Trust Me Smiles

Feeling cynical, suspicious, and out of my comfort zone, I gave the service manager at the dealership a doubtful look. She hadn't come right out and said the words, "Trust me" but I still felt unsure. Three weeks earlier when she had said that all they had been able to find was a corroded battery cable and a single rusty wire, the battery had tested fine. Now, the same battery had been diagnosed with a dead cell and at the bargain price of $214.62 been replaced. I tentatively reminded her that it had been the third battery since the first of the year and it was only mid June. Ah, yes, she said with a wide and what I wanted to think was meant to be a reassuring if slightly chiding smile, But you didn't buy those batteries here, a fact I had openly confessed to three weeks earlier, and we didn't install them. This did little to ease my mind - we were talking batteries, after all, not nuclear fuel distribution devices - and while I remained certain that some mysterious and as yet to be discovered electrical flaw was the culprit, draining each new battery as surely as God had made little, green apples, I had only anecdotal evidence. With some reluctance I handed over my credit card and told her that I hoped she was right and that I wasn't going to be doing this same dance all over again in the next couple of months. Because if I am, I said with far more confidence than I actually felt, I promise you I will not be happy. She gave me another "Trust me" smile and pointed to the signature line of the credit card slip. It's a gift to know when you're beaten - I signed and left.

The old cruiser started immediately and strongly, just as it had with the new battery cable and each of the new batteries before that. I wanted to believe but age breeds cynicism and distrust and I was still unconvinced. Living on the edge of never being quite sure whether the car will or won't start, at what point I won't be able to coax the ignition to life, or where I'm likely to be when it's had enough has lost its charm. It's a good idea to look a little deeper when someone gives you a "Trust me" smile, even if they're taking no more than a little of your time.

I calculate I'm safe til about Labor Day, give or take.

The Body on the Golf Course

It was pure chance that I happened to be in the car that night - both my brothers were at a sleepover and my mother and grandmother on their way to a lodge meeting - when my daddy got the call, it was either leave me at home alone or take me along to the crime scene, a Cambridge golf course where a body had been found at sunset, an execution style murder, one bullet through the eye and one through the back of the head. Reluctantly, he strapped me into the front seat of the old Mercury station wagon - it sometimes doubled as a makeshift hearse - and gave me strict instructions that I was to STAY PUT, BE QUIET, AND NOT ASK QUESTIONS. The scene of a murder was NO PLACE FOR A CHILD, he had GRAVE MISGIVINGS about taking me, there would be EIGHT KINDS OF HELL TO PAY if my mother were to find out and he hoped that FOR ALL OUR SAKES, I was old enough to understand - I wasn't, except for the eight kinds of hell part - my mother's potential for wrath was something I'd understood for years.

The golf course/crime scene was lit like a movie set - spotlights, search lights, police cruiser lights, and the constant popping of flash bulbs - there were reporters and detectives and uniformed police, the medical examiner was there with an entire forensic team - and in the center of it all sat a polished and flashy Cadillac, complete with tail fins and a convertible top, carefully surrounded with bright yellow tape. A body was slumped over the steering wheel and Dr. Davis - the very same Dr. Davis I had seen for every childhood ailment and broken bone - was bent over the body, dictating to a very young looking assistant in a white labcoat and plastic gloves. My daddy repeated his instructions with heavy emphasis on the STAY PUT and BE QUIET, slipped on a pair of his own plastic gloves, and left the car, walking carefully toward the Cadillac and the ducking under the crime scene tape with one handed ease. Dr. Davis hailed him and I remember thinking He's done this before, realizing with mild surprise that my handsome, ever gentle and soft spoken father was no stranger to violent death.

It was, predictably enough, deemed a gangland killing and the body, still flexible enough for the coroner to pronounce recently deceased, was loaded into a body bag and onto a stretcher. There followed a somewhat heated discussion over transport, my daddy and the lead detective clearly at odds and while I could only hear snatches -

my daughter....not possible ....then wait for the damn ambulance .....I realized that they wanted to put the body in the station wagon. The idea of traveling with a corpse gave me a wicked thrill, What a tale this would be! for show and tell, then I remembered I was sworn to secrecy. In the end, it was academic - the body was indeed put into the station wagon but I was to follow in a police cruiser - no small thrill, that, and it was almost as exciting.

Compromise, my daddy was to tell me in later years, was the axle that turned the wheels of a civilized society, keeping secrets was the grease.

I don't remember the outcome of the homicide, mafia killings happened with a surprising frequency back then and whether there was a trial or even if the case was solved held no interest for me. I do remember the warm summer air, the sirens and the lights, Dr. Davis's wide bodied form as he examined the body, the ride in the police car. I remember the coroner shaking hands all around, lastly with my daddy and then quite formally with me - he was a most proper and usually serious physician but his parting words were said with a smile, Well, Guy, dead is dead. See you at the morgue.

It was a hard secret for a curious and imaginative child to keep but keep it I did. As grown up as it made me feel, it still took a few more years before I understood that dead really is dead and that the dead can't harm you except in bad dreams.

Trips and Falls

Don't look back, my grandmother advised me the day I graduated from college and presented me with a check, You might miss a step. She had no idea.

I was, to be truthful, quite full of myself that June day. I had no clear vision of the future, no clue as to how many trips and falls and missteps there would actually be in the grownup world. I loved being in college and had never considered life afterward - I played with the idea of teaching, was enchanted with my cousin Linda's decision to be a librarian and live among books, even thought I might make a career of writing or become a veterinarian and spend my life doing good for animals. I packed up my cap and gown, framed my degree, found a place for the much loved textbooks on philosophy and ethics, and prepared to take on the world.

The world, however, was less welcoming than I imagined, less open minded, less impressed. It seemed that English majors, degreed or not, were a dime a dozen, a common commodity. My first trip and fall was learning that I wasn't as special as I thought - I took a job with the telephone company, intending it to carry me over until I discovered my destiny - and ten years later I was still there. I hadn't even noticed the second misstep, falling into a comfortable routine of work, marriage, marriage and work.

Somewhere along the line, I stopped looking for destiny to intervene with some blinding light or great crash of thunder. Perhaps, I thought, it had more discretion, more finesse - perhaps it was never there for the ordinary people at all. I tripped and fell over my own lack of faith and later my own complacency. Then there was a major misstep - leaving New England seemed like the right move at the time, opportunity and a warm climate were there for the taking as well as the nest of a loving and welcoming family. I never looked closely enough to see the danger.

