The Fiddler

Unshaven and pale, his features not just thin but bordering on gaunt, my friend David leaned in and began to talk to me about the cancer.  His voice was clear and quiet but the words were hard to hear - lesions on his liver, they'd told him, multiple and malignant - not the kind of malevolence that would respond to radiation or chemotherapy or surgery.  It was,I began to comprehend although still dimly and as though from a great distance, the worst of all bad news.  His dark eyes met mine, his graceful hands cupped a glass of tonic and lemon, and he talked to me about dying.  I saw then how terribly ill he looked, how drawn and tired and thin and I started to ache with helplessness, wanting to shout down these dreadful words.

He is an artist, a musician, a philosopher, slightly eccentric looking with a tendency to stay on the sidelines and a somewhat shy nature, a thinker rather than a doer and a private sort of man.   He has a horror of this news being spread over some social media site or circulating through the well meaning music community so when he asks for my promise to say nothing of what he tells me, I give it.  His dark eyes meet mine with a sadness so profound I can barely make sense of it and I wonder if he knows how much he is loved by his fellow musicians and artists, how thoroughly and quickly they would come together to support him and raise money.
Then I realize it doesn't matter - he's never been comfortable with any kind of celebrity, dying is no exception. I give my word, knowing I'll regret it but bound by it.  And I listen as he talks to me about discovering his spirituality, about things finally beginning to make sense, about how sometimes things just are what they are without rhyme or reason or fairness.   He talks about the doctors and here is the only flare of real anger - cancer may be taking his body, he tells me, but doctors are taking the rest - his money, his humanity, his self respect and peace of mind.  What they can't cure, they run from, he tells me, by detaching with a violent sort of arrogance, a self serving and insincere indifference.  He illustrates this by sharing his most recent conversation with the cancer specialist - an Asian oncologist with a marginal grasp of English who believes in getting right to the point - stage four liver cancer is untreatable, sorry, my nurse will show you out.

But, he adds with something that might've been a grimly determined smile, he feels fine for now and has a plan, at least for the short term - he will take his antidepressants and anxiety drugs, do his best to surrender his will to his higher power on a daily basis, paint and make music and be as grateful as much as possible.  A fine plan, I tell him, an exceptionally fine and reasonable plan.

The break between sets ends and he returns to the stage.  Despite his frail appearance, his voice is strong and his fiddle playing as good as ever.  Before I leave, I give him a kiss on his beard roughened cheek and he smiles back at me.

It's not enough but it's something.

In Between the Tides

On some clear, summer nights, in between the time when the tide came in and went out again, there would be an interlude of such exquisite peace and serene quiet that it would make you cry.  You could almost hear the dark stretching over The Point - it was in the calm waters, the shimmering path of moonlight across the passage, the lights of Brier Island mimicking the stars - and in front of our house, a soft circle of yellow light from the newly erected street lamp.  There was a sadness in these moments, a deep well of certainty that God was watching and approving.  Sometimes I would wake with a fierce need to be outside, feeling the darkness pulling at me.  I would creep through the sleeping house and out the side door where I could look up at the stars and feel the night breeze over the ocean.  I listened as hard as I could, holding my breath until I could hear only my heartbeat, expecting something to make itself known, to reveal itself from the shadows. Nothing ever did except the now and again quick, sharp footsteps of a lone figure passing by - Walkin' Will Patterson,
mostly known as "Swing" for his love of Bob Wills and The Texas Playboys - and his ability, at least before he'd gone to war, to do an uncannily lightfooted two step at the Saturday night dance.

Nana said he was a broken soldier, a shadow of the young man who had so proudly enlisted and sailed away to France to join the good fight.  He came back thin and pale with shell shocked shy eyes, a ragged scar across one cheek and chronic insomnia.  He walked the island roads at night, alone and sometimes til dawn, his boots echoing on the pavement with a staccato-like rhythm.  It was a lonely, lost sound, especially on those clear, quiet nights in between the tides when everyone else was sleeping and the world seemed so peaceful.

