will get a Christmas card and a note from Charles Nash and Vera will read them to him. Over and over. And Ben will beam, and then forget.

In the 1936 card, Charles Nash will write, “I’m the most common cuss you’ll ever meet, Ben Nash, and I’ve had my fill of corporate life.” He tells Ben he’s merging the company with Kelvinator, the refrigerator people, and that he and his wife are retiring to California. He thanks Ben for all his hard work and wishes him well.

“I’ll never forget you, Ben. My best to Vera.”

Ben has Vera write him right back and tell him that before he goes he should figure out how to make a tiny Kelvinator refrigerator, tiny enough to fit in a car so driving in the summer could be nice and cool. And before he leaves for California, Charles Nash does just that. And in the spring, Ben receives a nice fat check for the idea. But he never hears from Charles Nash again.

Ben doesn’t remember that.

Vera does. And when she sees Ben get a little down or confused or anytime around the holidays, Vera tells him the story of how Charles Nash, president of the Nash Motors, came all the way from Kenosha, Wisconsin, to see what a great mechanic Ben is.

Ben likes that story. And it keeps him warm for days, even after he forgets it.

I’d love to know what you thought of this story. Please leave me a comment.

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(Part 4 of a monthly series about writing my first novel, Hiram Falls. To see the other parts, go here.)

Writing the story Willie for stage presentation — and the reaction it received — got me going again. The story gave me a new character and backstories, and helped me establish place — the little town of Hiram Falls. I found it easy to bring in characters from the first two performed stories to connect with these new neighbors.

The failed first draft had led me to develop a plan (holy mackerel, Geoff, an actual plan?) and a timeline.

I was now ready to embark again on writing the novel now entitled Hiram Falls. Or was I?

Actually, no. I wasn’t.

Self-doubt was in overdrive. It’s always been there, a gnawing in my belly, an insecurity about my writing that sometimes is so severe I wonder if I have any talent at all. Perhaps I see my flaws too clearly; perhaps I’m just an overly critical beast. Whatever. But my first failed attempt at the novel just added oxygen to the fire of doubt. I needed to put a few things in place to help me combat it.

Audience

The first issue was audience. For a writer, audience is everything; it gives us purpose and with purpose it gives us motivation.

But … Who’s going to read this? And how am I going to get it to them? And, honestly, what publisher is going to buy a first novel about rural life written by a balding white guy in Vermont in his late 60s? (er, now, 73.)

I decided I should publish it myself. I spoke with several author friends. One had a wildly popular YA book but couldn’t sell his third book and said it was an example of how the book publishing world has changed — consolidation has diminished opportunities and has brought a penchant for ‘blockbusters.’ His choice was to go with a ‘hybrid’ where you pay a fee for the publisher to edit, create the cover, arrange for printing (you pay for the actual printing), distribute and market (limited).

Another friend publishes entirely on her own. She’s had great success in part because she writes in three popular genres: romance, mystery and, combining the two, ‘cozy mysteries.’ My book wouldn’t exactly fit.

Nonetheless, DIY made sense to me — on as many platforms as possible: a Web serial, audiobook, podcast, e-book and paperback. But how? Where? Who could I get to help?

Writers love to procrastinate. So, armed with a small grant from the Vermont Arts Council, I tested possible Web platforms. The finalists: Medium.com (can’t handle audio; bots galore); ghost.org (excellent, but again audio a problem and a lot of site upkeep); Substack.com, perfect.

Vermont being a small state, I reached out for help. A stage director agreed to cast and direct the audiobook in exchange for my help her with the play she was writing. A public media access nonprofit agreed to give me a studio and engineering of the audio for free, but only if I agreed to let them run it as a serial on their statewide network of radio stations. If I didn’t, they’d charge me. Gee, that’s a toughie. And a printer I’ve worked with for years said he’d print the book on demand (250 copies at a time) at a deep discount since I was giving a share of any proceeds to three non-profits.

So there it was. I would have an audience. I had purpose. And I was running out of ways to put off writing the dang thing. (An aside: I’ve put the self-publish on hold; I have an agent who has begun to try to sell it. More on that later.)

Collaboration

All my working life I’ve collaborated with others. No one puts out a newspaper alone. No one starts and runs a nonprofit alone. I am used to working with others. Who could I collaborate with? Who would be crazy enough to get involved in this project?

I reached out to a five writerly people I knew who couldn’t be more different in age, background, geography, culture. Would you be willing to help me write a novel?

To my amazement, and eternal appreciation, they all said yes.

One had mentored me while I ran Young Writers Project (YWP), constantly pushing me to try new ideas and to always strive for excellence. Another was a teacher who’d helped me start YWP and who constantly railed about my bad comma habits. Another was a young poet I first met in sixth grade who had gone on to get a masters in poetry who helped with flow and voice. The fourth was a member of one of my writing groups — a fabulous writer who has few filters and would tell me straight out what she thought. And finally a gentle writer from Michigan who I learned later has a phD in art therapy in working with people with damaged brains, which came in handy as two of the characters I was to create have damaged brains.

How lucky am I?

Focus

But there was one final rub: How do you pick up where you left off the day before? That is, how can you maintain consistency both in habit and in thought over a 100,000 word piece that, as it turned out, took years to create?

The first part of it was routine. Since writing at the end of the day hadn’t worked out, I decided to flip my day: I’d get up around 4 a.m., make coffee and sit down to write by 4:30. Give or take. Every day.

Returning to the same headspace as the day before was trickier and yet so necessary to maintain a consistent tone and rhythm to the writing. Another author friend told me he does it by starting each writing session by reading what he wrote the day before. But for me, that wasn’t enough.

So I began thinking about music. My daughter-in-law told me about binaural beats — recordings made with separate microphones each recording tones and melodies that are slightly different frequencies. The theory is that your brain will be triggered to higher energy and focus — or to calm down and get to sleep — depending on the frequency of the sounds and the frequency difference between the two.

I tried it. It worked splendidly. Put me right to sleep.

So I started listening to music, instrumentals only. I listened to classical, smooth jazz, new age (shouldn’t it be old age by now?), some cloying ‘mellow’ music that made me feel like I was in a dentist’s waiting room.

Then, by chance, I heard a track from a cellist that was part of a seasonal playlist created by Slate’s Culture Gabfest podcast. The piece was written and played by cellist Julia Kent, and it rocked my writing soul. So I made a playlist of her entire repertoire on Spotify:

I began my routine: get up, coffee, put on headphones, click the playlist, write.

I wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote some more until my first milestone — a new 25,000-word draft that I was not too too embarrassed to send off to my Gang of Five.

And so it went. After a year of it, I decided to write Julia to tell her what I was up to. (I did feel slightly stalkerish, but what the heck.) Here’s what I said:

“I have been using your music as my muse. I am writing a long, complex novel and have been looping your albums on my headphones as I write. It has helped me with my concentration, with my emotional focus. It moves me along… It has been exactly what I needed. It sets me on a contemplative, steady, emotional plane. I am just finishing up my first draft and have to get it to the editors by Friday…”

The next day she wrote back:

Dear Geoffrey,

Thanks so much for your lovely message! I’m always happy to accompany the creative work of others; it’s such a beautiful communion. For me, music is communication, and I do feel sometimes that it’s like throwing a bottle into the sea, so it’s wonderful to get something back and hear that it connected somehow….

We writers can identify with that. One of the thrills of writing for live performances has been getting visceral response from people who have heard it. Musicians understand it, except with their recordings. And I agreed with her that music and writing are closely aligned: we strive for musicality in our words; we alter rhythm to fit moods or characters; we want dialog to “sing” as it were and to reflect the pattern of speech of the character.