Don't look back, my grandmother had said. The past is the past and can't be changed or corrected. It was her way of saying live and learn, I suppose, live and learn and keep moving -

forward when you can, sideways if you must, but never back,

The House on the Square

Miss Abby had married at sixteen and been widowed at eighteen, her brief marriage ending after a tragic hunting accident that was to leave her childless and bitter. She retreated to the house on the square, barring the door and shuttering all the windows, refusing entry to all who called except for Mr. McIntyre who delivered a cardboard box of food and staples each week. He set the box by the front door, knocked and went away and the next morning there would be a white envelope taped to the front door of the old house - it contained payment for the delivery and the next week's list - never anything more or anything less. Twice a year, he arranged for three cords of wood to be delivered and stacked in the back yard and each summer he made sure Mr. Melanson came and mowed, otherwise he knew nothing of what went on in the house on the square.

As the years passed, the rumors flew. Abby had gone simply and quietly mad with grief, some speculated while others suggested that she was biding her time and planning revenge on the hunting partner who had taken her young husband's life. Still others wondered if she wasn't practicing witchcraft, dancing naked and surrounded by demons that she would release onto the small population to drink blood and steal the breath of cradle bound infants. The more practical minded islanders, Mr. McIntyre among them, dismissed the wild rumors and those that spread them with contempt - if Abby wanted to live in seclusion and was harming no one, it was nobody's business but her own, Folks'd be a sight better off if they was to tend their own business, he told his customers sharply, Woman's got a right to live as she pleases.

There being no shortage of eccentricity on the island, people eventually moved on to other things - Willie Foot's escapades and Old Hat's war against the world provided constant distractions - and the house on the square as well as it's mistress were set aside. After some ten years, the paint was peeling, the foundation had settled somewhat crookedly, the roof sagged and the veranda had begun to disintegrate. Could the woman hidden inside be suffering from any less neglect, Mr. McIntyre wondered. Then unexpectedly, a construction crew from the mainland arrived, set up shop and within a month had put the house right again - the mystery of Miss Abby was reawakened as there had not been a single sign of her during the process. Mr. McIntyre, moving more and more slowly and thinking more and more about retirement, still made his weekly deliveries and kept his silence, until one rainy afternoon, at his usual knock, the door of the house on the square swung open and a voice - young sounding, strong and clear -summoned him him. He was a sensible man, practical minded, as he liked to say, but the sight of Abby standing at the foot of the stairs in a long, dark dress with hair to her waist, was unnerving. Half in shadow, half in light, she beckoned to him, I don't mind sayin' it give me a shock, he told people, She hadn't aged, not a day. 'Course I knew it were a trick of the light, she's bound to be nigh on 70, but I declare it set me back apiece. And that was all he would day. Despite being besieged by questions and hounded for days for details of his visit, it was all he would ever say.

In the afterword to his unsolved mystery, "The Colorado Kid", author Stephen King wrote "I ask you to consider the fact that we live in a web of mystery and have simply gotten so used to the fact that we have crossed out the word and replaced it with one we like better, that one being reality. Where so we come from? Where were we before we were here? Don't know. Where are we going? Don't know. It's crazy to live with that and stay sane, but it's also beautiful. I write to find out what I think ......maybe it's the beauty of the mystery that allows us to live sane as we pilot our way through this demolition derby world....."

Not every question has an answer, not every mystery has a solution. Miss Abby's grave is unmarked save for a very small stone plate in the ground - the only thing carved into it is a single question mark.

Paper Dolls

My friend Ruthie kept her collection of paper dolls - a mother, two golden haired children and a gray and white cat named Dixie - in a shoebox under her bed. On rainy days when she wasn't expected to work in her daddy's general store, we spread her cut outs over her quilted bedspread and made new ones from the Spiegle catalogue. Hearing her daddy's footsteps on the stairs, we would gather up the clippings and hurriedly hide them - without knowing exactly why, we knew he wouldn't approve - he would stand in the doorway of her room, a short, squat man with his hands jammed into his pockets and his heavy glasses almost obscuring his eyes, and stare at us silently, grimly. The man never smiled or spared a kind word for anyone, he usually reeked of cheap whiskey, and rather than speak, he communicated with his wife and daughter through whistling and a series of gestures. Nana had made it clear that she would prefer Ruthie and I to play at our house on The Point and she had made me promise never to accept a ride from him or otherwise be alone with him. I didn't understand why and she refused to explain but because he frightened me with his long stares and his silences - a cold fear, nameless and heavy and somehow dark - I paid attention and did as I was told. If I had known the word predatory back then, I would have been able to define him. We left the paper dolls and despite the weather, went outside to play with Dixie's new kittens but by and by he appeared with the keys to his old pickup truck in hand, gestured for Ruthie to go inside and looking directly at me said, Take you home. I shook my head and ran down the driveway in the rain, not slowing until I reached the square and the safety of McIntyre's. Devil on your tail, girl? one of the old fishermen asked and when I didn't answer, Mr. McInytre frowned from behind the counter then led me to his own pick up truck. Got a delivery for your grandmother, he said with a reassuring smile, You might as well ride with me or you'll catch your death. It was raining in sheets by then, and surprisingly cold, with thick fog building and gliding off the ocean in waves. Bad night comin', Mr.McIntyre told Nana, She was almost caught in the storm. She thanked him, gave me a narrow eyed look and asked if I was hurt, then ordered me upstairs for a hot bath and dry clothes. It was some time before I heard Mr. McIntyre's truck pull out and rattle up the driveway and by then, Nana had made me two slices of her thick brown bread covered with butter and sugar and a mug of hot chocolate. You were at Ruth's, she said evenly, Did Norman come home? Are you sure you're not hurt? I promised her I wasn't and she poured me more hot chocolate. I think, she said in a tone that I knew not to question, that from now on Ruthie will come here to play. I thought of protesting then thought better of it.

The remainder of the summer passed all too quickly and Ruthie's visits to our house were few and far between.