He walked hard with his head down and his hands jammed into his pockets, stopping often to light a match with his thumbnail.  It was so deathly quiet I could hear the match strike and sometimes even see his face briefly illuminated in the small flare.  Then he walked on into the next patch of darkness and eventually out of sight, even out of hearing on the nights he took the still dirt Old Road.  It was said that on some nights he walked all the way to Tiverton and back - 12 long and solitary miles - but mostly it was from The Point to the square, around the cove and then back again.  He walked, he smoked, and he drank from a flask he carried in his hip pocket, night after night, as regular and reliable as the tides.  

War changes them that fights it, Sparrow allowed one afternoon as we sat on his porch and watched the fog coming in from Peter's Island while Swing, who kept body and soul together with odd jobs and his monthly military check, split wood in the side yard.  We couldn't see him but we heard the ax falling as regular as clockwork.  Somehow it was, like boot heels on a paved road in the dark, a lonely and lost sound.

Swing Patterson walked for for some 20 years before they found him on the beach one early morning, his body broken beyond repair by a slide down the embankment near where the guard rail ended on The Old Road.  An accident, everyone agreed, it was a treacherous turn and anyone could lose their footing on a dark night with the fog rolling in and no moon.  No one talked about the fact that the moon had been full and the night clear as glass.

Between the moon and the tides, Sparrow wrote my grandmother, a man's only got so much walkin' in him. 

Man Tracks

For a time between finding a log cabin in the mountains of New Hampshire and living in a nondescript motel on the Massachusetts border, we lived in a small town in Maine, just slightly north of the sister cities of Kittery and Portsmouth.  Neighbors were few and far between and in the winter when the snow drifts reached the window sills and travel turned into an expedition, we bundled up, hunkered down, and went ice fishing.  The cold was mind and body numbing but the solitude and serenity were priceless.  We often saw deer just beyond the tree line and sometimes their tracks led all the way to the back door - it was a small herd of sleek, graceful animals, very nearly tame and when hungry, bold enough to feed off the deck - so gentle-eyed and beautiful to watch that they often took my breath away and made me want to cry.  The family of raccoons that took up residence in the shed was another story - there were two adults and three babies, all fat and sassy despite the lean winter pickings - we heard them chirping and foraging at all hours, watched them comically make their way through the snow, scampering and tumbling over each other like midget circus clowns.  They were fearless little creatures with their bandit eyes and agile paws, curious as kittens and not a bit quarrelsome with the deer, even tolerating the chipmunks and random rabbits who dropped by.  All nature seemed to be in harmony that long, cold, country winter - I'd found a permanent position at the UNH bookstore and my then-somewhat-sober husband worked at a nearby veterinary clinic - we were able to leave and come home together each day and spent very little time apart.  There were times when I felt more like a jailer than a wife, a little lonely and a little isolated, sensing that allowing anyone too close would risk exposure, but mostly I was able to keep the evil thoughts of relapse at bay.
I badly wanted to be happy and became very good at turning a blind eye to the danger signs.  It was my second marriage and I hated the idea of admitting to a fatal mistake.

It all came apart the second winter when I had longer hours to work for the January bookrush.  A fast moving storm hit the coast with a vengeance, downing telephone lines and closing roads and bridges with very little warning, stranding me on the Portsmouth side of the border while my husband was trapped in Maine.  It was two days later when I finally got home and discovered several sets of man tracks leading to and from the back door and into the woods.  Curious why he'd have gone out in such a nightmare storm, I followed them and discovered a small clearing littered with green plastic trash bags half buried in the drifts.  I didn't have to look to know what they contained - the raccoons had found them first and torn them open - scavenged empty beer cans had spilled out and lay randomly abandoned in the snow, the stale smell of Budweiser was strong and violent and sure as I knew the sky was gray, I knew the peaceful country winter was over.

