cabin fever

2007-06-26T02:57:00.000-07:00

Barn Sale
Jane's Breakfast
Flying Machines
The Mexican (revised)
Partners
Grand Opening
The Committee
Artist In Residence
Saturday
Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
The Ice Storm
Saturnalia
Melt Down

ADDENDA
Jane's Apple Fritters Recipe
Jane's Venison Meatballs
A Brief History of Susquehanna, New York

Melt Down

2007-03-01T15:16:00.000-08:00

Sheriff Thom gave the all clear at 7am Saturday morning. Some left immediately; others lingered over breakfast just the same. The roads were still a mess, but the weather was mild. The temperature was over 50, overcast and calm. The ice and snow were melting away, the runoff spilling into a maze of pools and puddles on the still frozen ground.

The sun was beginning to break through at 7:30 when the Sheriff left. The ice storm was over with no reports, so far, or anything too serious. Electricity had been restored to 70% of the county already. Still, no rest for the weary. The arts festival was ending that day, which would be a handful on a good day. But that would have to wait. Deputy Nance had called at 7:15 to pass on the news that Paul Giardino’s herd of trophy animals had been spotted running loose along DeRuyter creek. An impromptu posse of dogs from a few farms had formed and was tracking and chasing the critters.

Sheriff walked around his car to the driver’s side and got in, noticing that the temperature seemed to drop about 40 degrees when he stepped out of the sunlight. He worried that the pack of dogs would create additional problems, called Nance back and told him to get the county’s animal control officers on it. Jane ran out and waved him down before he could drive away, passed a bacon and eggs sandwich to him through the window. Sheriff thanked her and drove off. A few hundred yards down the road he lifted the edge of the bread and peeked to see if it was real bacon, as if Jane might be watching him.

By 9am the breakfast service was winding down. Everyone who had spent the night had eaten early. After the Sheriff left cars from town began showing up. Tired as she and Ray were, Jane did not have the heart to refuse them. It was the last busy day. Anyway, the dining room was only half full, and two of the tables were holdovers. Professor Loomis and David were at one of them, chatting with Pygmy and Casper. Ray kept offering them refills on coffee and they kept accepting. Finally at 10 David announced that he and Pygmy better get over to the festival.

Casper, Pygmy, and David all thanked Jane for her hospitality. “The Festival thanks you” added Pygmy. Jane smiled graciously but had no idea what that meant.

David gave Jane a little brotherly hug. “We’ll be back tomorrow morning.” On his way out David did a double take. “Oh, say, you know what, we’d like you three to come to the banquet tonight as our guests, join us at our table. Will you do that for me?” He turned the charm on Jane as he said that, smiling coyly. He noticed that it worked. Jane kept her composure but he could tell.

“Sure. Thanks. I’ll be there.” Jane said.

David looked at Ray, then at Donald Loomis, who was still working on a coffee and not paying much attention.

“Me too?” Ray asked.

David nodded. “Of course, you too, and the Professor. Will you join us, professor?”
“Join you. Join you where? Oh yes, the banquet, um, sure” said Loomis. “At the faculty club, right? What time is it?” He was relieved to hear that the seating was at 6pm, cocktails at 5pm. He did not like to eat late, and wasn’t crazy about driving at night. He looked at his watch and announced that he had to get going as well. He accepted David’s offer of a ride home.

Casper, David, Donald and Pygmy left and the place was fairly empty the rest of the day. By 2pm the dining room and kitchen were all cleaned up and set for Sunday. Jose helped Ray load a week’s worth of trash on the flatbed and they went off to the dump, Jose driving. Jane figured no license at all was better than a suspended one. Jane sat in the dining room pleased with herself. She had always felt she could succeed in business if she had the opportunity; by her standards the restaurant was a success. Seemed like her brother didn’t quite agree with her, judging by some of the things he said, but that was kind of the way he was, pessimistic, or maybe it was about sibling rivalry. Didn’t matter. She still loved him.

She wandered around the house, inspecting it in a new light. It was a restaurant now. She had showed that Veronica that she could do it too. Well, not the Bed part. Not yet.

Jane put a couple more logs on the fire, poured herself a cup of coffee and sat at the fireside table to drink it, the table which David and Donald liked to sit at. She sat down in David’s chair, leaned back like he sometimes did. She closed her eyes and imagined what the banquet would be like, fell asleep without taking a sip of the coffee.

The sidetrack to the Professor’s took much longer than expected. Loomis Hollow Road was still shut down so they had to reverse course back to Jane’s and circle around on DeRuyter Road, then south on Route 8 and back north to the Professor’s. Pygmy and Casper were bickering over something inconsequential, too. David reflected that Casper and Pygmy had never gotten along, different personalities. Maybe jealousy was involved, with David at the center, although that didn’t make sense either since David’s relationships with each of them was long in the past. David could have just asked them but that was too easy. It was more fun to figure that stuff out.

So they made the much longer than usual drive from the Professor’s to campus in a tense and sour silence, both Casper and Pygmy stony silent in the bright sunlight, the wild landscape of tree limbs and branches passing without being remarked upon. Once or twice David made cheery comments to break the ice. They reached campus at noon. David used his parking spot by the art school.

They took the shortcut across the soccer field to the quadrangle. The last day of the festival there were no lectures or workshops. Nominally it was gallery day, the idea being to highlight the works, particularly the student works. In good weather, like that day, people congregated on the quad or on the playing fields, tossed Frisbees, played music, sat on the lawn. The ground was far too wet for sitting. Even Frisbee was messy. Mostly people milled around talking about the ice storm and what they did during it. Spirits were generally pretty high.

Students were beginning to trickle back into town and onto campus from spring break. The festival attendees had vacated Greektown that morning. It was being reclaimed by the fraternities and sororities, who were cautiously surveying the incidental property damage left by 7 nights of serious partying. Even after the repairs the profits were considerable, several thousand for the larger houses.

By 2pm the sun was high and it was 66 degrees, felt like 80 in the sun. The quad was getting pretty crowded as more and more students combined with festival attendees. David and Pygmy had never seen it as busy, or as boisterous. A day earlier the attendees had been shivering in winter outfits, stressed out by the storm, tired out from a week of partying. Who knew where the students had been on spring break. No doubt they had been partying all week too. They just didn’t show it.

David was making some comment to Pygmy along the lines of Shaw’s adage about youth being wasted on youth when an unseen commotion bubbled up across the quad from them. David and Pygmy followed the buzz with their eyes, straining to see what was going on. A naked young man with a long beard emerged, followed by another, and then by one, two, three coeds, or possibly young female attendees. They were all young and had nice bodies. It was hard to see with so many people crowded into the quad. Naked bodies appeared and disappeared.

The bearded young man whom the others appeared to be following leapt up onto the edge of the fountain and balanced on one leg, flailing his arms to maintain his balance. A loud cheer went up from the crowd. A naked girl climbed up and stood next to him, pumped her fists in the air. The crowd approved. She was very fair with long red hair, reminiscent, at a distance anyway, of Botticelli or Giotto. The bearded cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled something which David and Pygmy could not make out. Then the girl playfully pushed him and he fell backwards into the water.

Within a minute there were 50 naked people climbing on or bathing in the fountain, and as many or more in the process of disrobing. How word got to town in unclear but less than 5 minutes later the Sheriff was informed of 911 calls about an orgy on campus.

“and just what in hell am I supposed to do about that?” he thought aloud. Then he had a disturbing realization. The runaway herd had last been spotted a mile east of campus, and the pack of dogs, now even larger, was still in pursuit. One of his deputies had assembled a couple of animal control wardens and several volunteers. They were working to corner the herd well enough to use tranquilizer darts. Sheriff was very disturbed after he spoke to the deputy on the radio and learned the plan was to drive them into the quad, where they could block the exits and capture at least some of the animals.

“No!” the Sheriff commanded, “Bad idea.” The plan was highly unlikely to work since the animals were running loose, eluding all approaches. The elk and the buffalo were running together, spooked and disoriented. “Just get the dogs for now” he ordered, leaving the how to the animal control wardens, “that’ll maybe calm the herd down. Where the hell are those yaks?”

Another deputy broke in to tell the Sheriff that the state police were on their way to campus in response to a complaint about nude and nascivious behavior. Sheriff told the deputy he’d look into the campus complaint himself, then switched back to the first call: “What about the yaks?” he asked.

“I have no update for you on that” said the deputy.

Sheriff got to campus before the state troopers, checked out the scene on the quad. Apart from the nudity he didn’t see any wild or criminal behavior. More work was unwelcome. There already was the aftermath of the ice storm to contend with, a media event of a homicide investigation, and a stampeding herd of elk and buffalo, and maybe a herd of yak somewhere.

At the sight of the sheriff the fountain emptied out. The troopers arrived, looked around a bit and saw no nudity. Sheriff told them it was all over so they reported as much to the barracks and left.

Sheriff told the crowd “No more!” in a quiet but authoritative voice, meaning the nudity. He then called the station and advised he was going to take his dinner break.

The nudity thing was over anyway. It was time to leave for some, and getting close to banquet time. The western end of the quad was already in shadow. It looked like rain to Jane and Ray as they drove to campus. They stopped off at Ray’s house on the way so he could shower and dress. Ray put on a white shirt with cufflinks, light brown corduroys, and a hounds tooth sport jacket. He chose a maroon tie, the only clean one. He liked to dress, occasionally, and this was an occasion, the first time in his adult life he’d been invited to a social function.

They got to the banquet midway through cocktail hour. The room seemed awfully crowded to Jane and Ray but turnout was much lower than expected. Many people cancelled due to the weather, wanting to leave for home, antsy about getting stuck again. Ray and Jane stood by the entrance, intimidated by the apparent sophistication of the crowd. They felt foolish to just stand there and too self conscious to move. They spotted Professor across the room and gravitated to him. Professor had already taken his seat at their dinner table and was chatting with the German guy, Casper. Jane plopped down next to Professor. Ray walked around the table, reading the place names until he came to his.

“Where’s your drinks?” asked the Professor with a twinkle, holding up a highball glass in one hand and pointing at it with the other. He covered his mouth and sort of half sighed and half hiccoughed. Jane was startled to see the effects of alcohol on him. Not that he was even tipsy, just a little high spirited, which was far enough out of character for her.

Casper stood up and, ever polite, asked if he could have the pleasure of getting their drinks.

“Open bar!” intoned Professor. Jane and Ray didn’t know the term. Jane said just a coke for her. Ray opted for Early Times on the rocks.

“A double” he corrected as Casper walked away. Jane kicked him under the table. Ray shrugged back at her. Then someone with a microphone was trying to get the room’s attention. He saw Pygmy up on the podium with David and a couple of other people. The room hushed up. David was talking, blah blah blah, art stuff, festival this and that. Pygmy was sitting on a chair behind him, dressed in a dark skirt and multicolored sweater. Casper brought the drinks. Ray sipped his and pretended to listen to David. Did Pygmy just smile at him?

The waiters began to roll out the carts before David finished. David wanted to scold them, turned up the mic and called for everyone’s attention. “Just one more thing before we start pigging out – this is actually about pigging out – a lot of you have been talking about the wonderful little country restaurant that just opened, Jane’s Breakfast. Jane’s here with us tonight..” David took a sip of water, “...so I want to also thank Jane Thom” he pointed at the head table, “Jane?” Jane stood up and there was polite applause. The waiters had carried on with the soup course despite David’s scolding. “OK, let’s eat” he intoned.

David and Pygmy joined the others at the head table, the seating order going David, Jane, Pygymy, Ray, Casper, Donald with two places vacant. Rodrigo caught an early flight. Skid preferred to watch the NCAA basketball tournament. David proposed “a toast to Jane’s place.” The others raised their glasses and said cheers. Ray drained his second double, vaguely miffed that Jane was getting all the credit when he had put his time and money into the place too. Food was awfully good, though. He was really psyched about the prime rib; had to have been a couple of years since he last had it, at somebody’s wedding.

To Ray’s right Casper and Professor were immersed in a private discussion of cowboys or something, about the James-Colter Gang coming to Chenango County in 1868. News to Ray. Professor was explaining that he had seen ample documentary evidence about Jesse James being there, and meeting up with members of the Loomis gang. Wash Loomis had been killed three years earlier, so Wash and Jesse could not have met. Then Professor drew some parallels between the circumstances of both men’s deaths – at home, unarmed and not suspecting anything.

After dessert the waiter came by to clear the dishes and Ray asked for a fourth drink. Jane, who had been keeping count, overruled the request. She was the only sober person at the table, she figured. Casper and Donald were just slightly tipsy. She wondered if Donald would be okay driving home in the dark, offered to give him a lift but it turned out he ridden in with Casper, who was going to drop him off as well.

At 8pm the dancing started. Casper and Donald excused themselves and left. Jane followed suit. Ray stayed behind, claiming that Skid would give him a lift later. He kind of felt like another drink. David moved over into Jane’s chair, next to Pygmy. Ten or so couples whirled around under the big chandelier to Jimmy Ruffin singing “What Becomes of the Broken Hearted.” David and Pygmy were gabbing. Ray closed his eyes and nodded his head in time to the music. David got up and asked what Ray was drinking (double Jack Daniels, Pygmy passed). David went off to the bar. Ray drained the remnants of his fifth drink. As he set the glass on the table he felt a hand on his leg, just above the knee. He looked down at Pygmy’s hand, then turned to face her, attempted a smile.

Pygmy stood up and held out her hand. “Let’s dance!” She pulled Ray up and walked out on the floor, Ray lumbering along in tow behind her. At first they were separate, Pygmy energetically sashaying around him. The DJ segued into the Supremes’ “Got Him Back In My Arms Again.” The most Ray could do was move side to side to no particular beat. Pygmy took him by the hands and led him around the floor. Ray was not too drunk to enjoy the motion, indeed after a few more numbers somehow gained clarity and coordination. They stayed on the floor for a good half hour. David gave up on them and went off to chat with other friends.

Back at the table Ray slumped into his chair, suddenly tired and a bit sweaty. Pygmy waved over the waiter and requested a couple of coffees. The ballroom had thinned out. David had taken off at some point. The music was still playing but the staff had turned up the lights, a not so subtle signal that the affair was in overtime.

“What about the wood stove?” Pygmy asked. She took a handful of packets of sugar, squeezed them together and opened them all in one motion, spilling half the contents on the table, pouring the rest in Ray’s cup.

“I don’t take sugar” he admonished her, “Wood stove?” He looked around in confusion.

“You were going to come over and give me an estimate for putting in a wood stove.”

“Oh that, right. Sure, I’ll come over. When do you want me to come over?”

“How about now?”

“Now!?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, okay, I guess.” He winced at the sweetness of his coffee, hiccupped once loudly.

“Okay, let’s go.”

They went to the coatroom and got Pygmy’s wrap. Ray just had the sports jacket. Outside it was still warm, for March, but drizzling. “You up for walking?” Pygmy asked, although there was no alternative. Ray nodded and off then went, taking the shortcut pedestrian bridge across the Susquehanna River. The rain picked up a couple of hundred yards from the house, and they started to run as best they could, which was not very well in Ray’s case. Pygmy circled an arm around his waist to support him and he kept a tentative hand on her shoulder for balance as they loped through the dark, often stepping smack into deep puddles of cold water. By the time they reached the porch of Pygmy’s house they were more than soaked.

Pygmy hung the keys on a hook by the front door and hung her coat in the closet. She turned towards Ray, who stood in the open doorway, apparently awaiting further instructions. “Coat?” she motioned for Ray to hand her his. Ray wrestled out of his jacket, which was pretty much soaked. Pygmy frowned at the water dripping off it, went to put it in the laundry room to dry. Ray reached behind and pulled the door closed. He looked at the posters and artwork on the vestibule walls, not recognizing any of the reproductions nor realizing that all the original works were Pygmy’s.

Pygmy returned, drying her hair with a towel as she walked, speaking hands-free on her cell phone to someone about an interview time, a second towel draped over her right shoulder and a stack of mail wedged under her left arm. She told Ray to “take the towel and come in!, come in!” and walked away again apologizing to whomever she was speaking to.

Ray rummaged through the kitchen for a measuring tape, thinking he might as well make some measurements while Pygmy was on the phone. He looked over the living room, trying to figure out where to put the wood stove. The vent could go anywhere along the wall. He burned another10 minutes on the effort, jotted down the measurements and some notes, then plopped down on one of the sofas and waited for Pygmy to finish her call. After another 10 minutes of staring at all the stuff in her living room he picked up a copy of Art Forum from the coffee table, sat down on the sofa and flipped through the magazine. She must have a nuclear-powered cell phone, he wondered, no battery could last that long. She was always on it! Ray felt himself getting annoyed at her about the cell phone. He looked around the room, feeling bored. Pygmy walked over to and by him, making eyes and smiling at him, absent-mindedly stroking his cheek while she walked by, jabbering away on the phone the whole time. The touch jolted Ray in a few places but he didn’t show it. He stood up and took a couple of steps after her, then stopped, backed up and sat down, confused but happy. He reread Art Forum and after a while Pygmy reappeared, and walked by again, caressed his arm this time, still talking. Ray reached for her hand and held her from going. Pygmy writhed around as if she wanted to get away. To her surprise and disappointment he let her go. She left the living room for the third time, and for 10 minutes Ray heard her in the kitchen, talking and laughing.

Then it goes quiet and for a minute Ray is listening, waiting to hear her speak but Pygmy comes out of the kitchen without the cell phone and comes right over to the sofa and pushes him down on it and climbs on top of him, leans forward and gives him a lingering kiss on the lips. The thrill knocked Ray speechless for a moment; he just stared at her like a puppy. Next thing Pygmy is standing up and yanking on his arm to get him to stand up. When he realizes what she wants he stands and she leads him across the living room towards the stairs, unbuttoning her blouse and shedding it as she reached the bottom of the stairs. She pulled her hand from his and turned to face him, removed the rest of her clothing, slowly. Ray again was dumbstruck. Pygmy turned and walked halfway up the stairs, stopped and looked over her shoulder. Ray was still at the base of the stairs. Pygmy turned around and put her hands on her hips, elbows out, ordered him to c’mon. Ray obliged with slow steps towards her. She waited until he got one step away before resuming her climb. He followed her down the hallway and into her bedroom. Pygmy scampered under the covers.

“Ooh it’s cold!” she loudly exclaimed. “Turn out the light and get in here.”

Ray turned out the light and went over to the bed.

“Um, maybe you should take your shoes off and undress first.” Pygmy suggested.

Ray sat down on the edge of the bed and took off his shoes and socks, then stood up and dropped his trousers and underwear. His hands began to tremble as he unbuttoned his shirt. He turned away from her so she wouldn’t notice, fumbling over a tight button while Pygmy admired the rear view. Finally he just tugged the button loose and took his shirt and tshirt off, and climbed into bed and under the covers with her.

Pygmy noticed his hands shaking and saw him pull the button off. She lifted the covers to look at him. He was laying there like he didn’t have hands. She reached over him to turn out the lamp. She snuggled up close to him and kissed him. “Damn, honey, you’re acting like it’s your first time” she said.

..............THE END

Back to table of contents

Saturnalia

2007-02-22T19:18:00.001-08:00

At 10am on Friday there were 37 customers stranded in Jane’s. It took Ray a split second to figure that out – all 32 seats were occupied and there were 5 people standing, not counting Skid, himself, the Sheriff,or, of course, Jane. Jose was off somewhere, which was unfortunate since they sorely needed help. The novelty of beind isolated in a farmhouse during an ice storm was wearing off. The Sheriff had made a simple announcement that it would take at least several hours before power was restored and the roads were cleared of fallen trees and other debris. Until then the winter storm emergency would be in effect and no motor vehicle traffic was allowed, except for a veritable emergency (no, the Arts Festival does not qualify.)

The Sheriff advised that he would be in constant touch with his deputies and the state police and would pass along any news as soon as he heard. Although the temperature was well above freezing the sky was overcast and many roads were slick with black ice. The afternoon forecast was for winds gusting to 30mph, and more freezing weather and snow was possible. A low pressure front had stalled a high pressure front, or something like that, leaving it anybody’s guess what would happen next.

Sheriff Thom looked around the dining room to check the reaction. The people could not have been more subdued. The last two days of the Festival were the most exciting, especially the parties, which ran continuously from Thursday night to Sunday morning. Everyone wanted to be on campus, or at least in Greektown. Breakfast had been great, but now they were stuck at Jane’s with nothing to do.

A young man jumped up and scolded the man sitting next to him: “I told you we should have stayed on campus.” He stalked out of the room, into the front yard.

Sheriff shrugged.

David Prendergast stood up and called for everyone’s attention, feeling obliged to make a statement to the attendees. “I’m sure we all wish we could get back to the Festival. Sheriff Thom is doing everything he can to help. We’re fortunate that he happens to be with us. Meanwhile let’s just relax. We can’t control the weather, or how long it will take to clear the roads.”

Sheriff nodded at David, pleased to let someone else hold the reins. He slipped off upstairs to the bedroom he was using as a makeshift office. It was possible that the roads would be cleared before dark, but more likely not. Noon Saturday was what the state police were saying, and they were usually pretty close. He had held that back from the assemblage.

The front door opened and Professor Donald Loomis stood in the doorframe, his face ruddy from exertion. He tapped his ski boots against the frame to remove snow and ice. “Well,” he announced to the room with a smile, “ that took longer than usual.” There was enough snow in places. Most of the route was bare, or icy, so he walked more than skiied. Even klister didn’t work well on the muddy nice. It was possibly the last ski day of the season so he just had to get out. Early birds were heading north already.
“Hey Professor!” cried Skid. “How’s the skiing?” Few in the room knew the Professor, but it was evident he had come some time and distance, which provided an instant topic of conversation. Some of the stranded had already reached their threshold for boredom.