She was needed at the store, Aunt Jenny said none too convincingly, and in her more honest moments which were also few and far between, Norman likes to be able to keep an eye on her, doesn't want her to run wild. I thought for a brief second that Nana was about to explode at this admission - it was uncomfortably close to an accusation, but my rock solid grandmother checked her temper and reminded Jenny that Ruthie was always welcome, Day or night, she added meaningfully. Later I overheard my mother say that interference would likely mean another black eye or broken arm or worse - Aunt Jenny was accident prone, it seemed, as well as clumsy and farsighted. Can't see what's right in front of her, my mother remarked pityingly, Damnable shame.

By the time Ruthie was about twelve, things had improved marginally - a number of seemingly random events had come together - a lengthy and amazingly discreet campaign to boycott her daddy's small store had finally paid a minor dividend and cost him customers, McIntyre's had prospered and renovated the second floor with new and hard to find merchandise, but mostly Ruthie had grown older. She was not defiant, not ready to expose family secrets, but she was stronger, less compliant, and more certain that everyone didn't live the way she and her mother did. She had begun to realize that natural bullies were also natural cowards, that predators sought out the weak and unprotected, that they could be defeated by simple acts of emotional courage, by a child who, at long last, had had enough.

Sometimes you have to circle the wagons and fight to the last Indian, others you have to surrender gracefully, but now and then you can just defect.

Mary Margaret & The Great Sea Turtle

The story was old as the hills - blended like whiskey until it was part fact and part fiction, part fable and part morality tale, part warning and part history - not a single child who was raised on the island hadn't been told the story of Mary Margaret and The Great Sea Turtle.

Uncle Bernie told it the best on those Saturday afternoon story telling sessions in front of the candy store. Nana said it was what we did to explain the inexplicable events that challenge our faith, inventing a myth that we can cling to and find comfort in, no matter how unlikely it may be. Sparrow swore every word was the God's truth, claiming to have witnessed it. Being an agnostic, John Sullivan shrugged and allowed as how anything was possible. Even Miss Hilda, as strait laced and sensible a woman as anyone had ever known, had been known to say that even fairy tales must have a grain of truth somewhere in their origins. The children simply accepted the tale as told, not a solitary one of us would have had the courage to disbelieve.

Mary Margaret, the lighthouse keeper's daughter, lived across the passage on Briar Island. She had grown up at the water's edge, collecting shells and snails and keeping scrapbooks of stray gull feathers and other assorted tokens the sea liked to leave behind. She was a solitary child, not pretty but imaginative and self contained - she claimed to have seen mermaids by moonlight and other improbable ocean creatures, all with the gifts of speech and reason - and no amount of cajoling or discipline could make her recant. She talked to the sea and it answered, telling her wild tales of pirates and shipwrecks and lost kingdoms and the legend of the Great Sea Turtle who took 40 years to swim around the world, saving lost children and taking them with him to safety and a world full of dreams and sweets and good fairy queens. He was a mammoth creature, nearly the size of a small pony, Mary Margaret reported, and he carried the children in a silver and glass carriage with an entourage of sea horses, children who had ventured too far from shore, fallen off wharves, or had such unhappy lives that they waited for him, waist deep in the waves and crying bitter tears. They wanted to go, Mary Margaret said, wanted to ride balanced on his enormous shell with arms stretched out and faces to the wind. The Great Sea Turtle promised freedom and a world where children would never grow old but stay innocent, protected and carefree.

On a clear late summer day when she was eleven, Mary Margaret watched and waited for the Great Sea Turtle, dreaming of castles made of water stones and magic mountains beneath the sea. When she finally saw him - just as she expected, swimming on the surface with a throng of pink sea horses on either side of a shiny silver and glass old style coach - she began to weep and threw her small body into the ocean, swimming with all her strength through the whitecaps and waves. Sparrow, casting nets just off shore from a shabby old rowboat and facing into the sun, raised an alarm but the child was too far away to reach in time and he watched helplessly as she went under the waves and didn't resurface. Moments later, as he waited for the rescue boats, he looked past the breakwater and into the sun and to his amazement, saw what appeared to be a monstrously big sea turtle with a sea horse escort swimming furiously for open water, a small child in a blue dress balanced on its shell, arms extended and hair blowing in the wind. She turned and waved, he told the crowd of fishermen later, then I rubbed my eyes and when I looked again, weren't nothin' there but sun circles.

It might have been an illusion born of shock and sorrow and an old legend, people said. But the sea keeps its secrets, they also said, it's mysteries are vast and older than time. The only thing anyone knew for sure was that Mary Margaret was gone and that Sparrow had seen her go - The sea never tells, Uncle Bernie finished with a sad smile, She gives and she takes but she never tells.

A Test of Neutrality

When it comes to children, I am, on the whole, like Switzerland - decidedly neutral. People who want, can support and will love them should have truckloads. People who don't should find hobbies or get cats.

The young woman who came into the wine shop with a small boy and girl in tow abdicated her parental role and dismissed them the moment she walked through the door. While she browsed and chatted animatedly on her pink cell phone, her two offspring ran recklessly wild - they played tag through the delicate displays, rummaged through the cases of pricey wine, climbed the stacks and rattled bottles - their mother glanced their way every now and then but made no move to correct or reprimand them. Eventually they took seats at a table set for lunch, smearing dirty fingerprints on the linen tablecloth, unwrapping napkins and rearranging china. Their mother favored us with an aren't they adorable smile and continued her shopping. When the boy produced a tiny hot wheels car and revved it up before setting it on a plate to race in mad circles - it looked all the world like a deranged cricket and buzzed like a locust - I decided it was time to intervene. As I approached the table, he carefully picked up a fork, set the little car on the non-tined end and raised one clenched fist, preparing to catapult it blindly into God knew where.

I reached the table just in time, resisted the urge to box his ears, and snatched the car away. I don't think so, I told him quietly, You can have it back when you leave. He gave me a sullen look and ran to his mother - who had witnessed the entire incident without as much as a word - and she shooed him away impatiently before shooting me a daggered look. I returned this with as insincere a smile as I could manage, neutrality being a difficult thing to maintain when under siege. Some children, I muttered under my breath as I replaced the tablecloth, refolded the napkins and restored the place settings, should be boiled in oil and sold on the black market.

