CHAPTER SEVEN

Kara managed to slip out the next morning without waking me, and I slept until she brought me coffee. “Feeling better?”

I worked the sleep from my eyes and sat up. “Ask me when I wake up.”

She smiled and handed me the coffee. Strong and sweet.

Like my woman.

After a long pull, I set the mug down. Brown stoneware. Feldspar Glaze. Franconia Noborigama firing, spring, 2018. “Much better. Thanks.” I looked out the window at the streaming sunlight. “After 8:00?”

“8:30,” she said. “I’ve got breakfast just about ready. Bagels and fruit.”

I closed my eyes, gathering my thoughts. “Boy, I guess I needed the sleep. Everything okay out there?”

“No one’s been killed in your absence.” She perched on the edge of the bed. “Relax, already. Brea’s just getting a shower now. Jacob and I had a nice chat out on the patio, and I managed not to get blood anywhere.”

I opened my eyes and smiled. “Sorry – I didn’t mean to sound like a mother hen. Give me five minutes and I’ll be good to go.”

She didn’t seem to be in any hurry to leave. “Jacob told me about your call with Janey.”

I waved the problem away. “Shit always happens. We’ll make it work.”

She chewed on her lower lip, looking uncharacteristically indecisive.

I had some more coffee. Sooner or later, Kara would tell me what she was thinking. She is constitutionally incapable of holding back.

“Jacob really enjoyed the pottery yesterday,” she said, apparently resolving her internal conflict.

“Seemed to,” I agreed.

“I get the sense – nothing he said directly – that he’d much rather go off to the firing than whatever bumming around he was planning to do for the rest of the week. And you’ll be short-handed, right?”

I sighed. “We will be, probably. Mostly short of experience, and Jacob can’t help there. But . . . we’re going to be short on warm bodies, too. The schedule was already pretty tight.” I took another swallow of coffee, thinking.

Kara knows when to stay silent too.

“You think I should ask him?”

She nodded, slowly. “If you think he’d be helpful, then, yes, absolutely. I’m almost positive he’d welcome the offer. But if it would just be more work for you, that’s a different matter.”

I shook my head. “No, he’s a good worker. Focused. Has a good feel for handling delicate material, and not everyone does. Also . . . he’s good about not talking all the time.”

She giggled. “Introvert!”

“It’s not a dirty word, you know!”

“Did I say it was?” She put on an innocent look, though I’m not sure who would be deceived by it. “Would I ever imply such a thing?”

I snorted. “All right, woman! I’m recovered – thank you for the sleep and its antidote! – and I’ll think about it. Now, give me five minutes and I’ll be ready for whatever.”

She patted my knee and rose gracefully. “Sure thing, Dreamboat!” Her stride to the door might best be described as an insouciant saunter. She excelled at many things, but sauntering in all its forms was an area of particular expertise.

I rolled out of bed, did my business, then hung my nightgown on a hook. Today I was dialing up to a solid five – just the unisex outfit of mid-length shorts, a nondescript t-shirt from a national park we’d visited years ago, and sneakers. For now, my hair went back into a ponytail. I washed my face, but otherwise left it alone.

Kara had the breakfast set up by the time I got out, and everyone was up and ready to eat – even Breanna, who looked – as usual – fresh, alive, and exuberant in a pair of white capris and a silky sleeveless top in a lovely shade of coral.

We dug in. Toasted bagels, cream cheese, Nova lox, capers, as well as grapes, more of our fresh and excellent strawberries, and slices of pear. More coffee. Tea for Brea. Everyone was hungry, as the conversation didn’t get going for a good five minutes after we’d sat down.

“Kez, how long was that hike you mentioned?” Jacob asked.

“There’s an easy loop that takes about an hour or so, and a longer one that I certainly won’t have time for today, though it’s a really pretty hike.”

“What’s on the loop trail?” Brea asked.

“Trees,” Kara said. “There’s about a half a mile where you get up high enough to see the lake, though, and it’s a pretty view.”