It was idle speculation but I wondered where he'd kept all the empties while waiting for the opportunity to dispose of them.  I wondered where his stash of full ones might be.  I wondered how I hadn't seen it and what to do about it.  For several minutes I thought that hate and rage at being being taken for a fool - again - would suffocate me.
For another several minutes, I let the hopelessness and despair of reality take over.  I felt sick and defeated, betrayed beyond words and fatally sad.  And, I realized, standing in this freezing beer can graveyard, bitterly cold.  Not bothering to conceal my own tracks, I walked out of the woods, back into the gray afternoon light, and into the house.

He was ready for me.

There would be no excuses, no apologies, no lies or illusions.  He wouldn't even make the pretense that he hadn't been drinking but instead stood by the kitchen window with his face in shadow.  I sensed the coldness, the stubbornness, and the sheer defiance and rather than lock myself in another useless and painful confrontation, I walked the few steps to the bedroom, shut and bolted the door and began to pack a suitcase.  When I was done, I put the cats in carriers and slipped quietly out the front door.  There was no question of his following - sober, he might've made some effort to engage me, but after a two day drunk he was all self righteous indignation.  There was no danger here.

It wasn't the first time I'd left and it wouldn't be the last.  I didn't know it then but each time I gained a little strength and a little conviction until at last, several years later, I was strong enough to let go and make my own tracks.

The Lantern Line

There was thunder about as Uncle Shad pitched the last of the new mown hay onto the wagon and saddled up the team.  The horses were restless and we soon lost sight of them in the fog although we could hear their hoofbeats.  Nana watched a little anxiously until the sounds faded then called us for supper.

 Shad's driven that road in fog a hundred times, my daddy reassured her, Don't fret.

 But my grandmother, a natural born worrier, wasn't so easily put off.

I'll just call Elsie, she said, Have her to call me when he gets there.

 Knowing better than to disagree, my daddy just nodded and smiled.

When Elsie hadn't called by seven, Nana sighed and put aside her knitting.  By then we were thoroughly socked in and the foghorn was bleating warnings every ten seconds.  Nobody with a lick of sense would've been on the roads that night but Nana and my daddy trudged to the Lincoln and headed up the drive anyway, the old car's headlights barely making a dent in the fog, as if the whole world had been suddenly encased in wet, dripping cotton.  By then someone had dispatched the lantern line and the village men were walking in tight rows on either side of the road, kerosene lanterns swinging at their sides.  We couldn't see them but we could hear them calling to each other every few paces, keeping the Lincoln safely between the ditches as they walked, guiding and directing with a calm and familiar precision.  Meanwhile, the telephone lines lit up all over the island and a second lantern light formed further up island, slowly and painstakingly making their way toward the first.  Sometime after nine, they converged at the crest of the hill but still there was no sign of Uncle Shad.  Chilled, wet, sweating and beginning to be bad tempered, the men re-grouped and prepared to resume the search when one of the dogs began to bay, a distorted but still sorrowful sound that got everyone's attention immediately.

Over here!  Jacob Sullivan yelled although considering that you couldn't see the hood ornament from the front seat of the Lincoln, "here" was a somewhat relative term.  The men followed his voice and the howl of the dog and soon discovered the wagon, parked neatly on the dirt lane leading to the ballfield, the team still harnessed and standing silently like sentries.  While the men began shouting Shad's name, my grandmother leaned on the horn and the sound blared through the fog with a shocking sharpness, startling the would be rescuers as well as Uncle Shad who had been buried deep and peacefully asleep in the damp hay.

By God, you'll be wakin' the dead! he exclaimed as he brushed aside the blanket of straw and struggled to his feet, What the devil is all this?

You all right, Shad? Jacob Sullivan demanded roughly.

'Course I'm all right, you damn fool, Uncle Shad snapped back as he climbed down and surveyed the scene, Why wouldn't I be?   Pulled over when I couldn't see for the....then he stopped mid sentence and looked around in disbelief....for the damn fog, he finished, trying hard to stay indignant and failing miserably.  There was an extended silence.

Could've gone either way, my daddy said later, but then Jacob started to laugh and it was all over.

