“In the shed.”
Erica squinted at Jake, who was sitting in front of the window and the glaring sun. “Okay,” she said through her mouthful of tofu burger and pickle.
“Okay, what?”
“Okay, let’s chop down a tree.” She picked up a large plastic cup filled with green peach tea and took a big slug. “Or,” she said, turning her head away from the blazing sun so that her little crest of hair was backlit, making her look like a miner with a headlamp, “I could work as a case manager in a mental health agency. They must have some of those around here.”
Jake opened his laptop again. “How does this sound? Last month’s fire at Wild Mountain is being investigated as arson, according to Fire Chief Cappy Gold. It is known that the owner of the farm, Roz Allingworth, who is also chairman of the Wild Mountain select board, has enemies in the town. A petition being circulated demands her removal from the board, and pinpoints her sexual orientation as being contrary to ‘the family values of Wild Mountain.’ Chief Gold, who, after the fire, was seen sifting through the debris looking for ‘anything of a suspicious nature,’ refused further comment.”
“Sounds fine,” she said. “Except for the ‘enemies.’ Isn’t that a little strong? I mean, it’s not like they’re in a war.”
“When someone torches your property, it is war,” Frank said. “And by the way, what is happening with the Freedom to Marry bill?”
“It’s looking pretty glum,” Jake said. “A lot of people like Roz are fighting hard and calling in all the favors, pulling strings to get support in the House, but these anti-gay people are pretty powerful. And even if they do get a bill through, Governor Douglas will probably veto it.”
“What luck,” Frank said, “to have a Republican governor—so unusual in Vermont, just when you need a strong liberal.”
“But I don’t think it’s that glum!” Erica exclaimed, gulping down the last of her tea. “I’ve talked to Roz, and she thinks there’s a real fighting chance of it passing. I’m going to volunteer, do grunt work, or whatever.”
“Good for you, honey. And maybe you’ll make some connections that way, something that might lead to a job.”
Her smug smile indicated she’d already thought of that.
Frank watched through the window as Erica and Jake made their way over the bumpy surface of the yard, heaved and swollen after the rains and frost. The hemlock trees were filmed with a lacy mist, and dripped onto the yard and muddy driveway. Erica pulled up her hood as they passed beneath them.
Jake opened the shed door and pushed aside the trashcans. Jake will have to move the snow blower, Frank thought, along with the lawnmower, fifteen cans of paint, two pairs of snowshoes, a fifty-pound bag of kitty litter that he used for traction, and a badminton net that was tangled around the shovels and skis that were propped against a bicycle, to get to the little red chainsaw that was hanging on the back wall.
Warmed by the fire, and tired after his day of traveling yesterday, Frank started to feel drowsy, but just as he was nodding off, the whine of the saw cut into the silence, and his head jerked up. Good God. How long was Erica staying here? It sounded like she was planning to quit her job and move in with him. And that meant Jake would be around, too. Why couldn’t he, Frank, just stand up to her and say no? He’d always been a wimp around Erica, just like Patsy had said, always afraid that if he said no, he’d lose her. But this way, he’d lost control anyway, lost control of his home, his life.
Erica and Jake did chop down the tree. They cut up some of the branches and stacked the wood on the woodpile—almost, Frank thought, as neatly as he himself did it—and then, thankfully, they went on their hike and he took a nap. By the time they got back, he had dinner ready, and after Erica showered, they sat down at the table.
Jake got up from the table and picked up a large rock, about the size of his fist: a green-tinged piece of granite.
“Where’d you get that?” Frank asked.
“I went up on Wild Mountain the other day. Gus gave it to me.”
“The mountain man? How did you find him?”
“I just went up the south trail and looked around. We met him a couple of weeks ago in town.” He turned to Erica. “I think we have to go back and see him.”
“Why?”
“Because I think there is something to what he was telling me. He was saying that this stone came from a sacred dwelling up there. An ancient stone circle.”
“An ancient stone circle in Vermont?” Frank said. “Like the ones in England and Ireland?