Professor was surprised that the room was full so late in the morning, and disappointed that his usual table was taken. He had hoped to read the newspaper over coffee by the fireplace before heading back to his house. It had taken over 3 hours to get to Jane’s and he expected it would take as long to get back. Casper offered the Professor his own seat but the Professor declined.

Jane led him into the kitchen and fed him there, cobbling together an omelette of green onions, tomatoes, and woodchuck bacon. Professor was too hungry to notice the last, wolfed down his food while Jane made small talk about the weather and the restaurant. It had been an auspicious three weeks since the place opened, now Jane was beginning to think ahead to Sunday, when the festival would be over and the town back to normal.

“Well, you’ve got one steady customer” offered the Professor. He took a sip of coffee and wiped his mouth, thinking that the bacon had been oddly greasy. He looked up and innocently met Jane’s eye. If he had had a child, he reflected, he would have been proud if she turned out like Jane, self-reliant and content to remain in Chenango County and keep the farm operational. He wished he had been more of a neighbor over the years. So much had changed.

“A penny for your thoughts, Donald”

“Well” Professor harrumphed, “I’m just a nostalgic old man but I love what you’ve done. I do like company, you know. I know I’m regarded as an eccentric loner, and I suppose I am, but...but that’s just one side of me.”

Jane smiled encouragingly. She never thought of the Professor as eccentric or a loner. He was a neighborhood celebrity, if someone who lives several miles away can be considered a neighbor. Everyone else in the area was a farmer, or an outsider.

Then she considered whether she was a loner, too. Although Jose lived in the guesthouse she had been living alone in the house for over 20 years. Earlier on she had lots of friends, and a social life. But her friends got busy with their own families and many moved out of the area. Apart from Veronica Verploenck she was barely in touch with anyone.

“Well I don’t know if people think I’m eccentric but I guess I’m something of a loner.”

Professor decided to change the subject: “Seems like that David Prendergast is another steady customer,” he caught her eye again, “ maybe more than that.”

Jane laughed, would have blushed if she hadn’t. “I don’t think he’s interested in me. He probably has girlfriends in New York City, or on campus, all those coeds you know?”

Professor didn’t know, certainly not empirically. “If that’s so why does he come here all the time, alone?”

Ray knocked and entered without waiting for a cue. “Hi, Professor. Jane, what are we going to do about lunch?”

“And you have Ray, too” Professor observed. “I think you have a success story here, Jane. You might not get rich but it’ll help. Anyway, this is best thing to happen here in years.” Like 50 years, thought the Professor.

“There’s no telling what this place might become” opined Ray, firmly believing his words. “In nice weather people will drive out from town and a lot of places – Afton, Bainbridge, Oxford, Sydney, even Binghamton or Cortland - a drive in the country and a hearty breakfast, or lunch. Hell, we might even open for dinner.”

“Dinner!?” Jane arched her eyebrows, wondering what other thoughts Ray had about the restaurant. “Hmm. Hadn’t thought about that. Let’s talk about today’s lunch – can I get you anything else, Donald? Do you want to stay around? I’ll bring down some more chairs and see if I can get you your table by the fireplace.”

Professor had a hard time disguising his enthusiasm for the idea. He was actually excited by the crowd in the dining room. He only knew David, and the German fellow Casper. The others were a very Bohemian sort. He would like nothing more than to read by the fireside and surreptitiously observe the room. Come to think of it David and Casper were the same type, but also met Professor’s standards for being gentlemen.

Jane ordered Ray to bring down a few more chairs. Ray asked again about lunch but Jane said not to worry. She went out into the dining room to see about the Professor’s table. As it turned out it was David’s table at the moment. Casper, Rodrigo, and Pygmy were with him. They shifted their chairs to allow for a fifth chair for the Professor.

Casper was elated at the opportunity to continue talking about Washington Loomis, Jesse James, and the wild west. As a boy in Cologne he went to Western movies every week. He knew of course that New York was on the east coast but so what, it was on the same continent. He also knew that Jesse James died in Minnesota, so if Minnesota why not New York, why not Chenango County. However he was too well mannered to impose on the Professor, who seemed to want to read quietly. They had all day, after all, and perhaps longer.

“Jeez I’m bored” someone announced to no one in particular. It was just past noon. An optimistic few hoped that the Sheriff would pop out at any time and tell them it was okay to go back to campus. Ray put on the country music radio station for entertainment. Jane held back on bringing down the television from her bedroom, figuring to do that in the evening if they were still there. There wasn’t much to do. Nobody was really dressed for the weather. It was wet and very windy, a clammy sort of cool. The ground was either mushy or slippery. Still, people went out just to have something to do, walked out to the road and walked back and forth on the blacktop, skirting around the fallen limbs and other debris. Cell phone use was discouraged, and service was problematic at best.

Someone asked Jane if she had Monopoly, a chess set, or a deck of cards. No to the first two but she found a few old decks of cards in the attic and a couple of other board games. She also allowed anyone who wished to read to rummage through the boxes of books up there. By 1pm things were as settled as they would get, each to his own devices to pass the time.

She checked in with her brother to see how things stood. He was uncharacteristically curt with her: “I said I would tell people the news when I got any news.” He seemed depressed to her, sitting by the telephone, worrying over a folio of police documents.

“I’m going to be fixing lunch pretty soon. Can I bring you up something?”

“Sure. Anything. Take your time. I’m fine.” He didn’t look at all fine. She knew he was stressed out over a homicide investigation, and of course the ice storm. Now he has Paul Giardino filing a complaint about Jose rustling his yak. Her brother was only 4 years older but his years as sheriff had taken a toll.

Pygmy and David volunteered to help Jane and Ray in the kitchen. They spend more time gabbing than cooking so lunch isn’t ready until after 5pm. People eat very slowly, hoping that before they finish the Sheriff will come out and allow them to leave. At 7pm the Sheriff finally appears and tells them the roads will be opened at 8am on Saturday.

“But it’s Friday and I haven’t gotten laid yet!”

Sheriff Thom recoiled, then had the notion to arrest the brazen young man who stood face to face with him. He chose to ignore the man. The room knew that there was no question about it, they would be spending the night at Jane’s. Everyone felt inconvenienced, and Jane had to somehow accommodate them all. Nearly everyone would have to sleep in chairs or on the floor. Professor could have the sofa. Her brother would sleep in one of the guest bedrooms. Pygmy would get the other, along with three other females. Jane reflected that there was a 7:1 male:female ratio.

Just when Jane was thinking ‘cheer up, things could get worse’ Sheriff told Jane about the complaint against Jose.

“Why in hell would Jose rustle any animals? And what the hell is a yak?”

“That’s not all – someone at the county offices told Cornelia Cabot Holmes about it and she has gone out and retained counsel for Jose. So two Johnnie Cochrans are going to fight over it. Takes it out of my hands.” Sheriff raised his hands, palms forward “I’m already over budget for the year, and no, I don’t know what a yak is either, but there was, supposedly, elk and buffalo. Personally I wouldn’t be surprised if it was black market livestock, but that’s just between you and me.”

About 8pm the wind died and rain stopped. The temperature was still rising, slowly, hovering at 50. It seemed crazy not to be able to leave. Ray took the television downstairs and set it up in the dining room, where it could only get PBS so for the first hour it was “Wall Street Week”. followed by “The Albany Report.” The Lawrence Welk Show made a few fans that night. When the station signed off with “The Star Spangled Banner” the entire room sang along. Then Jane just said it was time to dim the lights and the house quieted down and went to sleep.

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The Ice Storm

2007-02-18T20:15:00.000-08:00

Paul Giardino wasn’t sure that moving to Chenango County was working for him. It was supposed to be a whistle stop on the road to the governor’s mansion – establish residency, serve a term or two as state senator, then become governor. He thought it would be easy to secure the Republican nomination, which was as good as getting elected since the county was 70% Republican. He had made all the right moves – joining the party, schmoozing the key players, flying them down to Giants Stadium, even hosting them on his yacht for the Super Bowl forcrisake. Did they do the right thing? Fuck no. They teased him along like it was in the bag but twice, twice!, they had fucked him for the nomination, this time for a dentist (!) whose license was suspended (!!). What the fuck! They come out of their private conference and nobody’s making eye contact with him so he knows it’s bad. One by one they take him aside and apologize, telling him they tried to sway the committee. Bullshit! He had more than half of them on his side. No way he could have lost.

Paul stared into his drink, feeling sorry for himself, jiggling the melting ice cubes. It was 3am but he was in no mood to go to bed. He was accustomed to having his way. In the last two weeks he had suffered two serious setbacks. First he had lost out on a beautiful tract of land. 1500 acres right where he expected the intersection of I-88 and I-83 to be. Cornelia stole that one. Then tonight he gets stabbed in the back for the nomination for state senator.

He reached for the bottle of Chivas and topped off his drink, swiveled on his stool to offer a refill for his date, holding up the bottle and arching his eyebrows by way of invitation. But his date had given up on him and retired 2 or 3 drinks earlier. He stared at the girl’s fur, draped over the chair back and tried to remember what she looked like, some model or actress, pretty disappointing actually. He wished Pygmy was with him. Now that was a woman he could get excited about, even marry. He pondered whether a biracial marriage would work for or against his political aspirations.

Coincidentally, at the same moment that Paul was drunkenly thinking of Pygmy, Pygmy was drunkenly thinking of Paul, kneeling on the floor in her bathroom, about to call Ralph on the big white telephone. The $10,000 donation that Paul had given to the festival had bounced. Evidently he had put a stop payment on the check and not told Pygmy. That was just like him. Use people and then stiff them. Make promises and break them. And to think that she almost had feelings for him, before. Well, she did have feelings for him, but he was poison. She leaned over the edge of the commode and gave it up for Ralph.

Then the lights went out, at Paul’s secluded estate and at Pygmy’s house, indeed all over Chenango and several other counties the lights went out. The parties in Greektown were still going, lights or no lights. Maybe better without them. The theme for Wednesday, as usual, was karaoke. In the dark, without the recorded music or the video backdrop, the revelry cruised on its own momentum. Here and there a few relatively clear-headed attendees sought to restore the power, groped around basements in search of circuit breakers while most everyone just stayed put and groped the immediate vicinity.

Those who ventured outside discovered that three inches of soggy snow had fallen. A very tall young man stepped out on the porch of one of the frat houses and promptly slipped on the ice and fell. The pitch of the porch propelled him towards the front steps. He reached for the wrought iron handrail to keep from sliding down the steps, but the handrail itself was coated with ice and his efforts to hold a grip on it were futile. He watched his fingers slowly slide off the handrail and then he was a human sled, gracefully gliding down the walkway, across the lawn, into the driveway and down the driveway into the street. He hit the curb and spilled up onto the lawn across the street, hooked his arm around a maple sapling.

The young man raised his free hand in a signal of triumph to his compatriots, but absent the street lights no one in the frat house could see him.

“Brian, are you okay?” someone shouted from an upstairs window.

Brian laughed merrily, cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted “fine,”, but the little tree buckled under his weight and he began to slide away down the street towards the river. Fortunately for him there was a fence between him and the water. He came to rest, finally, and was able to stand up, but it was useless to try to get back to the house; after a few steps the ice carried him back to the fence.

Then a couple of his friends ventured out on the porch to see what was happening. A few minutes later they were beside Brian at the fence, three very bright and creative minds boggled by black ice and gravity. Coatless, they might have contracted pneumonia from the frosty damp exposure. Their salvation came in the unlikely form of Skid, who had been out since midnight with the plow, dumping rock salt on top of the ice.

Skid knew it was already too late for the rock salt to do any good, but he got paid doubletime and could just drive around all night so he didn’t much care. He did all the village streets and was heading for campus when he saw the three men in the headlights. They crowded into the passenger seat and Skid drove them back up the driveway. It took 15 minutes to get them inside the house from the truck, using several bedsheets knotted together as an impromptu lifeline. One of the men offered Skid a 50 dollar bill, fully expecting Skid to at least balk once but Skid just tucked the bill in his pocket and said “Awesome.”

“Don’t go! Don’t go!” someone shouted at Skid. “Tell us what’s going on.”

Skid shrugged. “Fucked if I know. Looks like an ice storm. Power’s off all over town.”

“How long will it be out?”

“Probably hours. Maybe days.” Skid’s words quickly spread throughout Greektown, along with various accounts of Brian’s misadventure. Now that the mystery had a name, ice storm, and an expected duration, everyone settled down. By 4am Greektown was quiet, the earliest end for Karaoke Night that anyone could recall. Most people just went to bed, if they could find it, and otherwise went with whatever the next best thing was.

Not all the power was out in Susquehanna. Pygmy’s house was one of the few exceptions. Pygmy brushed her teeth, rinsed, and studied her reflection in the mirror. She was still a bit nauseous and her head was beginning to ache. If she lay down she would sleep at least to noon, probably longer, and she couldn’t afford that. Three more days! How would she make it? She brushed her teeth a second time, then made and drank several cups of Cuban coffee, sitting on a sheepskin by the fireplace. She’d gut it out until the evening and then crash. David could cover the evening for her; it was the least he could do for her. She put a Nick Drake cd on and wrapped an afghan around her shoulders, closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep.

She woke up for a nature call at 7am, flicked on the Bose to catch NPR, caught the news about the ice storm and all the power outages, went through an absurd moment of wondering whether she had a power outage. She had no hangover at all, felt pretty good and rested. Then again, she was laying in bed, and she knew from experience that standing up could make a world of difference.

She tempted fate by getting up and going to the window to look see what it looked like. The answer was “white and messy.” She had seen ice storms before but this one was the worst. The landscape was white again, salted with a riot of twigs and branches of all sizes. Quite a few trees were uprooted, fallen over onto the ground, or other trees, or whatever was unfortunate enough to be in the way. The radio said it was 30 degrees, and forecast a high of 45. Ironically the sky was clear and the Sun was bright, so Pygmy figured everything would be okay for the Festival. She felt okay, good enough to take care of business.

First order of business was to get through to Paul Giardino and address the stopped check for 10 large. She dialed his mobile and got him on the 5th ring.

“Paul” a tired voice intoned.

“Motherfucker!” Pygmy saluted.

“Pygmy, I’m sorry – let me explain.”

“No explanation necessary. Just make with the mon-nay. I’m trying to keep 2,000 freaked out people happy. I thought I had a solid budget and then when I go to the bank I have to suffer the embarrassment of Miss Thing smirking at me about the bad check that I deposited. I don’t care what your explanation is. Where the fuck is the money?” She slammed the phone into the cradle and went off to shower. Fuck Paul Giardino and his $10,000. Don’t really need it anyway, and certainly don’t need him. Then she turned her thoughts to the present: lip gloss? Etc.

Paul had an impulse to make amends, but it passed. Pygmy fascinated him, attracted him for sure, but somehow, he couldn’t put his finger on it, he and she didn’t click.

Paul had been fucking people over for so long he had long since forgotten that people have feelings, or principles, or stuff like that. It was just natural for him to stop payment on checks, if he even wrote one. Sometimes he just refused to pay on account that the work was late or not good enough. Occasionally he’d relent after several months and pay half, or a tenth. He liked people, thought of himself as a people person. He just had a problem letting go of money.

He somehow believed that Pygmy understood him. He sat down and wrote another check for $10,000. He most likely would stop that check too, so he tore it up and made a mental note to get a cashiers check. He needed to move on. It was past 7. He had to get out to his “sportsmen’s paradise” – a 400-acre farm that he had converted into a luxury shooting gallery, where hunting parties of himself and an entourage of pro athletes and politicians gunned down exotic critters, who were fenced in for easy killing.

A few times each year Paul threw a weekend hunting party. The first outing for 2001 was the week after the Festival. Two NFL hall of famers were among the guests. Paul had elk and buffalo as usual, and in honor of his special guests, yak, which he confused with an African antelope. Too bad he had to pay cash up front. How were they going to hunt yak? The things didn’t even move. He’d give them to the zoo, anonymously of course. Too late to get anything else so make do with what he had.

He was glad that he had the Hummer, as glad, maybe more, that he had a gas generator to supply the electric during the outage. The roads were dicey. The radio said it was a winter storm emergency which meant no travel except for emergency but he did have a Hummer and he had no problem getting to his hunting preserve. As he drove up the hill he had a good long view of the barn doors flapping in the breeze. There were no animals inside. They were all, it seemed, in a single herd heading into the woods, a human figure with a staff walking behind the herd. Paul called and the figure turned around. Paul saw that it was Jose, the Mexican who worked for the Sheriff’s sister Jane. The herd and Jose vanished into the woods.

Back on campus, gas powered generators were supplying electricity and all the attendees, and quite a few townies, sought refuge there. Everyone was thrilled to have light and heat, and a chance to recharge their cell phones.

The Festival proceeded on its normal schedule, quite a contrast to the chaotic remnants of the ice storm. The temperature was not quite 40 but it seemed warm in the bright sun. The ice and snow were beginning to melt but they still dominated the landscape. Every few seconds there was the popping sound of a tree limb snapping off under the weight on it. Every few minutes came the whoosh and crash of a just uprooted tree.
The ice storm became the center of attention. Attendees found it more interesting than the Festival. David Prendergast noted as much in his opening remarks, invited people to go out and enjoy the spectacle – not the damage but the abstract expressionist canvas of twig and branch on snow.

“David, Why are you so sober?” someone shouted from the audience.

“Who says I am?” answered David.

At 10am David slipped away in his Land Rover to meet up with Casper for breakfast at Jane’s. Pygmy wanted a ride, too. He drove through town to pick her up, antsy about being seen, maybe ticketed, by a deputy. He liked his chances. There were enough other vehicles out in violation of the winter storm emergency.

It wasn’t easy getting out to Jane’s, took nearly an hour. The place was packed, too. Like most farms Jane had a gas powered generator and was doing business as usual. Her brother was doing business as usual too – ticketing each arrival with a $200 citation for violating the winter storm emergency and tartly advising that they best not leave the premises by motor vehicle until said winter storm emergency was lifted.

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Tuesday

2007-01-18T15:38:00.000-08:00

The wait for a table at Jane’s was at least a half hour. There was a lineup on the front porch by 5:30, a very loud and lively crowd, talking and laughing. As soon as Ray unlocked the front door the dining room filled up, the prize tables being the ones flanking the fireplace. The weather had turned a bit wintry that morning, below freezing and breezy, so Ray got a good fire going. It took Jane and him 15 minutes just to get everyone menus and coffee.

Against her better judgment Jane had hired Skid as a host. No one else was willing to be there at 6am. Skid stood out on the porch, by the front door, with a clipboard with a single sheet of 8x11 paper. He wrote people’s names randomly, so he had to guess at who was next, and then at where they were, so he just went to whatever car seemed to have been waiting the longest. There were a few complaints, not too many by Skid’s standards. The clipboard gave him a feeling of authority, the same as when he was driving the big snow plow.

Professor Loomis pulled in Jane’s driveway at 7:00 that morning. He was surprised to see the crowd on the porch. He walked up to the front door and found himself face to face with Skid.

“Name?” asked Skid, as if he didn’t know who the Professor was.

Donald Loomis was more amused than annoyed. “Loomis” he replied with a straight face as he gently pushed past Skid and reached for the doorknob.

“Half hour to an hour, Professor” exclaimed Skid. He reached to interpose his arm between the Professor and the door. “unless you want an express seating upgrade.”

Professor was instantly more annoyed than amused. Things might have gotten ugly if Ray hadn’t opened the front door just then. A couple of the early parties were leaving. Ray showed the Professor to a table, not his usual fireside table. Professor was astonished to see the room so busy. It looked and sounded more like a frat party at midnight than a country diner at 7am.

It had not occurred to Professor, Ray, Jane or Skid that the customers had been partying all night. Indeed Professor’s thoughts of a frat party were on the money. Because of the shortage of hotel rooms some of the wealthier attendees rented fraternity and sorority houses. There were parties every night at each of them, all night, all out parties, the best and worst parts of frat house booze bingeing and snobby New York City disco VIP lounge decadence.

The frat and sorority houses were in the Greektown Ghetto, or just Greektown, a long semicircular drive on the far edge of campus with 20 or so big ugly red brick/white shuttered center entrance Colonials, vintage 1920’s but eerily similar to a development of McMansions. Greektown was a good half mile from the village of Susquehanna, far enough that the sound of frat parties did not disturb anyone in town. During festival week the parties were louder and longer. It was really more like one big party than 20 different ones. People drifted from one party to another, and anyway the good parties overflowed onto the lawns and patios of Greektown, music blaring from several sources, the combined buzz of music, laughter, singing and shouting enough to wake some of the townspeople.

Enough to keep Cornelia Cabot-Holmes awake past midnight despite the ear plugs. Cornelia had rented the largest house, Gamma Phi Beta, following the counsel of a Tibetan Buddhist high lama named Pancha, one of her spiritual advisors. The house had 15 bedrooms but only 3 were in use, one by Cornelia, one by Pancha, and the third by two low ranking lamas.

Cornelia woke up in a bad mood, tired and sore, feeling like she had hardly slept because of all the noise. Someone was shouting something incomprehensible right outside her bedroom. She went to the window and saw two men merrily urinating on a privet hedge, drunkenly chanting improvised lyrics to “Macarena” as they sashayed around the building, their heads bobbing, pumping their free hands to keep time. An audience of a couple dozen egged them on.

Cornelia repressed the urge to open the window and scold the men. She believed too strongly in karma for that. She showered, wrapped herself in a saffron sari, and went down to the living room to pray at the shrine which Pancha had set up for them. In her prayers she sought, as always, the Quiet Place, where she could see things. The lack of sleep did not matter. That was longing. The effrontery of the partiers did not matter. That was vanity. She closed her eyes and relaxed, let her thoughts empty.