We have kept in loose touch. At one point, I wrote to tell her I was well aware that Spotify pays musicians squadoosh and would she like me to make a donation to the Julia Kent Living Fund? She declined, said she was doing fine thank you, and suggested I donate what I would have given her to one of the nonprofits I was supporting. I did. In her name.

For nearly five years now, I have been listening to Julia Kent — but only when I wrote. As soon as I put the music on, I slid right into Hiram Falls, into the emotion of Hiram Falls. I could immediately feel my mind shift back into where it had been the day before — my mood, what I was thinking, intending. If nothing else, the rhythm and tone of the book was consistent in part because of Julia Kent’s music.

I highly recommend her for listening while writing. I also recommend her for simple listening. She’s a remarkable talent. And if there is ever a musical score for Hiram Falls, it will definitely be the music of Julia Kent.

NEXT MONTH: The first critiques, the power of having a support team and the art of revision.

December 8, 1974

The stars wink above Jenna’s Diner in Hiram Falls. They blink and sparkle, disappear and reappear as clouds, wispy and thin, move across the frigid sky with speed that would amaze Lucien Fortier, if he only he could see them. But he can’t. It’s too dark. So to Lucien it seems as though someone is turning the stars on and off and then on again but in no discernible pattern.

Kind of like Lucien’s moods, which shift faster than the speed of light. Which is why most people are a little leery of Lucien every time they bump into him. 

Lucien is standing in the parking lot of Jenna’s Diner, his boots having crunched to a halt on the snow that thawed in the sun and froze when it set. He tilts his head back and stares at the stars. The panorama swallows him, makes him feel like a speck, a tiny molecule in the universe.

Lucien takes surprising solace in that sensation, in the knowing that he is just as insignificant as the next guy — no better, no worse. And who knows, he thinks, maybe there’s another Lucien standing on one of those stars, looking out at the vastness, at the brilliance. 

“Cool,” Lucien says to no one.

Cool is Lucien’s favorite word, a word adopted during what he calls his New York Period when, for a time, he bounced around on strangers’ couches, wore blue jeans and white t-shirts, white socks and black shoes and went to smoky cafés and listened to beat poetry that made no sense to him whatsoever, though he still nodded and learned to snap his fingers at the right time.

Lucien is still unsure why he hopped the train in Hiram Falls and made his way to The Big Apple. He knows he needed something different, somewhere different, some place where he could be overwhelmed by the lights and noise and people, needed to be shaken out of whatever it was that made him feel like his feet were stuck in April mud.

“I was just trying to find my groove,” he told folks when he came back.

Ten years later, Lucien is still looking for his groove.

He’s near 30 now and lives alone in a tiny apartment above The Hiram Falls Apothecary and eats spaghetti from the can or a bologna sandwich on white bread with mayo and Velveeta. He bounces from one job to another, “shit jobs,” he calls them, jobs where all he does is fetch things. A hod of bricks to the mason, packs of shingles up the ladders to the roofers, two-by-fours to the framers, whatever Lucien can carry. And small though he may be, “I can carry shit,” as he likes to say.

But he’s the low man. Always the low man. They make fun of his name, call him “Lu-lu” or “Grunt” or “Butthead,” which is closely followed by bellowing for him to go get this or that and goddamnit be quick about it.

Lucien can take only so much of it at one time, so he ends up quitting. And then gets another job that pays him a buck-fifty an hour and leaves him unable to stand straight in the mornings.

This fall, when someone yelled at him to hurry up while he was halfway up the ladder with a 70-pound rack of cedar shingles, he just stopped climbing and let the bundle slide off his shoulder, and he watched it explode at the bottom in a cloud of dust. He was down the ladder, into his truck and spitting out to the road before anyone truly understood what Lucien Fortier had just done.

Stars wink above the diner as Lucien feels the cold creep through his coat and makes him think he is losing his resolve – the determination he carefully constructed in front of the mirror in his apartment when he stood proud with his best shirt and clean pants and brushed-off boots.

Lucien scolds himself, tells himself to “just go do it for chrissakes,” and walks up to the steps and into the diner.

Now what Lucien is dead set on doing is to ask Amber Ouellette — the new waitress at the diner and, in Lucien’s mind, the only Ouellette worth a damn — if she’d like to go out on a date.

But now, suddenly, standing just inside the Diner door, the heat and chatter rising up on him in a way he hadn’t expected, fogging up his glasses, almost knocking him over, and just moments before he actually does it, he is still not sure that he can, even though all he wants is to have a nice dinner with Amber at some nice restaurant with white tablecloths down in St. Albans, or maybe they’ll go bowl a couple of frames down at Crystal Palace Lanes, or go to a movie at the Orpheum or maybe, just maybe, go for a walk down by the river in the light of the stars. 

“Wouldn’t that be cool, Amber?” he says.

“No. Not really, Lucien,” Amber says, her heart fluttering, looking at Lucien’s fogged-up glasses, unsure of what else to say. “You want a booth or are you gonna sit at the counter?”

Amber Ouellette, who’s nearer to 30 than she cares to admit even to herself, doesn’t know what to make of Lucien. For that matter, she doesn’t know what to make of any man.

Amber’s formative contact with men has been with her brothers and cousins and uncles and the men who call themselves uncles who come by the Ouellette compound to watch TV on the snowy black and white or to just shoot the shit and get drunk and smoke dope.

And ever since she can remember they give her that sly smile as they burp and fart and ask her ‘How ya doing, darlin’ Can you get me another beer from the fridge?” And this happens no matter which Ouellette trailer she’s in, all of them arranged like spokes in a wheel circling around the old family homestead which was abandoned years ago and finally caved in last winter in the big blizzard.

Amber is just three months into this new job as a waitress at the diner. She’s fresh off the only job she’d ever had, typing and filling out forms and answering the phone for Brad Pike at Pike Insurance across from the bank. She and her cousin, Cheryl, were both hired to replace the diner’s longtime waitresses Mira and Patsy who walked out one morning at 7:32 a.m. after working at the diner for what seemed like 100 years.

People still talk about it, about how Mira and Patsy, with half their orders up, took their aprons off — didn’t even hang them up for gosh sakes, just tossed them on the counter — and waved goodbye to everyone saying they couldn’t wait another minute to get out of town.

Amber heard about the walkout from Brad Pike, a man with bad breath who returned from breakfast pissed as hell that his eggs and sausage came late and were cold to boot. When Amber heard how he described Mira and Patsy in such hateful terms, she wondered how he might be describing her to people in town. Worse still, she’d just gotten off the phone with a man distraught at Brad’s letter — which she had to type — denying his insurance claim. There was nothing she could do to make it right.

So that night she went over to Cheryl’s trailer and the two of them got up at 3:30 the next morning, slipped out like the wind and went down to the Diner to see if they could get hired.

Jenna Bartels, the owner of Jenna’s Diner of course, liked the two right away. And not just because they were up and making sense at 4 in the morning. She’d known them since they were kids and knew what they were up against up on Lincoln Hill, up living in the “Ouellette Compound” as the Ouellettes call it, or “The Eyesore” as the rest of the town calls it.

So Jenna hired them on the spot. She even agreed to deposit their tips and wages in their bank accounts given that the Ouellette men, and their hangers-on, always seemed to have plenty of cash for cigarettes, beer and pot but never enough for groceries and the electric bill and were constantly hunting around Cheryl’s and Amber’s bedrooms looking for where they might have hidden some cash.