“Yes. Apparently, they’re all over the world, these stone circles that ancient people built.”
“Really, Jake, the guy is a nutcase,” said Erica. “You can’t start believing in his crazy stories.”
Frank poured himself some more wine from the bottle and took a sip. “Well, why not, Erica? Why not stone circles in Vermont as well as any other place?”
Jake sat down and looked at Frank with new enthusiasm. “Apparently, they have some astronomical meaning.”
“Like Stonehenge,” Frank said. “Cool. I’d like to go up there, too.”
“Let me show you these pictures.” Jake went over to the sofa, rummaged through his stacks of papers and files, and picked out a paperback book, Stone Chambers in South Royalton & Sharon, brought it back to the table, and sat down.
Frank pulled his chair up closer to the table as Erica, her mouth squeezed into a moue of disdain, stood up and started picking up dishes and placing them on the kitchen counter. There came a point in a relationship, he thought, when you stepped down from your cloud and began to see your partner in a different light. Was she losing the glow about Jake? Frank went over to the stereo and put in a CD of Susannah McCorkle singing Gershwin. Soothing retro music that Erica liked.
Bang. A plate dropped, and hit a pan in the soapy water.
“Whoa,” Frank said, “take it easy.”
Erica wiped her hands on a dish towel and sat down with a vengeance. “I’m just not in the mood for another quirky man and another wild goose chase,” she said, almost shouting.
Jake looked up, startled, from his book. “What?”
“When I was seventeen,” she said, “I went to live in the Village with Dad for a summer. I was so excited about being with him, thought he was going to be my protector, take care of me. But no! Every day, he’d stop on the street and start talking to some weirdo.”
“Not every day,” Frank said.
“Every crackpot with a story. And then he’d get all involved with them.”
“Involved? I don’t think so.”
“Remember that wild-eyed guy in rags who told you about the UFO landing in upstate New York? You came home and packed me into the car without telling me where we were going. We ended up two hours from the city in New Paltz, driving round and round, looking for some town called Jellsville that didn’t even exist, where the UFO supposedly was.”
“Okay.” Frank bowed his head. “That was a bit of a wild goose chase.”
“I was hungry and scared,” she said to Jake, “but Dad wouldn’t give up. I thought he was going crazy!”
“Well you won’t be hungry tonight,” he said, beaming, as he took his rhubarb pie out of the oven.
Erica looked at Frank, then at Jake, and broke into a big smile herself. “Mmm, that smells scrumptious.” Her face was as light and cheerful as it had been gloomy a minute earlier. Frank glanced at Jake, whose frown had turned into a tentative smile. He’d have to learn about these mood swings in Erica. “Wow, Dad, fiddleheads and rhubarb pie in May! My favorites. Where’d you get them?”
“Worthy Produce. Heather put up a tent, and has all her spring vegetables on display, as usual.” Frank placed the pie on the table.
Erica bounced over and sat down with a thud. “So maybe he’s quirky, but my dad is a great cook.”
Frank grinned and picked up the book on stone circles.
25
FROM THE SIDE PORCH OF THE STORE, Mona could see the river in both di
rections, with its memories of fishing, canoeing, swimming with the other kids—the memories like flotsam, drifting away and around the bend. Now the broken bridge looked insignificant, just debris churned up by the storm and the flooding, just a thing, a thing that would soon be gone.
So, what did it mean? You followed your dream, you gathered your people around you and provided them with milk and bread and cigarettes and cans of chili and cereal and soap and salsa and Tampax, you extended them credit, you worked on the rescue squad, but then it all broke down. The connections severed and the group fragmented, a hundred cell phones crackling and breaking up with what? and are you there? and I can’t hear you, I’m hanging up. Some of them shouted with hate; someone torched a farm stand.
But then you fell in love. And then the rest of it was bearable, doable, manageable, in fact—a challenge.
Until a nightmare from the past came to life again. She put her hand in her pocket and fingered the stiff paper of the second message from Johnny.