Jacob’s expression was priceless.

I couldn’t help but laugh. “‘ Trees,’ Kara? Seriously?” Turning to Jacob, I augmented her description. “A fair bit of the red oak, hemlock, plenty of ash, sugar maple, some swamp maple, a few impressive, mature stands of birch. Not a lot of pine, but there’s some. The undergrowth is mostly ferns. Well – and saplings, of course.”

He smiled in response. “Better, thanks! If you’ve got time for a little hike, I’d love to see it.”

To my surprise, Brea wanted to see it as well, and I think Kara decided to come along because she didn’t feel like being left behind. Kara and Brea both changed into t-shirts, I grabbed my ready bag and we piled in the car.

The trail starts on the flat for about a quarter mile before a series of switchbacks brings you higher onto the hillside. Brea and Kara were chatting about something up ahead (well, Brea was chatting, and Kara was interjecting, sometimes explosively), but I hung back and watched Jacob in his natural habitat, so to speak. He seemed very aware of his surroundings, his eyes sweeping back and forth and up and down. He had a purposeful stride, but would pause to examine more closely anything he found interesting.

He was also silent. It wasn’t just that he wasn’t talking; he even moved quietly.

He stopped, a look of delight on his face, and wordlessly pointed to a nest high in a stately sugar maple, where a red-tailed hawk followed our movements with fierce concentration. A few dozen yards later, he bent to examine mushrooms growing at the base of a hemlock tree, then moved on, saying nothing. The girls would start to open up some distance as he paused to examine something, but once on the move he quickly and quietly closed the distance.

We hit the first switchback and Kara stopped to retie her shoe, causing Brea to stop as well. Brea smiled at Jacob as he glided up. “So, what do you think?”

“Lovely.” He smiled back. “You keep talking, girl – it’ll keep the bears away.”

She swatted him. “Nice!”

He chuckled, but said, “I’m serious, Brea. Clear tracks by the stream we crossed back there. Momma and two cubs. They’re shy creatures, mostly. Let ’em know you’re coming, and they won’t be there when you show up.”

Brea looked impressed despite herself. “What kind of bear?”

Kara leaned in close and stage whispered, “The hungry kind!”

Everyone laughed.

“Black bear around here, I imagine,” Jacob said, looking to me for confirmation. I think he’d kind of written off Kara’s relevant expertise when she’d said “trees.” Not that he was wrong.

“Yeah, black bear almost certainly,” I confirmed. “We see them near the farm, too, now’n then.”

“Well, I assume it’s safe anyway,” Brea said. “But if you spot any lions and tigers, you sing out, okay?”

“I always do, don’t I?” Jacob asked, deadpan.

“You never have,” she countered.

“Only because I’ve never seen them. That just proves that I’m very discriminating.”

Brea hopped over, gave him a quick peck, and said, “I’ll go back to talking then!”

“Good plan,” he said gravely.

We continued along the same way, with Kara and Brea ahead, Jacob ranging behind. I followed Jacob, trying to see the forest through his eyes. We were getting close to the break in the trees that provides the outstanding views of Lake Champlain when he stopped, did a double take, and walked ten yards or so off the trail. A tall ash tree stood alone, and Jacob examined it closely, checking both the leaves and the bark.

He looked my way and said, “do you have anything in your bag I could use to mark this tree? I want to call it in when we get back.”

“Uhh, sure. I think? I’ve got a bandana . . . ah . . . I’ve got a couple red straps, too.”

“Straps? Those’ll work, if you can spare them.”

I fished them out. “Yeah, so long as no one needs a splint or something.”

He gave me an approving look. “I like how you think.” Using both straps, he tied a loop around the trunk of the tree. He grabbed his phone, took a picture, and also checked how far he had traveled.

“What’s the problem?”

He brought me in closer. “See these little D-shaped holes in the bark? You can see them in some of the branches too. It’s a marker for the Emerald Ash Borer. Invasive species from Asia; it’ll probably wipe out all of the North American Ash variants within a generation.”