It didn’t take Amber long to love her new job. She likes Jenna and her mom, Lavender, who comes in to run the register and, Rina, the quiet woman from the top of Mt. Riga, who fills in for Lavender when she doesn’t feel like working. And Amber likes getting up early when everyone else is asleep and likes getting decent pay for once and a bonus: breakfast and lunch that doesn’t cost her a dime.

The only thing she hasn’t figured out is how to deal with all these men giving her moon eyes and soft whistles, and she still shudders when she thinks about the time that older gentleman from Barton pinched her ass as she went by. Jenna banned him for a year and told Amber not to worry; most men wouldn’t dare do such a disrespectful thing.

Nonetheless, the experience added to Amber’s shyness honed in high school when she grew like a bean and had scary looking acne until one day, long after she graduated, all her pimples just vanished like magic and Amber’s beauty broke through, though you’d have a hard time convincing her of that.

So if Amber were to tell you, she’d say men scare the bejeezus out of her, even though, if asked, she’d admit that Lucien Fortier seems gentle and nice and kind of cute.

But she still doesn’t know what to do with his question, sprung on her all sudden like, as he wipes the steam off his glasses with his shirttail, an act Lucien undertakes because he still doesn’t know what to say next.

Amber doesn’t either, so she grabs a menu and leads him down to Booth 9, the one that has the nice view of the falls in the daytime, and after he slides in on the turquoise Naugahyde seat she asks him whether he wants water or coffee.

When she returns with a mug of coffee, she asks what he’d like.

“I told you,” Lucien says, softly. “I’d like to take you to dinner or walk with you under the stars.”

“And I told you. Not interested.” 

Lucien, flustered, orders a burger and fries. “And a vanilla shake, please.”

Amber can feel her face flush, wonders why she is being so harsh, wonders whether she said what she said a bit too loud. She folds her order pad and tucks it in the pocket of her apron, turns and goes right into the kitchen where she stares at the back of Jenna who is flipping three hamburgers and two grilled cheese sandwiches for the family at Booth 7. 

Jenna can feel Amber staring, so she turns. 

“It’s Lucien,” Amber says.

“What’s he done?”

“He asked me out on a date.”

Jenna is about to say ‘well that’s nice,’ but then she sees Amber’s face and is not sure how to read it. She turns back to the griddle. She clatters the spatula. She moves the onions to the corner. Finally, deciding she can’t hold back another moment, she turns.

“There’s nothing wrong with that, Amber,” Jenna says. “He’s not so bad. He’s just a little moody. Probably because he’s a lonely guy. Has no family. They all died early. And this is a tough time of year when you’re lonely, what with the holidays and the days short as they are.”

Amber gives that some thought. And she gives some thought to the fact that Lucien has been nothing but friendly to her. And she wonders, again, just for a moment, what in tarnation is wrong with me.

Lucien, meanwhile, sits in the booth staring at his coffee mug and cannot console himself. He glances out at the other diners and wonders how many of them heard Amber turn him down, and sees one woman quickly avert her eyes before his meets hers. Lucien looks back out the window into the darkness, wishing he could see the stars winking in the night. 

He ponders what he should do. He fidgets, finally sips his coffee and watches Amber bring out an order for the family in Booth 7, sees her smile, such a beautiful smile, he thinks, and watches her smooth, balanced walk, graceful even. And that just makes Lucien feel sad and a thought needles into his mind that maybe he should just leave. Perhaps so, he thinks, perhaps that is what I should do. Yah. That’s what I’ll do.

So he slides out of the booth, reaches into his pocket, pulls out a folded $5 bill from his frayed wallet — a morning’s work — tucks it under the sugar shaker and walks out of the diner, upset that he’d forgotten about the tiny bell above the door that announces his departure. 

Amber hears it. 

“Cancel the order, Jenna,” she says through the server window. 

“Hadn’t started it.”

Amber goes out to Booth 9 and sees the $5 bill, and she feels sad. More than that really — she feels horrible. She feels she has done Lucien wrong and has done so not because of anything Lucien has done, but because she doesn’t know what to do when a man asks her out.

So she picks up the $5 bill, tucks it into her apron pocket and rushes to the door and outside without even getting her coat or hat, the air biting cold against her thin uniform.

And there is Lucien, standing in the middle of the parking lot, leaning back and looking up at the sky.

Amber walks up beside him.

“Aren’t the stars cool?” Lucien asks, still looking up. “So clear and bright in the winter. Look how they come on and off. Just like that.”

Amber looks up and watches the stars appear and disappear as the clouds skid across the sky, the stars almost luminescent against the black, and she takes a deep breath and feels the cold, clear air deep in her lungs, and it awakens something inside her. Makes her feel strong, alive.

“Yes,” Amber says, still looking up. “The stars are really cool, Lucien.”

She smells the hemlocks that surround the parking lot, hears the falls that give the town its name, hears Lucien shift his feet on the crunchy snow. She looks over at him.

“And, yes,” she says, “it would be nice to have dinner with you in St. Albans some night at a fancy restaurant with white tablecloths.” 

He turns and looks at her. He smiles. Amber smiles.

“Let’s go inside, Lucien. Have your dinner. You paid for it for gosh sakes and, besides, it’s freezing out here.”

Lucien lingers a moment, one last look at the stars, so majestic, so gorgeous, both warmed by the thought of sitting together at that restaurant some night soon.

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This story, presented to live audiences by Vermont Stage Company, emerged from a writing workshop in which I asked participants to create a story using a line from one of several poems written by my friend, the late Reuben Jackson. I derived this story from Reuben’s poem, “thinking of emmet till” which begins: “Stars winked above the diner …”

(Part 1: How my novel got started. Part 2: Doc and The Man.)

This is a story of how a day taking photographs — and one photograph in particular — got me started again on writing my novel, Hiram Falls.

But, first, the story of why my novel needed restarting.

After my second Hiram Falls sketch, Doc 1947, was presented on stage, I was pumped. People who experienced it were encouraging and enthusiastic. They were curious about the man who appeared from nowhere, the character that emerged from a typo.

I was curious, too. And I also thought maybe, just maybe, there is enough in this to write a long story, a novel.

So at the first of the year I began. I worked on the backstory of the man. I wrote about the town of Hiram Falls. I expanded on characters already created. Since I thought of myself as a night person, I wrote in the evenings, after supper and well into the night. Soon I was on a roll. By mid-February, I had reached 25,000 words.

Then, early one morning, disaster. I had gotten up early, had coffee and breakfast and decided to read what I had written.

But it was dreck — boring, aimless, uninteresting. Honestly, I couldn’t finish it. All I could think of was the old writing adage to write a book that you would want to read.

OK. But this one sucks.

So I deleted it. Every last word. And then I deleted the backup.

I was immensely discouraged. Self-doubt overwhelmed: What was I thinking? I can’t write a novel. I’m not good enough.

For months, I didn’t go back to it. I floated through the spring and summer. From time to time I’d think about the book but mostly about what had gone wrong, how I might do things differently. Could I do things differently? Mostly I let it go.

And I took photographs.

Photography is the opposite of writing. It is an antidote to writing. Photography uses a different part of your brain. You are looking outward not inward; you observe, look for details, think about composition and colors and textures and patterns. You pay attention to light and shadow. You look for the little things.

Flash forward. Late September. Vermont in full plumage. The Tunbridge World’s Fair — the primo agricultural fair in Vermont. My partner was away for the weekend so up I went with my camera. I stayed the day. For 12 hours I took pictures. The fair is, after all, pretty dang photolicious. For a while I focused on taking pictures of feet (dusty hooves on the horse pull, loggers scrabbling up tree trunks, pigs racing), then on hands (quilt makers, basket weavers, a smithy) and finally, faces.