If, at that age and in public, I reflected grimly, to paraphrase Henry Higgins - I had behaved as if my home were in a tree - and if my mother had been sober and in a generous mood, I might have received one initial warning but she would never have spared the breath to issue a second. I would've found myself hauled out by my ear, deposited in the car without ceremony and left to examine my conduct and consider the consequences. It was a time when children were meant to be seen and not heard - there was no appeals process, no amnesty, and no bargaining for leniency - in matters of discipline, she was perfectly clear and always prepared to follow through. Other mothers were inclined to applaud rather than criticize her methods and sympathy for a rowdy child was rare - parents tended their own children and expected other parents to do the same.

It's one thing to raise a confident, independent, self expressive child who will stand strong and make wise decisions. It's quite another to be an onlooker during the process. Any fool can procreate and bring forth children but it doesn't make them a parent. The young woman completed her wine purchases - a shade less friendly than when she'd walked in - rounded up her wayward urchins and left through the back door. Perhaps she will return but perhaps fortune will smile on us and she will not. The wine shop was intact and my neutrality only a little worse for wear - anarchy had been defeated and once again driven out.

Travels in Spain

Spain? my grandmother repeated, Why, the child's never even set foot off this island! Besides, I thought it was Paris.

Aunt Edie sighed and accepted a second glass of sherry. Paris was last month, she said sorrowfully, Now it's Spain. I declare, it's not easy raising a dreamer, the child was just naturally born with stars in her eyes. I can't imagine where she gets it from.

Such dreams were not nurtured in the small, close knit village - experience had taught the families to keep their expectations low - bring a child into the world, raise them with religion and hard work and a strong sense of family, hope for them to find a partner and repeat the cycle. It was not a philosophy that many questioned, tradition usually overcame the temptations of the outside world and practicality ruled - the need to procreate and maintain the community came first. New construction was as frowned upon as strangers, but now and again a child was born with dreams beyond the boundaries of the ocean - Edie's first born daughter was such a child, stars in her eyes and a natural restlessness that no one understood, a wanderlust for farwaway places and a deeply rooted discontent. It set her apart from her family, distanced her from the village's quiet and isolated ways. She grew up feeling out of time and place, straining at the leash and anxious to take her first steps toward an unknown world. Even her name, Delilah Marie, seemed to summon romantic images of mist covered mountains and faces in the clouds, faces that spoke in unfamiliar languages, softly musical and sweetly seductive.

Del grew to be a determined young woman, miserly with her wages, unconcerned about fitting in, oblivious to the attentions of the young island boys. She persuaded the schoolmaster to discreetly send for a book on learning Spanish and self taught herself the language while her small savings account grew and gained interest, as she made her weekly deposits as regular as clockwork and never withdrew a penny. By the time she was twenty, she judged, there was an adequate amount and she set about procuring a travel visa, a passport, a book of checks with her name imprinted in a flowery script. On her twenty first birthday, she announced her intent to leave for the summer and travel in Spain, leaving her stunned and shocked parents speechless.

Sometimes dreams disappoint, the anticipation being so much more than the reality but for Del, her Spanish summer was everything she had hoped for, a glory time and a rite of passage. She came home that October, tanned and long haired with silver hoops in her ears, a gypsy who was never the same again. During my travels in Spain .....she liked to begin and then tell stories of matadors and fiestas, cave paintings and shining cities, aristocrats and cowboys on magnificent Spanish horses, moonlit cantinas where music played all night long. She dazzled us with romantic tales and sometimes, if we didn't interrupt, she would teach us a Spanish word or phrase and we could make it our own.

Un idoma es suficiente, she liked to tell us at the end of a story, One language is never enough.

Daughters & Dinner Rolls

When I had reached what my daddy liked to call The Age Of Sufficient Maturity - nearly beyond the rebellious teenage years but still with both feet planted firmly on this side of the door to adulthood -
he liked to take me to dinner at Boston's elegant Parker House, known as much for it's discretion as it's famous dinner rolls.

Here we would sit under soft lighting and exchange stories of our days. He was still a young man then, just in his late forties, with dark hair and a reassuring smile, a handsome man in a three piece dark suit, still in the habit of wearing cuff links. He loved really good scotch whiskey and drank Chivas from a heavy crystal glass although never more than two and frequently neglecting to finish the second. I drank ginger ale with lemon and felt immensely grown up - I had been redeemed from my past life of sin and shame, courtesy of a marriage license, and these dinners were sometimes faintly apologetic - he wanted to put things right now that I was back in the good graces of the family, his non appalled side wanted to understand and forgive. He had been, he admitted, too harsh and he regretted it, after all I was very nearly a grown woman and entitled to make my own mistakes. Perhaps, he suggested, We've both learned something.

Perhaps, I agreed, thinking that we'd both paid a higher than imagined price for my standing my ground. I'd never wasted a single moment on my mother's public outcry of shame and humiliation at what she referred to as her tramp daughter's behavior but I had always hated disappointing him and I knew he'd been caught on a narrow edge between his love for me and his fundamental values. Not knowing about the woman on the side, the illicit affair that he'd been discreetly having for years, I thought I had severely tested his moral compass - with a little more knowledge, I might have been a little less generous, a little less grateful to have his company again. Then again, I might have embraced the idea as I did when I finally learned of it. I'd campaigned for him to divorce my mother for years and never got more than a patient and sad You'll understand when you're older smile.

Try your oysters, he advised, the only rule of these dinners being that I was to try something new each time, something that on my own I'd never have dreamed of ordering. I'd been introduced to zucchini, Camenbert, sweetbreads (distressing when I learned what they were), escargot (pass!),
horseradish, curry, cheesecake - and was currently in an oyster phase - raw, smoked, fried, and what was to become my all time favorite, Rockefeller. We finished with Boston Cream Pie as only The Parker House could make it and coffee, subtly (and illegally) laced with the smallest amount of brandy, covertly added behind the closed doors of the kitchen and never mentioned by a soul. One memorable night, we saw Buddy Ebsen at a corner table, wearing a huge bib and eating lobster with drawn butter. Long before his hillbilly television days, my daddy whispered to me, he had been a hugely popular song and dance man - not Astaire or Kelly, but famous and well known in his own right, almost - but for an allergy to aluminum dust - The Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz. ( Later I looked this up, not completely trusting my handsome but sometimes prone to take advantage of my trusting nature, parent - it turned out to be true.)

