Northern Light
Page 3
“Why aren’t there more tourists? Isn’t this where the Au Sable River Canoe Marathon starts?”
“That’s earlier in the summer, my bookish friend. People turn up all along the river.”
“Hey, Claire!” Laurel’s jaw had dropped. “That house looks like it was built out of rubble.”
“What’s left over of big glacial rocks is more like it. Every year, snow topples some houses built on hillsides. Sometimes owners stack up what’s left for foundations. Look at the hospital complex, though. It just keeps growing. The hospital offers cancer treatment and hospice care. I drove George here. They offer prenatal care and classes for parents. And believe me, doctors give a lot of Lyme disease shots.”
“That’s kind of cool. The elementary school next to the hospital complex.”
“There’s a little labyrinth in back, donated by the Dominican Sisters of Grand Rapids. George and I sat out there once. A raccoon came and ate our peanuts.”
“Wow. A movie theater. The Rialto?”
“Yup. And there’s a park the Au Sable runs through, in the middle of town, next to Spike’s Keg ‘O’ Nails, which is the first place I ever saw offer poutine—French fries under white cheddar curds, all of it doused with beef gravy.”
Laurel gagged. “Great, clogged arteries!”
“Don’t look so horror-struck. It’s probably no worse than doughnuts. And I like being able to shop in a town that isn’t all chain stores. Outside of the main street, you can find usual town components—pharmacies, pizza shops, car dealerships—but the downtown area has some interesting places. There’s the Paddle Hard Micro Brewery, for instance. And there are actually two ‘Michigan’ shops in town. I shop at Ann Campbell’s place, because she’s got fresh produce, but the other store, Tip’n the Mitten, has its own specialties. You can buy craft beer there, or Towne Club Pop. The owner stocks made-in-Michigan toys, books, and puzzles, and guidebooks and mystery books by Michigan authors.”
“Thanks, guru of Grayling,” Laurel said.
“Maybe I’ll get a job with the Grayling Chamber of Commerce.” Claire guided the Bentley into the one remaining main street parking place, leaving the truck driver behind them fuming. “This is,” she said, “a humongous car to park.”
“Look. They have lattes in the flower shop! Do you want coffee?”
“Be patient you must. Selling out Ann will be.”
“You can be my tour guide. You may not be Yoda.”
They headed across the street to Everything Michigan, where a truck was unloading fruit. A DeLorean was parked in front, the back seat already stacked high with bags of carrots, potatoes, and apples.
“Good Lord,” Laurel said, as they walked out of bright sunshine. “There’s a world here.”
“Told you,” Claire said smugly.
Patsy waved at them both. “Hi, Laurel. Good to see you again. Show her around, Claire. I’ve got to check this shipment of fruit.”
Anyone wanting a picnic lunch or dinner could find their wishes here. Bushels of Summer Gold apples, the earliest to ripen. Loaves of crisp-crusted locally-made whole wheat, rye, and oat bread in their shades of toasty brown. Small, perfectly shaped orange carrots, green onions, radishes, and even celery, once grown commercially, but now only raised in small batches in Michigan. The produce section smelled of onion, dill, and rye.
“You need a map of Michigan in here,” Laurel commented as they browsed.
Claire pointed to the map behind the counter, where hand-drawn pictures showed customers what they could find in each aisle of the store. These included butter-rich cheeses from nearby Amish farms, Koeze peanut butter from Grand Rapids, cherry preserves from the Leelanau Peninsula, and jars of white asparagus spears from fields near Ann Arbor. Jars of shining black turtle beans that, having thrived in Michigan, had been sent off to Mexico for packaging and returned to the “mitten state” for sale. Pizzas—a sign on the counter noted—could be made to order, and you could buy Vernors ginger ale that had originated in Detroit.
Salmon was the specialty, as a spread, fresh caught, or smoked. Where smoked trout usually filled shelves, a handwritten note signed with Ann’s extravagantly looping initials warned about rising river temperatures and commended catch and release.
Everything Michigan wasn’t short on sweets, either. Little cards identified various kinds of Mackinac Island fudge. Honey in the comb floated like whale baleen in the jar. Bottles of maple syrup glowed dark as amber, and maple leaf-shaped maple sugar candies reminded Laurel of her childhood. She could remember sitting in the back seat of her parents’ car, on a family vacation, letting the sugar slowly dissolve on her tongue.