When I saw the man you see here, I was riveted. He was standing under the eaves of a cow barn, leaning against a post. The more I studied his face, the more I was intrigued that he exuded both humor and sadness, was both strong and vulnerable. The deep lines and wrinkles, the scars, the rough texture of his skin showed a man who’d spent his life working outdoors. Working hard.

I noticed something else. People were coming up to him, individuals, couples, people young and old. They seemed to hold him in deep respect; they clearly hadn’t seen him a while, some seemed to be consoling him. For a while there was a line of folks to see him, a couple or three standing a few yards away, waiting for those speaking to him to finish.

Finally, there was a break — no one was waiting to speak to him. I moved forward and asked if he minded if I took his photo.

“Sure,” he said. “Hope it doesn’t break the camera.” He smiled.

As I was clicking the shutter I started talking to him, more to distract him from the lens more than anything. I asked him whether he had some cows in the barn.

“Nope. Sold ‘em all off this summer after my son passed.”

That’s all he said. I put the camera down. “I am so sorry, sir.”

“That’s OK.” He paused, swallowed. “We’re getting by.”

I noticed a young couple had appeared, waiting for me to finish. I backed away.

The man’s response, his face, haunted me all day and all the way home. I tried to imagine what might have happened, what it must have been like for him. When I got home, I dashed inside to my computer and wrote a story that filled in the gaps. Willie — the character and the story — was born. And with him came a few other characters.

The story ‘Willie’ was presented that December by The Vermont Stage Company in its annual Winter Tales program. Seven shows. Cinnamon cookies and cocoa. A feel-good night. My story was on the edge of feel-good, maybe over the edge — even though I backed off some of the sorrow of the first draft of the story.

But the director had loved the story,, told me not to worry about the sadness in it. You end with hope. It works. But I was worried. Perhaps it’s too much. People just want joy and cheer. This is a bit of a downer. Maybe they’ll get up and walk out. (A writer’s critical imagination never ceases.)

On opening night, as the actor got closer and closer to the part where Willie finds his dead son, I slid down in my seat. I closed my eyes. The theater went silent. Finally, I opened my eyes. I looked over at the woman next to me. Tears were streaming down her face.

Whoa. Sorry to make you cry, m’am, but I guess I’m back on track.

Never underestimate a writer’s glee in bringing readers to tears.

On the way home that night I was excited, motivated, eager to start anew. But it’s one thing to be encouraged, its another to actually sit down and bang out a novel that you’ve already tried once to create. And failed. Clearly I had many issues to deal with.

First, how the fuck do you write a novel anyways?

Second, what is the backbone of this story, this hodgepodge of characters?

And third, why was my first stab at it so bad? What was I doing wrong?

So I did what we always do nowadays: I surfed the Web. (When was the last time you heard that expression?) Google: How … do … you … write … a … novel?

I almost expected Google to say: Don’t.

But the Web offered many ideas. Too many ideas. And then, bingo: How to use the Snowflake Method to write a novel. I’d never heard of it. The site looked like it hadn’t been updated since the Early Jurassic Period, but never judge a website by its home page. The “snowflake” method was, in fact, extremely illuminating and helpful. It was a new way of thinking for me. I won’t bore you with details. If you’re really interested, follow the link. The gist is this: Plan ahead. Design the book beforehand.

Well that’s a novel concept. (Sorry.)

I dove in. I got focused. I created a plan. I defined the backbone, rather, the backbones of the story. (Spoiler alert: having multiple story arcs led me down the road to my second biggest mistake — too many plot lines. But more on that at a later date.) I also built a timeline.

The timeline is worth a mention. It became my outline since I decided to have the story span multiple decades.

And I made another major shift. Originally the story was to start in the late 1800s, I decided to move it up so that at least half of the story could take place in my lifetime. It would save me on research, but, more importantly, it would allow me to interject what I knew, what I had experienced living in small towns. I could be more confident that this fictional small town of Hiram Falls would be credible, would come alive.

The timeline also allowed me to create a rudimentary map of the progression of each of the characters’ story lines. Eventually I put it on a white board with sticky notes.

So my strategy would be to combine the old writing saw — write what you know — with Toni Morrison’s plea to her writing students at Princeton: “don’t pay any attention to that … create characters you don’t know.”

Perfect.

But in getting organized (definitely not part of my DNA) I realized a couple of other things. First, Microsoft Word doesn’t cut it. I mean, really, when was the last time you tried to handle a .doc file that was 25,000 words long?

So I reached out to a few other writers to ask them what they use; fellow Vermonter Robin MacArthur () recommended Scrivener, an inexpensive ($33 then, $60 now) British software designed for people possessed with a compulsion to write novels. It is amazing. I won’t go into a rhapsody about software here, but I will tell you it has been this disorganized writer’s dream.

So between Snowflake and Scrivener, I established a loose structure to the story — the conflicts, the characters, the setting, the timeframe — got set up on Scrivener and was ready to go.

Except.

Why did the first attempt go so badly?

Before I could fully analyze that, something happened.

As I mentioned, I had long believed I was a night person. But suddenly I started waking up at 3:30, 4 a.m. thinking about the story, the characters, the dilemmas I was facing. Worse yet, I was wide awake, raring to go. Really? Four in the friggin’ morning? The first couple of nights I rolled over and tried to get back to sleep. On the third night, I decided, “Fuck it. I’ll just get up and write.”

I made myself coffee, went to my study, and, in the darkness, at 4:30 in the morning, I began writing. I wrote and wrote and wrote and three hours later my partner got up, we had breakfast, she went to work, and I went back to writing.

And again the next day. And the next. And the day after that.

I had a pattern, a routine. And I began to see my mistake in my first stab at this. I was starting after supper and I was already tired. Then I wrote long into the wee hours when my mind was drifting and unfocused, and I really should have gone to bed.

To be sure this time I didn’t wait until I hit 25,000 words. Each morning I’d reread what I had written the day before. I liked it. In fact, it wasn’t half-bad. My writing had energy; I could begin to see, feel the characters; more ideas, more characters, more situations were leaping in. Each morning I couldn’t wait to start in again. I was excited.

Holy shit, maybe I’m a morning person.

For the next few weeks I solidified my schedule of getting up by 4 a.m. and writing by 4:30. I had found momentum. New characters were appearing. I was letting myself go, explore, surprise.

I should add here an important fact: I love writing. It is when I feel most like me, when I feel the drive and excitement of having my fingers desperately trying to keep up with my mind. Writing is when I feel most alive.

But a new conundrum developed: How do I maintain the same headspace as the day before? How can I pick up where I left off and keep the same tone and energy and direction?

That was easy for me when I worked on newspapers. Write a new story each day. A long one might take a week to write. But something this long?

Certainly re-reading what I wrote the day before (a tip from writer-friend Stephen Kiernan) before writing helped, it was not quite enough. I had to find a better way.

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Next (January): How a cellist solved my conundrum.

This is a story of how one of the main characters in Hiram Falls arose from a typo. Really.

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But first the background. My first story, Carrie, was presented on stage to several thousand people in seven performances. The audience response was exhilarating. (If you ever have had your work read aloud on stage you know it is an incredible experience.) Vermont Stage Co. was happy, too, and asked me to write a new story each year for the annual Winter Tales production. 

My next story was Doc.