Both my daddy and Buddy Ebsen are gone now but The Parker House, under new ownership but as elegant and discreet as ever, still stands and serves. I'd be willing to wager that fathers still take daughters ( and maybe other women as well ) there for coffee and conversation, cream pie and dinner rolls.

Standoff At Fish Point: Old Hat and the Law

By the time the Mounties arrived in the village - on horseback, in full uniform and armed to the teeth - every last still had been shut down and every bootlegger had fled without a trace. The island had been warned well in advance of the first ferry crossing, as usual, and the impressive troop of mounted officers might have left empty handed but for Old Hat - the old woman had a special place in her heart for the law and was inclined to shoot first and ask questions later. Her first volley sent the lead Mountie's wide brimmed hat sailing into the wind - her second blew it to pieces.

What in tarnation..... Sparrow bellowed from his tiny kitchen, so startled he dropped the cast iron skillet, very nearly striking the old hound dog a fatal blow and ruining a perfectly good batch of scrambled eggs. He ran for the front porch, snatching his hat and shotgun in mid-stride and then stopping short at the sight of a dozen uniformed men and horses scattering like dandelions in a strong breeze. In the moment it took him to process what he was seeing, a dozen guns were suddenly trained on him - he instantly put his own aside and raised his hands with a violent shout of Don't shoot! Mother of God, don't shoot! There was a shaky pause before yet another shot rang out, this one striking perilously near his muddy boots and sending a shower of splinters into the air. He dropped to his knees with a crash and a loud curse, expecting his life to start flashing before his eyes at any moment - then he heard a voice he knew, a cackling, high pitched voice - One step closer and I reckon it'll be your last, mister man, now git off'n my land! To his dismay, he saw Old Hat, shotgun raised and smoking, advancing toward what he now realized was a troop of law enforcement officers. God Almighty, Hattie, this at the top of his lungs,They're the law! Put that damn thing down!

A new voice, firm with authority, command, and a touch of youth. Ma'am, this the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and we are placing you under arrest for unlawful discharge of a firearm!

A shriek of wild laughter, In a pigs eye, you little piss ant! Hattie screeched and fired another round.

Ma'am, the young voice, now almost pleading, We will return fire if we have to! Please lower your weapon!

Hattie! Sparrow had gotten to his knees and crawled to what he hoped was out of range, Lavinia May Louella

Hatfield! You put that shotgun down 'fore somebody gits their damn fool head blown off! Ain't no need for any of us to get hurt! Half crawling, half crouching, he began to make his way down the grass and gravel path toward the pinned down Mounties, only dimly aware that in his haste he'd forgotten his eye patch and that he was still in his longjohns. Leastways I got my boots on,he thought forlornly as the whine of a bullet passed overhead and blew out a window in Bernie's candy store. Hattie! he hollered desperately, You quit that now! He reached the Mounties, got raggedly to his hands and knees, just as a shot rang out, ricocheted off a boulder and lodged in a submerged ditch log a foot away.

Ma'am! Mrs. Hatfield! the young Mountie yelled, You're outgunned and surrounded! For the last time, lower your weapon!

Iffin you can't lie any better'n that, boy, you ain't got much of a future! Hattie shrieked back,Now you git on them horses and hightail it outta here or I aim to part your hair with the next one!

By that time, a subdued but curious crowd had gathered albeit a respectful distance away - no one underestimated Old Hat's temper, not to mention her marksmanship, and the collective wisdom favored her by a considerable margin. The Mounties, however, had training, numbers, and firepower on their side, as well as a reputation to preserve - a rear action was ordered and two of them were sent up Sparrow's path, around the house and through the back pasture to Hattie's back door. While the young man in charge continued negotiations and Uncle Willie was dispatched up island to fetch Hattie's sister, two Mounties crept through the cabin, worked their way to the front yard and unceremoniously jumped the old woman in mid-aim, tackling her to the ground and disarming her.

Nearly ninety, no more'n a hunnerd pounds soaking wet, Sparrow was heard to say, And she fought like a damn wild cat and screamed like a banshee.

And so ended the standoff at Fish Point in the summer of 1951 - Old Hat was arrested, handcuffed, incarcerated in the mainland jail for thirty days and ordered to make restitution for the RCMP hat but her reputation had been enhanced and by the time the story had made the rounds and rebounded to the village, tourists were told a tale of her having kept an entire regiment of Canadian regulars at bay for three days with only a single shot pistol and an iron will.

Without the incompatibility of truth and fiction, legends would be few and far between, Uncle Bernie declared as he patched the candy store window, The truth of a good story is most always in the details and the decoration.

A Change of Heart

Until he left for college, he had never given a second's thought to the basics - how his bed came to made every morning, how his favorite foods were always in the house, how the carelessly dropped towels in his bathroom rehung themselves so neatly, how his shirts made it from the floor to being starched and pressed and in the closet twice a week. Turning his back on the family money and vowing never to trade on their name, he boarded a plane and headed for the East Coast, independence and freedom. He grew his hair shockingly long, learned to smoke and drink, dropped out of school after one semester and hawked the local underground paper on street corners to pay the rent. This was his revolutionary period, far away from home and on his own and while it only lasted a few years, it changed him for a time.

True natures, however, may go into hiding but they are destined to assert themselves in the end. Back at home, his long hair was out of place, his lifestyle didn't fit, his values were challenged. The good life was a nine to five job and a haircut away and it didn't take long before he changed back, adjusting his language, his morals, and his politics to fit the family system. Country club membership soon followed and then a divorce or two and a few family Christmases, and with surprisingly little effort or resistance, he had rejoined the ranks of the upper class from which he came. His place had been saved from the day he'd left.

Reclaiming his rightful position paid off - there was a new wife, skillfully modeled after his own mother, a new home in an exclusive zip code, his own business, travel to all the right places. He wore three piece suits with practiced ease and learned about wine, antiques, and the symphony. His name began appearing on donor lists of charitable givers and campaigns to help the less fortunate and in no time he had accepted his legacy, fully prepared to take the reins and be molded and groomed into a proper heir. His entitlement mindset was the last detail to be added and he was complete, his true nature reestablished and in full control. He was never to look back.