Mona sipped her coffee, put it down, and picked up her binoculars. On the opposite bank, the eagle’s nest sat high atop a white pine. Little beaks popped up as the eagle came back from her hunting trip. She fed her babies a mouse or a chipmunk, a fish or a frog. The little beaks opened and gulped, then swallowed and opened again, and Mona imagined those squawky cries she couldn’t quite hear. The eagle soared away in its inevitable, relentless cycle. You had to keep going, keep working, find more food for the hungry beings.
Mona took the paper out of her pocket and looked at it again:
Something else is going to happen if you don’t come tomorrow night. 7pm, the hotel. J.
This time, he had signed it with his initial. Should she tell anyone about this? Not Roz—she would spring into action and insist that Mona take out a restraining order, and that would just make things worse, knowing Johnny’s attitude toward the law. Cappy would probably take the same course, and who knew what Luke Spinelli would do? Probably slough it off and do nothing. No, ignoring him seemed like the best course of action. The way to handle a bully, she had read in O Magazine, was not to show any fear, not to give him any power. Not to respond to threats.
The clouds of spring, wispy cirrus threads, hung like horizontal milkweed fluff in a pale sky. She put down the binoculars, and Frank came around the corner.
“Hi there.” He stood tall in old jeans and a yellow sweater, his hair cut short and his beard trimmed, and her senses filled with the smell of peppermint soap and wood smoke.
“Oh!” She smiled with surprise and delight, then recoiled into herself.
He was quiet, relaxed, casual, as if he hadn’t disappeared from the face of the earth for a month.
“I missed you,” Frank said, as he straightened up and looked her in the eye. His eyes were wet. He reached out for her, but she stepped back.
When Johnny O. had left, she’d waited one day, then called the drummer in the band he was managing, who said he was worried, too. The next day, she’d called the police, and the day after that, they’d found him. He’d packed up his business and moved to Canada, and was living with a woman named Michelle in Québec City. Michelle, who had now apparently left him.
At least Frank had called her.
After three weeks.
“Did they find out who set the fire?” he asked.
“No, I don’t think so. At least, I haven’t heard.” Awkward silence. “How was Mexico?” she asked.
“Oh, the usual. Hectic, chaotic. They wanted me to completely reorganize their company in two weeks.”
“And did you?”
“Pretty much. But, of course, it took longer than two weeks.” He modestly puffed out his chest, then reached out to hug her, but she pulled back. She clenched her jaw and glared at him. Why would I trust you, she thought, another man with a habit of evaporating into the atmosphere?
His chest sank, and he looked confused.
She put her hands on her hips. “You could have called sooner.” Frank frowned and ran his hand through his hair. Boris came around the side of Mona’s house, gave a little bark of delight, wagged his tail, and scurried up to Frank, who squatted down and ruffled his fur. Frank looked up. “I was in business meetings, back to back,” he said. “I called as soon as I could. And didn’t you get my email?”
“Your email?”
“Yeah, I had to use Artie’s address, since it was his phone. Artie-at-artie-dot-com?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t have recognized that. I probably deleted it, thinking it was some Nigerian scam or something.”
“I was thinking of you the whole time,” he said, and his blue eyes looked so sincere that something in her chest softened.
The softening, the opening, and a broken door. It had been thirty years ago, the end of June, and she had been seventeen. She was alone up on Wild, on the trail she and Dad used for hunting. And suddenly, she heard music. Like magic, it came out of nowhere. A rollicking bass guitar and an ancient-sounding, whispery male voice, singing something intimate and lyrical.
Drawn by the magical voice and the thrumming bass, she picked her way through vines and brambles and stepped out into a clearing: an open area ringed by a house and a barn with a fire pit in the center, and two shirtless young men standing beside it. The first, a skinny guy with white skin and light brown hair matted and twisted into a style she would later learn was called dreadlocks, stopped her in her tracks. It was an alarming sight, this hairy creature who looked like he’d just stepped out of the Neolithic Age, as if he’d been living in the woods on roots and berries and was about to club a lion.