It is often difficult for a writer to know (or remember) how they came up with a character or an idea. And I really can’t tell you how Doc Fowler crept into my brain. Certainly some of it seeped in from my own life — my Dad and his partners were country doctors in the truest sense: They made house calls; they worked every day; and until Medicare/Medicaid most of their patients didn’t get a bill and paid in barter. We had a town telephone operator and whenever my Mom and Dad would go out someplace for dinner, say, he’d let the operator know where he was.

I made a conscious decision to move the story forward to 1947, a time closer to my own lifespan. While I was intrigued with the 1890s (Carrie), I felt my stories would ring truer — and be more fun to write — if the stories drew from my own experience and life knowledge than from pure research about a time long ago.

My first draft of Doc was pretty stodgy. Most of my backstories are; I tend to get into the minutia of a character. I explore how the character sounds, how they walk, talk, what they like and don’t, what relationships they have, their history. I was also interested in Doc’s relationship with his wife, Flo. I saw them as near opposites.

On the second “draft” I started crafting a story. To create the arc, I drew on the old saw — get your main character out of the house and into a jam. 

So I did. I had him make a house call in the middle of the night, in the middle of a blizzard in his two-horse sleigh instead of his car (a Nash). 

This also allowed me to build a connection to the town — it is the town operator, Vera, who calls Doc to say he is needed — and to use dialog to reveal the relationship between Doc and Flo. 

(Semi-cool Tangent: I love dialog. One exercise I do, and sometimes have my writing groups do, is to write a dialog between two characters without names, ages, genders or information about their relationship. The aim is to see if you can tell all those things just from the dialog.)

Here’s am excerpt (David, by the way, is their young son):

“Vera called. She said Ernest Eastman went to the Emersons’ house to say Carrie was real sick and could they get a call to me.”

“Good God, it’s howling out there,” Flo says. “He walked all the way down to Emersons’?”

“I know.” Doc says. “Must not be good. I need to head up there. The Nash will never make it; I’m gonna take the sleigh.”

“It’s not a night fit for horses either,” she says. She mutters something under her breath, but he doesn’t hear it, too busy getting on his wool pants and shirt. Flo puts on her robe and slippers and heads downstairs. Muttering.

“Damn fool,” she says.

“I heard that.”

“Well, you are,” she whispers back up to him. “And be quiet. We don’t want to wake up David.”

Then I imagined Doc’s journey and, it being in the middle of the night and Doc is exhausted and lulled by the rhythm of the sleigh, I had him fall asleep, at the reins, if you will. 

Simple enough. 

But now what?

Even while I was writing, I didn’t know what was going to happen next. I really didn’t. But I was in a good place — uninterrupted, focused, comfortable. I was just writing. Almost watching myself write. I had Doc awaken. I had him realize that the horses had stopped and wasn’t sure where he was and then… 

My intention was to have the lead horse do something, like turn, but instead of writing “her” (the horses, I knew, were mares) it came out as “him.”  Who is him? I wondered. But only for a second. I kept going, I went with it. I was curious. Who IS he? Here’s how the paragraph came out:

“Doc opens his eyes with a start. The sleigh has stopped. Snow swirls around the horses. Wide awake, alarmed, he snaps the reins, but the horses stay put. And then he sees it, sees him, a stranger standing between the two horses, stroking the snow off the brown mare’s eyelids. He turns and looks right at Doc. The sleigh lights flicker on his face: a young man of 25 or so, black hair, no hat, no gloves, a hint of a smile. There is something vaguely familiar about him.

Doc is perplexed. ‘Who are you?’ Doc asks, out loud.”

And from there, the rest of the story developed. The mysterious man disappeared, and then, at the end, reappeared in town. 

The experience taught me how important it is to find that space between the conscious and unconscious, that time when you are as close as possible to what your brain is thinking and your fingers are going along for the ride. 

And it is important that when a surprise comes, don’t edit; just keep going.

I also learned that sometimes it’s OK not to explain. Because I did not explain who the stranger was. And the people who spoke to me after seeing the story performed told me they were glad I didn’t explain who he was or how he happened to appear. They liked coming up with their own theories.

(I won’t give much more detail here, either, because I don’t want to give too much away.) 

The character captivated me though, and for many months, I let my brain do the walking while I did other things. Sometimes I spent time thinking about him, but mostly I let him settle in. I thought about making him the center of a story, or, perhaps, the frame around a much larger story. At this point, the town was coming to life and more characters were beginning to percolate in my mind…

By the time I did come back to writing about the man, I had decided a few things: he was an outsider in the community; few people knew him — had even seen him for that matter and he was indigenous, an Abenaki. (I will talk later about my internal conflict about a white man writing about an indigenous person.)

Cool tangent: Jumping ahead in the writing chronology here, a remarkable thing happened with this character. 

As with all my characters, I wrote out his backstory. In the man’s case, I decided he was living in a cave that was distinctive in three ways: the opening was very hard to spot unless you were looking at a certain angle; that it was formed from waves of a prehistoric lake created by glacial melt; and that it had a crack in the ceiling in the northwest corner.

Flash forward three years. 

To research the Abenaki, I enlisted the help of a dozen Abenaki elders. On my first visit, I met with six, three of whom had at one time been their tribe’s chief. We met for nearly four hours. It was an emotional experience. They told of their childhoods, of sometimes not being allowed to ride the bus to school, of people dumping boxes of old clothes in their driveways, of being made fun of, of having to live by foraging and hunting, of being indescribably poor. 

All six, at one point or another, broke down in the telling. 

They told me about customs and foraging and even about “ancestors” — which they told me is how they refer to what we call ghosts.

On my way home, one of them called me to say that after I left they talked and realized they hadn’t had a session like that in a long time and, further, they had never done that in front of a white man. 

“I hope you understood the story we were telling you,” he said.

What story did he mean?

“That what you saw today was how we have survived all these generations — by the love and support  and encouragement we give each other. Our resilience. That’s the story that is never told.”

The man also invited me to come up again and spend the day; they wanted to show me some of their special places. I did.

The very last place they took me to, up near the Canadian border, was a cave. It had an entrance just as I had written — the opening was impossible to see unless you looked at it from a certain direction. When we entered it, I saw the cave’s interior was carved out by the action of waves from the edge of the glacial lake that covered much of Vermont. And up in the northwest corner was a crack. 

The oldest gentleman, sitting on a rock in the cave, told me that his grandmother had lived in the cave for a while and that over the years it was a refuge for many a tribal member who needed it.

“This is so weird,” I said to the man. 

“What’s weird?”

I told him I had written about this cave and that it was almost exactly how I’d seen it. 

“That’s not weird,” he responded. “The ancestors are speaking to you.”

Perhaps.

But it remains the most unusual form of affirmation I have ever received. It was further encouragement to not question what you initially write but to keep going, to push on and see where you end up. 

Hard to do. But, somehow, I had done it.

Further, they gave me their assent to write the man’s story.

Next: A photograph and brief conversation at an agricultural fair leads to my third staged story and the decision to write the novel.

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In 1999, when I was working at a newspaper in Vermont, a man knocked on my office door and shared a remarkable document: A diary written by a teenaged girl from the late 1800s. Here is how it began:

Friday, Jan. 1, 1892: 4 below. Cloudy.

“Yesterday was the day they set for Uncle Lyman’s and my trial. The men folks all three went down. But Lyman’s lawyer was sick and some other things so it is again put off to next June. Oh dear me. How can I bear it all? My Uncle Lyman tended fires and took care of the court house yesterday. May God ever bless him and give him every joy. Oh dear me.