“Is it significant that it’s here?”

He put a hand on my back and started guiding us back to the trail; I could barely still hear Brea. “Might be; I don’t know,” he replied. “They’ve devastated the local ash in Michigan and Ontario, and they’ve definitely been spreading. We absolutely keep tabs on it.”

We picked up the pace and came to the clearing. Kara and Brea were a ways ahead, at the best lookout point, arms around each other’s waists. Kara turned to look our way, and I waved reassurance that we were coming. “Jacob, while I’ve got you . . . Kara suggested I should ask if you’d like to join me for the wood firing. I don’t know what you’ve got planned, so don’t hesitate to say ‘no.’ But you’d certainly be welcome, and there is – God knows – plenty of work to do.”

He shifted his gaze from the girls to give me a careful look. “I’d be very interested. But it’s your community and I don’t want to intrude. Do you want me there?”

His question made me realize that I’d elided that point – maybe intentionally – in how I’d worded the offer. Why did I do that?

I couldn’t think of a reason. “Yes. I would enjoy your company.”

He smiled. “Then I’m your man! I don’t need any special gear, do I?”

I looked at his footwear. “Your hiking boots are more than fine, and Janey’ll supply the welding gloves. You’ve already got a tent and sleeping bag packed. You’re all set.”

“Great! I’ll be honest, I really wasn’t sure what I was going to do with myself, and I’d much rather keep busy.” He moved purposefully to where the women were waiting.

“You brought some water didn’t you?” Kara asked when we reached them.

I shook my head sorrowfully. “How many hikes have we been on?”

“Heaps! Always in trees!” She made a face and stuck her tongue out at me.

“Have I ever failed to bring a canteen?”

“Well, no. But it seemed rude to just assume.”

I pulled the water from my backpack and handed it to her. “Anything for you, girl.”

She drank and handed it off to Brea.

“Damn – it’s even cold!” Brea enthused. She passed the water to Jacob, who drank deeply, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and passed it back to me.

I took a swallow and preserved what was left. You never knew.

We stood a while taking in the truly glorious prospect before us. We have a good view of the lake from our patio, but Champlain is truly enormous, and you need some elevation to really appreciate its size. It might not be a “great” lake, but it’s a pretty damned good one!

We stayed closer together on the way down, and Jacob was more willing to break his silence for Brea’s sake, pointing out an unusual species of fern, an isolated Poplar, or evidence of where a family of deer had nestled down for the night. His knowledge of the woods was deep, but his love of them was deeper still.

As we hit the flats, the girls lagged behind and the stillness seeped back into him. It was something we had in common, he and I, like a language we shared.

As we recrossed the stream where he had seen the bear tracks, I asked, “Did you learn silence from the woods? Or is your natural silence what draws you to them?”

He looked at me sideways. “Interesting question.”

We kept walking, the quiet between us a peaceful thing, without tension. It wasn’t until we’d come through the trees and the car was in sight that he responded, just as if the fifteen minutes that had passed were unimportant to the conversation. Or, maybe, were an essential part of it.

“Do you shape the clay, or does it shape you?”
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CHAPTER EIGHT

Once we were all back under the same roof, the tensions inherent in our circumstance returned and chafed. There was a growing electricity in Kara and Brea’s interactions, a powerful frisson that was impossible to ignore. You could hear it when they spoke to each other, see it in their looks . . . their touches. They were clearly anxious for “their” time, and, while they didn’t exactly kick me and Jacob out, it was apparent that our prompt departure would not distress them. We left just as soon as lunch was finished.

Kara walked me out to the truck. She leaned in through the window when I was behind the wheel, nibbled on my ear, and whispered, “I love you, Kez. I don’t know why you put up with me.” She hopped down off the step bar, smiled and raised her voice to its normal volume. “Have fun – and good luck!”

Brea and Jacob said their goodbyes indoors. I don’t know what truths were spoken, or which were left unsaid. Maybe the things that were said were not true at all. But Jacob looked unsettled – a rare expression on his usually calm face – and I left him to his thoughts.