Despite the money and the dream home and the ideal wife, despite the name recognition and the success, the power and the right clothes, there's a hollowness to him these days. He laughs a little too loudly, fights a little too hard to be the center of attention and tries a little too hard. Something inside him is empty and walled off, far away, out of reach and forgotten and he pretends it's not.

There's still a fragment of fight the system blue collar in his white collar world and it won't be reconciled - there's a price to paid for each change of heart and while by some things we are made stronger, by others we are diminished.

Strange, how often we get to where we're going and it's exactly the same place as where we started from.

Welcome to Life

They planted the seedling in the spring, finding good soil where there would be sunshine and clean air and soft rain to nurture and protect it. It was surrounded by adult trees to watch over it and see it grow, strong and proud trees that would always be there come bad weather or hard times. There were elms to provide shade, oaks to help it stand on its own, sugar maples to bring out its sweetness. Their limbs and leaves swayed in the light breeze as they celebrated the new arrival and there was music in the air.

Spring is a good time to come into the world, a sweet season rich in promise, new life and unforeseen change. After a seedling is born, nothing is ever the same, and parents reach out and embrace this lifelong gift with awe and wonder. Young trees are precious and fragile, dependent on their elders for care and shelter and love, learning to take their first steps under caring and watchful eyes. We tend them with a combination of delicacy and firmness that we learn as we go - we watch and worry, sleep less and ask more questions, put their welfare ahead of our own, and are amazed by our own competence and their complete innocence. We are never as prepared as we imagine, each day brings new challenges, new discoveries. These are small miracles, the elder trees know, and they smile with pride and gratitude, warmed by their old memories and eagerly anxious for those in the making.

The seedling knows nothing of this - know not that it has been waited and planned for, dreamed of and loved before it took its first breath, knows not that it is a small miracle and will always be so. In time it will bloom and ripen, learn and grow and reach for the sun, but for now it finds contentment and peace in just being. It leaves the nursery for its new home, warm and sleepy and secure, to be tended by devoted gardeners who will make up for what they don't know about seedlings, with love.

There will be abundant light and water and nutrients for the soil - just as there were for its mother and her siblings - and a forest of older trees in the wings and watching from above.

Welcome to the world, TJP. Welcome to life, seedling, we've been waiting for you.

High Summer

Just as I pull into the driveway, a small, fluffy, gray and white blur races across the driveway and disappears through the latticework and under the house. His mother follows, giving me a resentful glare and a warning snarl as she passes. My house, I remind her, Don't push your luck. From out of nowhere, three more fluffballs - one all gray, one all black, and a different gray and white come scurrying and skittering - they all slip soundlessly through the latticework and disappear. It would seem I am involuntarily harboring the entire family and for just a second, being far too tender hearted for my own good, I actually consider feeding them, then in an unexpected and rare flash of common sense, I realize what a disaster that would be. I harden my heart - I did not ask for and do not welcome these precious trespassers - if I knew who owned the mother cat, I would trap her and the whole litter and deposit them on the offending owner's doorstep. There is no punishment too severe for people who abandon animals, no retribution too harsh. Shoot'em first and ask questions later is always the best course.

It's almost high summer and I'm consoled by the fact that by the time the weather turns ugly again, they will be grown, feral, and self sufficient and I won't have to worry about them. It doesn't help much now though and I fret and worry to no end that they won't survive their kittenhood, even though experience tells me that this time next year, half of them will be tending to their own new litters and the entire process will start over. It's a dismal thought but I suppose there's always the hope that they will choose someone else's house next time.

A few days later as I turn in, I see mother cat and all four kittens lazing in the late afternoon sunshine, tumbling about and playfully chasing their tails. All five run when I approach, the mother cat seeing that all the little ones are safely under the house and out of harm's way before she casually follows. Again, she gives me a resentful glare and again I remind her, My house, and when she hisses, My driveway too, I tell her mildly, Watch your language.

I fear this little family of intruders may be with me for some time. Half of me wants to evict them, the other half wants to set out food and water - no matter what I do, I won't be happy with myself.

Widow Walk

This thought arrived - without fanfare and originating from nowhere in particular except my somewhat scattered mind - both my grandmothers spent more than half their lives widows. Of my paternal grandfather, I remember nothing as he had died before I was was born and no one spoke about him but of my mother's mother, it may have actually been the better part of her life.

My grandfather was a hard man, successful, admired, widely respected but wholly unlikeable. His death left my grandmother a widow but a prominent and comfortably well off one. If she missed his company, she never said so and after the funeral she resumed her life with ease and equilibrium, making no outward changes but seeming to breathe more freely and smile more often. She had her home, her trusty navy blue Lincoln ( still replaced every two or three years with a more current model whether it was needed or not ), her lodgework and her friends, her grandchildren. She crocheted and knitted, cooked holiday dinners, never missed Lawrence Welk, entertained and went to church irregularly, slept in the same twin bed and took charge of her life with a cheerful if demanding spirit. She became less hard to please and more forgiving, maintaining her lifestyle and opening new doors with a fearless kind of curiosity. Never one to publicly put her emotions on display, if she mourned, she kept it to herself. If she rejoiced, she did it privately.

Though I dared tell no one, I was relieved at his passing - being a loud and large man, he had always secretly frightened me a little. I was glad to be able to visit Nana without feeling in the way, as if I might break something valuable or get on his nerves. In addition, he and my mother were constantly at odds, sniping at each other like stray dogs fighting about a leftover bone. I never thought they liked each other very much, possibly there was too much of each in the other - she felt unloved and rejected, he was simply not interested in parenting. Nana always seemed caught in the middle of these usually petty quarrels and she had no good way out - backing or defending either side was a losing proposition, doing nothing brought them both down on her.

She put on her widowhood and wore it well. I think it suited her.

Workplace Weary

The temptation to call in sick is powerful - tempered by my fear of not being able to pull it off and the unraveling thought of being out of work. It has, I freely admit, nothing to do with honesty, not anymore.