She sat in a full lotus and faced east. She wore finger cymbals on the thumb and ring finger of each hand. She began a meditation that Pancha called the 100 lotus breaths. It entailed drawing a deep, yogic breath, visualizing its passage, chakra by chakra, to the lotus. In the same motion she slowly lifted her hands from her knees, palms addressing heaven, until they were level with her shoulders. It always seemed like the hands raised themselves, or were pushed by the air rushing into her belly, the motions synchronized so that her hands arrived just at the apex of her breath. Then she clinked the finger cymbals and exhaled very slowly, following the overtones well past the audible range, repeatedly chanting om mani padme hum, her hands floating back down until they returned to her knees, and the cycle would begin again.

100 lotus breaths later Cornelia was good to go, The partying was a welcome distraction. It reminded her that she had a serious mission. Not really her mission. She was the instrument. It was a pure coincidence that she was at SUNY Chenango the same time as the Arts Festival. She was there to locate New Lhasa. That had been her mission for 30 years, and she’d been working at it all that time without really understanding, not the way she did then. Pancha had clarified it for her.

Indeed she had already accomplished many good works in the interest of Tibetan Buddhism and the Tibetan people, contributing untold amounts of money towards the preservation of traditions and the resettlement of refugees. She had funded the construction of monasteries in Colorado, Alberta, Vermont, and North Carolina. She made several trips to India and Bhutan each year to personally supervise the liberation of religious artifacts from Tibet. Pancha had shown her a higher mission – the establishment of a Buddhist community in North America, an opportunity to bring enligtenment to the Land of Liberty.

Cornelia thought about New Lhasa as she sipped barley tea in the kitchen. Pancha and the other monks were just getting up. She would take them to that country restaurant for breakfast. It was too noisy on campus and that diner in town had been awful. They could drive around the countryside after breakfast, scout out possible locations for New Lhasa.

While Cornelia sipped her tea and waited for the lamas to be ready, Donald Loomis sat at his table drumming his fingers in impatience. His third cup of coffee was stone cold and he had yet to put in his order. He didn’t really care what he ate as long it included scrambled eggs and toast. The place was downright boisterous too, one loud table leaving only to be replaced by an even rowdier bunch, sometimes even 7 people squeezed in at a table for 4. One could tolerate it for a week, he supposed. So many things had changed in Chenango County in his time. What was next? Would New York City overtake the area the way it had overtaken the Hudson Valley?

David Prendergast tapped Donald on the shoulder and inquired if he and his friend could join the table. Professor was relieved to see David and the German fellow, Casper. “Yes, of course, please do” said Donald. “To tell you the truth I was about to give up. I’ve been here at least a half hour and haven’t even ordered. And it’s so busy. Where are these people from?”

David raised his eyebrows. “Half hour?!” He caught Ray’s attention and waved him over. Ray apologized profusely, took their orders and went off to the kitchen. Scrambled eggs and woodchuck bacon for all. Casper wasn’t sure what a woodchuck was but was more interested to resume Sunday’s discussion of Jesse James and Washington Loomis. Unfortunately for him the Professor had no memory of that conversation and was initially unsure where to begin.

Cornelia and the lamas arrived around 8:30am, slightly past the peak of the after hours crowd. The porch wasn’t as mobbed and the waiting time was down to 15 minutes. Skid was able to relax a bit. He was busy counting his “tips” when he noticed Cornelia and the three monks. Cornelia led them single file through the front yard, lifting the hem of the yellow sari clear of the mud. Pancha walked flatfooted behind her in orange dhotis and dollar store flip flops, his footfalls splattering the sari from behind. He had the most awesome hunting jacket Skid had ever seen, a bright orange ski jacket with some weird embroidery on it.

“Hey, nice coat” Skid offered as Cornelia and Pancha came up the steps. One of the other lamas had a long trumpet with him, which out of the corner of his eye Skid mistook for a rifle. Skid was so distracted (the chick was pretty foxy) that he forgot to do the host thing. Cornelia opened the door and went in, Pancha right behind her.

“You can’t take that in there!” Skid barked at the other two lamas as they made for the door. The lamas did not understand. They smiled and made a praying sort of gesture at Skid. “Oh” said Skid, seeing that it was not a gun. One of the lamas noticed Skid staring at the long trumpet, raised it to his mouth and sent a very long, very low note in the direction of the big sycamore.

“Awesome” said Skid. The monk grinned and slipped in the door. The other people who were waiting didn’t think it was too awesome, neither the sound of the trumpet nor the fact that Cornelia’s party got seated right away while they had to wait.

Jose was at the chicken coop, gathering more eggs for Jane, when he heard the sound. He walked across the barnyard and around the house to investigate. He looked at Skid and the people waiting for tables, walked around the driveway and out on the road, then back to the house and into the dining room. Ray was surprised to see him there. He hardly ever was in the house, and even then only in the kitchen.

“What’s up, Jose?” Ray asked. Jose paid him no attention, walked straight to Cornelia’s table and prostrated himself in a turtle pose, face pressed into the floorboards with the hands folded atop his head. He was moaning, or something, thought Ray.

Jane was watching from the kitchen door. “What’s going on?” she asked Ray. Ray shrugged.

Cornelia looked down at the chubby figure which was wedged between her at Pancha. Jose continued to babble. Pancha was babbling back at him. Cornelia caught a couple of words of Tibetan but they made no sense. The other two lamas were standing, eyes wide, mouths agape. Pancha sat there serenely, as if he had expected Jose.

Jane walked over and put a tentative hand on Jose’s right shoulder. Jose did not seem to notice.

“Old Jose finally found someone to talk to” observed Ray.

Jane looked at Pancha, then at Jose, then back to Pancha. “Are you speaking Spanish?”

Pancha chortled. “Spanish! No, we’re speaking Tibetan, southern dialect.”

“Why would they speak Spanish?” Cornelia wanted to know.

“Well, Jose’s Mexican.” Jane explained.

Cornelia was amazed. Imagine a Tibetan speaking Mexican turning up at her table in the middle of nowhere New York. Then again was it really that surprising? Clearly there was a reaon why Jose had crossed the paths of Cornelia and the monks at this karmic point in the space-time continuum. This had to be about New Lhasa. There were others. People were here. People were coming. It was all too much. Something was being revealed here, and it was up to them, Pancha and her, to discern what. For sure it was positive, a directive to proceed with the establishment of New Lhasa. Just exactly where and when needed to be nailed down. That’s why Jose is here, concluded Cornelia. She jumped up from her seat.

“Pancha – ask him where and when” she exhorted.

Pancha took the sunglasses out of the breast pocket of his ski jacket and put them on. “Where and when? What do you mean?”

“Please, just ask him where and when.”

Pancha hid his annoyance and did as Cornelia bid. He said something to Jose and a spirited discussion followed for a couple of minutes. The other two lamas joined in from time to time. A couple of times it seemed like they were just telling each other jokes.

“What did he say?” Cornelia pressed. Jane and Ray were no less interested. Indeed the entire room has fallen silent, everyone watching Cornelia, Jose, and the lamas.
Pancha shrugged. “He just tell us about the village he comes from in the southern part of Tibet. He left a long time ago. He doesn’t know when.”

Jane still didn’t get it. “So, you can understand Jose” she asked Pancha. As she said that it dawned on her. “Do you mean he’s from Tibet?”

“Of course. He is from Tibet. Why is that a surprise? Didn’t you know that?” Pancha was getting confused himself. He explained to Jose that everyone thought he was Mexican. That made Jose laugh, which made Jane feel good. “Why did you think he was Mexican?”

Jane felt a twinge of dizziness, had to lean on the table for support. “So, he’s not Mexican. So is his name really Jose? Why is he here? How did he get here.”

Pancha and Jose conferred again for a minute or so, more seriously and quietly than before. Pancha reflected for a few seconds before translating. “He says his name is not important. He like Jose. It sound a little like Jose.”

“A little like that. What is his real name?” Cornelia interjected. Pancha whispered something in Cornelia’s ear. Cornelia nodded.

“Whoa, are you going to tell us too.” Skid had been watching too and was throwing in his two cents.

Cornelia gave Skid a dirty look. “He says Jose is a good name” she fairly snarled, in a Buddhist southern belle sort of way.

“But why did he come here. What does he want?” Jane cried.

Pancha and Jose fell into another side discussion while Jane recounted for Cornelia the circumstances under which Jose had appeared at the farm. Pancha interrupted them before Jane got very far. “He say he’s happy here.”

“Is that all? You and him were talking to 5 minutes and he only said that he’s happy here.”

“Yes, that’s the main thing. He’s happy here. He wants to stay here.”

“But how did he get here. Wht did he come here?”

Pancha smiled and relaxed back in his seat, adjusted his sunglasses. “He says that’s his business.”

Jose looked at Jane and smiled. Jane smiled back. Nothing had changed for them.
Ray didn’t think much of it. Not much difference between Mexico and Tibet in his atlas.

Cornelia was flat out in an altered state. If she had had any doubt that New Lhasa was the right thing to do it was surely dispeled. This was the right time and place. They were very warm. It would be revelead.

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Monday

2007-01-17T15:16:00.000-08:00

Hoot Daviess moved his notebook computer to the desk by the window so he could observe the town square while he worked on that week’s editorial for the Penny Saver. Naturally it would be about the Arts Festival. He should have done it Sunday night, right after the opening ceremonies. Instead he had just a couple of hours to get it done.

Easter was just a couple of weeks off. Hoot thought the theme of resurrection and renewal would be appropriate. He looked out the window at the crowded square, the shops busy with bargain hunters. At the other end of the square, in the small park next to the bank, two young men were playing basketball. It was a nice day for March, 45-50 and sunny, and the town seemed vibrant and prosperous with all the activity. Hoot began to type: “This will be the 25th Annual Chenango Arts Festival. The Festival has changed the town’s fortunes. 24 years earlier the first festival was held in an impoverished town. Half the shops in the village were vacant, unemployment was 15%, some farms had been abandoned. Susquehanna was in a decline like so many other rural towns, with little hope of change. Susquehanna, our dear hometown, was in the process of becoming like Afton….”

Hoot sat back and frowned at the screen. The Penny Saver had some 100 subscribers in Afton whom he didn’t wish to lose. There had always been a rivalry between the two towns, through times of prosperity and difficulty. Susquehanna had been bouncing back the past few years while Afton continued to suffer hard times and a population decline. Hoot erased “ like Afton” and replaced it with “another victim.” He didn’t like that either, got out the thesaurus and went through the alternatives it listed for “victim.” He looked out the window again, at the basketball game. It looked like Ray Tate and his cousin were playing a spirited game on one-on-one, pretty physical. There was his word – competitive! Until the festival had come along “Susquehanna, our dear hometown, had been losing its competitiveness.”

That got Hoot on a roll. He banged out the rest of the editorial in half an hour, even managed to get in a dig at Afton in the process. Afton was Susquehanna High School’s traditional rival. Hoot himself had suited up three times for the Thanksgiving football game, had made a couple of tackles in the Big One, the ’65 game when Susquehanna scored twice in the last 3 minutes to preserve an undefeated season, which no team since had accomplished. Hoot reread the editorial, hoping to find a way to blend in a mention of the fighting spirit of Susquehanna High School. He tried adding a paragraph at the end: “We should all be grateful to David Prendergast and the work he has done to build the Festival to what it’s become – a world class event which draws an international audience to our beloved town. The Festival has fueled a dramatic turnaround of the town’s fortunes. You, my friends and neighbors, my fellow Susquehannans, have always had spirit, the competitive spirit, the same spirit that high school boys bring to the football field and basketball court.” He glanced out at the court to see if Ray and Skid were still playing. “Let us show our guests the good side of Susquehanna, in that same competitive spirit. Let us show our appreciation and our hospitality. True, these people are different from us, and we should be tolerant of them. They come from other countries, other lifestyles. Let us open our arms and hearts to them.”

Hoot clicked on the save button and leaned back in his chair. “Nailed it!” he said aloud. He read through the editorial and saved it again, just in case. It was the best thing he had ever written. In content it made about the same points as all the previous editorials he wrote at festival time – things had been bad for Susquehanna but now they were better; the attendees were mainly gay weirdos from hostile foreign countries; indulge them because they spend a lot of money.

Speaking of money the week of the festival the diner was packed pretty much from 6am to the extended (from 2pm) closing time of 7pm. Hoot stood up and stretched, checked his watch to see if it was time to get back downstairs to the diner for the lunch rush. There were always enough people who had never eaten at Hoot’s Diner. Some even liked it, or at least came back. It was barely 11am and already there were a few parties out on the sidewalk, waiting for a table. The diner did more business in that one week than it had done since Thanksgiving.

He gave the editorial one final read and decided the edition was ready to go. He stepped out on the little balcony and enjoyed the cool air. There had to be a couple of hundred people milling around the town square, most of them underdressed. In the sun it seemed much warmer than 45 degrees. A few people were throwing a frisbee over by the basketball court. Skid nearly got hit by an errant toss. “Interference!” he cried, demanding to have the ball back after a missed shot.

Ray shrugged and flipped the ball to him. They weren’t keeping score so what did it matter? Skid was 2 years older and more of an athlete than Ray. The gap had been wider when they were growing up. Skid had always been the team captain, or the first one chosen. Ray was often the last to be picked for basketball or football, or odd man out. Skid had put on a beer belly and didn’t have much stamina. Ray was as uncoordinated as ever, and smoked too much, but hard work (when he could get it) had made him strong and fit.

Two men asked if Ray and Skid wanted to play two-on-two, a game of 15, winners out. Ray was willing but Skid said he was spent. They let the men have the ball, pointed out Skid’s pickup truck, told them to just leave the ball in the truck when they were done.

“I didn’t want to play with those fags.” Skid whispered as they crossed the square.

Ray looked over his shoulder at the two men. “How do you know they’re fags? They look like normal guys to me.”

“They’re all fags. Well, a lot of them are. Artists. You can’t tell by what they look like.”

“What do you mean you can’t tell by what they look like? How do you know, then?”

“You can just tell.” Skid said. Ray let it go at that, figuring Skid was just woofing. What did if matter if those two guys were gay. Sure, some, maybe a lot of the people who came to the festival looked or acted different. That was part of the deal, wasn’t it? For a week the town was completely different, busy and bustling, way more interesting than the deserted boondocks it was for the other 51 weeks, college or no college.

Ray’s parents had pretty much the same attitude as Skid. For that matter so did a lot of the townspeople. They’re hypocrites, thought Ray, happy to have the money come to town but not the people who spent it. That had changed some in the past ten years as the festival became more and more popular, and the townies and delegates more and more familiar with each other. Quite a few homeowners rented spare rooms for the week. Some even rented their houses. The severe shortage of hotel rooms in the area drove the prices to the same price point as upscale New York City hotels in high season.

Skid and Ray sat on the bench by where the old Greyhound office had been. A beautiful woman came out of the CVS across the street and smiled at them for some reason. She was wearing a dark blue dufflecoat, jeans, cowboy boots and a furry hat like Russians sometimes wear. She had a big white button on her coat which read “Fuck Art.” Ray smiled back and waved, but got no response, the woman melting into the flow of people moving in both directions on Main Street.

“Yep” Ray philosophized out loud, “this town really sucks.”

Skid didn’t get the connection, though of course he agreed. He leaned over the back of the bench and spit loudly through clenched teeth, spraying a bit on the Hoot’s Diner sign behind them.

“Ewww. Gross” exclaimed a girl from the backseat of a passing car.

Skid gave her the finger. “I’m going home for lunch. What are you doing?”

“Work, I guess, Got a repair job over that professor’s house.”

“Professor? You mean that girl I saw you with? Is she a professor?”
“Yeah, and she’s not a girl, she’s over 40.”

“No way!”

“Yeah, she’s 43.”

“Fooled me. I though she was 30.”

“Hey, it takes time to be a professor.”

“You seem to know a lot about her. You got something going?” Skid knew that he didn’t.

Ray rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I got something going, work.” Ray and Skid bumped fists and jerked their hands upwards, their ritual farewell of some years’ standing.

“Later”

“Bye”

Ray got his tools out of Skid’s truck and walked with the crowd, slowly making his way down the quarter mile of shops on Main Street. He was happy to be alone for the moment, anonymous amongst so many strangers. Maybe they took him for an artist, too. He studied the way the people looked and were dressed, especially the females. He wondered where everyone came from, what their lives were like, how his life would be if he lived where they lived, did what they did.

He turned off of Main onto River Street just before the bridge to campus and walked on the path alongside the Susquehanna. There were still plenty of chunks of ice floating in the muddy stream. He passed a lone mallard foraging in the shallows. Spring felt good, even though it wasn’t quite Spring, even though there’d as likely as not be another blizzard in March or April.

A half mile from Main Street he could still sense the crowded streets, hear the people talking. He passed Sycamore, the last of the village streets, and walked on eastward on River Street, now just plain Route 7. Pygmy’s house was about 100 yards past Sycamore, the old Grayson’s Mill place. The ruins of the millrace were still evident from the street as one approached from the town. The house was over 100 years old, a rambling white Queen Anne Victorian with a wraparound porch and a large widow’s walk on top.

The building was very solid but sorely in need of updating and cosmetic work. The windows were all old-fashioned single pane, the electric only 60 amps, the plumbing a mixed bag of lead, clay, and galvanized with just some copper. That was his job today, fix the hash that someone had made of the copper pipes in the basement, a plumber (supposedly) from Oneonta whom Pygmy had paid $400 for the worst plumbing job Ray had ever seen, converting the pantry to a laundry room and hooking up the washer and dryer.

There was a note taped to the front door: “Had to go to campus. Door’s unlocked. Call my cell if you need me. 607 765 0756.” He let himself in and immediately set to work in the basement. The beams were eye level so he had to move around stooped over, head cocked to one side to keep it from bumping against the pipes and beams. The light was poor, too. Not much in the way of windows and only one of the light sockets had a working bulb, 40 watts at that. Good thing he packed a good flashlight.

He moved from fitting to fitting, shaving off the old solder, getting the pipe good and clean before soldering it properly. The guy who did the job for Pygmy had really slopped on a lot of solder. No wonder it cracked and leaked. How long had Pygmy been living with the problem?

Ray took his sweet time yet still finished faster than he expected. He hit his head only once, a good one that left a painful bump, He packed up and walked back upstairs, calling out “hello” a couple of times in case Pygmy had returned home while he was at work. He was pretty sure she hadn’t since he would have heard the door, or her footsteps above.

Pygmy rushed home to fetch some papers she had forgotten. She had also forgotten all about Ray and the plumbing job, was leaning on the door, fiddling with the key ring’s eight identical looking Yale keys to get the one which unlocked the door, forgetting too that she had left the door unlocked. Ray didn’t realize she was there. Otherwise he would have opened the door more carefully. Pygmy certainly didn’t expect the door to open, stumbled helplessly forward into Ray and his toolbox.

“God! Don’t DO that!” she gasped, catching her balance. She straightened up, left hand clasped to her chest. She was not in a good mood, needed a little down time after a day of tension and frustration trying to do the festival’s tasks and keep everybody happy. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

Ray was frozen, feeling like he should be apologizing. “Sorry” he said. It sounded like a kitten’s mewing to him.

“No, no, My bad” said Pygmy. “I see you’ve been busy.” She squeezed past him, took off her coat and hung it up, walked on into the kitchen.

“All done.” He said, following her.

Pygmy smiled. “Cool. $35.00, right. Are you sure that’s enough.” She took out her wallet and handed Ray the money.

Ray nodded. “A deal’s a deal.” Jeez. Hadn’t taken even an hour. If only all jobs were like that.

Pygmy pulled a bottle of scotch and two tumblers from a cupboard, showed the works to Ray as a way of offering. Ray nodded. Pygmy poured a couple of fingers for each of them, handed one of the glasses to Ray. “Can you come back after the festival? There’s some more work I’d like you to do.”

“Sure, love to” said Ray. “How’s the festival going?”

Pygmy made an equivocating, comme çi comme ça expression, punctuated it with a sigh. “Same as always. Exhiliarating. Exhausting.” She leaned back against the counter and stretched. “Good. All Good.” She smiled. She bit her lip, suddenly realizing that she left her notebook in one of the conference rooms.

“Are you sure? Are you okay?” Ray asked.

“Yeah, more or less. Why? Do I look not okay?”

“Well, you’ve been stirring your drink with your finger.”

Pygmy looked down at her finger like it was a pet doing a trick. “Oh that. Nervous habit.” She extracted her finger and sprinkled a dash of salt on it, then popped it in her mouth. She ran upstairs and a moment later back down with a sheaf of papers which she crammed into her bag. “Gotta run” she exclaimed, “just close the door behind you. Stop by after the festival.”

She grabbed her coat and slipped into it, struggling to find the left sleeve until Ray held it for her. She squeezed past him and out the door, her hand accidently brushing his chest. Ray watched her run up the front walk, the spot her hand had touched buzzing. He picked up his tools and walked out too. He’d have to find a ride home now. He walked back to Main Street, hoping that Skid was around. The spot on his chest was still buzzing.

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Sunday

2006-11-15T13:53:00.000-08:00

Jane’s cocoa wasn’t tasting so good to Pygmy at the moment, not that it was any less tasty than Saturday’s. She was about to explode and take out both Paul Giardino and Cornelia Cabot Holmes. Those two had been bickering nonstop since they arrived at Jane’s. It was the opening day of the festival and Pygmy was on edge to begin with, so she was beyond tasting anything but frusttration.