The next morning broke clear and fine and fresh.  By then, Shad and the team were home and the lantern line had dispersed.  The old Lincoln was back in the driveway and Nana, too relieved to be angry, was in the kitchen husking sweet corn from a brown paper sack that had been anonymously left at the back door.  Each member of the lantern line had discovered a similar package that morning - some got tomatoes or peppers, sweet red onions or summer squash - Jacob Sullivan got a fresh pouch of pipe tobacco and a thermos of sweet buttered fish chowder.  Good turns, not unlike debts, were routinely repaid on the island.  It was just the way things worked.  

Remington Romances

It was my mother who discovered the stash of narrow ruled notebooks I kept hidden in my closet.

Her rage was instant and fierce when she read them, as if she’d stumbled onto a nest of teenage pornography and not the pitiful efforts of a child who wanted to be a writer and had no idea where to begin – I was, at the time, under the influence of the romance magazines available at the local five and dime store – forbidden and atrociously written as they were scandalous.

 “Trash!” she shrieked wildly at me, “How dare you even think let alone write this trash?”

Notebooks flew in every direction.

“They’re private!” I shrieked right back at her, “How dare you read my private things!”

A wayward copy of “The Carpetbaggers” with its slick and suggestive paperback cover whizzed by my ear and hit the bedroom door with a dull thud.   Rendered as incoherent as I’d ever seen her, my distraught mother began ripping pages from the notebooks and punctuating each ragged handful with a violent curse.  I picked up the thick, dog eared novel gingerly and then dropped it like a hot rock when I  remembered I’d discovered it carefully concealed in her lingerie drawer.  That was bound to come to her as well, I realized, and very likely sooner than later.  Flight suddenly seemed like a reasonable course as opposed to being trapped in a tiny room with stolen property and a mad woman – I screamed some final hateful words in her direction and fled.  Not to be outdone, she flung out her last and best volley but the words were flat and the sentiment too clichéd  to carry any weight.

“You just wait…..” she screamed with a kind of breathless and impotent fury, “….til your father gets home!”

 I ran.  Down the stairs, two at a time, out the front door and onto the sidewalk where each crack looked like an opportunity and I didn’t just step, I pounced with both feet.  I ran all the way to St. Luke’s, a small Catholic church four blocks away.   It was there my daddy found me, sitting miserably on the church steps, afraid to go home but still defiant.   He parked the old black station wagon and came to sit beside me, hugging his knees and looking thoughtful.

“So,” he began neutrally, “You want to be a writer.”

“She had no right,”  I snapped, “And you can’t make me say I’m sorry.”

“Oh, I know.  She’ll get over it.” he told me with a slight shrug of his thin shoulders, “But there might’ve been a better way to handle it.”

“Like what?” I demanded with the sullen righteousness of the unfairly accused.

“Well,” he said and put his arm around my shoulders, “ You might’ve tried writing about something you know about.  Or used invisible ink.  Or found a better hiding place.  Don’t you know the bottom of the closet is the first place she looks?”

I tried hard not to smile at this and he hugged me a little tighter.

A few days later, after the winds had died down, he appeared at my bedroom door with a square shaped, latch locked box containing a dusty, second hand but still reliable – except for a missing “r” key and a tendency to skip if pressed overly hard – typewriter and an unopened ream of clean white paper.

“Just skip a space for the “r” for now,”  he told me with a small smile, “You can fill them in later.”

He patiently showed me how to load the ribbon and insert the paper, set margins, use the space bar, the shift key and the carriage return.

“Two things,” he said, “No more true romance stories.”

I had the good grace to blush at this.

“What’s the second?”  I asked hesitantly.

My daddy, always the peacemaker and perpetually caught up in a mother-daughter dynamic he didn’t understand, smiled again, this time a little sadly.

“Respect the words,” he told me.  “Don’t write anything you’d be ashamed to see in the paper and if this is something you really want, then don’t give up.  Find your own voice but learn to respect the words.  Oh, and here,” he added, producing a paperback from his pocket and laying it on the dresser. “Writers need to read.  A lot.  This is a good place to start.”