The other man was more normal-looking, short and dark, with a beard. They were holding skewers speared with steaks, roasting the meat over the fire. When they saw her, the man with the dreadlocks smiled and winked at her. As if a girl stepping out of the woods was an everyday occurrence.
He stuck out his arm and waved her over, and gingerly, she approached. He was holding a hand-rolled cigarette in red, white, and blue paper. “Go ahead,” he said, “Pure Colombian.” Finally, she understood that she was to inhale from this cigarette. And in keeping with her newfound openness, she did as she was told.
The two men continued their conversation, laughing and arguing about some philosopher called Foo-co, using strange words like capitalist oppression, phenomenology, and existentialist. Did they expect her to join in this discussion?
She began to feel dreamy. There was something warm and seductive here, with the smell of the roasting meat enveloping the space like a cloud, the music emanating from the open door, and the young men, so relaxed and easy. She felt herself dissolving into this world.
She ambled over to the house, whence came the singing voice, the sounds of pots clanking on the stove, young women laughing, and children playing. The door was shabby and dilapidated, jagged ends of weathered planks pointing like broken fingers. Trailer trash, her dad would have said.
In her life, there were firm boundaries, separations, and exclusions. It was a life of shoring up and protecting your own. On the farm, you rose before dawn, you did your chores, you fixed anything that was broken, you didn’t laugh or talk, and if a stranger wandered in, you got your gun from behind the door.
But why did it have to be like that, and who was her dad to judge other people? This place was entrancing, and so Mona, the shy farm girl, simply opened a door into the lives of these strangers, who seemed to accept her as they would any wild animal that wandered in. The young women, braless, in long, droopy dresses and boots, invited her to stay for spaghetti and venison. They sat at a table in the kitchen, and the two young men from around the fire joined them, while other people drifted in and out and children ran here and there. Conversation was desultory, tangential, punctuated by long silences, the air thick with the marijuana being passed around the table. She would never remember how she had gotten home that night.
A couple of weeks later, she hiked up there again, but couldn’t find the clearing, the house. As if it had simply d
isappeared…as if, like Alice in Wonderland, she had slipped through a hole in the world into a fantastic land, and then come back to life as usual.
In town, people began to talk about this commune up on Wild Mountain, the dirty hippies and their filthy lifestyle. Mona’s father literally spat with disgust.
And then one day, in the general store that would one day be hers, she saw the young man with dreadlocks. His name was Frank. She didn’t know if he recognized her, and she didn’t speak to him. By this time, she was too shy, or intimidated by her father, to cross that barrier.
Later, though, when she realized what a mistake Johnny O. had been, she began to wonder again. About that commune, that other path she might have taken. The boys who were so gentle, so accepting; the music, the soft colors, the laughter at the dinner table. What if she had yielded to that fantasy life, let go of the work ethic, and lived with the hippies?
Mona looked at Frank, with his sheepish grin and his excuses, and a thought that had lived beneath the surface of her consciousness began to formulate. There was something about that smile. This solid, almost hefty man with the receding hairline and curly gray hair. Could he have been the skinny boy with the dreadlocks? And was this why she was attracted to him—to that magical place in her memory and dreams, where everyone was free and life was a constant pleasure? “Did you ever live in a commune?” she asked. “Up on Wild?”
Frank threw his head back and laughed. “Oh God!” He kept laughing. “The Moose Clan Commune!”
“So, that was you. The boy with the dreadlocks.”
“Yes! That was Frank MacFarland! Ah, the days of wine and roses and pot and acid. I was there for a couple of months. Were you around then?”
“I went up there once.”
He shook his head. “Sorry, I don’t remember you. Probably too stoned.”
This was it. Frank had brought back that moment, the magical kingdom that had been cordoned off and boarded up with No Trespassing signs ever since. He was so open and welcoming.
Wild Mountain Page 18