Jars of shimmering red thimbleberry jam from the Keweenaw Peninsula competed for attention with white paper bags of dried cherries. Next to these, a note in Ann’s writing told customers the store would provide warm, fresh baked pies just out of the oven on request. Blueberries lurked plump inside overcoats of yogurt sweetened with beet sugar from fields near Marlette. Near the front of the store, cinnamon rolls with thick, white swirled frosting could be bought with local butter from the milk of contented cows. The store was redolent of baked goods, but amidst what could have been overwhelming sweetness hovered the scent of Baraga County lavender, making Laurel think of clean white sheets billowing in the wind.
Two aisles showcased offerings by local craftspeople. Hunks of driftwood sported obscene prices. Polished “lucky walking sticks” with spiraling indentations, like the internal spines of nautilus seashells, caught reflected light. Pressed wildflowers graced tasteful blank cards by local artists. A bench turned out to be a hand-carved cribbage board. The scent of citrus lotion led them to Ann, who was holding a creamy crocheted cape against the tanned female driver of the DeLorean. The driver was saying, “They don’t use dyes? What if I want it in pink?”
Laurel bought lip balm for Jen. Claire bought a side of salmon big enough to be a bathmat, apples that glowed like sunshine, loaves of bread, and a wheel of aged white cheddar. She finished up by buying a peach pie. Their purchase came with free homemade caramels, bulging and rectangular in wax paper wraps.
Ann left the tanned customer, who was still fingering the cape, and walked toward them. “I’m surprised she doesn’t want a cape labeled ‘natural wool, no dyes’ to come in purple.” Ann wore a blue knit top and knee-length skirt, and green-and-white socks and tennis shoes. After she rang up their purchases, she looked at them and grinned.
“We all loved coming over last night,” she said. “Laurel, we hope you’ll fall under the charm of that house and stay a while. Besides the fact that it’s about in the center of our circle of households, Claire always has the best parties. We think it’s the river. Negative ions.”
“How on earth did you build a clientele when you started this store?” Laurel asked. “You’ve got everything here but pot.”
“We had that too,” Ann said. “When my daughter Tansy worked here, before she went away to school, she used to buy and sell it.”
Once outside the store, lugging packages, Laurel turned wide-eyed to Claire.
“She was kidding, right?”
“I’m not sure if Tansy sold it, but I know someone here bought it. Ann used to bring George joints.”
They stopped at the house to put the salmon in Claire’s refrigerator, and then drove out and did a neighborhood tour. Parts of the area were transitioning to residential housing, apparently without building codes. Doublewides that boasted statues of well-dressed geese rubbed shoulders with landscaped but largely unsold subdivisions lots. Other sections were still lush with orchards—mostly cherry, peach, and apple, leaves shining every color from bronze to green. They passed occasional fields of goldenrod and star thistle, and gently rolling hills with spruce and maple rising toward the north.
“Hey! That’s Barbara,” Claire exclaimed, breaking the silence. She gestured toward a white farmhouse with a long, curving drive. A small sign near the front fence read, “Swallow Hill Farm.”
She turned into the drive and let the Bentley coast down the valley. Barbara—wearing one of Bill’s T-shirts and a pair of stained overalls—was sitting near an extravagant splash of purple butterfly bush, dangling a grass stem over the kittens in her lap. A few feet away, lounging tummy-up, an orange and white tabby purred.
“How old?” Claire asked.
“I think six weeks. Aren’t they darling? One wonders who Colby here has been consorting with, giving us two calico babies and one gray-and-white kitty. It’s hard to imagine, but Colby was skinny, for a mama, when we took her in.”
Laurel and Claire cast a quick glance at Colby, who now resembled a rotund wheel of cheese.
Laurel knelt by Barbara’s lap, where the kittens mewled and skittered like yarn balls with wide yellow eyes and twitching tails.
“What are you going to do with them?” she asked, entranced.
“They’re going to Everything Michigan. I think we’ll keep Colby. She’s fallen in love with Bill. He says her purr puts him to sleep.”