It had seemed like a great idea, bring them and Veronica together over a super breakfast and get a good start on the day. Pygmy expected that they’d set aside their differences and get in the spirit of the festival, focus on the opening ceremonies. At least they could behave like adults.

Paul had started it by making a big deal about woodchuck bacon, ordered two sides of it, knowing it would disgust Cornelia. Indeed, Cornelia pushed her oatmeal away, claimed to be unable to eat. They needled each other for the next ten minutes, first about diet, then about ethics, then just random digs and insults. Pygymy twice tried to bring up the subject of the festival, but Cornelia and Paul were too locked up to notice.

Pygmy felt like she was brokering Mideast peace talks, finally just lost it and shouted “Shut the fuck up” four times over, loudly enough for Jane to hear in the kitchen. Jane was talking to her brother, the sheriff, at the time. They both came out into the dining room to see what the commotion was about.

“What seems to be the problem?” Jane asked.

Pygmy, Paul, Cornelia, and Veronica sat dumb faced. Pygmy wanted to apologize but could not find the words, her head still flushed with annoyance at Cornelia and Paul, a migraine starting to swell up. Cornelia and Paul were embarrased to be the focus of Jane’s ire. Veronica was wondering how it all got started; after all they were just having breakfast, nothing at all happened.

“They were just having a difference of opinion is all” Ray explained. He had been watching with interest, as nonplussed as Veronica.

“A difference of opinion?” Sheriff Thom asked, somewhat rhetorically.

“Sorry” offered Pygymy, finally feeling clear enough to speak. She blamed only herself, and being on edge was no excuse.

Jane nodded her tentative acceptance of Pygmy’s apology, subject to better behavior in the future. She went back into the kitchen, followed by her brother. He had a problem investigation on his hands, a grisly murder which had attracted the interest of media in Syracuse and Albany (so far), the first homicide in Chenango County since 1989. He had driven down from Norwich to escape the relentless attention, have a bite to eat and mull over the case in peace and quiet. His was sure that it was the husband, but he had no motive and no witnesses. The circumstantial evidence was compelling for him, but the DA didn’t even want to convene a grand jury based on it. He was telling Jane about the case when the flare up happened. Jane was just listening, being an ear so her brother could think out loud, vent a bit.

Pygmy took a sip of cocoa. The other three were all head down into their food, including Cornelia. The cocoa tasted okay but she was still a bit tense and her head still ached. The silence helped. She wanted to discuss a few essential details about the show. She looked over at Ray, who smiled and winked at her to buoy her recovery.

“Could I please have some ice water?” she asked. Ray got the pitcher from the service stand and topped off all four glasses. The other three continued to eat in silence. Pygmy appraised them in turn. None of them had any real interest in art or the festival. She mused over the fact that rich people, “important” people, are so big on charity and cultural events, love to serve on organizing commitees and be known as benefactors. Why?

She figured Paul just wanted to flesh out his resume. Two years earlier he was also after Pygymy, had taken her on what was supposed to be a romantic weekend, in his mind anyway. He had her flown down to Teterboro in his corporate jet to join him in his skybox at Giants Stadium to watch the Giants in the playoffs. She liked football enough to watch it occasionally, if someone else had it on. She had never been to a game. She was surprised at the size of the skybox, larger than the Manhattan Avenue apartment she had grown up in, surprised too that there were a dozen or so other guests there. Some of them were ex-players. Paul introduced them, expecting Pygmy to be wowed but Pygmy didn’t know who they were.

Everyone seemed to be drinking and by halftime the effects were showing. There was an incident, someone brushed against her, might have been accidental. Somehow Pygmy did not think so. She went to the loo to recover. Paul was in the hallway when she emerged, kind of went all over her. An hour later she was back in the air, alone, wondering what she expected anyway. She felt nothing for him, so why did she even go to the stupid Giants game? She thought they were just friends, a mutual respect thing. She liked him because he lived large, he liked her because she was creative, strong, and self-sufficient.

That was the year that Paul had joined the committee. He showed up on campus the week after the game to apologize. His sincerity impressed her enough to have lunch with him at the faculty club. He said he wanted to “do something for the school.” Pygmy told him about the festival, which he had never heard of, and he signed right up. Just having his name on the letterhead was enough. He didn’t put much time into it, just attended 2 or 3 meetings, sometimes via telephone.

Cornelia was slightly more hands on than Paul. She showed up at most of the meetings and some of the festival events. Cornelia had been on the committee since before Pygmy’s time. She had a crush on David going back to 1967. She was a sophomore at Barnard, majoring in psychology and philosophy. She didn’t attend many classes, was more involved with the commune she started on East 3rd Street. She met David at a party. She wasn’t his type, too naïve and too much into the hippy thing. He tried to tell her nicely. She understood but continued to show up at his openings, and at the bars David frequented. One night at Max’s David was feeling generous; invited her to his table. They got tipsy and spent the next three days together. That was it, David claimed. After that they were just friends, meaning she kept in touch and David pretty much ignored her, until he joined COVA, started the festival and needed an infusion of cash.

She was an only child, spoiled beyond recognition. Both of Cornelia’s parents were absurdly rich, Leonard “Sonny” Holmes, a Tulsa oilman/cattle rancher, and Priscilla “Binky” Cabot, herself sole heir to a manufacturing fortune. She grew up with homes in Tulsa and Boston, went to school in Switzerland. Her parents were opposed to her moving to New York, insisted that she reside at the Pierre and hired a chauffeur/bodyguard to look after her. She financed 100% of the commune’s expenses from her allowance, the impact barely noticeable.

The commune broke up following the drug-induced suicide of its nominal guru, Leo, a happy go lucky Puerto Rican flower child from the Bronx who felt trapped in the role. “Bad Trip From The 5th Floor” read the Post’s headline, with a photo of two cops on the sidewalk, flanking Leo’s covered body. Cornelia stopped taking LSD, or any other drugs, dropped out of school and went on an extended trip to India and Nepal, where she immersed herself in Tibetan Buddhism. Her parents died in a plane crash while she was abroad, her father himself the pilot, touring the ranch when bad weather hit. She came home for the funeral, two months shy of her 21st birthday.

Or so David told the story.

Pygmy thought about that. Her parents (stepfather anyway) were still alive and well and living in the same rent-controlled apartment on Manhattan Avenue, both pushing 70. She had left home way too young, which must have hurt her parents. She felt guilty about that. She never really was hostile to them, just acted like it for a few years. They were closer than ever and that gave her a comfort that nothing else could. What did Cornelia have? Paul? David?

Neither Cornelia nor Paul were much help in the day to day details of planning and managing the festival. Veronica was more productive in that regard. Pygmy knew very little about Veronica, had only known her for a couple of months and had not had much opportunity to get to know her. Local girl who moved away, got divorced and moved back fairly recently, opened a Bed and Breakfast, sold real estate as well. She wasn’t very outgoing for a realtor, Pygmy thought, seemed to be the shy, self-effacing type, anxious to please. Pygmy had no complaints about her. On the contrary she found Veronica reliable and efficient, was more and more dependent on being able to delegate tasks to her. Indeed she was counting on Veronica to coordinate all the staff and student volunteers who would be working the opening day ceremonies, and was confident that Veronica would do well. That would free her up to be on the podium with David and the featured speakers.

David would turn up an hour or so before the program started. He’d only be in the way before then. He usually spent the afternoon at home, entertaining some close friends. This time he had added Donald Loomis to the party, a spur of the moment invitation over breakfast that morning at Jane’s. Professor was surprised. It had beens years and years since he’d been invited to anything off campus.

David’s place was on state route 255, a few miles south of the hollow, about a mile north of I-88. David told Loomis that it was across the road from the Grubaker farm, a house and another building on the hillside. Loomis knew the Grubakers’ place but did not recall a house on the west side of the road. It was easy enough to spot David’s place from a half mile away, perched way up the drumlin, at least 300 yards. He recognized the house when he saw it. It was a bungalow in the prairie/craftsman style, built by a professor at SUNY Binghamton back when that school was still Harpur College. Now it came back to him, he and his wife had been invited there once. The professor’s name was Murphy, Something Murphy. That must have been 1955. It was dark inside. That was all that came back to him. The second building hadn’t been there.

The driveway was insanely long. Professor parked on the shoulder of the road and walked uphill. The snow had melted off the driveway, leaving it very muddy, but it was hardpacked and there was enough gravel for a car to make it, even with rear-wheel driver. He had skiied over 700 miles that season so it took little effort. David watched in amazement as he bounded up the hillside, made a mental note that he had to get back to regular workouts.

As he drew closer, Loomis studied the second building. It was a simpler structure, a tallish A-frame with skylights and a second floor deck, roughly 30x60. Professor wondered if David was also a stargazing buff. The deck commanded an extraordinary view in three directions. It was about 500 feet above the river, which could be traced about 10 miles to the east. This was where the river exactly followed the contact zone between the Susquehanna Hills and the Appachians. He had read that in “Roadside Geology Of New York.” When he had visited the house the first time it was summer and the view, though thrilling, was quite different with all the foliage. Now it was a study in white, evergreen, and grey, bare hills in every direction, the long valley stretching to the east.

David came out of the second building to greet the Professor, apologized that he was “in the middle of something” he wished to finish up. He followed David up a wooden stair onto the deck and inside sliding glass doors. The upstairs was one large room, 25 feet wide and 50 feet long, with four skylights and 3 picture windows along each side. The only furniture in the room was a beat up sectional sofa facing the doors, 3 or 4 feet inside. There was paint splattered all over the floor and walls. A number of canvasses on stretchers or frames were propped along the back wall. There were brushes, tubes and buckets of paint, palettes, and empty cans strewn around as well, leaving little room to walk. Professor sat on the sofa and watched David as he applied brush to canvas on an easel.

“I’ve done this every winter. Every winter the view changes.”

Professor regarded the painting in progress and then the view. “How do you mean that? I don’t see where there’s much manmade difference, and the hills haven’t moved.”

“Ah, but the light changes, and the color.”

“Of course. I should have thought about that.” said the Professor, thinking once again about the night sky.

David smiled and put the brush in a can. “Enough for now.” They walked to the far end of the room where there was another stair leading down to the first floor. “My workshop” David explained, gesturing at a diametrically opposite environment, altogether neat and orderly. There was a lathe in one corner and a lithograph press in another. One wall had shelving built along most of its length, with cubicles for supplies and tools. The other wall had a series of specialized workbenches, with equipment for lapidary, engraving, silkscreening, sewing, and woodwork. In the middle of the floor was a potting wheel and chair.

“Do you do all those things?” Professor asked.

“Sure, hobby stuff. Mostly I paint.” David answered.

A car horn honked. The first of the other guests had arrived. They went out to meet them, an art dealer and an artist from Toronto. The four went into the bungalow. It was also one large room, about 30 feet square, sparsely furnished. It was quite dark, the walls paneled in cedar, the floor wideplank pine with a dark stain. A cobblestone fireplace took up much of the northern wall, a wide slate bench along its front, a long black leather sofa facing it. There wasn’t much of a kitchen; evidently cooking was not one of David’s passions.

The four took seats at a dining table. There were eight places set. David wheeled over a cart with a built-in liquor cabinet and served drinks. The Canadians had scotch and water. Donald passed. David fixed himself a bloody mary, complete with celery and bitters, and put on a Paolo Conte CD. It occurred to the professor how masculine the place was, the sort of décor one associated with the West. The Canadians, however, seemed not at all masculine.

Another couple of men arrived, a German named Casper, which seemed odd, who spoke with an accent, and a Venezuelan named Rodrigo whose English was flawless. David and the other guests fell into a spirited gossip and conversation about art. Professor changed his mind and had a bloody mary when drinks were offered again. The last two guests, New Yorkers, showed up at 12:30. Professor was onto his second drink and forgot their names within five minutes. David went over to the kitchen area and put something in the microwave. Everyone crowed over the aroma that wafted out.

It took David longer than expected to heat everything up, and in his tipsiness he dropped and lost the dish of pickled beets. He pulled himself together well enough to get the rest of it served without incident. David had convinced Jane to cater the affair, told her to make anything she wished, as long as it had three courses and dessert and fed eight. The first course was corn chowder with buttermilk biscuits, the second a salad of fennel, radicchio, hickory nuts, and feta cheese with a dressing of lemon juice and olive oil. The main course, minus the beets, was venison meatballs with brown gravy and scalloped potatoes. Dessert was pumpkin pie. All the guests were suitably impressed, even the snobby New Yorkers, who were actually natives of North Carolina. David was delighted.

They moved to the fireside for coffee and “un digestif” as David put it. Rodrigo asked the professor if Loomis Hollow was named after his family.

“Not to my knowledge” replied the professor, which naturally the others found a curious way of putting it. “That is to say I have not found any generalogical link between the family it was named for and mine. Any relationship would go back to the 16th century at the latest. Of course, there might not be any relationship at all.”

“So are there two Loomis families here?” asked David.

“Well, it’s simply a coincidence. The hollow is named for a family that doesn’t live here any longer. My grandfather moved her from Philadelphia, settled in the hollow around 1880, when Loomis Hollow was already its name.”

Casper was intrigued, but had not followed all of it. “But how do you know that you’re not related? What do you know about the other family?” he asked.

“Ah! The Loomis clan was notorious, horse thieves and burglars who operated with impugnity for many years. They victimized hundreds, perhaps thousands of people in Central New York, from Lake Ontario to Cooperstown and everywhere inbetween. They didn’t so much live in Loomis Hollow as use it to stage some of their nefarious operations. They rustled horses and sold them down in Maryland and Virginia, to the Confederacy.”

“So, they were rebels?” one of the Canadians was asking.

“Not at all. They also stole horses down there and sold those horses to the same people they had stolen from up here. They might have done the same out west as well. There is some evidence, hearsay evidence, that they did business with the James Gang, even that Jesse James was seen around Loomis Hollow.”

The other seven were all riveted to the professor’s words.

“Who is this Jesse James, please?” Casper, the German, wanted to know.

David looked at his watch and announced that fascinating as the subject was, it was time to venture on to campus.

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Saturday

2006-11-10T13:34:00.000-08:00

On Saturday Jane picked Ray up at 4am. They had to get to Johnson City to pick up a large coffee urn and a restaurant stove. Jose came along to help. Jane had picked them up at a fire sale. The stove had a lot of superficial damage but worked well enough. The urn was fine. Ray’d hook them up after they closed for the day.

By the time they got back to Jane’s it was nearly 6 and getting light. They left the stove and urn in the flatbed. Jane and Ray concentrated on getting ready to open for business. Professor indicated he’d be in early, maybe 6:30. Ray set up the dining room. Jose went off to milk the cow and gather eggs. Jane started a pot of coffee.

Donald Loomis decided against taking the quick route. The snow on the esker was in bad shape, soggy and icy, bare in some places. He had a pair of skis that he used just for such skiing, waxed to glide over sloppy snow. After so many weeks of subzero temperatures and powdery snow it was a bit of a shock to see springlike conditions.

He’d also gotten up at 4am, which was not at all unusual. He liked to watch the late night ski, had a collection of four telescopes for that purpose. That day he went with the hand held one, packed it in his knapsack. He checked the temperature, just under freezing, and accordingly added some red wax to the skis, thinking any day might be the last day of skiing for the season.

He set out in the dark, went immediately downhill and into the woods, followed reflective tree markers to an old logging road, followed the road all the way to DeRuyter Creek. He stopped to take stock of the conditions. The sky was clear and Venus was low on the southeast horizon. He took out the telescope and studied the sky for a few minutes. The quiet was nearly total. The only sounds were soft and indistinct – the flow of the creek, twigs dropping or birds moving in trees, nothing human or manmade. He stayed by the creek until full daylight, content to watch the the sky and meander around the adjacent woods.

It was a good two miles to the swamp across the road from the Thom farm. The ground alongside of the creek was already mostly bare; next to that the snow was solid but slushy. He added some more wax and set out glided through the slush, keeping about 50 feet from the creek. It was still too dark to see properly, so occasionally a ski got tangled in the underbrush, causing the bindings to pop open and let loose the ski. For some reason it gave him a boyish pleasure when that happened, always had.

About halfway to Jane’s he heard the motor of a car, approaching from a distance. He looked at his watch – 7:30. It was the first worldy sound since he left his house. He wasn’t in a hurry but he had built up an appetite. He picked up the pace and reached the road in five minutes, noticed David Prendergast’s Land Rover parked by the front door.
David and Pygmy were already at work on their “bacon” and eggs. “This better be good” Pygmy exclaimed. David had called for her 2 hours early, at 6:30. She had had a bad night and really could have used more sleep. On the way over David told her the story about the woodchuck bacon. Pygmy was too annoyed to be amused, or even show any reaction, sat there with her arms crossed. David’s eyes were on the road, not noticing her body language. Pygymy sort of hissed to give him a clue, also not picked up on. That was David, sometimes, she thought. The only word she could summon was ‘inconsiderate’ but that wasn’t true, not most of the time. David was, well, she didn’t know.

Pygmy took the first bite of her food and found it remarkable, four stars. David looked at her expectantly and Pygmy pretended not to notice him, forced a blank expression. She took a sip of coca and could not contain herself. She smiled with pleasure, dabbed at her lips with the napkin. “Wow, that’s good.” David smirked back her, told you so. They both looked up when the door opened and Donald Loomis entered.

Professor closed the door, turned, and found himself looking directly at David and Pygmy. David stood up, motioned with his hand at one of the empty chairs. “Join us.”

Professor hesitated, then obeyed, walked over and took his knapsack off, placed in on the floor, then draped his jacket over the back of the chair. “Thank you, but I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced. Donald Loomis.”

“David Prendergast”
They shook hands across the table, David still standing. Of course they knew each other by name but had indeed never been introduced. David had no opinion of the Professor. He had heard all the stories but they only made him vaguely curious about what the Professor (even people on campus used the term) was like. Donald felt a bit sheepish for having been prejudiced about David for so long; now he seemed like a good fellow.

“Pygmy Dyke”
Pygmy extended her hand but remained seated.
“Pygmy Dyke?” Professor took her hand, flustered, unable to not ask, embarrased to have to.
“Pygmy Dyke. It was my stage name but I still use it.”
“I see. Which department are you with?”
David answered for her, as he was loathe to do. “We’re both with COVA. I’m the Dean and Pygmy’s official title is Artist In Residence, but she teaches a few master classes, and does all the work on the annual festival. Couldn’t function without her.”

David’s stock dropped a bit with Donald Loomis, offended at the implication that Loomis wouldn’t know who all the Deans were, but the feeling didn’t stick. The moment was too sweet. He was in the afterglow of his trip through the woods and about to have a wonderful breakfast. Were he grading final exams that morning they would certainly all get A’s. Ray came over and Professor ordered a short stack of pancakes with Jane’s homemade blackberry preserves, a side order of ham, orange juice, and a soft boiled egg.

By the time the food arrived David and Pygmy had long finished theirs and were lingering over second cups of coffee and cocoa. They urged the Professor to “please eat” and slipped into a side conversation while he did, discussing some of the details of the Arts Festival. While they talked, Professor worked at his food slowly and carefully, listening without interest. He looked around the room, seeing no change from the previous days. His gaze was drawn back to the woman’s portrait.

Pygmy picked up on it. “That is an intetesting portrait, the nearly black background to the woman’s left and the bright, cheery wallpaper on the right. It’s like the artist was trying to say something about the woman’s personality, like she was bipolar or something.”

Professor smiled wanly at Pygmy. “I see your point exactly but I doubt we will ever know the artist’s intention. I think the woman was a spinster.”

David leaned forward, intrigued. “Why do you think that?” Both he and Pygmy waited expectantly to hear Professor’s reasoning.

“Jane!” summoned the professor, loudly.

“I’ll get her” said Ray, who had been there all along, the fly on the wall.

Jane came out, said hello to Donald. She had introduced herself to David and Pygmy when they arrived.

“Right, I see the resemblence,” said David “ but how does that make her a spinster?”

“I’m not a spinster, I’m a divorcee, and once was enough for me.” Jane was visibly annoyed.

“Sorry! Sorry, sorry, sorry. Not talking about you, talking about the woman in the picture. Do you know who she was?”

“That’s Louisa Gregory. She wasn’t a spinster either. She was a widow, the sister of my grandfather’s great grandfather, or you could say my great great great grandaunt. Her husband died in the Civil War, down in Louisiana in 1863, which is kind of funny since her name was Louisa.”

“So maybe that’s why she looks sad in the picture” Pygmy observed.

“She was sad alright. They were only married a year, and he was already in the army when they got married.” Jane paused, realizing for the first time how closely that paralleled her own brief marriage, but she wasn’t going to discuss her personal life with strangers. “She never did remarry, never left the farm.”

They all looked at the portrait sympathetically. Professor felt a bit redeemed by the story. Technically a widow, virtually a spinster. Quite possibly the marriage had not been consummated, he thought.

Pygmy was thinking quite the opposite, picturing torrid lovemaking in the few nights, perhaps only night, the couple had together. Her fantasy was interrupted by another voice, which instructed her to ask Jane about the cocoa. She watched herself ask while the images were still swilling about her mind.

“Oh, that’s just because it’s fresh milk. Jose milks the milk cow every morning.” Jane explained. Jane went on to give more details about the number of quarts (25-30) the milk cow yielded, low for a Holstein but she was grass fed, how Jose didn’t like to feed corn to the chickens either, and they were laying right through the winter, no idea how Jose did that.

Pygmy looked at Ray, thinking he was Jose, and thought he didn’t look the least bit Latin, fair haired and freckled. Kind of cute, too. Reminded her of an unrequited crush from her college days. Ray noticed her looking in his direction and came over.