It was “Cannery Row” by John Steinbeck, its once glossy cover faded with age and nearly detached from the spine, its pages so well thumbed they curled at the edges.  It was held together with a thin, green rubber band and smelled faintly of pouch tobacco and clove.  It had, I read with a growing sense of wonder, been written before I’d been born, Steinbeck had been in his early forties and the world was recovering from war.   It somehow seemed the perfect choice for my daddy’s back pocket, the perfect gift to pass on.

It was my first grown up book.

More important and more essential, it was my first grown up moment.

Love & Other Expectations

No question about it, if someone was to invent love recognition software, I'd invest down to my last dime.

I haven't given up, not precisely, but the search has worn me down considerably and made me a tad cynical. It's too effortless and comfortable to fall in love when you're young and surrounded by magic ,too trying and time consuming when you're old and have become set in your ways. All the loves of my life have come and gone - passing through like the seasons, always on the way to changing - leaving me to wonder if any were real.

With every beginning, at least so I told myself, I was absolutely, positively, rock solid sure I was on good ground, that such feelings couldn't be anything but love. With each ending, I was equally certain that there would be another chance - mistakes are the best teaching tools, after all, and I was resilient, optimistic, and overflowing with dreams. We are meant to be paired, I told myself, meant to be in tandem and headed in the same direction, designed to search and find a soulmate. After two marriages/divorces - some might say failures - the perfect match was proving annoyingly elusive but I kept faith with the dream and the idea of a forever love, stubbornly refusing to let go.

In the end, I returned to the first and possibly only genuine love I'd ever known - my feelings for animals had been a constant since I first laid eyes on a cardboard box of puppies and been told to choose. Here I knew where I stood, here I was needed and loved without conditions, here I would have given my life to protect another small one. There was no wondering, no second thoughts, no fear for the future. Whether I'm holding a dog or a cat or a chinchilla, nursing a baby raccoon back to health and independence or sitting by the cage of a majestic white tiger, I know what it is to love and it's not what I had always believed - it's far simpler and straightforward and was always within me, right on the surface and waiting for me to find it. I just had to get past the white knights and other expectations.

Love is a warmth that pours outward from the soul, a mysterious and hard to define emotion, far too often confused with other more superficial feelings. I discovered it the instant my daddy placed a sleepy, warm and sweet smelling black and tan daschound puppy in my arms. I was too young to recognize a life altering moment, too much of a child to realize that destiny had just brushed by me, too innocent to comprehend that love doesn't always stand on two feet. I still expected the same feeling to one day overcome me in human form, to find the man I was meant for and live the story book ending. When it's all said and done, a part of me still does - but it's a small part, a whisper, really, and it goes suddenly silent the moment I pick up an animal. It's a non-traditional view of love, I know and I suppose there are people who might think me odd, if they are charitable or delusional, if they are not. But what I feel for animals is something so fundamental, so deeply rooted and just plain right, that I suspect I will never really feel it with a partner. I knew it the moment the tiny daschound pup snuggled into my neck, as surely as I've ever known anything since. There is, between me and my animals, absolute trust, unconditional love, tolerance and patience. We have the same needs - food, shelter, acceptance, security, the occasional afternoon nap, and the same goals, to live quietly and spend our time well. Unorthodox, perhaps, but genuine love isn't limited or confined or always inside the lines like a coloring book. When I began to understand that love comes in all shapes and sizes, that it can't be boxed in or assigned like a part in a play, that it can't be fabricated or manufactured, I also began to understand myself on a different level. The simplest truths are often hidden in plain sight and here was one: In the event of fire or flood or other natural disaster, my husbands were on their own, my first and only priority would be the lives of my animals. Not surprisingly, this revelation wasn't received with much grace but rather with disbelief and surprise, both of which turned to resentment. Here's another: The safety and well being of my animals mattered more to me than either of my marriages - the shock of this awareness was almost heart stopping and forced me to reexamine my motives and my very purpose - except that I had known it all along.