One of the calico kittens climbed up Barbara’s knee to make a break for adventure. Barbara raised her leg, and the kitten fell back, its tiny claws not quite getting through the thick overalls.
“I’d love to let Colby keep one of the kittens,” Barbara said with regret. “But we just can’t. We’re always getting strays here. It was worse when we used to place the kittens ourselves. Seems like there’s nothing like a sign that says ‘free kittens’ to encourage people to drop off cats.” She gathered the kittens into her shirt and poured them into a small, plush carrier. Colby followed. “Want to see the horses? Bill is giving Ari a shower.”
“I love to,” Claire said.
“I’m glad you stopped by and brought Laurel. You haven’t been around much.”
Barbara led them through a large, high-roofed barn that smelled of clean mulch and straw and new manure. Industrial-sized fans were fixed to the ceiling in each of the stalls. Swallows flew between the rafters, and pigeons eyed them from rails.
“Hey, Orra,” Claire said to a tall, square-shouldered woman sweeping out a goat pen and hip checking the goat aside.
“Hey, Claire,” Orra said. She stopped and threw carrot pieces into the far corner of the pen. The goat, rolling his catlike eyes at them, trotted away from the gate and let Orra make her getaway.
She pulled off her gloves and held out a hand to Laurel.
“You must be Claire’s houseguest,” she said, her voice husky. She had a faded scar on one side of her face.
Claire made the introductions. “Next time, you come to my house and make Bill stay home and tend livestock.”
“Nope,” Orra said. “Don’t like to be around a lot of people. You know that, Sugar. I like it here, where life is a teeny bit predictable.”
“Pregnant goats?” Claire asked.
“Better than an asshole husband,” Orra said.
“There’s a lot of that going around,” Laurel agreed.
They stopped to rub Braytoven the donkey’s forehead. Bill the donkey hung back, less trusting, but Braytoven, who was warm from lying in the sun in the outside section of his pen and smelled of clean hay, pushed appreciatively against their stroking hands.
They caught up with Barbara, who had gone through a freshly swept horse pen and into an adjacent yard. The spraying water from Bill’s hose fountained over Ari, a white Icelandic horse that would have been more at home in snow and ten-degree temperatures. The horse—small, compact, stocky, with a long, flowing tail and mane—positively basked in the cold water. Bill wielded a grooming brush with his other hand, working hair out of Ari’s coat.
“You got his heart medicine?” he asked Barbara.
“In my pocket,” Barbara said, fishing out half an apple that had been doctored to conceal a pill. She offered it to the horse, who spit it out. Bill swept it up and offered it again. This time the horse lipped it off his palm and thoughtfully crunched it.
“Hey, Laurel. Hey, Claire. Sorry to ignore you, but getting pills down Ari is a major pain. He figured out that we hid them in between graham crackers and in marshmallows. Now he won’t touch those.”
“I don’t even think his pills taste bad,” Barbara complained. “I tasted them myself.”
They gave carrots to the other horses: Ace, a brown Gotland pony from Sweden; Rune, a blond Norwegian Fjord horse that shone platinum gold in the light; and Andy, an Arabian with a much more impressive show name.
Rune and Ari both had bad cases of founder and had to wear specially cast shoes to help support hooves that had sagged with girth and time. Weighted plastic bins yielded tufts of grass that had to be pulled out by a determined equine. “Better for their waistlines,” Barbara explained. “So, better for their feet. Speaking of waistlines,” she added, “Want some cream cheese brownies? They’re homemade.”
“Guess not,” Claire said. “We just stocked up at Everything Michigan. For gosh sakes, Barbara, when do you find time to bake?”
“I didn’t say they were made in my home,” Barbara raised one eyebrow. “You know we attend the Unitarian Universalist Church? We do a little trading and bartering and selling. One of the women has duck eggs and bakes fresh bread, which I think is as good as anything Ann Campbell ever has. Families take turns bringing food to eat after the service. Nothing fancy, usually. Chili or macaroni and cheese, and fruit, if anyone has fresh fruit. Crackers, processed cheese squares, carrot sticks, and cucumber slices. Rolls, often store-bought. We can pop them in the oven in the kitchen. Some kind of cookies. We try not to compete, and to have food that kids will like and older people can eat. If there’s a lot of food left, there’s no way to store it, so one of us will buy it. Voilà—brownies. I’d be glad to share. If I freeze them, Bill will eat them frozen.”