“Can I get you something else?” He had the phrase down now, tossed it like a horseshoe. Ringer!

“Oh, another cocoa if you could.” Pygmy didn’t want one, in fact she had to use the loo, and she had a thing about public loos.

Donald Loomis finished breakfast and dressed to leave.
“Good luck with the Arts Festival. That starts tomorrow, doesn’t it?”

David smiled. “Thanks. That’s right. Lucky for us the weather broke.”

“Well, why have it in March. Why not in May?”

“First couple of years we did. It’s the housing problem. There’s not enough hotel rooms. Most of the attendees stay in dorms, frat, or sorority houses, rent them out from the students since it’s Spring Break. Can’t get the State to make the dorms available in May, not yet anyway. Anyway, now it’s kind of a tradition to have it in shitty weather.” David saw disapproval on Professor’s face and regretted saying ‘shitty.’
“Well, I’m off to do some more boring research.” said the Professor.

“You know,” said Pygymy,”I’d like to know more about what your work. You’re a legend on campus, you know.”

“Nonsense! I’m a boring old man, but thank you for saying such flattering words. Good luck with the festival.” Professor slipped out the door, picked up his skis, crossed the road and put them on, skated off in the same direction he had come from.

Pygmy and David decided it was time to leave. “What an amazing man. What an amazing place.” said Pygmy. She waved at Ray. “Jose!”

“I’m not Jose, I’m Ray. Did you want Jose?”

“Oh! Sorry, I thought you were Jose. I’m Pygmy.”

Pretty big for a pygmy, thought Ray. “Hi. Did you want me to get Jose?” wondering why she would want him and what’s more, how she would communicate with him.

“No, I just wanted the check. I’m sorry. The wo- Jane talked about Jose and I thought she was talking about you.”

Ray nodded understandingly. “That’ll be 6.95”

“That’s all?!”

“That’s all”

David gave him a 10 and told him to keep the change. Another car pulled up and a large man got out. Pygmy thought he had a scout uniform on but it was Sheriff Thom, who rumbled through the door, breathing a bit hard, sort of nodded in the general direction of David, Pygmy, and Ray, and rumbled on across the floor and into the kitchen. There was a few seconds silence while they processed the event.

They thanked Ray and headed for the door.
“Do you want me to drop you on campus?” David asked as they walked out.

“No, I have to go home first. I have a leak in the basement. I think a pipe broke. I have to call a plumber. Do you know any?”

Ray heard the reply through the closing door, looked at his watch – 8:35. He had to hook up the stove and urn but he could fit in a no-brainer soldering job, assuming he could get there. He darted to catch them.

“Excuse me!” He yelled as he hopped outside. “I can fix your pipes if you like, charge you less than half of what a plumber would and do twice as good a job. I can do it this afternoon.”

“What time can you be there?” Pygmy asked.

“Between 12 and 1, give or take” Ray said, hoping his mother had shopping planned. The roads were clear enough to bike if need be, although that wouldn’t be much fun with a hacksaw, blow torch, and wrench somewhere on his person. “Charge you $12 an hour.” Ray wondered why he didn’t ask for 15, or why he was so anxious for a couple hours, at best, work.

“Fine. Deal.” said Pygmy. They shook hands and she got in the Land Rover and they drove off. The Professor was still visible, several hundred years across the meadow, gliding along slowly on his skis.

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Artist in Residence

2006-10-29T07:53:00.000-08:00

Pygmy Dyke legally changed her name from Sheneeka Brown the day she turned 21. She had been using it as a stage name since she was 15. She was a sophomore at Stuyvesant High then, focused on literature and the theatre, self-emancipated from a dysfunctional family, fronting a punk trio on the weekends it had gigs. The band was better than New York Dolls, who were beginning to make it, so why not them?

Her apartment was the sort that appear in parents nightmares where their teenagers run off to, a studio illegally carved out of a storefront on Avenue D. She kept nothing of value there, rarely spent the night. She had a succession of boyfriends, whose apartments were no better but at least there was company, someone to swat the roaches.

Sheneeka auditioned for an off off Broadway production of “Raisin In The Sun.” She didn’t get the part but the director, a well-known woman artist and playwright, took an interest in her welfare. When the director saw the Avenue D place she virtually insisted that Sheneeka move in with her, take the guest bedroom in her loft. Naturally there was gossip.

“That’s fucked up” was Sheneeka’s first reaction when her friends told her what people were saying. Then she thought “Go with it. Use it. If they think I’m a dyke so much the better.” The Dolls played on that and won. For that night’s gig she became Pygmy Dyke. Her family nickname had always been Pygmy. She was born at 7 months and just under 5 pounds, not good odds for Harlem Hospital in 1957. She was not much more than 5 pounds 4 months later when she finally went home. At age 13 she had reached her adult height of 5’8”.

She borrowed the drummer’s trousers while he was napping and cut out stencils of D,Y,K,E, which she sewed on the back of her denim jacket. There was a guy who sometimes came by Hilly’s wearing a bomber jacket with “SUICIDE” spelled out in metal studs on the back. She didn’t have the jacket or the studs so she worked with what she had.

It was at that gig that she met David Prendergast. He was sweet to her, took her to Max’s for dinner and listened to what she had to say. She knew David was kind of a famous artist, had one man shows and all. She had seen him hanging out, had noticed him (cute), was flattered enough by his attention to claim to be 19. David momentarily wondered what the point of that was. She went home with him and stayed four months, rather long for a relationship in 1972.

The breakup was amicable, also typical for the time. David helped her find a cheap loft off of Canal . They saw each other every week or two, occasionally wound up sleeping together. After a while the casual sex became something of a bore for both of them. Their friendship remained strong. While they were together David casually taught Pygmy how to sketch and paint. After they split he continued to encourage her development as an artist, helped her get a portfolio together and used his influence to get her admitted to Cooper Union. She had dropped out of Stuyvesant but her grades had been good. At age 16 she retired from the stage and rock and roll and moved on to study art at college.

The first year at Cooper was wonderful. She painted all the time and lived on adrenalin. There was no need to work. Cooper was tuition free. A city program gave her a stipend that covered the rent. Everything else got taken care of one way or another. People would invite her to join them at Max’s or Phoebe’s. Theatres like LaMama or Truck and Warehouse let her in for free. If the city got too stressful she went to Cooper’s country estate in New Jersey and painted landscapes.

It all unraveled the following year, when David moved Upstate. It wasn’t just David who was leaving town. Many other people were getting out, moved Upstate, or to Long Island, or to places like Venice (CA), Boulder, Vancouver, New Mexico. Some left the country. Hilly’s became CBGB’s and was filled with affected kids from the suburbs. St Adrian’s closed. Max’s and Phoebe’s were not the same. Gallery openings were boring. So was Cooper. She dropped out and got a waitress job at Fanelli’s. Most of the people she cared about, who were still in New York, hung out there. She continued to paint, and got into more than her fair share of shows, but her work went unnoticed and unsold. After nearly two years of failure she resumed her degree program at Cooper, more mature and more focused. She explored sculpture and ceramics, concentrated on the latter in her senior year and graduated with honors in 1979. More important to her ego, her work was favorably reviewed, and sold. How sweet that was, having failed to move the world to notice her as an actress, singer, or painter.

By 1979 there was no one left in New York City so she left too, selecting Alfred University from the six schools who offered fellowships for an MFA in ceramics. Pygmy was the same age as most of the other incoming students, whom she correctly assumed were far less worldly, and incorrectly assumed were far less accomplished. Everyone in her class was talented and worked hard. Most of them were whitebread, even the minority students, from small towns and suburbs, happy to watch it on TV rather than live, as Pygmy had, at the center of it.

Pygmy assimilated, started to read People Magazine and talk about what all the other kids talked about. She never talked about her freewheeling years in the city. She became a regular kid, attended all her classes, went to the Friday night beer blasts and got drunk like everyone else. Her work was still selling, if modestly, but she kept quiet about that, got just as excited as the others about their student shows in Corning, Buffalo, and Rochester. Indeed, when she looked objectively at what the others were doing she their work was more skillful and daring.

Corning Glass offered her a senior design position, $24000 a year. “You’re making your age!” her classmates marveled. In 1981 that was the standard for success. Along with that success came residence in Corning, New York. She plunged herself into her job to compensate for the isolation and loneliness. Within two years she was named as assistant vice president, reporting directly to the vice president of design. She had her own admin aide, a company car, and no shortage of jealous peers willing and able to sabotage her career. There was the inevitable buzz about affirmative action, started by one of her very few friends. She bought a house in the countryside, the better to be alone in, and adopted two puppies from the animal shelter.

By March of 1987 Pygmy was seeing her therapist twice a week and getting nothing out of it. She had put on weight but had stopped drinking and taking pills. She was still an assistant vice president but now she was starting to think it was affirmative action. Her work didn’t matter and it didn’t sell, and she didn’t much care. Then the flyer for the SUNY Chenango Arts Festival came in the mail, with some scrawl on the side – “Hope you can make it. David”

She called in sick, packed a bag and the dogs, and drove west of 17, thinking the flyer said SUNY Chautaqua. People in Jamestown didn’t know where Chenango was either. What should have been a two hour trip wound up taking eight, with several more false directions. “Why didn’t you just get a map?” David asked. “Why?” Pygymy responded.

David saw right off that Pygmy needed support, and that made him a bit nervous. He was in a relationship, not living with the woman, he didn’t do that anymore, nor casually, but it was serious. His own life was more or less coming together after some emotionally bleak years. He had sent the flyer without knowing what Pygmy was up to. They had been out of touch for years. He was reaching out, wanting to reconnect with people he care about now that things were stable for him.

Pygmy thought that David owed her. Back when they were together it was she who supported him, emotionally. His career was stagnant then. On the surface he had everything – looks, charm, smarts, money, talent, fame, one-man shows, invited to A-list art world dinner parties. Behind his back people were saying he was derivative, that he had not lived up to the extraordinary promise he had shown fresh out of school. He heard. He saw where things were heading and didn’t know what to do. Pygmy was the only good thing in his life in 1972.

OK, she owed him too. He introduced her to the art world, taught her, gotten her started on the long road to Cooper, Alfred, Corning, and now his doorstep. Where was she now? On the verge of getting fired unless she quit first, 30 years old, just like David in 1972.

OK, they owed each other and neither of them owed the other.

All that transpired on David’s doorstep, in the matter of a few seconds.

“Come in” said David. Pygmy obeyed. Her dogs were already inside, going through the canine protocol with David’s.

Pygmy resigned from Corning the next day, put her house on the market. There were no faculty openings at the time. It would be a year before anything suitable opened up. Pygmy had more than ample savings to live on in the meantime. She bought a gorgeous beat up Victorian with a widow’s walk, built c1880, on the edge of the village, right on the river, on over an acre of land. David knew a mason, helped her build a kiln in the backyard. She spent the year fixing up the house, doing ceramics, painting in the widow’s walk. It wasn’t the first time in her life she felt free.

The following year David managed to get her on the SUNY payroll as an artist in residence and codirector of the SUNY Chenango Arts Festival. The pay was less than a third of her salary at Corning but it was more than enough to live on. She stopped selling her work.

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The Committee

2006-10-27T11:11:00.000-07:00

“Not bad” David thought as he stepped out of Jane’s place and into the cold. Now he could tell people he’d eaten woodchuck. He felt comfortable despite the temperature, whatever it was. The sky was clear and brilliant blue. He stood on the front porch steps and stared at the big sycamore. He was tempted to take off his gloves and sketch it right then. Its trunk had to be seven feet at the base. About ten feet off the ground the trunk forked into twin three foot thick trunks which quickly disappeared into a riot of snow laden branches and boughs.

David trudged through hip deep snow to stand by the syacmore, looked straight up into the tangle of tree and snow. He searched for the slightest trace of blue sky. Possibly there were bits of it visible but the glare of the snow made it painful to focus on the canopy.

He went back to his Range Rover and started it up, sat and surveyed the farm while the engine warmed. He looked back at the sycamore and noticed a bird, some sort of hawk or falcon, perched on the lowest bough. The bird had white superciliary lines and beautiful tail banding – alternating half inches of battleship gray and brown. David wondered what sort of hawk it was, made a mental note to look it up, the sort of mental note he made several times a day and almost always forgot about.

The forecast said the thaw was coming. After over seven weeks of subzero, including today, the temperature was going to rise to the mid-40’s by tomorrow afternoon. The jet stream was retreating and warmer air was moving up from the south, simple as that. Sure worked for him, since the Arts Festival was just four days off. The cold weather was not the problem, it was a matter of clearing the roads. Some streets in town had been snowed under for months, parked cars completely buried in drifts up to ten feet high. Snowplows just made those streets worse, throwing ice, gravel, and slush on top of the drifts, carving out an opening barely one car wide to drive through.

The road into town was much better but it took a confident driver to handle the hilly stretches. After so many years of the same route the winter conditions didn’t faze David, not with the Range Rover. However he was antsy about deer. Most years there were close calls, four times more than close. His first winter there a buck ran in front of his BMW. He could still picture it, kind of like a video game. One moment there were just the woods and the snow, the next the deer bounded out of nowhere, then the sound of the impact. The deer looked peaceful in midair, still traveling in the same direction. David stopped the car, walked back, but the creature was dead. He threw up. He cried for a moment. When he told people about it he usually left that part out.

About a mile south of Susquehanna was a drumlin that divided the town from the unspoiled countryside. David reached the top of the drumlin and took in the view of the town and river valley below him. There were no vehicles in the rear view mirror so he coasted along the level hilltop and down the mile long incline into the bottomland along DeRuyter Creek. He crossed the creek and took the shortcut around the village to campus. He was 40 minutes late to the steering committee meeting. With any luck it would be over before he got there.

Everything that mattered had already been taken care of. Pygmy Dyke saw to that. For the last five years Pygmy had been in charge. David let her run the meetings and make the decisions. David only made suggestions if he was asked, took every pain not to undercut Pygmy’s authority. He regarded her as his protégé.

Pygmy saw things rather differently, regarded David as a has been and herself as a self-made woman. David had sought her out and convinced her to join the faculty. She found him easy enough to work with but that was it. Not her style, certainly not her type. They shared an enthusiasm for the annual arts festival, supported each other to survive the dreadful committee meetings.

Besides David and Pygmy the steering committee included three local business people with pretensions of caring for art and culture. They only did it so they could brag to their friends. Paul Giardino was a real estate developer who fancied that he was one of the richest men in Upstate New York, perhaps even the richest. Cornelia Cabot Holmes was in the business of spending the vast fortune she inherited. As hard as she worked at that it managed to appreciate at a faster rate. Her idea of real estate development was to zone as much of it forever wild as she could. Paul and Cornelia had been at war from the moment they met, each spending wildly to promote their respective agendas and thwart the other’s. Paul Giardino might be the richest man in Upstate but Cornelia Cabot Holmes was richer.

Veronica Verploenck rounded out the five on that year’s committee. Veronica was the only townie on the committee, perhaps the only townie willing to serve on it. Hoot Davies had served on it the previous year. That was one of the very few points that David insisted on with Pygmy – there had to be someone from Suquehanna on the committee. That was fine with Pygmy. They couldn’t be more clueless than Paul or Cornelia.

David pulled into his assigned parking spot. There was no way to tell where the parking spots were since the signs were all buried in snow but his was right next to the front door of the Art School. He went to his office and checked his mail and messages before heading to the meeting room. He knocked on the meeting room door before entering. Pygmy was at the marker board, going through some talking points. David motioned to her to continue and took a seat, nodded hello at the others.

He sat there for an hour, paying no attention to the meeting. He doodled woodchucks on a paper pad and imagined perspectives of the sycamore tree in the different seasons. When the meeting adjourned he shook hands with the others and begged off from joining them for lunch. Indeed there was a lot of business for him to attend to.

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A Brief History of Susquehanna, New York

2006-10-23T17:43:00.000-07:00

Susquehanna (pop 3450) is the 3rd largest town in Chenango County after Norwich and Sherburne. It is located at the southern end of the Susquehanna Hills, where its namesake river divides the Hills from the Appalachians. It is just like any other small Applachian town. The people are friendly, hard working, down to earth. The town is not much different than any other small Appalachian coal mining town between Harding County, Kentucky and Parrsboro, Nova Scotia, except that 10,000 years ago the glaciers stripmined all the coal and shoved it down into Pennsylvania.

In 1878 the Swedish historian Lars Skyldar wrote “The first settlement of Susquehanna was as a trading post in the late 17th or early 18th century. The post was situated on top on the drumlin just to the west of the present day village. Archaelogical excavations suggest the post occupied one hectare (2.5 acres), and consisted of six or seven log cabins surrounded by a stockade fence. There is also substantial archaelogical evidence of a tannery operating on the banks of the Susquehanna roughly 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) away from the fortified area. The trading post was overrun by marauding Algonguins during the French and Indian War, with only one known survivor – Everett Howell.”1

Ephraim Squier took issue with Skyldar’s conclusion, insisting that the Algonquins were repulsed by the Oneidas some 50 miles north of Susquehanna. Writing in the Volume 15 of the “Smithsonian Institution Contributions to Knowledge”2, Squier agreed that the settlement was abandoned and that there was a survivor named Everett Howell, who turned up at the Hudson Bay’s office in Baltimore in 1762. Squier references Hudson Bay company documents, since lost, which refer to the “Upper Susquehanna Post.”

Professor Donald Loomis of the SUNY Chenango campus disagrees with both. According to Loomis, archeological analysis of artifacts recently excavated from the site indicates continuous occupation up until the establishment of the town of Susquehanna in 1806. The settlement was already known by that name. Loomis cites several documents concerning the creation of the “Susquehanna Tract” by Governor George Clinton in 1785, especially a Clinton affadavit: “Messrs. G. Clinton and G. Washington conferr a Tract of Land, in and about the Village of Susquahanna…”4

The village of Susquehanna claims to 1788 as an origin since that was the year that the first village council was formed and a mayor elected. Loomis estimates the village population of 80 in 1806, and the town’s about 200. By 1850 the village population was 300 and the town’s over 800. Until the 1930’s the economy was primarily based on agriculture and millworks, and even today agriculture remains the largest industry in the area. The 2000 census lists a village population of 631 and a town population of 3450, including 315 in the hamlet of North Susquehanna.

1 “Explorations and Settlements of the New World” by Lars Skyldar, 1878, Kungliga Biblioteket, Stochholm, Sweden
2 “Pre-Revolutionary Settlements of the Susquehanna Valley”, Smithsonian Institution Contributions to Knowledge, vol 15, pp 187-109, 1881, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C.
3 “On The Settlement Of Southern Chenango County”,New York History, vol 72, pp 183-208, 1991, New York State Historical Society, Albany, NY
4 ibid p189

In 1829 the Methodist Church founded the Susquehanna Seminary across the river from the village, rather unwisely situated in the flood plain of the river. After 2 years the seminary relocated to higher ground a half mile to the north. The seminary closed in 1864 and resumed operation as the Chenango County Academy of Machinery and Agriculture in 1871, the first technical school in New York State. It was renamed the Chenango College of Agriculture (CCA) in 1894. In 1952 it became part of the State University of New York (SUNY), and has since been known as SUNY Chenango. Its enrollment of 500 made it the smallest of the SUNY’s. Construction of the “New Campus” during the 1960’s tripled the enrollment, and the emphasis of the school shifted towards liberal arts.

With the decline of family farms in the region came a dropoff in the enrollment in agriculture programs from 450 in 1956 to 130 by 1971. In 1972 the agriculture program was consolidated into the program at SUNY Cobleskill and the Chenango College of Agriculture was formally closed in 1974. In 1978 the former agriculture campus was reopened as the College of Visual Arts (COVA). David Prendergast, the noted pop and conceptual artist, was the driving force behind COVA’s creation, and is in his 23rd year as Dean.

Although the enrollment in COVA is only 225 students it is internationally recognized as an art school. Roughly one third of its students are international, representing 40 countries. Only 70 students are admitted each year, from an applicant pool of over 3000. The school’s annual “Chenango Arts Festival” is a showcase for works by students, alumni, and faculty. The week-long festival also has a full schedule of talks, panel discussions, informal meetings, etc. The festival has become for art what Cannes is for film, an imperative for dealers, critics, journalists, and curators. Held during Spring Break, attendance is capped at 2000 due to facility and housing limitations. Like the student body, attendees are roughly one third international.

The success of SUNY Chenango and COVA in particular has revitalized the southeastern quadrant of Chenango County. The school is now the major employer in the area. SUNY Chenango had an enrollment of 1700 in 1999, with some 400 faculty and staff. There are plans to expand SUNY Chenango over the next 10 years, adding another college, the Susquehanna College of Criminal Justice. The expansion plans also include graduate studies at COVA and additional facilities for liberal arts. By 2010 enrollment is projected to be 3000 at SUNY Chenango, with 700 faculty and staff.

Given the proximity of the College of Criminal Justice, New York State Department of Corrections hopes to locate a minimum security correctional facility in the nearby town of Coventry. There are also several proposed real estate developments under review by the town council. Giardino Development has plans to build an outlet mall by the Susquehanna exit of Interstate 88. Paul Giardino, the owner of Giardino Development, also has plans for a baseball theme park on the other side of I-88. A development of quite a different character is being championed by Cornelia Cabot Holmes, a Texan heiress with a passionate interest in the arts and Tibetan Buddhism. Ms. Cabot Holmes envisions a hilltop sanctuary called “New Lhasa” in the same vicinity as Mr Giardino’s developments. The two have been at loggerheads concerning the matter.