I've learned a few things about love since then. In all its forms, whether between consenting adults, parent and child, siblings or best friends, even between a little girl and her first puppy, it's a rare gift. Some of us search for it, some stumble over it, some do without. But my heart has known it all my life, just not as most of us expect. So if someone does invent love recognition software, I'll get in line, cross my fingers, pay my two dollars and let the fates do as they will.

Meanwhile, there's no need to look for love. Thanks to a cardboard box of puppies at the age of five and a wiggly, tiny bundle of soft fur with big brown eyes, I found it early and it's still everywhere I look. Traditional or not, I'm surrounded and my heart is full.

A Run for the Border

The idea began to crystalize one morning in May, just a few days after the Oklahoma tornado, as I listened to Tom Coburn talk about/dismiss disaster relief for the victims until and unless there were what he sneeringly called offsets.  The loss of lives and property in his own state didn't move him in the slightest - he sat and smirked his way through the interview, redefining political arrogance and hypocrisy - a United States senator, a medical doctor reveling in his power to withhold assistance from those who had lost everything.  It made me ill, made me furious, made me ashamed.  At first, I found myself hoping that neither he or his family would ever find themselves in a position where they desperately needed help but the more I listened, the more I hoped they would.  One thought led to another - climate change deniers, the republican war on women, the poor, anyone of color.  South Carolina re-electing a liar and an adulterer, car thieves and white supremacists in congress along with car thieves.  Those in charge of preventing sexual abuse being predators.  Banks and insurance companies being able to buy politicians like penny candy.  Politicians buying prostitutes and compromising education.  Health care held hostage by the rich and powerful, religion invading and corrupting everything it reaches, terrorists being paid full salaries while awaiting trial, dead children in the streets and a growing gun culture funded by a right wing fringe group and embraced by every inbred moron and tea partier whether they can put together a whole sentence or not.  Not to mention the entire South.  And nobody's accountable.  The inmates are running the asylum and I'm at odds with my government, possibly with my country.

Just suppose, I found myself thinking, I were to say to hell with it.  Just suppose I were to sell everything, pack up the animals and my camera and make a run for the border.

A ridiculous notion, I know, ridiculous and utterly impossible.  The paperwork alone would drown me and I hate snow and cold.  I wouldn't be able to get American cigarettes.  I'd have no way of making a living.  There would be no nightlife, no quick runs to the corner store, no bookstores, no favorite tv shows.  I'd go gray for lack of L'Oreal and I'm not that wild about fresh fish.  I'd miss friends and loved ones, having someone to cut the grass and NPR and maybe a thousand other small things I take for granted here.  Ridiculous and utterly out of the question, a pipe dream born of arrogance, hypocrisy, a handful of corrupt senators and the weariness of one too many bad news days.

And yet it persists, this misty and unrealistic idea of a small house overlooking the ocean, an island of sanity and simplicity out of reach of all that's poisoning this country.  Poisoning me.

Lord knows, I've had more improbable ideas.

There But For Fortune

Every state has them, I suppose, those few tiny towns where inbreeding and poverty and stupidity are in charge.  You avoid them at all costs.  Our's are the road to South Louisiana and if you must pass through, you roll up your windows, lock your car doors and don't stop for hell or high water.  The faces that you see are vacant and dazed, a little menacing, a little too close.  If I'd been standing when one such face appeared at the office window, I'd have taken a step back - I had the disconcerting feeling I was looking into the eyes of a serial killer - or at least someone who kept an arsenal of guns in her basement.  She was tall, thickly built and mostly toothless with a mane of salt and pepper hair.  Stringy and unkempt, it fell past her shoulders and into her eyes in a wild tangle of snarls and knots and she smelled like dirt with undertones of snuff and cooking grease.  She had had meaty, man hands balled into white knuckled fists as they gripped the sign in clipboard.  Every self preservation instinct I had kicked in, episodes of "Snapped" flew through my mind, and it was all I could do to find my voice with those mad eyes glaring at me.