I'm weary of crossroads, those points where I am called upon to make a life changing decision and live with the consequences. I'm worn out with the toxicity of the workplace, the accusations and threats, the long suffering sighs and displays of temper and especially the How many times do I have to tell you tone of voice that has become part of the daily routine. I am workplace weary but trapped in a harsh and unforgiving economic world - I don't know how to repair jet engines, mix drinks, or oversee off shore drilling and I don't imagine I could make a success of selling used cars or managing a fried chicken outlet. Odd, what abilities and expertise are called for the in the current market, odd what employers seem to value nowadays. I spend an hour or so each day in search of new employment but it's a discouraging process, repetitive, frustrating and fruitless.

When I examine my feelings in the most honest light possible, I realize that this is a reaction to the past, to a time when I was powerless against the forces of raised voices and parenthood, when I first understood that we don't always find fairness in the world. This is ground I have covered and recovered through writing, through therapy, through 12 step programs and dark nights of self forgiveness and remembering that I am an adult now and no longer a child with a target painted on her back. And yet, I do not suffer this well - mornings find me searching for a reason to call in sick or inadequate or simply not up to it. Eight hours a day on eggshells has me edgy and apprehensive.

The child in me still flinches at a raised voice, at being a disappointment, at being held hostage to a job in a hostile environment, of failing to do my best. It's not rational, I know, but it is real.

The Medicality Man

The new summer doctor - young, clean shaven, hopeful and a mite bewildered by his first potential patient, frowned at me. He swallowed a fish hook, I managed to say through my tears, You have to help him! The doctor took a step back. But he's a dog, he said reasonably, I don't know that I can ...... Beside me, John Sullivan straightened up, cleared his throat loudly, and met the young man's uncertain eyes. Aye, he's a dog, but he's a good dog, Long John said firmly, Are you a good doctor?

There was a moment of hesitation before the young man nodded and extended his flannel shirted arms, That I am, he replied with confidence, Give him here. And he carried my beloved Fritze, coughing and choking and sounding near death, into the exam room. I began to cry even harder and Long John picked me up and set me on his knee, stroking my hair and quietly reassuring me as best he could. Had me a dog that swallowed a hook once, he told me, All come out fine in the end and this will too.

John's eyes were too kind not to trust, his voice too sincere not to believe and in less than a hour the doctor emerged with Fritze trotting proudly at his ankles, neither any the worse for wear. When John pulled a ragged five dollar bill from his old wallet and the doctor declined, a new island legend was born. The next day, Nana delivered a stern lecture to me and a warm blueberry pie to each man - according to island standards, each had done well. Not long after, when Doc spent an entire night repairing one of the Ryan boys' ear - one of the Sullivan brothers had liked to slice it clean off during a friendly disagreement - it was decided that the doctor, despite his original reluctance, had passed his initiation test with flying colors. We had us, as Aunt Vi proudly proclaimed, a new medicality man.

That summer, Doc treated people and animals alike - broken limbs were set, cuts were stitched, breech babies were delivered from human and non human mothers, the occasional gunshot wound was treated. Rowena came and taught him not to dismiss all salves, potions and poultices and after some small resistance, he welcomed her help. He came to us a proper, starched, and book learned doctor and left a wiser, kinder hearted, true medicality man.

.

.

Johnny T

Thanks to the miracle of a social network, I've discovered that a boy I might have married is now a great grandfather. This unsettling news gave me great pause and briefly sent me into a mild state of shock. The Ugly Stepsisters, Time and Reality, have once again spoken.

The boy I remember was tall and thin with dark red hair and a highly seductive smile. The man he has become is tall and thin with white hair and a highly seductive smile. Upon reflection, this state of change/no change pleases me - there are constants in the world after all and while we all grow into age and wisdom at our own pace, he has done so with ease and elegance. I am, I realize, more than just pleased, I am reassured.

Age can be a ripening process if we allow it, starting slowly and after a certain point, speeding up at a reckless and alarming pace. Whether we resist or give in gracefully makes little difference in the long run - doors open and close all along the way, we step through or turn away - sometimes we're right and sometimes we're wrong but we're always in motion, always headed toward some cloudy and mysterious point where we imagine the rainbow ends. We may arrive alone, in pairs, or even with great grandchildren in tow but we get there all the same and we all get the same chance to look back and see where we've come from, where we've stopped to rest, where we changed direction.
The young, redheaded and handsome boy I used to know has chosen and traveled well - I can see it in his eyes and familiar smile.

I suspect that no one calls him "Johnny" anymore, but when I open the velvet lined box I keep under my pillow, the one that holds the truly special memories, it's how I always remember him.

A History Lesson

Even when you learn from history, it can still repeat itself.

Before I came to understand that my mother was pathologically unpleasable, I invested no small amount of time and energy trying to win her approval but nothing was ever quite good enough, right enough, quick enough, adequate enough. A lifetime later, I find myself in an eerily similar situation - the harder I try, the less I succeed. This time I have company in my misery, a small comfort to be be sure, but a comfort nonetheless - at least I know I'm not trapped alone, not imagining how bad things really have become. It's not paranoid if they're really after you, as people like to say.

The scars of verbal abuse may not be as visible as bruises but they fade slower and take far longer to heal. People who use this technique tend to be bullies, manipulators and masters of sarcasm with a nasty bite and a flair for hitting their targets. They gnaw at the self esteem of others, gradually corroding away sense of self and dignity like dental decay. They win because they cheat, being far ahead at the start and reinforcing their lead with not so lightly veiled threats and constant heavy handed reminders of who's in charge. Their power is that of the paycheck, reasonable reprimands are too kind when a temper tantrum will do, a shouted and acid tongued answer to a question is easier than an actual response. Employees are ground down gradually, used up and discarded, slyly replaced, emotionally beaten into submission or simply driven off. It's a nasty business all around and it breeds negativity and hostility, anger and defiance. When power becomes a weapon, the user becomes an enemy.

In my imagination and dreams, I yearn to make a statement, a dramatic exit that will leave him high and dry but stranded. It's not impossible that one walkout would pave the way for others, that a fully staffed office might not be suddenly and shockingly unstaffed. It's unlikely, but it's possible - you never really know what your breaking point is until you reach it.