Whichever one prevails, the future appears bright for Susquehanna, New York. New York State economists conservatively estimate 1000 new jobs for the area by 2010.
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Jane's Easy Apple Fritters

2006-10-19T10:28:00.000-07:00

This is a great one when you have to make a dessert for unexpected company because it only takes 10 minutes and you probably have everything around. Apple fritters are easy to make but it still comes out different for everyone. First thing is the ingredients. I never use anything but unsalted butter and unbleached, unbromated flour. It's just no good to bake with anything else. The apple should be tart, a little sweet, and with lots of flavor.
1/2 cup milk
1 stick unsalted butter, melted
2 eggs
2 cups unbleached, unbromated flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
teaspoon salt
2 cups cortland apple, diced
1/4 cup pulverized walnuts or hickory nuts

If you can't find cortland apples in your supermarket use empires. We have hickory trees on our land so we use them but walnuts taste the same. The nuts make the fritters crunchy, and balance nicely with the tartness.

First thing is add the salt and baking powder to the flour and whisk it.

I always do the mixing in the same order - beat the eggs, pour in the milk and butter, whisk it until it's all blended, then the apples and the nuts, stir them around too until it's all even. The flour is the last thing. Pour that in gradually and keep stirring. You might not need all 2 cups, or you might want more. It should be pretty mushy but not too mushy.

Then heat up oil in a pan or a fryer and spoon it in in big spoonfuls. It only takes a couple of minutes. When it's golden brown it's done. Like I said it's a good recipe for when you have unexpected company. If you don't have the nuts you can make it without. This recipe will make enough for at least 8 people.
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Grand Opening

2006-10-18T19:41:00.000-07:00

The harsh weather was fine by Donald Loomis, professor emeritus of history at SUNY Chenango. The more snow the more he could cross country ski the 10 miles form home to his campus office. Going in was level to downhill and took under an hour without effort. Coming home there were a couple of tiring climbs. He usually took a break after these, enjoyed the view. Most days he took his Nikon with him in case he spotted something interesting. He had a special pouch for it so it wouldn’t freeze up.

Professor, as the locals called him, was following his usual route along the crest on the esker which forms the eastern edge of Loomis Hollow. An overnight snow had left an inch of fresh powder on top of the hard pack, perfect for ski running. He picked up the pace accordingly, elongating his diagonal stride, stretching well forward to plant the pole and pushing off with vigor. It was barely 7am, he could stay out if he wished.

It had been 12 years since Professor Loomis had given a class or had been the advisor to a doctoral candidate, however he still kept the same office hours as ever – Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday 11-12:30. He had been keeping those hours for 39 years. He always kept the door closed. He sat at his desk until someone knocked, hardly moving at all, hands folded on the ink blotter, elbows resting just on the edge of the desk, back straight, shoulders square. He used the time to think about his research, just think. He didn’t like to read or write in his office.

There had been several attempts to get him to give up his office, rather weak attempts since Loomis was a campus celebrity, an affable eccentric. One department chair told him point blank that he had to cede his office to a visiting professor. In response, Loomis locked himself in a stall in the men’s room and proclaimed that he was on a hunger strike. The student newspaper printed a sympathetic article. Loomis opened the door so that they could get a suitable photo on him on the throne.

That edition of the Chenanigan came to the attention of the New York State Historical Society, who considered Loomis to be a state, if not national, treasure, internationally acknowledged to be the ultimate authority on the history of the Delaware and Hudson Canal. The society exercised its influence with SUNY administration in Albany. The department chair was subsequently censured by the SUNY Chenango faculty council for “insensitive administration” and backed off of his directive. Tight as office space was on campus, no one since had bothered Loomis.

Professor was 82 and old fashioned but his equipment was up to date, a fire engine red goretex shell with skull cap, lightweight insulated longjohns, wraparound yellow plastic goggles, basically the same kit that Olympic racers wore. If it weren’t for the white handlebar mustache he might have been taken for one, 6’6’ and long legged, very nearly as lean now as he was at 20.
This morning he was not in a good mood. He had stumbled upon a brood of ring-necked pheasant, a hen with about a dozen juveniles nearly her size, crossing the trail single-file about 50 feet ahead. He was focusing the Nikon when a pair of snowmobiles came roaring into the hollow from Fremerg’s Trail. It would have been one for his birding scrapbook.

“Assholes” he shouted waving his fist, nearly dropping the camera. The word echoed several times but the snowmobilers heard nothing, had not noticed him at all. Professor looked back to where the pheasant had been. There was no trace of them. He wondered what they ate when it was so cold and the snowcover so deep. He’d have to go online after office hours, in the library, an find out.

He put the camera away, slipped his gloves back on and picked up the poles. Assholes. He quick stepped back into a running pace and sprinted all out for the flat quarter mile stretch in front of him. Then the esker turned to the west and the trail made a half mile long descent into the northern end of the hollow. The incline only average one degree over that stretch but Professor had been over it literally thousands of times. He knew exactly where and how to kick for maximum velocity, when to tuck, how to point the skis. He got his speed up to about 20mph and coasted, feeling the wind against his cheeks. For him it was no trickier than walking down a flight of stairs.

As he coasted he saw the Thom farm come into view. There was something different about it. His earliest memories of the farm were from the 1920’s, when Jane’s grandfather and his brothers worked some 2,000 acres of fields. The Thom farm and the Verploenck farm were the pride of Chenango County back then. He could remember the farm in winter from when he started to ski, in the early 30’s. Over the years it had not changed much but today something was different.

When he came out into the flat by the side of the road he saw the sign:
THOM’S
BREAKFAST
6-10
7 days
The sign looked professionally done. Ray Tate had spent a few hours getting it right. He cut a sheet of exterior plywood down to 6x2, painted it white, then very carefully sprayed black paint over a stencil. He planted temporary posts in the frozen ground and attached the sign. After the thaw he’d redo that part. He wanted to add “Jane Thom, proprietor” but Jane didn’t want it to be about her so much as the family. Unlike Veronica she was not going to forget her roots.

Professor popped the bindings of his skis, stepped out of them and walked across the road to investigate. There was an 8x11 piece of paper face down on the ground by the big sign. He reached down and picked it up. It read “GRAND OPENING!.” Evidently it had been scotch taped to the sign and fallen off.

He continued to the house, where another 8x11 had been scotch taped to the inside door. It just read “KNOCK.” Professor did and Ray, who had been watching from the window immediately opened it. Ray had on a semblance of a waiter’s outfit – whitish shirt and black trousers, a black bola tie adding a western touch. Professor had never seen Ray so clean.

“Hello, Ray” said Donald Loomis, smiling warmly, stepping past him to admire the redecorated dining room. Ray stood tongue tied. The last time the professor had spoken to him was after a boyhood incident when he and Skid had pelted the Professor’s car with snowballs. The professor visited Ray’s house that evening, spoke briefly with Ray’s father, used a lot of unfamiliar words. Then the Professor tousled Ray’s hair, smiled at him, and left. Ray wasn’t sure what to make of it but he left the Professor alone after that. They’d honk and wave in passing but they had never had occasion to speak. Now here the Professor was, bigger ‘n shit so to speak, saying hello to him like he was still 8 years old.

The professor walked around the room, looking over the photographs and paintings on the walls. It had been quite some years since he had been to the Thom’s place. Maybe it was at Jane’s wedding reception, which he remembered was Saturday after Johnson was elected (Professor voted for Goldwater). The Professor’s wife was Jane’s first cousin once removed. After their divorce the Professor correctly assumed that he was unwelcome, but no hard feelings on either side. Of all the people in the photographs Jane and her brother were the only ones still alive. Professor took his time at each photo, identifying the people and places in them.

Ray stood still, watched the Professor. Jane heard the wideplank pine floors creaking as Donald Loomis shuffled along the wall, came out of the kitchen to see what was going on.

“Donald! You’re our very first customer – of course I’m not going to charge you.” Jane nearly called him Uncle Donald. Jane was one of the very few on a first name basis with the Professor. Even her brother called Professor. “Ray, show the professor to a table.” She noticed the professor had dripped a lot of snow walking around the room. “And hang the professor’s coat on the coat rack.”

Donald Loomis put up his hands in mock submission. He unzipped his goretex jacket, removed it, and handed it to Ray. “What is this all about, Jane?” Ray all but took the Professor by the elbow to guide him to the table he had chosen, in the corner of the room to the right of the fireplace. Professor eased into his seat. “What is this about, Jane?” he repeated, his tone dismayed. The photographs and paintings had put him in a nostalgic frame of mind, and more sensitive to the troubling notion that the world as he loved it was further away, the Thom farm now a restaurant.

Jane picked up on his mood. “Just a little business on the side, Donald.”

Donald Loomis didn’t know how to interpret that. “You’re not going to sell the place, are you?” He imagined someone moving down from Syracuse or Albany, worse yet up from New York City, maybe even that son of a bitch developer Giardino.

“If the price was right, who knows. You know how it is to farm nowadays. But I’m not expecting to. You just don’t worry about that and tell Ray what you’d like for breakfast.”
Jane walked back into the kitchen.

Ray stood waiting for the Professor’s order. Professor had already had his breakfast but didn’t wish to disappoint Jane so he ordered scrambled eggs, toast, and coffee. Ray went into the kitchen and gave Jane the order. Jane poured out the coffee, put it on a tray with some cream and sugar, gave it to Ray, telling him en passant to mop up the wet spots.

Ray picked up the tray by the edge with his left, slipped his right hand underneath it and hoisted it over his shoulder like a Parisian waiter, strode out into the dining room with a full forty, his first – something. His third stride caught a nail that the floor sander had worked loose, causing Ray to lose his balance and fall to his left, arm still in the air, keeping the tray level enough to keep the cream and sugar from spilling, but the coffee cup came toppling forward out of the saucer, over the edge and down on the floor.

“Didn’t break nothing.” Ray exulted, looking up at the professor, tray still poised. He got up and set the cream and sugar on the Professor’s table. “I’ll get you another coffee.”

Jane came out to see what the commotion was and redirected Ray to the mop and bucket, served the coffee while Ray cleaned. She went back to the kitchen to fix the eggs. Ray mopped up the floor and took a rag to finish drying it up. He wash his hands and went over to the Professor’s table, leaned palms down on it and looked the Professor in the eye and smiled. “How is everything so far?” He had practiced that over and over last night to get the tone just the right kind of friendly, and so that he didn’t feel phony when he smiled, which he did anyway.

“Fine, Ray, fine” said Professor, having indeed nothing to complain about.

Jane dinged the bell but Ray had forgotten about that semaphor. She let 15 seconds pass and dinged again, then after another 15 seconds yelled through the kitchen door for Ray to come get the professor’s order.

“Your order will be right up” chirped Ray, thinking ‘2 for 2’ and he strode off to fetch the order. He returned immediately, set out a large plate with 3 scrambled eggs, two slices of toast, and 2 rashers of woodchuck bacon. Professor thanked Ray and tried a small forkful of egg. They were worth the wait. The hens had been laying that winter, thanks to Jose. Jane couldn’t figure out what he was doing differently. The professor’s scramble had been laid that morning. Jane had made a quick trip to the coop while the professor had his coffee.

Ray stood by the table and watched the professor eat, uncertain of what else to do. The professor kept his head bowed so that he wouldn’t have to look at Ray. Jane came back out and motioned Ray away. The professor checked his watch and decided to stay a bit longer. He got some reading material out of his backpack, set it so that he could read while he worked at his food. He managed most of his eggs but left most of the bacon. Not that he had a problem with woodchuck. He had already had breakfast. He did not like to overeat. He felt pleasantly stuffed, still able to ski at a good pace the rest of the way to campus.

Professor’s attention returned to the dining room itself. There were five tables for four, all the same, butcher block pine with a golden maple stain, three feet square. The chairs were maple with the same stain, broad and sturdy with spoked backs. The room was about 20 by 15, large enough for twice as many tables. Professor pondered table arrangements for a few moments, until Ray came and offered more coffee. Professor hesitated, then accepted. He looked around at the photographs and paintings. One large portrait caught his eye, a young woman who had unmistakably Thom traits – dark hair, wide set hazel eyes, high cheekbones, squarish jaw with a slight dimple.

The woman wore dark clothing, sat on an Eastlake rocker in a dark room. Her face was bright and vivacious. The Professor guessed from the outfit, hairstyle, and furniture that the portrait was done in the 1850’s, and estimated the woman to be in her thirties. He knew the Thom family tree going back 200 years. He tried to remember the names of the females born between 1820 and 1830, came up empty. He would have to look in his files after office hours. He had genealogical records on all the families who had settled Chenango and Delaware counties in the 50 years after the revolution.

Ray came out and added a log to the fire, offered more coffee, which was declined.

Professor looked at his watch again, just past 9am. He decided to stay until 9:30. Maybe the name would come to him. He could ask Jane, but no fun in that. He still had a half cup of coffee to nurse. He went back to his reading. The log in the fireplace hissed and spit. The air became very slightly, pleasingly smoky. The snow was picking up outside, the wind echoing into the chimney.

The Thom farm was also on the route that David Prendergast drove to campus. His place was a good five miles south, down on Route 369, about a mile north of US 7. He was on his way in to the monthly art department meeting when he noticed the sign. David had been living there since 1977 and not much had changed, same farms and only a couple of new homes. Indeed there were no commercial or industrial buildings until much closer to Susquehanna, no billboards at all, just country roads, which was what David wanted.

David slowed to read the sign then stopped by the driveway, debating whether or not to go in. He had never stopped in at any of the farms. There was one that sold honey, but he didn’t care for honey. There had to be 20 farms along the 15 mile route he drove. He had sketched and painted all of them. He particularly liked the massive catalpa tree in the front yard of the Thom place, 7 feet in diameter and at least 70 feet tall. He had painted several perspectives of it and the farm. Once when he had his easel set up on the shoulder of the road out it front, Jane and Jose had come out and admired his brushwork. That was one of his favorites from his Chenango Landscapes show, now in the permanent collection of a museum in Osaka.
David pulled into the driveway and parked a couple of feet from the catalpa. There were no other cars nor any evidence of tire tracks, no indication of where or how to park. The wind was blowing steadily from the west at about 10 miles an hour. Another couple of inches overnight and it was still falling. The weather was still stuck in the deep freeze, about 0, probably below. That was cool in January and February but now, after forty something days of it, it was getting tiresome, and the Arts Festival was coming up.

David entered the dining room and stomped the snow off his boots, stuffed his hat and gloves into the pockets of his down jacket and hung it up. Ray showed him to the table next to the Professor, on the other side of the fireplace. Donald Loomis looked up and nodded hello without much of a smile. He had never met David but something about him was annoying. Professor knew his reputation – diva, narcissist, egocentric, eccentric, none of these bad qualities in Professors estimation, and, unfortunately, the darling of the administration, which was a horse of another color.

Before David joined the faculty SUNY Chenango had been an agricultural school with roots in the CCC days. Donald Loomis joined the faculty in 1952 when it was still known as Susquehanna A&M. Over the 1970’s he witnessed many disagreeable changes in the school. Too many old friends and colleagues were pushed into retirement or forced to take jobs at other schools, making room for upstarts like David with fanciful artsy programs catering to brats from Long Island and New York City.

David’s vision was to create something like Black Mountain College. He pitched the idea to the SUNY Chancellor at a dinner party in 1972. The Chancellor was well known collector and receptive to the idea but cautioned David that he was not, despite popular opinion, a dictator. David pestered the Chancellor about it for two years. The Chancellor didn’t think it would work, but had an enrollment problem at SUNY Chenango to fix. He closed down the agriculture department at Chenango in June of 1975, transferred its faculty and staff to Cobleskill. In July of 1977 renovations of the former agriculture school campus were completed and in September Susquehanna Hills Academy held its first classes.

Donald Loomis glared at David, thinking of those terrible years. David took pains to seem unaware. Ray came over with coffee, asked him what he’d like for breakfast. David sipped it, relieved to have a focal point in the opposite direction from Donald Loomis. David certainly knew all about “The Relic”, and had a pretty good idea why he was glaring at him.

“Can I see the menu?”

“We don’t have a menu, but Jane can make whatever you want, eggs, pancakes, waffle.”

David ordered the scrambled eggs and toast.

“Really? That’s the same as Professor ordered.”

David couldn’t help but follow Ray’s eyes and look at the Professor, who had resumed reading. It was 9:33 but he wasn’t leaving just yet. David pondered for a second and raised his hand to catch Ray “and some bacon, too.”

Ray thanked him and went in the kitchen, came right back out.
“We’re out of regular bacon. Got woodchuck bacon though.”

“Woodchuck bacon!”

“It’s good, not quite as soft but just as tasty, especially Jane’s. She’ll make it real crisp if you like.”

“OK, I guess” said David. If it was gross he’d just leave it.

Ray went off to the kitchen. While he was there Donald Loomis slipped into his goretex jacket and left. He crossed the road to his skis, stepped into the bindings and started off to school. In his wake David detected a fart. He got up and stood by the fire to escape it, warmed his hands.

Jane came out of the kitchen to personally deliver the breakfast to the artist guy. She was ashamed that after more than 20 years she didn’t know his name, had barely spoken with him. She had seen him out painting or sketching often enough. All she had to do was just strike up a conversation but she never did, unless he was by her place. He lived up a long, long driveway on a hill down towards Route 7, never mowed his lawn, 300 yards of weeds and wildflowers all the way down the driveway to the road. He had two houses, not one. Everyone wondered what he needed two houses for.

“Howdy” Jane said, putting the food in front of him. “Jane Thom”

David stood up, extended his hand. “David Prendergast. Glad to finally meet you.”

Jane beamed at him, feeling foolish, like she was at a high school dance or something. David was older than she thought, maybe older than her 50, but he was cute, and made her feel relaxed, which kind of made her nervous.

“Your food is going to get cold” she said to fend off the urge to just stand there and flirt with him.

David smiled and sat back down, cut off a piece of bacon and some egg and gracefully shoveled it into his mouth.

“So tell me about woodchuck bacon.”

“What do you mean?” Jane’s voice trailed off into a giggle. She had the sensation of watching herself make a fool of herself.

“I mean tell me how you make woodchuck bacon. Do you buy it at a store or what?”

“Oh no! That’s from chucks I shot last September. Some of them I made stew with and some I made some bacon.”

“You hunt woodchuck?”
“Uh uh. They just raid my garden, especially the tomatoes. Only way to get rid of them is to shoot them.”

David took another bite. There really wasn’t much difference. The chuck bacon had an oily afteraste.

“It’s good” he pronounced. Jane nodded her approval and retreated back to the kitchen before she did something else foolish. She told Ray to collect $2.50 from David when he was all done.

David left at 10:15, after his third coffee. Ray took the knock sign off the front door and replaced it with a sign reading “CLOSED.” He’d fix up better signs for tomorrow. Their first day of operation was in the books. Two customers. Gross revenue $2.50.

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Jane Thom's E-Z recipe for venison meatballs

2006-10-18T11:01:00.000-07:00

Jane got this recipe from a Hasidic butcher down in Sullivan County, The slaughterhouse up by New Berlin had been cheating her, taking some of the choice loin that's used for meatballs. The only change Jane made was to use soy sauce and hot sauce instead of horseradish.

1 pound venison loin
1 or so cups breadcrumbs
2 egg yolks (a little white's okay)
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 medium onion, cut into rings and sweated
2 tablespoons coarse salt
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon hot sauce
1 teaspoon finely ground lemon zest
a 5x9 inch baking ban

Cut the venison into inch wide strips, about 1/4 inch thick. Lay the strips in the baking pan and brush them with the lemon juice, turn the strips over and brush the other side.

In a separate bowl stir the vinegar, hot sauce, soy sauce, and lemon zest. Pour the mixture over the venison. Sprinkle the salt evenly over the loins, then smother the loins with the onion rings. Cover the pan with wax paper and refrigerate for at least 4 hours, better yet overnight.

Put everything in a grinder or food processor or what have you and mince the whole business up. If you use a cheap blender be careful scraping the meat off the blades. Transfer the minced meat to a bowl and mix in the egg yolks. Get that mixed well before adding the breadcrumbs. Keep adding the breadcrumbs until the meat is a little thicker than mashed potatoes. The secret to venison meatballs is not to get them too bready.

Make the meatballs about the size of golf balls so they cook evenly. If you make them too big they won't cook in the middle unless you overcook them on the outside. Then they're no good. Fry in oil for about 2 minutes on high heat. Don't be afaid if the pan sizzles.
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Partners

2006-10-17T14:47:00.000-07:00

Jane Thom waited until 9:30 for Ray Tate to show up. Ray’s phone was turned off so there was no way of getting a hold of him except to drive the 8 miles to his place. He was supposed to insulate the basement ceiling underneath the dining room and cover it with sheetrock. She was nearly done painting the dining room. It had taken just two weeks to doll the place up. She could open her Breakfast in a couple of days with or without the insulation. Insulation would make the room a little warmer.

Jane decided to go get Ray. She listened to the news station while the engine warmed. They announced a winter weather emerency. That wasn’t news. The temperature had been below zero every day for four weeks, the highs sometimes below 10. Another storm had rolled in from the west the night before, dumping 10 more inches of snow. The tail end of the storm was lingering over Central New York. Winds were gusting between 10 and 20 miles an hour, creating whiteout conditions.

The announcement meant that only emergency travel was permitted. Jane wondered what kind of fine there was for being out. It wasn’t really an emergency for her to get the basement finished up. Then again she had 4-wheel drive and knew the roads to the Tate place well enough. She wasn’t likely to run into any state troopers and they all knew she was the sheriff’s sister. Still, whiteout made her ansty. Sometimes you couldn’t see where the road was, if you could see anything at all except a white cloud. If she ran into a ditch she could be stuck there for hours.