That first entry alone sparks a story. Doesn’t it? And questions, too. Who is Uncle Lyman? Trial? On what charge? Why did she not go to court with “the men folks”? Did Lyman literally tend fires or does she mean something else?

The man who brought me the diary said he found it at the bottom of a box of books he bought at a yard sale. He was in Vermont on vacation; when he went back to the house later, they knew nothing about it. And in his short time in Vermont, he could not find out anything about the young woman. Perhaps I could, he said.

The woman’s hand was steady — as steady as you can be with a quill — but there were surprising grammatical and spelling errors (perhaps she didn’t stay in school long), and many pages were hard to read from water stains and smudges.

The man wanted to hang onto the actual diary but left me a transcript he had done. That night, I stayed up and read it all. It was a dreary. She opened a window to a life of drudgery and hard work, loneliness and pain. There were only two vague hints of the “trial.” Like this one:

Tuesday, Feb. 23, 1892: 16 above. Cloudy.

The boys have been drawing soft wood logs to the door yard this forenoon and this afternoon they have been sawing down in the lower woods.  I have been doing the common housework today and I washed me a couple old dresses.  Oh dear me.  What a lonesome and lonely sad and forsaken day this has been.  Oh dear!  God help us to come out victorious.

And this:

Wednesday, March 2, 1892: 30 above. Cloudy.

Oh dear me!  I felt so discouraged and lonely and everything is so dull.  Oh dear!  This is an awful long lonesome dull day.  God help us please for he knows who is innocent.

A month later: “God please help us to bear all false things bravely.”

It is clear that, for a time, she’s not permitted to leave the house.

Saturday, Feb. 20, 1892: 36 above. Cloudy.

Boys are splitting blockwood in the dooryard all day today. This forenoon I made 6 meat pies and 2 turnovers and this afternoon I am not doing very much of anything. Oh dear me.  This is another dull lonely sad and forsaken day.  I wish I could get out to the village this evening but oh dear me, I can’t go anywhere.

Twice during the year, the girl makes reference to being taken to other homes, and she apparently stays for several weeks in one, where she is subjected to heavy house work, cooking, cleaning and wash. Why? She does not say. But she describes the gloom:

Friday, May 6, 1892: 26 above. Cloudy.

I came home from Twombley’s this afternoon.  He came & brought me up: I had worked for him long enough now & this is only 3 days that I stayed there: I dispise them all.  Yes every one of them: but i can look to god for help & comfort & courage in every hour of need.  Oh dear me.  How dull & lonely.

Most of her entries are punctuated with sadness, with the monotony of her life, but on Feb. 24 there is a small event that leads to something else: “E. Bickford after a horse. I stoped it for him.”

A loose horse? She captured it? How so? Who is E. Bickford? Soon we are to find out.

And it seems that whatever the “trial” was about gets resolved. She’s permitted to take walks with Ernest but often with her brother or her friend “Caddie” as a chaperone. Sometimes, perhaps in secret, she meets with Ernest. Part of one entry: “Ernest & i went to walk.  We went down to the corner depot.  We had a lovely time & then went up home.  Ernest went up a piece with me.”

And this entry hints at tension within the house:

Wednesday May 11, 1992

My father locked the door,
My mother took the key,
But neither bolt nor lock,
Can keep my own true love from me

Her entries are overtaken with her pining for Ernest who she decides she is in love with. She even tries out her name as his wife. And she reverts to poetry:

Wednesday, May 18, 1892

Mr. Ernest d. Bickford;
Sweet as fragrant roses tis
to have a true friend on whim
in gloom or sunshine
We know we can depend:
True love is the foundation of all pure happiness.

And then this in June, several days after he proposes and she accepts:

Thursday, June 23, 1892: 85 above. Cloudy.

Ernest came up this morning just at 9 oclock & we went out straight to Rev L. Dodds & he married us at 10 oclock. Then we went up to the ville & had our pictures taken then up to Brown's where we are to stay tonight.  Oh my, Ernest is my husband now & i love him oh so dearly.  God help me to be true to Ernest always.

In the following months, Ernest is absent for long times for work. It is not clear what work he does. She also continues to work at other people’s homes, but it seems more an obligation than choice. In November, she makes reference to going to Quebec to meet Ernest’s family. And then the diary ends.

When I finished, my first thought was to see what I could find out about her, to see if she had any relatives — children or grandchildren or great-grandchildren — who might be alive and interested in her diary. Perhaps, too, they can fill in gaps.

It didn’t occur to me then that I would not be able to find any record of her or of what happened to her.

But that was the case.

Town records had been destroyed over the years by fires and a flood — though perhaps there were none; a lot of people didn’t bother with birth or death or marriage records. I found a reference in a state archive, but it was a different family with the same name.

So I tried the phone book and called every person in the county with the same name. No match.

But one man with the same surname gave me much more to ponder. He was a Family Court judge and had done a study of teen girls from the late 1800s to see if cases then differed from those now. They did not. (Proceedings in Family Court in Vermont have always been closed to the public; as a judge he had access to those records but he found none under the girl’s name.)

He was disheartened to see that the courts back then were littered with cases of domestic abuse, alcoholism, incest, sexual assault — all punctuated by poverty and illiteracy. The same as now.

He told me that a girl the age of the diary writer (a small notation indicated she was 18) would have been considered almost beyond marrying age. The term “uncle” was often ascribed to a non-relative who was a friend of the family. And sometimes a father might bring charges against a man (or “uncle”) suspected of having sexual relations with a daughter in order to clear the family name from rumors that might be circulating in church. Since the court sessions were closed, no one would know the details, but the act would be known. Sometimes, he said, the daughter was included in the charges.

As to the young woman working at other houses, the judge said many did so to earn money for the family. Other times there was a darker explanation: Often fathers loaned out their daughters to do chores to pay off debt, and he’d found cases where daughters were forced to satisfy someone’s sexual needs to erase to satisfy the father’s debt.

The dreariness of that, of the diary itself, all seemed too dark and complicated for a story in what was then a thriving community newspaper. So I set the diary — and the idea — aside. For 18 years.

In 2017, I was asked to write a story for Vermont Stage Company’s annual “Winter Tales” production. It is a program with seven shows over a week. It is a hot cocoa and cinnamon cookie affair so the tone needs to be lighter, an ending like a tidy bow.

I immediately thought of the diary. Perhaps putting it in a more uplifting light would work, perhaps I could focus more on her finding love, finding a way out of her dreary life.

Here’s what I wrote — with audio of how it was performed by an 18-year-old actress — Carrie.

I cannot describe to you how exciting it was to hear my words presented on stage. It is a rare treat for a writer to have someone give a dramatic reading of your work and experience the live, visceral responses of the audience. People loved it. I only went to one of the shows but after each I received emails, texts and even a few phone calls from people who appreciated the story, some I knew, most I didn’t.

(In the original story, I had an actual Vermont town name; one older woman came up to me after the show, said that she was from that town and that she and her husband had finally figured out exactly where Carrie’s farm was. I didn’t have the heart to tell her it was fiction.)

The experience gave me affirmation and motivation. It also prompted the director to ask me to write a new story every year.

I did not know then that this was the beginning of the novel, that the characters and stories I developed for stage would lead to the creation of a made-up community and a series of interwoven stories.

Nor did I know how long it would take (five years) how much it would change, how far the characters would evolve and how this initial diary would be set way to the side, overpowered by the characters and stories that would develop.

But here’s a glimpse of what Carrie’s voice became, albeit in a time frame — 1918 (but more about that shift later) — in the final draft of the novel:

Thursday, November 28, 1918, 10 degrees, cloudy.

