No Possibility of Parole

The factory whistle woke me promptly at seven on the first morning we were home.  I'd slept on top of the covers and in my clothes so I wouldn't miss a moment - the dogs and I raced down the stairs and out the back door and began to run, halfway up the driveway then a right angle turn to the path through the strawberry field and to the road.  We jumped the ditch and headed for Uncle Willie's front pasture, past the lobster traps stacked four deep, and finally to the dusty Old Road.  I couldn't wait another second to make sure nothing had changed, wanted to see it all as fast as I could.  In the back pasture, through the waist high wild grass and wildflowers, I could see all of the cove and smell the salt air and the hay wagons and the wet clothes Mrs. Ryan was hanging on the line.  A wicker basket was balanced on her hip and her mouth was full of wooden clothes pins but she turned and gave me a friendly wave - there were no strangers here, we would be welcomed and asked in everywhere we went.  


You can't escape, John Sullivan had told me once, So you might as well learn to get along peaceful.


For lifelong residents, it was a hard and uncertain life with no much possibility of parole - for me, it was carefree, idyllic and magic.  I passed the post office ( a crossroads of sorts where you came for your mail each night, it didn't come to you ) and the dance hall, shabby and lonely on a Monday morning.  The movie theatre next door was dark and shut up although it would come to life on Saturday night.  The barber shop, also open only on Saturday nights and then the town square - two general stores, the bank and the Prescott steps where we gathered during the summer evenings and watched the stars.  A single gas pump stood unattended.  Set far back in a field next door was the house my great grandmother had been born in.  Abandoned and empty now, a team of oxen had once been housed here, I had a dim memory of having my picture taken with them and my daddy.  The road wound around in both directions and I headed for the the one room schoolhouse, the telephone office, and Curt's tiny corner store.  Just beyond was the church, across from the house where the doctor lived, when we had a doctor, and then I was back on the main road.  Satisfied that everything was still intact and still perfect, I began the trek home, stopping only for an Orange Crush and a Jersey Milk at the back porch where Frank Thurber sold homemade ice cream and cigarettes.  I passed Uncle Len's house with its pale green gingerbread trimming and heard the sound of a buzz saw - at the Sullivans, I heard children crying, the front door was wide open and an old dog slept in the threshold - he gave a half hearted woof as we passed.   Uncle Shad was in his front yard, sanding down planks and whistling as he worked and then I was at my own driveway and looking down at the red and white house with its windows newly scrubbed and the grass just cut.  Sunlight danced  and sparkled on the ocean and a colony of seals played in the whitecaps.  Things couldn't have been more right with the world.


Nana had lunch waiting - warmed up fish chowder, hot rolls and cold milk - afterward I headed off in the opposite direction along the coast and up island where no one lived.  I picked my way through the tide pools and the driftwood all the way to Beautiful Cove with only the gulls for company, then through the woods on what was left of the rutted old road, and home again.


It was the first of an entire summer of perfect days.