“Chastening,” Claire said when she and Laurel were on their way home. “Who knew horses had diets? For their feet, I mean? I knew horses could get swaybacked, and I know I’m not swaybacked, but I will say my last pair of sandals was a size wider than I used to buy.”
“Less grass for you,” Laurel exclaimed. “Good God, Swallow Hill Farm looks expensive to maintain. And that’s not counting the surrey I saw, or the horse-drawn sleigh, or the track, or tack, or distemper shots, whatever.”
“A simple life in the country. Not so simple, from what they say. Like a lot of farmers, they rent beehives for pollination. One year, a stray queen set up a colony in their chimney, and the next thing they knew, they had hundreds of pounds of honey and possessive bees inside a wall of their house. Last summer, they had wheat smut and had to buy grain from Indiana. And power is an ongoing problem when we get storms out here. They keep three generators—one for themselves and one for the horse barn, and a spare for the horse barn if the power stays out. Last Christmas, a field mouse-turned-house mouse—probably came hidden in a Christmas tree they’d cut—made a home in a desk drawer and ate their back tax receipts.”
“Don’t cats eat mice?” Laurel asked.
“It depends on the mice and the cats,” Claire said. “Field mice are smarter than house mice.”
“What will happen to the kittens?”
“Ann and Patsy will help find them good homes,” Claire answered. “Kittens stay behind the counter most of the time, but they sometimes escape into the aisles. You wouldn’t think people on vacation would adopt a kitten, but they do, if their kids fuss enough. Local people too. Ann hands out a free turkey roasting pan with clean kitty litter with every cat they place. We know at least one of the kittens born to stray cats at Swallow Hill Farm is living in Boise, Idaho, and one in Montpelier, Vermont.”
“What if the people who ask seem like bad cat owners?”
“Sometimes Ann just tells people, ‘I don’t think you need a cat.’”
“She’s pretty forthright
.”
“She can be, when she has opinions. We’d just started getting to know people when George was diagnosed. He wanted it kept quiet, but Ann figured it out when George started losing weight. He only tried chemo twice, and it didn’t help, so he and the doctor agreed it wasn’t a ‘viable option.’ During chemo, Ann came over with a couple of joints. She told George he was being selfish. That he wasn’t anywhere near dying, and that I shouldn’t have to be alone while he was sick.
“When Ann put it that way, he agreed people could be told. So Bill Marsh came by and swapped fishing stories, and Barbara would bring ‘surprises’ to entertain him, like a baby pig—now named Piglet—someone had dumped in their garden. A chicken with a white fluffy crest of feathers, named Olive, who would sit in his lap. Ann brought custards to help him keep pain pills down, because after a while, he’d cramp up at night.”
“Where did she get the pot?” Laurel asked, fascinated.
“She says a kid in his teens stole some food and took off without paying, but left a plastic pouch near the cash register. Orra can roll cigarettes. Lots of people can. There’s a veteran named Murphy who lives behind us, across the river and through the trees. We hardly ever see him, and when we do, he turns his back. But one night, I was sitting up late and saw him wading across the river. He left four hand-tied fishing flies next to George’s camp chair, and then turned around and went back.”
“Could George still fish then?”
“No. He’d never fished much after we first moved in. But Murphy used to give me the creeps, and that made us warm up to him.”
The road was curving up a hill now, and fields had given way to maples and oaks. Laurel realized they hadn’t passed a single car. The car’s smooth movement and quiet hum was seductive. Laurel could feel the car drifting into another soft curve.
“Once, Jen brought a baby goat George bottle-fed—Laurel!”
Claire flung an arm out to keep her friend from sliding forward and braked to an abrupt halt in the middle of the turn, her car skewing at the sudden motion. Fifteen or so deer crossed in front of them, three splintering off from the main group to run along a ditch. One vaulted the hood of the car, seemingly without effort. They could see now that there were still a few deer in the trees on the left side of the road. One, confused, stood stock-still for a minute, staring at them with affronted innocence.