I have had no heart to enter these pages. For truth, I have nothing to be thankful for on this day. Oh, Lord, you’ve placed upon our shoulders such unspeakable loss. 

Ma left us four days ago. She had been doing so well, said she was finally feeling like herself again. Doc Abernethy says it was her long illness that weakened her and left her vulnerable to this dreadful flu. But what of S and O? Two heartier boys I do not know. They took sick the night Ma died and were gone a day later. One day! 

What a frightful disease. Oh dear me, oh dear me. How can I bear it all? My heart has been sundered. 

As you will eventually see, Carrie has a small role in the book, but she harbors a secret that would be devastating to several people if it is ever found out.

Next: How the next two staged stories helped me understand the town and characters I was creating became the book. With a side note as to how a typo led to creation of one of the main characters.

Notes:

• I will only be posting this Journal every month for now so I won’t add much to your email clutter. Each post, like this one, will also have audio narration for those who prefer to listen.

• All of my work here is being given to you for free. Please donate to any of three non-profits I am supporting if you can.

• And please tell me what you think — what you like, what you don’t. Throw some questions at me. Don’t be shy; remember that you are an expert in how your brain reacted to what I’ve written; what you have to say is important.

Jenna Libby Bartels sets the phone gently in its cradle, gets up and walks into the kitchen. Her mother, Lavender Libby, is hanging up her apron, the dishes done.

“Thanks, Mum."

“What did he want?” Lavender says, the ‘he’ being Herb Stanton, owner of Herb’s Diner in Hiram Falls where Jenna has worked for years.

“He wants me down at the diner at 7 sharp tomorrow.”

“On a Sunday? Diner’s not even open. Aren’t you taking Gracie and her friend snowshoeing up on Mt. Riga?”

“Yep. He knows that. Said it wouldn’t take long. Whatever it is.”

“He’s up to something.”

“You got that right. He’s been acting squirrelly ever since November when the diner turned 30.”

“How so?”

“He keeps complaining about the winter weather. Says he hates snow, hates the cold. Hates December almost as much as November. Wonders how he’s managed to do this day-in, day-out for 30 years. And he keeps repeating the story about how he built the place, back when he was 32 years old just like me. Says it was the talk of the town.”

“It was.”

Indeed. It was.

It was 1921 when Herb bought a two-acre lot at the bend of Riga Creek for $100. It was nothing but rock ledge, a few hearty maples, a giant oak and a breathtaking view of the falls. Only Herb saw its potential.

“He’s crazy,” they said when he bought the land. “It’s too steep. Too rocky. And he’ll have to take out all those trees to build anything in there.” But Herb had a plan. 

He hired Lester Norton, the logger from up on Bickford Mountain, to clear the brush and scrub trees and build a rock foundation and lay some sill beams from down at the Mill. It all got the town curious. Buzzing even. “What the hell is he building up there anyways?”

One day it all became clear. It rolled in on a flat car at the tail end of the Montreal freight. It was a diner from Quincy, Massachusetts, cut in two, each half tied down to its own wagon both afixed to the rail car which was maneuvered onto the spur next to the Hiram Falls Lumber Mill. There the steam crane, a spectacle unto itself, rumbled down and lifted each wagon onto the ground. Ernest Eastman and his blue-ribbon, six-horse team hauled each wagon up the hill to Herb’s lot. There Lester and his crew, using a giant tripod of hemlocks like they used when they logged steep sections of the mountains, lifted each side of the diner and set it down on the sills just as gentle as could be. Soon the two halves were welded, the electricity was rewired, the interior was finished out and they even brought up a propane tank for the kitchen stoves. 

And that latter detail got people to wondering. “I hear tell propane is dangerous,” said one. “Hell, give me a wood cook stove any day.” “What about them new electric stoves?” Said another.

The old timers were concerned. “This must have cost him a fortune,” but they did not know that it was Herb’s cousin who sold him the diner for a dollar because he wanted to put in an apartment house where the diner once stood.

No matter. It was something to behold, particularly in the blue light of the full moon reflecting off the steel and glass with the falls roaring in back.

For those not present for the beholding, The North Country Gazette published a four-page photo spread of the whole operation.

Herb’s Diner opened for business November 16, 1921, and it was packed. Herb had taken out a full page ad in The Gazette saying there would be free samples of food all day as an offering for any inconvenience he might have caused.

But he needn’t have bought the ad. The Gazette’s coverage was enough for just about everyone in Kent County to make plans to come down and check it out.

“Who would ever have thought of such a thing?” they said, as they lined up outside to try Herb’s cooking which, they agreed later, “wasn’t half-bad. Fact is, it was pretty darn good. And not too expensive, either. … And oh that view of the falls from inside.”

* * *

Jenna is thinking about that story, trying to picture it in her own mind, when Lavender speaks up.

“I’m headed to bed. You coming up?”

“Nope. I’m gonna sit a spell. Maybe have another piece of your pie. Poke your head in and remind Gracie it’s bedtime, will ya?”

Jenna goes to the fridge, gets out the remains of one of Lavender’s raspberry pies and sits down at the island in the center of the kitchen, the baking island, the place where it all began.

Jenna was in high school when she learned how to bake. Just like her mom. Better than her mom. Just like her grandmother, Cara. But even better than her, too.

She made breads and pies, cakes and pastries. But her real knack — her signature — was doughnuts, cake or raised, plain or glazed, no matter. She had a sense for it, said it was all about the feel of the dough, the timing and the heat of the oil. And no question she could make the most scrumptious, luscious, perfect doughnut you ever tasted. 

For a while, Lavender and Cara tried to keep Jenna’s gift a secret. But Jenna got to making so many, they started sharing some with the other Libbys and Bartels and Churchills living nearby. Then word got around. People started asking for them. So Jenna decided she’d make a little money for the house. So she’d get up early, make the doughnuts and then she and Lavender would pile into Lavender’s old Nash wagon early in the morning and deliver them, still warm, all over Bickford Mountain in a long circuitous route to school. Lavender would take a dozen with her to work at the Lumber Mill and make the Bergerons, the mill’s owners, pay for them. “It’ll keep everybody happy,” she said.

One day Herb Stanton got wind of all this. So he came up in the early evening to sample a few and see just how a high school kid went about making doughnuts that everyone was gabbing about. He happened in on the day Jenna was perfecting her latest glaze from spearmint she’d picked and mashed and boiled down with maple syrup and powdered sugar. The doughnut drove Herb wild.

“Let’s work something out here,” he said.

So Jenna started making doughnuts for Herb. In her mind, he paid mightily for them. So she’d get up even earlier and make four dozen, then even earlier to make him six dozen but even that wasn’t enough. And it seemed to Herb that his customers had forgotten their manners. They didn’t even say hello when they came in. Nope. First thing out of their mouths was, “Any doughnuts left?”

After she graduated, Jenna went to work for Herb full-time. Lavender was furious. She wanted more for Jenna. “You should go to college,” she said. “Go out in the world and get a real job.” But Jenna told her mom she was done with school. “I’ve read all that crap,” she said, “and what’s the use of me going to college? You didn’t.”

Truth be told, Jenna had become something of a tangle of a late teen. She’d sneak out with her cousins and go to some party up at the Great Quarry or on top of Bickford Mountain. Sometimes she’d wander off with her friend Rina Lapsa who knew about some beaver ponds up on Mt. Riga for some late afternoon fishing. Rina also knew how to brew some mean dandelion wine to wash down the grilled trout. 