She finally decided it wasn’t worth it, went back to painting. Not a minute later Ray knocked on the door.

“Hi, Ray. How the hell did you get here?”

“Skid drove me.”

“Skid’s crazy.”

“Always was, but he’s running the big plow for the county on Route 88. There’s nothing else out there, tell you that. We scraped the road from Harpursville to Sydney and back the other way.” Ray had brought some of his own gear, a saw and an adjustable contraption he made out of PVC to hold the sheetrock in place. He stepped into the mudroom and stomped the snow off his boots, then stepped out of them and into a pair of work shoes.

Jane followed Ray into the basement. Ray looked over the ceiling, then took stock of the materials Jane had gotten – R30 was overkill, he thought, R19 would have done, and there would be at least one full 8x4 of sheetrock left over.

“So you’re going to open a bed and breakfast?” Ray had a habit of hedging between question and assertion.

“Just a breakfast. Not the bed part.”

Ray nodded approvingly. He didn’t know what Jane meant but didn’t want to let on.
“So what are you going to serve, bacon and eggs?”

“Yep” Jane had not given much thought to the menu and was off balance. She’d serve whatever people wanted, as long as she had it. Everyone knew how good a cook she was.

Ray hoisted a full sheet into place and balanced it on top of his contraption, made it look like it didn’t take much strength. He turned a cranklike thing to lock the sheetrock into place. Jane left him to his work and went back upstairs to hers.

“Bacon and eggs” he echoed. He was trying to find the right words to ask Jane what he had been up at 4am thinking about – could he get in on the deal? He had 3,000 in the bank now. If he spent it he’d be right back where he was, nowhere. There wasn’t a lot of opportunity for a young man in Chenango County. Friends of his had moved out of the area, to Syracuse, Albany, or down south. He had no desire to live in Syracuse or Albany, had never been to the south.

Jane called Ray up for lunch at 1pm. She had fixed venison meatballs with mashed potatoes and gravy, and a salad of escarole fresh from the greenhouse. The deer she had shot on her property in early December. It had been feeding regularly in the cornfield so it was as tender as farm raised venison, better since it was free ranging. The potatoes were some weird very dark purple variety that Jose had grown. Jose had some with him when he arrived five years before. No one had ever seen potatoes like that. Sweet enough that they didn’t need butter but Ray put some on anyway.

Ray was no judge of cooking but it seemed to him Jane was as good as it got. He had eaten a lot of venison in his 23 years. His mother’s was always good but nothing like this.

Ray filled up on seconds and had no room for the apple fritters, wrapped a couple in a napkin and put them in his pocket. He sipped his coffee while Jane nibbled on a fritter and decided it was a good a time as any to ask.

“I’d like to invest in your Breakfast.”

“What do you mean?”

“I have the money from the barn sale, 2 or 3 thousand. I could be partners with you.”

“Ain’t that your mother’s money too?”

“Just some of it. Maybe she’ll be in on it too.”

“How is that going to work, being partners in the business.”
“I’ll help you in the kitchen and wait tables, too, collect the checks. You know I’m good with numbers. We split the profits, uh, say 60-40, 60 for you. I’ll put up 2,000 and not charge you for my labor, including what I’m doing now.”

“Let me sleep on it, Ray.” Jane smiled to reassure him. She did have to think about it, maybe talk to her brother about it.

After lunch Ray bounded downstairs to finish the basement work. Jane went back to her painting. She went through a checklist:
Did she get along with Ray? Well enough.
Could she trust him? She thought so.
Would he be reliable? That might be a problem.
Did she need his help? Good question.
Did she need the 2,000? Another good question.

All afternoon Jane could hear Ray through the floorboards, insulation or no insulation. He sure was in high spirits, constantly whistling, humming, or singing. He finished up before 5pm, came upstairs with a big smile, expecting nothing less than a yes.

“Well?”

“I’m going to sleep on it.”

“What do you have to lose. If it doesn’t work out you won’t owe me anything, not even the 2,000.”

“I can’t take advantage of you like that. If it doesn’t work out I’ll return whatever I can of the 2,000”

“So it’s a deal?”

Jane wondered how it got to be but could not deny it.

“It’s a deal.”

Ray thrust out his hand, then took it back and threw his arms around Jane, hugged her off the ground.

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Flying Machines

2006-10-16T17:25:00.000-07:00

Ray Tate sat forward in the easy chair and set the stove on maximum. It was 5 below outside and the wind was whistling in through the cracks in the walls. Skid passed him the bottle of Early Times. He wiped the bottleneck off with his dry hand and took a pull.

“You got a cold, Skid?” Ray wondered. Skid just nodded a couple of times, leaned forward and coughed into his palm several times in rapid succession. They were still celebrating the success of Ray’s barn sale the previous weekend. Ray was trying to get Skid to give him a ride to work at Jane Thom’s place.

Ray had been thinking. “You know what I think. I think that people could fly around in personal size flying craft, you know, like the size of a compact car. Then you wouldn’t need roads anymore. It would be a lot safer that way.”

Skid doubled over and coughed a few more times, his free hand raised like he was back in school asking to be called on, straightened up and gasped for breath. “So what, you think people wouldn’t still crash. Cars, or whatever you call them, would come from all directions. How’d you even know where they are?”

“I guess you’d have radar on a screen to tell you.”

“Well then it’s just like an airplane. You’d have to be a pilot. Half the people on the road are bad drivers, imagine what they’d be like flying. And what if people flew drunk, crashed into trees or wires.”

The trouble with Skid, Ray reflected, was that he had no imagination. He took another drink and passed the bottle back. “OK, so not everyone will fly them but some people will.” Ray wondered if he would be allowed, with a DWI on his record. “If this were 200 years ago and I told you about automobiles you’d have said the same thing – ‘there’s no way that people could drive around on roads.’”

Skid decided to ignore Ray rather than argue about something he didn’t care about. He could have stayed home with his wife and kid if he wanted to argue. Skid picked up Monday’s newspaper from the ground and pulled out the sports section. “I’ll be dipped in shit” Skid exclaimed, “Syracuse lost to Georgetown.”

Ray did a double take. “That was last weekend. Anyway, what’s so unusual about that.?”

“They were up by 18 at the half and playing at home.” Skid gave Ray a look. “Don’t you remember?”

Ray returned the look. “I was out here running the sale. Don’t you remember? You were supposed to be helping me. Anyway you can never tell when those two teams play.”

“Yeah but Georgetown isn’t as good anymore.”

“So, neither is Syracuse.”

“They made the final four in ’96.”

Ray reached, took the bottle back from Skid, took another pull and let it sit on his palate, thinking of what they might talk about instead of arguing about the quality of Syracuse basketball. The buzz from the barn sale had worn off. Ray’s mother had deposited nearly all the money in the bank. Ray had spent the rest. He was back to square zero, no license, no work except for what he was working on for Jane Thom, if he could get over there. His mother had taken his father up to the VA hospital in Utica for his therapy appointment, leaving him dependent on Skid for transportation.

“Why don’t we go in and watch some TV?” Skid asked.

No way Ray was going to let Skid in the house with his mother gone. Skid would raid the kitchen and be passed out drunk on the sofa by lunch time. Nothing on TV anyway.

“Why don’t you give me a lift to Jane Thom’s?”

“Told you, I’ve got to be in Bainbridge.”

“Fine, then go to Bainbridge.” Ray stood up, swiped the bottle of Early Times from the table, shut down the stove and stalked out the barn, his three dogs rousing themselves from their repose and following him. Ray could have gone down the driveway and stayed dry but he chose a shortcut through knee deep snow in the yard, snow falling in to his boots as he walked, unzipped jacket flopping in the breeze, open bottle in one hand. He jumped up on the porch, spilling some of the whiskey, and went in the back door, slamming it for emphasis. The dogs ran around to the steps and scurried up but they were too late. Ray wouldn’t have let them in anyway.

Ray went into the powder room to pee, heard the sound of Skid’s truck as it went down the driveway. He looked out the window, noticed Skid had left the barn door open. He zipped up and went to close the door. The snow had started up again. It was too cold to be doing any drywall. Anyway he couldn’t get there. Maybe they should have settled up with the phone company so he could call Jane and tell her.

He settled on a chair in the dining room and flicked the remote. The picture came on slowly, waffled between clear and snowy but the sound was pretty good. Some talk show. It didn’t matter. He didn’t pay attention. He sat looking out the picture window into the backyard. The bushes were completely covered with snow. His eye followed the whiteness uphill to the horizon a good 50 feet higher and a quarter mile away. The wind was blowing a cloud of snow, making it dance from left to right. He squinted his eyes so that he could see only white, imagined himself in a podlike vehicle, levitating a few feet off the ground, cruising over the hill and down into the next hollow. The people on the TV were talking about travel. That fit right in. They were better company than Skid.

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Jane's Breakfast

2006-10-15T18:05:00.000-07:00

Sheriff Thom met up with his sister Jane for lunch at Hoot’s Diner. Hoot’s had terrible food but it was still the favorite meeting place for locals - convenient and comfortable, and the service was good. They each ordered coffee and grilled cheese sandwiches, Jane’s with tomato. Sheriff Thom asked for it rare since Hoot had a way of overcooking everything.

The big news in town was the bed and breakfast that Veronica Verploenck had converted the Verploenck farm into. The B&B had been open six months and appeared to be a success, especially considering how bad the weather had been. Every weekend there were five or six cars there, most from out of state.

There were color brochures in the rack by the entrance – “Chenango Dales Bed and Breakfast.” Sheriff had taken one and was thumbing through it when the food arrived. It didn’t seem right to the Sheriff that people would drive up from New Jersey or Connecticutt for a weekend in Chenango County, not in winter. He didn’t know that Veronica had been running contests on her web site, giving away free weekend stays to promote the place.

“Good photo of the house” Sheriff observed. He handed it across to Jane.

Jane wiped her fingers on the napkin before taking the brochure, knit her eyebrows as she studied it. She wasn’t happy with Veronica at that moment. Veronica had been her closest neighbor and best friend growing up. There was a gap of more than 25 years where they were hardly in touch. When Veronica came back to town Jane was hoping that they could be friends again, but Veronica had the same snobby attitude that had separated them.

Jane always thought it was marrying Ronnie Aubrey that made Veronica change. Ronnie was six years older than them. Veronica had a crush on him since she was 12. Ronnie was the lifeguard at the lake. Every summer Veronica would go there as often as she could but Ronnie never took any notice of her until after she sophomore year at Susquehanna High School. Ronnie had just finished college and about to start law school. They dated a few times that summer, then on and off during the year. Susquehanna High School was abuzz with rumors of them going all the way. They got engaged when Veronica graduated high school and married the following June.

When Ronnie finished law school he got a job with the state government. They moved to Albany and bought a house in an upscale suburb. The next year Veronica had her first son, Roger, named after the Dallas Cowboys quarterback. Jane went up for the christening. Ronnie had the wild notion that maybe Roger Staubach would attend, since Ronnie had met him once, at a dinner hosted by Lieutentant Governor Duryea following a motivational speech Staubach had given.

Jane felt completely out of place at the christening. The furniture looked too delicate to sit in. All the women were dressed like Elizabeth Taylor. She didn’t know anyone there except for Veronica and Ronnie, and she and Ronnie had never got along that well. Veronica hardly introduced her to any of her new Albany friends, who all called Veronica “Ronnie.” It was a long afternoon of forced smiles and banal discussions about Ronnie and Ronnie, the house, and the baby. “Little Rog” they called him. The baby looked a lot like Veronica, same big blue eyes. There was an autographed photo of Roger Staubach on the mantelpiece. Jane observed that Little Rog didn’t look anything like him.

The letters stopped and they fell out of touch. They exchanged Christmas cards most years. Most Thanksgivings Veronica and Ronnie came back to Susquehanna. After Veronica’s parents retired to North Carolina the visits stopped altogether. They rented out the farmhouse to a professor from SUNY Chenango and leased out the fields.

When Veronica returned home she did finally take Jane up on her offer, stayed with Jane for three days. They talked about old times. Jane had mixed feelings, unable to overlook the years they’d been out of touch.

Veronica told Jane of her plan to open a Bed and Breakfast. She took Jane over to her place, spent nearly a whole day going through the house, showing Jane the architect’s drawings. Jane got excited, wanted to be involved with the project, but when the work started Veronica forgot all about Jane, again. When the place was ready to open Veronica had a grand opening party, which turned out to be about the same experience as the christening. Most of the people Jane didn’t know, except for Hoot and Sheriff Thom. There were SUNY people there and some friends of Veronica’s from Albany and New York City. Jane left after a half hour.

All those events came back to Jane while she worked on the grilled cheese sandwich, looking out the window at the snow accumulating on Main Street. The shops across the street made her think of a scene from “It’s A Wonderful Life” where Jimmy Stewart walked past some shops in the snow. That movie was supposed to be somewhere in Upstate NY, in a town like Susquehanna, only larger, and west of Syracuse.

The snow was coming down heavy. Two students pushed noisily into the diner, stomping the snow off their boots. Hoot made a face since he had already cleaned the whole kitchen and was ready to close but he couldn’t turn away customers in this kind of weather. The students took a booth on the other side of the restaurant. Hoot brought them menus then came over and refilled Jane’s coffee. Sheriff Thom put his hand over the top of his cup. Hoot noticed the brochure in Jane’s hands.

Hoot smiled broadly and pointed at the brochure. “That’s some operation that Veronica has. Did you ever think about doing a bed and breakfast, Jane? You’re about the best cook I ever knew.” Hoot went off to take the students’ order.

“Maybe I should do a bed and breakfast” Jane speculated.

Sheriff Thom processed that. The house would need a lot of work. Jane had been living alone there for twenty years. A lot of the rooms were closed off. It would run $25,000 for the mechanics, where would Jane get that money, let alone whatever else it would cost for furniture, redecorating, and advertising.

They discussed it for a while, mulled over financing options. Sheriff Thom had always felt responsible for his younger sister, thought that farm work was too hard for her, now that she was 50. He had tried to get her interested in law enforcement but she didn’t want to leave the farm. At least she had some help the past few years wth the Mexican farmhand but it was still too much and sooner or later she’d have to stop. A bed and breakfast might be a good alternative.

The money was the stumbling block. Jane had a couple of thousand saved. Sheriff figured he could load her five more. They would have to go to the bank and see about a loan. They stood up to leave.

“Are you serious about this?” Sheriff asked. It seemed too much of a spur of the moment decision to go rushing off to the bank.

Jane nodded. “I know you worry about me. I worry about me too. My hip has been nothing but trouble. If I could take it easier I would, and why couldn’t I do what Veronica is doing?”

Sheriff Thom recognized the loan officer, a former SUNY student from Long Island who had had been in a couple of bar fights, took a swing at a deputy once and spent the night in jail. That had happened eight or nine years earlier. The kid had been really drunk, what the Sheriff liked to call “category 5 shitfaced.” Sheriff shook the guy’s hand, thought he detected alcohol underneath mouthwash. Sheriff Thom tried to remember his name without looking at his nameplate - Jason Thorne, Jason Thornman. It was actually Joshua Truman. Still a cocky son of a bitch, and now he held the cards. Jane sat down unaware of the tension between Joshua and the Sheriff.

They discussed the financing options for half an hour. Jane did not follow any of it, was relying on her brother for that. It all seemed so real now, the idea of opening a bed and breakfast.

“Frankly,” Truman started half his sentences with ‘frankly’, “I don’t think that the bank would be very interested in financing another bed and breakfast in town. I would have to see your business plan first.”

“Business plan!?” Jane looked at her brother.

Sheriff Thom made a mental note that the loan officer drove the blue 330xi that was parked in the handicapped spot. Had to be his since there were only two cars there and the ’85 Tercel had to belong to the teller. He would jot down the plate and pass it along to the deputies who would add it to the SPSL, the sheriff’s personal shit list.

Truman suppressed a smile, indeed shook hands with both of them with enthusiasm, pressed his free hand on top of Jane’s, told her to be sure to get him the business plan. It was ten past five when they left, and it was getting dark. They walked back down Main towards Hoot’s where they had left their cars.

“Well, you could take out a mortgage on the place” Sheriff offered.

“You know I’ll never do that” said Jane. The farm had been in the family for eight generations without a mortgage. Mortgage meant foreclosure in Jane’s mind. Her parents had warned them about that, told them about neighbors of theirs who had lost their farms.

“Hell, why don’t I just sell the place?”

Sheriff wished she would but knew there was nothing in her sarcasm.

“So what are you going to do then? If you don’t mortgage the place you won’t get the money to fix the place up.” Sheriff wondered if she was really serious about the Bed and Breakfast. The idea had only come up that afternoon and now they were talking about mortgaging the place.

Jane got in her car, started it up, rolled down the window despite the snow.

“Well, how about I forget about the Bed part and just open a Breakfast. I can use the dining room and living room as is, just fix up some tables and chairs. Won’t need a loan that way. You know I’m a far better cook than Veronica, beat her all the time in the 4H.”

“This isn’t the 4H, Jane. People aren’t going drive up from New Jersey just to have breakfast at your place. There already are too many restaurants not doing too well in the area.”

“That doesn’t seem to have stopped Veronica.”

“Well the grass might be greener on the other side of the fence but you still have to mow it.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“That means that Veronica has already done it.”

“Well I’m going to do it too, my way.”

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The Mexican (revised)

2006-10-15T14:58:00.000-07:00

The funny thing about the Mexican was he didn’t speak Spanish, which took 5 years to figure out. They had a feller from Albany, Victor Hernandez from Health and Human Services, who was in town on state business, meeting with the sheriff and his deputies and Sheriff Thom asked Hernandez if he’d do him a favor and stop out at his sister Jane’s farm to talk to her hired hand, explained that Jose, the hand, had been working for Jane for over five years but still spoke no English. Victor Hernandez figured doing the sheriff a favor could only help.

All jane knew was the guy’s name was Jose and he came from Mexico. About the only words that worked were si, no, and donde. But no matter. In Jane’s opinion Jose was worth four of any other farmhand in Chenango County and the language barrier didn’t matter cause she never needed to tell him what to do. He knew when and what to feed the livestock. If an animal got sick he’d notice before her, point it out to Jane. He’d figure out a cure, too, most of the time, old-timey sorts of cures with roots, mud, flowers, leaves, and such. Saved her a ton in vet bills. sometimes Jose’s cures didn’t work, but you could say the same about the vet. Things were pretty tight financially for Jane, and Jose worked for room and board. Jane paid him a little cash too, but she didn’t need to.

The farm had been in Jane’s family for 8 generations. It had never been much more than a subsistence affair, but there used to be the extended family to work the place. Jane had been working it alone for 20 years, hiring help when she could afford it. She did the best she could with the livestock and the crops, scaled down of course. Her brother helped her maintain the buildings and machinery.

One September, Jane was cutting hay when she noticed a stranger leaning on the corral fence watching the llama, calling to it. Jane had gotten the llama to protect the sheep from coyotes, after losing 4 sheep in one year, and it had done its job well. apart from Jane it didn’t like anyone in its territory, so it was pretty odd that it was not reacting to the stranger. It was also pretty odd that the stranger had come on foot. She would have heard if he came by car, and he didn’t have a bicycle. Sometimes pickers came by looking for work but never on foot.

Jane got jose’s attention, pointed at the hayfield, waved the sickle in a cutting motion, and then pointed at jose. Jose just nodded and followed her back to the hayfield, took the sickle from her and started to cut. Jane needed the rest, sore hip and all. She went inside for lunch, dozed off for a while, came back out about 2pm, a little groggy, and saw that he had finished the hayfield so she fetched a ladder and got him started in the orchard.

At quitting time Jane gave him a 20 and offered him a ride home. Jane eased the truck down the driveway, pointing left and right, looking at Jose for a sign of which way to go. No response. She guessed that he must be from one of the trailer camps outside Susquehanna on Route 8 so she went in that general direction.

They drove around for an hour, slowing at every intersection and every trailer park, jane glancing at Jose for an indication, jose just looking blankly back at her. finally she drove in to town, pulled up in the IGA’s parking lot. “Donde?” she tried, repeating the word a few times, hoping he’d recognize where they were and how to get where he needed to go, but he just looked blandly back at her, eyes gently averted, a wisp of a smile on his lips. He nodded slightly and said “Donde”, turned and reached for the door.

“No, no” said Jane, flustered, reaching across to catch his hand before he opened the door, but the door swung open and she lost her balance and fell over Jose’s legs, causing both of them to topple out onto the gravel. Jane bruised her bad hip. She lay there rubbing the sore spot, looked around to see that Jose was face down on the road, bleeding some, not much, from the forehead. Jose opened his eyes and sat up. He didn’t look too bad. She got one of the cleaner rags and dressed the wound.

“That didn’t work too well” Jane muttered as she gathered herself. She shut off the motor and checked her face in the truck’s mirror, brushed off her clothes and walked over to the IGA to get them each a coke. When in doubt, have a coke. She used the machine outside the store, got two for each of them.

They sat on the running board of the truck drinking the cokes. Jane tried to figure a way to let Jose know that she wanted to drop him off where he was staying and have him back the next couple of days to pick some more. She hoped wherever he was living there’d be someone to translate.

She got back into the truck and looked over at Jose. with the bandana tied around his head, made her think of errol flynn though there was no resemblance.

Jose hesitated then got back in. Jane tried again: “Donde?” Jose smiled and replied “Donde.”