Carrie May and The Teacup Monkey

Carrie May's folks lived up island at the end of a narrow dirt road that wound for a half mile or so through thick trees and ended up just above the cove. The little frame house was always neat as a pin and kept brightly painted, its windows shone in the morning sun and wildflowers grew on either side of the path. Carrie's daddy, an itinerant carpenter, traveled all the over provinces for work, and always returned with pockets full of cash and a box of presents for Carrie and her mother - a brass birdcage, a music box, an entire set of Encyclopedia Britannica - and one June evening, a miniature monkey with scaly, brown and black fur and huge eyes. It was this last gift that made her mother anxious but won Carrie's heart for all time. No one on the island had ever set eyes on a genuine monkey, never mind kept one as a pet, and for a time the little creature with the soulful eyes was a major curiosity. Carrie named him Teacup, just like the monkeys in the ads at the back of comic books, and her daddy built an enormous enclosure and filled it with driftwood and ropes and a several small swings. Teacup thrived on sun and salt air, a diet of dried fish, fruit, nuts and porkchop bones, and come winter, he was moved inside to a smaller cage to accommodate what Carrie's daddy called his tropical soul. He took sick not long after and Rowena had to be called. Cain't say I know much about monkeys, she told Carrie with a heavy heart, but I'll do my best. I'll study on it.

And study she did, discovering more about monkeys than she had ever wanted to know but nothing definitive. She recommended keeping him warm and dry, increasing his fluid intake - by force if need be - a quarter tablet of baby aspirin once a day and powdered milk. Carrie added a nightly prayer and little by slow, Teacup improved Rowena chalked it up to serendipity and old fashioned common sense while Carrie was sure it was intervention from a higher source, some merciful god of monkeys who had looked down and decided to spare the small life. By late spring when the weather finally turned warmer, Teacup was returned to his outside enclosure, happy, healthy and playful as ever. He was to live another thirty years and by the time he died - well fed and chattering quietly to himself as if making his peace with the god of monkeys before curling up in a corner of his summer cage and closing his eyes for the final time - Carrie's children had children.

It was a fine day for a funeral, my friend Ruthie wrote me, Jimmy let all the children out of their lessons so they could be there, Carrie even persuaded James to come and read a prayer and we sang "Let The Circle Be Unbroken" then buried him - the monkey, not James - beneath the wildflower patch by the back door. When the children asked if monkeys go to heaven, James told them that God accepts all good souls. Nice touch, don't you think?

I did think so and still do.

Men of Honor

Aunt Suse lived four doors down in the house she'd been born and raised in. A bulky woman with misshapen teeth and wide hips, she'd birthed four strapping boys by the time she was twenty and declared she was done with having any more. Uncle Ned took this news in stride, philosophically shrugging his bent shoulders and thin back - his duty to his woman done and his family complete, he left for parts unknown, returning a few times each year and sending money and gifts on the first of every month. Regular as clockwork, Aunt Suse liked to tell people, Always could count on ol' Ned to keep his word. Too many men underfoot as it is. She told the boys their daddy worked off shore to keep them in shoes - they accepted this and asked no questions - absent parents were not uncommon on the small island, and for all Suse knew, Ol' Ned could actually have been on some oil rig off the Alaskan coast. She didn't ask, he never told. Don't much matter, she would say cheerfully, He ain't here but he's doin' right by us and that's a sight more'n I can say for some. Got me no cause to complain.

The boys were in their teens - a rough and tumble pack, some said, Hard drinkin', hard livin' but honest and hard workin' - when Suse met Snooky, a recently widowed seiner from St. John, a big man with blue eyes and a face that looked like a road map to a troubled past, lonely and still adjusting to the loss of his pretty young wife. The attraction was immediate and powerful ( the less kind natured of the village women were inclined to add and damned mysterious ) and the boys were wary. While it was true that Suse and Ol' Ned had never been formally wed, all four sons respected the common law marriage and didn't take kindly to the idea of a stranger in their midst. Suse and Snooky conducted themselves discreetly by island standards and for a good while the money and first of the month gifts kept coming - but talk travels - it reached the mainland and kept on going until Ol' Ned heard rumors that the mother of his children had taken up with a new man. Astonished by this turn of events, he made an unscheduled and unannounced trip home, arriving on a Saturday afternoon and going straight to the house where Suse and Snooky were sitting innocently enough on the front porch, playing gin rummy while Spike Jones blared from the old turntable.

Neighbors braced themselves and Sparrow, who lived next door, put aside his wood carving and reached for his scattergun in the event that it became necessary to intervene - but being men of honor, Snooky and Ned shook hands, shared a Molson's, and then agreed to a shoot off for Suse's hand. It was to be held the following day in Uncle Willie's front pasture and the Sparrow would judge the winner. Never did hear of such foolishness, Suse declared with a pleased grin and laid down a winning hand.

Dawn came and a crowd gathered. Aluminum cans had been arranged on fence posts, distances measured out, both men were clean shaven and Sunday dressed. Suse and the boys took their places on the sidelines, anxious and excited for the outcome. At precisely seven o'clock the competition began - one man, one shot - in ever increasing distances away from the targets, until one of them missed. After a half hour's shooting, it was clear that they were exquisitely evenly matched and the crowd grew restless. Alternatives were discussed - plates could be thrown into the air, but no one was willing to provide the dinnerware. Coins could be tossed but they would likely need to be
half dollars and no one felt that generous with their pocket change. It was Uncle Willie, bored and already behind on his Sunday chores who finally suggested -only half seriously - pistols at twenty paces. Whoa, there, John Sullivan protested, Ain't lookin' to get nobody killed here. Uncle Willie shrugged, Don't reckon blanks would do much harm, he said, And it could always be fifty paces. Let the woman decide.

And that was how the duel of Ol' Ned and Snooky the Seiner came about. The two men stood back to back then each took fifty paces. They turned and fired - and with the crowd holding its collective breath, both anticlimactically missed by a mile - and then began laughing, dropping their guns into the high grass and falling to the ground, weak in the knees and relieved to be unharmed. Aunt Suse ordered them to shake hands and then hugged them both before suggesting they go to breakfast and work things out, Like civilized folk do, she said with a proud smile. But men of honor who have been willing to face each other with drawn pistols don't downstep that easily - Snooky packed his things and told her goodbye that very day while Ol' Ned caught the last night ferry back to the land of parts unknown. Neither ever returned and a tearful Aunt Suse gave Uncle Willie twenty dollars for the pair of pistols and mounted them over her bedroom door.

I need to remember this, she told John Sullivan, 'cause if another man shows up, I'll be wantin' to shoot him myself.