Some mornings Jenna’d arrive at Herb’s having been up all night. After she’d made the doughnuts, Herb could see she wouldn’t be much use for anything else so he’d send her home.

He cut her slack because most times she was a dream to work with — she did what she was asked but mostly didn’t need to be asked. He understood her, liked her, had come to realize she dwelt in a spot in his heart that he hadn’t even known existed. She was almost the daughter he never had.

The feeling was mutual. Jenna’s dad died in the Great War before she was even born. Over time, she told Herb things she hadn’t told anyone.

One summer morning when Jenna was 20, she served a nice-looking college boy from Boston who was up staying at his parents’ summer home for a couple of weeks, the old Bloom place down on the River Road. He’d finished his studies and was taking a deep breath, which is what people like that do, Jenna figured, and it wasn’t long before the two of them started dating. 

He’d drop by around closing time in his fancy blue Packard convertible — a graduation present — and the two of them would go off to the bars in St. Albans or up to Barton and sometimes go up to the Quarry to skinny dip. She was smitten. He was smitten. In early September, perhaps with the aid of a little apple brandy her cousin Jed had made, they got married by a Justice of the Peace in St. Albans and the next day she announced to the world of Herb’s Diner that she’d gotten married to Bradley Cabot the Third and was moving to Boston. 

Herb gave her a hug, mostly out of shock, but as the news spread he found he had to console his customers. None of them could understand why anyone would marry a person whose name ended with “The Third” though they chalked it up to those city folks’ lack of imagination. And what about the doughnuts?

When Lavender got word, she was irate. And also crushed that she had to hear it first from some damned logger who’d been down at Herb’s for breakfast. At home, that night, Lavender stood in the kitchen as Jenna packed a suitcase, came downstairs and kissed her grandmother on the top of her head and her mother on her forehead and hopped into Bradley Cabot the Third’s convertible and was gone. 

“Doesn’t he even have the decency to come inside?” she said as the screen door shut.

For days loggers coming into the Hiram Falls Lumber Mill — where Lavender ran the show — tread lightly. Gradually, she cooled off. Mainly because she’d come to the belief that her daughter’s marriage would never last and she’d come back home. 

Which is exactly what happened. But she had a bonus — a toddler named Grace. And Gracie, as she soon became known, was almost enough to make Lavender forget about everything.

After a time, Jenna squeezed out an admission to her mother that she, Jenna, may have been the only one in Hiram Falls who didn’t know the marriage wouldn’t last, but that was because she had not taken into account Bradley Cabot the Third’s hideous mother who held too much sway with Jenna’s now ex-husband.

So Jenna slipped back into the house where she was born and between Lavender and Cara and a few neighbors, Gracie had enough doting women around so’s Jenna could return to work at Herb’s Diner. It was hard to say whether Jenna, Herb or his customers were happier. By then, 1941 to be exact, The Diner in Hiram Falls had become an institution. 

And over these last 10 years, Herb and Jenna have run the diner from 4:30 a.m. until 3 p.m. every day except Sundays, and they cook good food at reasonable prices and make sure conversation stays friendly. 

Jenna is, unofficially, doughnut maker, prep cook, griddle cook, bookkeeper, floor mopper, opener, closer, food orderer and fill-in waitress. 

“My right-hand gal,” Herb tells people. “She could run this place without me.”

* * *

Jenna smiles to herself as she thinks back on all that, her time at the diner, her misbegotten marriage. She thanks the stars for Gracie, who’s just about the best thing that has ever happened to her.

Jenna finishes her pie, walks upstairs and pokes her head into Grace’s room. She’s asleep. Jenna closes the door gently and goes to bed.

At 6:30 Jenna bolts out of bed in a panic. She hasn’t slept this late in years. She dresses, creeps down the stairs in her socks, puts on her boots and winter coat and heads outside. It’s a bitter cold December day. Five below. The snow squeaks under her boots and a northwest wind hits her face — cold and damp. A haze of fine snow is falling, a start of something for sure.

She gets into her 1941 Ford pickup, pumps the gas pedal, pulls the choke half out and turns the key. On the third try it coughs to life. Jenna appreciates this truck. Ben Nash sold it to her. With some reluctance. “Remember, it’s only a Ford,” Ben had said, “and it’s ancient. So don’t be expecting too much from it.”

Soon she is out on the road and heading down the mountain into town. She can’t push back the curiosity, nervousness even, that’s crept into her belly about what Herb has in mind that absolutely can’t wait until tomorrow. 

“Jeezum,” she thinks, as she pulls in and sees Herb’s truck, the bed filled with something or other and covered and tied down with a tarp that is already collecting snow. Right next to it is the Nash sedan of Francis Lyman, the town’s nicest lawyer. Her curiosity is in overdrive.

She walks in. The bell above the door jangles. The two men are in the corner booth with only the nightlights on. 

“What in the world are you two doing sitting in the dark?” she says, flipping on the lights. She goes behind the counter for the coffee pot which, mercifully, has a fresh pot on the warmer. 

Herb’s lab, Toby, comes out from the kitchen, looks at Jenna, wags his tail, walks over to get his ear scratched and then returns to the kitchen.

Jenna fills her mug. “So what are you two up to?” she says, her stomach going all jiggly and tight on her. Herb directs her to sit next to him at the booth. 

“I’ve got something to tell you,” he says.

Jenna settles. She sips her coffee and looks at Francis. Then back at Herb.

“What?”

“Well,” Herb says with uncharacteristic bravado. “I’ve decided to sell.” He lets that settle for a moment. Then he sees the horror on Jenna’s face. “To you.” 

“What?”

“Francis here has all the paper work; you’ll find my price is quite reasonable, a steal some might say, and one of Francis’ clients who wishes to remain anonymous is going to loan you the money — at no interest — so you can make the purchase.”

“Why would anyone want to do that?” Jenna asks, flustered, still trying to make sense of what is happening. 

“Well,” says Francis, mustering his best lawyerly voice, “my client admires you — your work ethic, your attitude, your sense of humor. And your doughnuts. She has plenty of money and wants to help. Simple as that. If you want it, of course.”

Jenna looks back at Herb. 

Herb speaks up. “I’ve had enough, Jenna. I wanna be warm. I want to lay on a beach in Florida and sip piña coladas.”

Jenna is silent.

“And I want you to have this place. You’ll run it right.”

Jenna reaches for a napkin and buries it into her eyes. Herb reaches over and puts his hand on her shoulder and pats it gently.

“I presume that’s a yes,” Herb says. 

All Jenna can do is nod.

 Before she knows it, Herb says, “I gotta get going. Gotta beat the snow.” They all slide out of the booth. Herb gives Jenna a long hug and whistles for his dog, Toby. 

“I’ll see you in the spring, Jenna. As a customer.” 

Toby bursts out of the kitchen looking like he’s gotten into something he shouldn’t have, which is probably the case, and soon the two of them have hopped into the pickup and are heading down the hill for points south. Herb sticks his arm out and waves.

Francis gives her the papers. “Sure as it’s snowing outside,” he says, “Lavender will want to look these over. Come by the office when you’re ready.”

Jenna flops down on a stool at the counter and begins to cry, overcome by the kindness, by the sadness of Herb leaving, by the excitement of what lies ahead, for her, for Gracie, for her life. Jenna’s Diner, she thinks. Imagine that.

She stands up and looks around at the diner, at the booths, at the counter, out the windows at the falls now dim and blue in the early light. The snow is falling harder now, fine flakes. A hush.

Good day for snowshoeing, she thinks. She wipes her eyes with her sleeve, puts on her coat, locks the door and walks on the fresh snow to her truck.