Somewhat against her better judgment, Jane drove back home and offered Jose the use of the guest cottage, which was really a tool shed with a cot in it. She had never had a stranger stay for the night. The next day, when she told her brother, he said it was the most foolish thing he’d known her to do,

Jose stayed on in the guest cottage for five years. He took over most of the manual work from Jane, freeing her up to do some things, like sewing and decorating, that she scarcely had time to do in years. She could get out and hunt or fish as much as she liked. Sometimes Jose came along. He wasn’t a good shot; did a little better with fishing.

She even had some time in the morning to put on her old Richard Simmons video and exercise a bit. She enrolled in a Spanish class at SUNY Chenango, hoping to learn enough to communicate with Jose. She took two semesters, got good grades. She practiced with jose but he must have spoken a different dialect.

Jose didn’t mind that the cottage was unheated, slept okay with a down comforter and a couple of wool blankets added on the colder nights. Jane wished she could let him use one of the bedrooms in the house but that just was not done. She did cook for him, and he ate with her. Besides not minding the cold another surprising thing about him was his appetite for woodchuck. Never had known any of the Mexicans or Jamaicans to eat more than a couple of forkfulls, if that, but Jose’s eyes lit up when she served chuck.

They arrived punctually at 2pm, the Sheriff in his personal car, Victor Hernandez in a state car with his aide. Jane led them to the guest cottage and knocked on the door. Hernandez was wearing city clothes, dark blue overcoat and a grey flannel suit with galoshes over dress shoes. His outfit made her think of funerals. His aide was more sensibly dressed. She glanced sidelong at Hernandez, checking his outfit more carefully, thinking that the shoes must not be very warm. He looked pale and seemed to be shivering but he held himself.

Victor was also thinking about his shoes. It felt like he was barefoot on a block of ice. He wanted to shuffle his feet to keep warm, but he didn’t want to look foolish. His aide, wearing Timberlines, should have advised him, but that was a different problem. He inherited the aide when he took the Albany job the previous summer, didn’t like him much but had lived with him thus far. he had lived all his life in San Antonio, and at 32 was a rising star in the Democratic Party back in Texas. He ha but then the New York job came up.

After a while Jane knocked again, smiled at Victor to reassure him. She couldn’t take her eyes off his outfit, how he looked so spiffy with the black cashmere scarf, bright, bright white shirt, conservatively loud red tie, ear muffs made out of some fur she couldn’t place. Only the coyote lined hat didn’t fit. Seemed like the hat his aide had on would go better.

Victor smiled back and thought his lips were going numb. He thought about William Harrison not wearing an overcoat to his inauguration and dying of pneumonia a month later. He wondered if his feet were in danger of frostbite. After a second eternity the Sheriff, God bless, pronounced Jose not at home. Jane guessed jose had gone off in the woods.

Victor wanted nothing more than to get back in the car and crank up the floorboard heat, but he didn’t want to leave empty handed. Coming out to Jane’s place had been a political token, a matter of currying favor with Sheriff Thom. He expressed disappointment that he wasn’t able to help, gave both Jane and the Sheriff his card, told them to call him and he’d speak with Jose. He shook hands with each of them and walked back down the long driveway towards the car. The farm didn’t look all that different from farms back in Texas. Even with the heavy snow cover he could visualize it in warm weather, the fields and the orchards, the massive shade tree in the front yard.

Everything would have been fine if he hadn’t gotten distracted by the llama. He thought it was a horse at first, He stopped in his tracks, tapped his aide on the shoulder and pointed to it. The aide explained that farmers kept them as guard animals, especially for sheep. Victor moved towards the corral and the llama trotted towards him in response. Jane was hollering something at him and he turned towards her, not catching the words, smiling in a photo op reflex. Something warm and wet was on his cheek. He turned to look at the llama and it curled back its lip and expelled about a pint of spit, a good deal of it falling short but more than enough to lather his face and stain the overcoat, scarf, shirt, and tie.

Jane took him inside the house and cleaned him up as best she could. While she was at it she spotted Jose out on the road, watched him walk up the driveway, caught his attention and waved at him to come inside.

Victor greeted Jose and spoke to him in Spanish, but he didn’t get through any better than anybody else. Sheriff Thom eliminated English and Spanish and wondered what that left. Victor supposed he might be Indian, said he’d follow up once he got back to Albany. His feet were feeling better already. He thanked Jane and the Sheriff and left.

Nice guy, thought Sheriff Thom. Too bad he wasn’t Republican.

Jane looked at Jose. It didn’t change much, him not speaking Spanish, but she thought maybe she should stop calling him Jose. She lay awake in bed for a long time that night, unable to stop thinking through a list of names.

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Barn Sale

2006-10-15T14:56:00.000-07:00

It had been a hard winter for Ray Tate. In January his license was suspended for two years, so even when he could find work he had to get someone to drive him. The lawyer had cost him plenty, he even had to borrow. It was just his first DWI, but the judge was in a bad mood. So great, it was never easy to find work with wheels, now he had to make do without. There was work, but he’d have to be on time and if he drove himself his six-month jail sentence would get unsuspended or whatever the judge called it and he didn't want to find out first hand what jail was like, having heard enough from his cousin Skid.

His mother could drive him some days but not regularly. Ray sat in the kitchen confounded, nursing a beer at 9 in the morning just to take the edge off. If the weather was decent he’d bicycle the 7 miles to town, make that in a half hour, but Chenango County was in the coldest spell on record, going on six weeks of subzero temperatures, plus a lot of snow had left the roads a patchwork of ice and hardpack, no way to bicycle on that, even where the road were flat. Most of them were not. “Half as hilly as Switzerland” was what his father used to say, before his stroke. Their house was on the south end of Loomis Hollow Road off of Route 206, a steep half mile with three switchbacks.

That’s when he got the idea for the barn sale, sitting there sipping a Blue, half watching Oprah, some commercial about making money selling real estate. Wasn't much of a market for real estate in Chenango County but that was okay. It was the money that he needed, after all. He could sell some of the stuff they’d collected over the years. He’d never done a sale but everyone said you could make a lot of money that way. People loved garage sales and with the weather so bad there was no way to have one outdoors but he could use the barn, clear it out like and put all the stuff he wanted to sell in it.

All that flashed through his mind during that one commercial break. Ray pounded right fist into left palm, jumped to his feet, nearly spilling the Labatt's, and got a marker pen and some blank paper and made up a bunch of signs – BIG BARN SALE – SAT & SUN - FEB 26 & 27 – 9AM to 5PM, ANTIQUES & COLLECTABLES, TATES PLACE, LOOMIS HOLLOW ROAD. He bounded downstairs to show the signs to his mother, who frowned at the idea of a lot of people coming over when she had her husband to tend to. Some of them would bother her with sympathy, genuine or feigned, ask after him or worse yet want to pay their respects. She’d just keep out of sight in the house, let Ray tell them she didn’t want to be disturbed, she was asleep, or whatever he wanted to say, as long as she didn’t have to see anyone.

Wednesday she drove Ray to town so he could put the signs up. He had made 10, a gross underestimate. He put up 4 in the IGA, another 2 at the post office, 2 more in Hoots Diner, 1 at the fire house, and 1 at the sheriff's substation. He asked his mother if they could make another trip but she just glowered at him so he used some of his last $5.00 to buy some more paper and scrawled out another 10 signs on the counter of the CVS.

The next two days Ray worked nonstop getting the barn ready. He spent most of the first day clearing out a space about 20 feet square and set up some makeshift tables to display merchandise on, using cinder block and sawhorses topped with old doors, cast off sheets of warped exterior plywood, odd pieces of dry wall and concrete board. Some of it wobbled a bit but covered with tarp and burlap it didn’t look bad.

Then he hauled everything of his that he could carry from the attic and basement – tires, hubcaps, car parts, bicycle parts, chains, rope, concrete mix, fertilizer, cases of mason jars, some with lids and some without, a volleyball net (no posts), a dozen pair of Carhartt jeans all 40 inch waist which neither he nor his mother remembered acquiring, Ray was a 28 and his father 34. After that a couple of bird feeders, several fence posts, a lantern, a coleman stove, three sleeping bags, 20-30 screen windows in fair to middling shape – all that in the first two hours. Then it got into tools, toys, furniture, clothes, and dishes. The barn filled up faster than he expected. He spent the rest of the first day rearranging everything, moving some things outside, setting them down on cardboard and covering them with a tarp. He worked until midnight. By then it was about 5 below and his cough was coming back so he packed it in, treated himself to some of his mother’s Early Times before retiring.

On Friday he woke up at 10am feeling sore here and there. He lay on his back in bed, covers pulled up under his chin, wiggling the stiffness out of his fingers. During the night the the caulking had popped out of the crack in the window sash. He could feel the draft on his cheek as he lay there looking at the ceiling. He turned his head to look out that window into the front yard and the road. It had snowed 3 inches overnight. Shit. He pushed off the covers and swung his legs over the side of the bed, jumped up, stretched, and lit the first cigarette of the day. Too much to do. He'd skip breakfast.

He started with plowing out the driveway with the pickup truck and putting down rock salt. An hour later the county truck came by to plow the road and pushed all the snow he'd plowed and more back into the base of the driveway so he had to do that part again, losing valuable time. That was what the Oprah commercial said, time was money. He still had a lot more of the basement to go through, and the shed, and the barn loft. He skipped lunch, worked straight through to dinnertime without a break. Hungry as we was from not eating all day he was too excited to eat much. After a quick few forkfuls of spaghetti he excused himself, ran out to the barn, wired up the lamps and inspected the setup. Everything looked good. There was enough space to walk around and everything was in plain sight, even under the shadowy light of the lamps.

By 9pm Ray was yawning despite himself. It was colder than Thursday night, but there was more to do, all the price tags for one thing. He checked that the space heater was working okay, wondering if it would throw enough heat. It was supposed to get up to 20 over the weekend, at least in the afternoon. He turned the heater up as high as it would go to test it against the subzero night. The heater was effective for a radius of 5 or 6 feet. It would have to do.

He worked on prices as long as he could. He was good with numbers. Math was the only subject he had done well in. He also had an instinct for figuring the right price for most of the items. Still there were so many items, and it was hard to write with gloves on and too cold to write without them. At 11pm he went to bed, skipping the whiskey.

Ray was out of bed at 5 with an all over achey body and stuffy head cold. He took a hot shower, drank 2 tablespoons of Tylenol Cold, went downsairs and fixed a pot of coffee, put on the new Alan Jackson cd that Skid had copied for him, sat at the kitchen table sipping coffee and smoking cigarettes, contemplating his big day. He needed to finish up the pricing and make a last tour of the attic and basement for overlooked merchandise. At 6, still dark, he put on his coat and headed outside. It had only snowed a trace so he didn’t have to plow. He scattered rock salt on the driveway, then checked the barn. Everything was good to go. He fired up the space heater. It was already about 10 degrees out, maybe 15 in the barn. Once the heater kicked in the barn would be comfortable enough for people to browse around in.

He went back to the house to grab a quick breakfast, writing up the rest of the price tags while he ate. His mother appeared in the kitchen door with a look that spelled trouble. Evidently she had been out to the barn. It took some time to placate her and come to an agreement about certain of the items for sale. Some of these his mother had taken back to the house. Some, like her wedding photo, were just out of the question but she eventually relented on most of the others, as long as they got the tag price and she got two thirds of the proceeds. Finally she allowed that maybe they’d get half the asking price for some of the stuff.

It was nearly 8 before Ray and his mother settled up, and not a minute later the first car pulled in. Ray looked at his watch, not really surprised that people were showing up an hour early. These would be the deep bargain hunters, who’d go through everything, looking for underpriced stuff. That’s what Ray did when he went to sales. His mom had taught him that. Ray took off his watch and put a $20 tag on it. He was pretty sure he had gotten it for $7 at an estate sale.

By 9 there were 14 cars in the driveway and another 2 out on the road. Ray’s mother was up in the parlor, sitting away from the window so she could watch the action without being seen. She was spooning out breakfast for her husband. She had set him up so he could see too. She asked him if he could see okay, told him the names of the people she recognized, looking at him to see if he understood. His eyes fluttered in response. She wasn’t sure if he was saying something and, if he was, whether it was yes or no.

By 9:30 Ray was flustered. The price tags still weren’t done and, wouldn’t you know, it was those items that people were asking about. Ray had to think of a price off the top of his head and whatever he came up with the people would immediately offer half of, or less. And then there were people who just wanted to let Ray know silly shit like when they were young how they had a rake like that, just wasting his time and throwing off his concentration. Plus he had to keep an eye on everyone, make sure they didn’t walk off with anything. There were a lot of strangers and a couple of people he knew couldn’t be trusted.

He made quite a few sales but the only major one fell through – Bill O’Toole wanting the snow plow for $100. It was too new to go less than $150 on. Ray offered to sell him his other snow plow for $50 but Bill got huffy about that and said that he already had a rundown snow plow what did he need another one for. That was fair enough but then Bill got personal, saying what did Ray need any snow plow for since his DWI and all. That got Ray’s goat and he mocked Bill, pretending to stutter like Bill sometimes did – D-D-D-D-W-I and A-a-a-all. Bill stormed off and a couple of people gave Ray dirty looks.

It got better after that. A couple of SUNY students, Chinese or Japanese, happily paid the $25 asking price for the volleyball net. Jane Thom came over in her flatbed truck and took all the fence posts, concrete posts, and some other construction stuff. Jane was a bit short so they agreed on $10 and 25 pounds of venison. Bill O’Toole came back. Ray apologized to Bill and Bill to Ray and Bill took the snow plow after all, the $50 one.

Then things got really sweet. Everyone seemed to be in a buying mood. The barn was so crowded that Ray broke a sweat trying to get from one deal to another. Some of them fell through but mostly people had their money out, ready to pay asking price. Ray’s pockets got so stuffed with money that he had to run to the house and stash some of it in his dresser. He nearly tripped and fell down the stairs in his hurry to get back to the business at hand. A whiff of baking came to him and he sidetracked to the kitchen to investigate. His mother had several pies already baked and covered with plastic wrap, some more in the oven, and was working on some more dough. Ray unwrapped one pie, cut out a wedge and gobbled it over his mother’s halfhearted protests, washed it down with a good pour of Early Times, which his mother protested more vigorously. Ray wiped his mouth with his coat sleeve and told his mother that he’d clear a place for her in the barn so that she could sell the pies - $6 each on a 50-50 split.

Hoot Daviess from the Penny Saver showed up around then with his digital camera and took lots of pictures, three of which made in to the following day’s edition – one of the barn taken from the road, with all the people and cars. That ran on page one, Hoot liked to lead with a local item. It took him most of Sunday evening to get the inspiration for the headline – “Big Sale At The Tates.” The other two photos were on page 4, one of his smiling mother offering up a slice of pie to the camera, the other a candid close up of Ray who would have smiled if he known Hoot was taking his picture. Hoot gave Ray a couple of prints of each photo. Apart from school and the sheriff’s substation Ray had never had his picture taken. His mother liked Ray’s photo so much that she framed it and put it on the mantel next to her wedding photo. It was only then she noticed how alike the men in the photos were.

Sunday, the second day of the sale, Ray was operating on adrenalin. He woke up at 7am with the chills, a headache and a lot of congestion, just drank down whatever was left in the Tylenol cold bottle and took three ibuprofen. He looked out the window and saw that a couple more inches of powder had fallen, checked the thermometer, relived to see it was 12 degrees already. His mother had already fixed breakfast. She was certainly in a cheerful mood. Ray grabbed his coat and rushed out, mumbled that he had to plow before the people came, thinking if they came at 8 on Saturday they could start coming any time.

But his rush was uncalled for. He had until well past 8 to eat pancakes, drink coffee, and smoke cigarettes. His mother lectured him about smoking with a cold but his mind was all on how the sale would go that day. The barn was not as full as Saturday. Ray had replenished it a bit on Saturday night. He went through the household again, but there just wasn’t much at all left in the attic or basement. His mother had gone through her own clothes, even thought about putting her sewing machine up for sale since she wanted a new one. Ray and her looked at all their furniture and tools, too, decided to put up for sale one of the living room lamps, the good garden hose, and some of the dishes, just to flesh out the inventory.

The people started to trickle in just before 9. Then suddenly, about half past, it got super busy. Ray had paid his cousin Skid $10 to supervise the parking. Skid made about 100 on the side by charging 2, sometimes 3 dollars to anyone wanting to park in the driveway. Ray was far too busy in the barn to notice but Herb Noles told him about it and Ray demanded a 25 dollar cut from Skid.

The weather turned pleasant on Sunday afternoon, the temperature reaching 20 for the first time in over 2 weeks. In the bright sun it felt like 40, and there was snow melting off the roof. Although it had snowed a bit Saturday night the roads were clear. People drove from as far away as Norwich and Binghamton. After 6 weeks of subzero weather everybody wanted to get out and do something.

One man told Ray he drove down from Watertown, said he got an email about it. Ray wasn’t sure what email was. They had computers in high school but he had never used them. A couple of years earlier a college girl he met in town had asked him for his email address and he didn’t know what to say.

The guy from Watertown bought the good snow plow. Ray didn’t want to sell it so he jacked the price up to an unreasonable $275 and the guy just said "OK" and paid cash so there was nothing Ray could do.

By 4pm there wasn’t much left to sell. The prime items remaining were the garden hose and the easy chair with the wobbly legs. Ray considered marking the chair down from 20 to 15. The hose he just as soon would keep. Otherwise there were some clothes and kitchen items, a few of the mason jars. The tires were all gone, which really surprised Ray.

There were nearly as many cars as before but the people were quicker about it, most of them walking in, around, and out in less than a minute. Then around 4:30 things got quiet. Daylight was fading, the wind was picking up, and the temperature had dropped back to 10 degrees. Ten minutes later there were only two cars left in the driveway. His mother was still in the barn. She had kept baking pies and still had several to sell. Skid was sitting in the easy chair working on one of the pies. Ray shooed him because the sale wasn’t over and there were still the couple of prospective buyers left.

One of these prospects, however, was just sitting in his car in the driveway, had been for some minutes. Ray thought maybe the guy was on his cell phone or something but it didn’t look that way. The guy seemed to be just staring straight ahead. He wasn’t with anyone else, that was for sure, because the only other people were a couple who came in the other car. Then that couple left, without buying anything and there was just the guy sitting there in his car.

Ray looked at his wrist to check the time but he had sold his watch, $13 if he remembered right. His mother told him it was 5:10. They decided to shut it down, closed up the barn. The guy was still there in his car. Ray started to walk over to see what was up when Sheriff Thom’s car pulled in. Sheriff Thom got out and put on his hat. Ray, his mother, and the sheriff exchanged greetings but the sheriff did not look pleased, having been pulled from the dinner table and an overtime basketball game on TV. The guy got out of his car and started up the driveway towards them. The sheriff walked down and met him halfway. Ray and his mother stood watching, wondering. They heard the sheriff address the stranger as Mr. Greer. It didn’t sound good, whatever it was but what could it have to do with them? His mother looked at Ray. Ray shrugged.

Sheriff came over and asked if they knew anything about a snow plow that belonged to Mr. Greer. The man down the driveway overheard, became excited, yelled out “It was in there”, pointing at the barn. Ray said sure there was a snow plow in there, two in fact, sold both of them, an old beat up one and a newer one he’d just bought.

The sheriff requested to have a look in the barn and Ray opened the door for him. Sheriff Thom swept the barn with his flashlight. He had never seen a barn that clean, pretty odd, especially for the Tates. Kind of suspicious but he didn’t know why. He had only vaguely heard about the sale, pictured it as the Tates just selling a couple of odds and ends. He’d never had trouble with the Tates, except some vandalism of Ray’s doing when he has in school.

“Just recently bought it, did you? Got a receipt?”

“Well no. Bought it from Skid. What’s the big deal about a snow plow? They all look about the same.”

“Yeah but this one had an identikit number on it and the Mr. Greer says it was the same as his.”

“Well, I sold it.”

“Do you remember who you sold it to?”

“No, well, the guy said he was from Watertown.”

Sheriff Thom frowned.

“How much did you sell it for?”

Ray thought quickly but carefully: “$75”

“You sold a nearly new snow plow for $75”

“It got twisted up a little bit” Ray fibbed.

Allen Greer had been watching intently, got excited again at Ray’s claim. “It wasn’t twisted up!”
Ray thought for a moment, wondering if he should offer to pay back the $75 to Mr. Greer, and then collect the same back from Skid. He decided it was the right thing to do.
“Well what’s the big deal about a snow plow anyway?” he asked.

Sheriff Thom looked at him steadily. “It’s not so much the snow plow as the truck it was attached to.”

Skid emerged from the house about them. All the pie he’d been eating had caught up with him and he had spent the whole time in the bathroom, unaware. Sheriff looked at Skid and saw his cold dinner and the buzzer beating winning shot that he would have to watch on the late news.

Ray and his mother watched them drive off, Skid in the sheriff’s car followed by Mr. Greer. That spoiled the mood some, Skid getting arrested. Night had fallen and it was starting to snow again. They went inside to fix dinner. Ray practically fell asleep at the table before he even finished.

Monday morning they piled all the money on the dining table, separated it by denomination and counted the bills twice - $4108 the first time and $3883 the second. Close enough. There was a coffee can half full with coins too that they didn’t bother to count.

That afternoon they took the truck down to WalMart and spent nearly three hours there and just barely got everything in the truck – nine shopping carts loaded with stuff plus stuff that didn’t fit in a cart. The bill was $718 and they paid it with singles, which the manager had to come out to count. The next day they would go through another $400 between Agway and Home Depot but that still left about 3000 in mad money.

On the way home they passed Skid, out in front of the substation with the public defender. The charges had been dismissed for lack of evidence. Sheriff Thom had duly called Watertown and reported the identikit number on the snow plow, assured Mr. Greer that if it turned up he would pursue the investigation.

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