Can't read or write, she told me although it came out more like Cain't rid er rawght and was closer to a growl than actual speech.  I willed my hands to stop shaking and took the clipboard, nodded to her to take a seat and told her no problem, we'd help her fill out the form.  Moving stiffly and slowly, she shambled to a chair and lowered her bulk into it with a grunt and a heavy sigh - the patient in the next chair wrinkled her nose and with a discreet cough, moved several seats away - I imagined if Ted Kaczynski and Aileen Wuornos had ever had a child, this would be the result and the stubborn image stuck with me.  

Lord have mercy, one of the nurses muttered from behind me, Jeremiah Jonhson took a wife!

Knowing I was not completely alone in my uncharitable thoughts made me laugh (a little) and feel guilty (a lot), especially when the chatter in the waiting room turned whispery and unkind, but there was still no denying we all breathed a sigh of release with her departure.  It takes all kinds, as my daddy might've said.

There but for fortune, go you or I ~ Phil Ochs

Crocker Lane

Crocker Lane, directly across from the village church and named for the first family to build on it, wasn't much more than a narrow strip of grass with ruts on either side.  It led all the way from Highway 117 to the aptly named Beautiful Cove, a serenely sheltered inlet of deep woods and driftwood covered rocky ledges with a stunning view of the Atlantic.  Ruthie and I spent hours there, collecting shells and playing in the tide pools, building forts, wading toward the tide as it came in and chasing after it as it went out.  We got there the long way 'round, past Old Hat's where 117 ended and scrambling all the way but we usually came home down Crocker Lane - Ruthie would cut across the square by the post office while I continued to The Point - sometimes catching a ride with the mail car if it were late enough but mostly just walking slowly at the side of the road and bracing myself for an inevitable lecture about my dirty face and skinned knees.

On one afternoon, sleepy Crocker Lane was alive with activity.  Pulling a wagonload of firewood, Denny Crocker's team of oxen had inexplicably gone on strike midway down the lane - both mammoth creatures simply stopped and no amount of coaxing or encouragement could persuade them another step.  Even Denny's whip, which everyone knew he carried just for show and rarely if ever actually used, had no effect - he shouted the commands and gave one of the great beasts a half hearted flick on the hindquarters - but the oxen were rooted to the spot.  Denny pushed and pulled, yelled and sweet talked, threatened and reasoned, all to no avail.  The island's only yoke of oxen dug in and were unmoved by his protests and pleas and it wasn't long before a crowd, some curious and some loudly unhelpful but all thoroughly mystified, had gathered.  They tried car horns, they tried bells, they tried banging cast iron pans together - the oxen showed no interest.  Uncle Bernie fired his shotgun into the air - the oxen blinked, but didn't move.  

Get a tractor! someone in the crowd yelled unkindly and Denny glared.

Meanwhile, his wife, a good hearted, up island girl with a practical streak, arrived carrying two buckets of buttermilk and a half dozen ears of sweet corn.  While Denny fussed and fumed, she calmly tempted the team into motion and led them down the lane, across the road and into the churchyard.  While Denny unloaded the firewood, she stood quietly with them, stroking their shaggy heads and telling them what fine animals they were, what great hearts they had, what noble beasts they were.

My good boys, she repeated softly, What's a tractor know about teamwork.  And then she beckoned Ruthie and me and we each got to ride an oxen all the way home - slow but elegant with the smell of leather and hay and island sunshine.  Nana was in the doorway and the dogs came running up the driveway to meet us, barking and nipping at the oxen's hooves like flies while the placid beasts paid them no mind, serenely putting one foot in front of the other, in tandem, all the way to our back door.

Moved 'em slicker'n bacon grease, Uncle Bernie later reported to my grandmother, Just like that Pied Piper fella!

Nana just smiled.

Some years later, Denny retired the team and put them out to pasture - for a long time we could see them as they grazed peacefully in his fields, harnessed up only for an occasional Christmas sleigh ride.  They'd earned their rest, which as his wife liked to say, was more than anyone would ever say about the tractor.