We drove into Georgia Center to pick up the 105 and headed north. We were almost in Enosberg Falls before either of us said a word.

Jacob was looking out the window as the small town came and went outside the window. Blink, and you might miss it, just like a million other small towns on the backroads of America. “You love her?” he asked.

I gave the question time to percolate, knowing that he was wrestling with demons and needed more than a quick and easy answer. We’d eaten a few miles before I said, “Yes. With all my heart and soul.”

We hit Richford – more 19th Century brick buildings, clustered by the same river that fed Enosberg Falls – passing the turn-off that leads to the border with Quebec, just a mile and a half away. Dense woods quickly blotted the town from view.

“Doesn’t it eat you alive? Knowing what they’re doing, right now? While we’re just . . . just driving away?” His words were seasoned with anguish, but his delivery was curiously detached. Like he was trying to see from a distance.

I drove, the road continuing to flirt with the easy-flowing Missisquoi, negotiating the border between the New England highlands and the broad Canadian plateau to the north.

“It hurts,” I acknowledged. “I wonder, sometimes, why I’m not enough.” I drove on.

He continued surveying the world we traversed. Silent. Knowing, somehow, that I had more to say. Content to wait until I was ready to say it.

“I wonder, sometimes, if she wants me to fight . . . if she thinks less of me, because I don’t.” The road slowly curved, beginning to turn south, and I watched the Missisquoi disappear, dwindling to a distant, silver ribbon in the rear-view mirror.

We approached Carleton Mountain, with Burnt Mountain and North Jay Peak visible to the south. As we passed the parking lot for the Long Trail, Jacob’s face betrayed a longing that echoed what I’d seen in my studio the day before. “Good hiking ’round here, I bet.” Barely a whisper.

“Yeah.”

“Moose?”

“Sometimes.”

The road took more turns, as it picked its way through the Green Mountains like a billy goat finding stepping stones to cross a creek.

“If you fought, would she stop? End . . . things . . . with Brea?” His question was quiet as his eyes sought to penetrate the woods around us.

I thought about it. Weighed my deepest fears in the balance with the certainties on which I had built my life. Afternoon sun caused water on my right to dazzle as the road flirted with another stream. “I wouldn’t have to fight,” I said, finally, knowing it was true. “I just have to say the word.”

We passed through Jay and took a sharp left near the Jay Branch Gorge. Heading north again.

“But you won’t. You won’t say the word.” He made it a statement, not a question.

I answered anyway. I owed him that. “No.”

It was the strangest conversation I’d ever had, shaped as much by the silences between words as it was by the words themselves. Like we were suspended in a bubble, a cosmos with its own rules that the two of us knew instinctively. We alone.

We drove another twenty minutes in silence, until we reached Newport and Lake Memphremagog stretched away to the north, crossing the international border. He looked at the water, sparkling in the mid-afternoon sunlight.

Then he finally looked at me. "If looks could kill, I’d be dead, you’d be dead . . . and, I’ll be honest, Kara would be dead, too. From the looks I’m giving, in her case. But . . . not Brea.”

I kept my eyes on the road, maneuvering around a repair crew complete with yellow vests and signs that warned me to yield. “No. I like Brea. I’ve always liked her.”

“But . . . .” He stopped himself, and returned to silence.

When we were out of town and back in the countryside, I said, “I can’t blame Brea for loving Kara. How could I? Personally, I think it’s impossible not to love Kara.”

He thought about that for a bit as we rumbled on. We crossed Interstate 91. Passed from Vermont into New Hampshire.

“Kez, I’m sorry.” He sounded lost. Bewildered. “I just don’t understand. It’s a wound that won’t heal. Seven years, and you’re still hurting. How can you not say the word?”

“Because she would do it. She wouldn’t argue, or fight, or plead. She would do it because I asked, and it would be like cutting her heart in half with a rusty meat cleaver.”

We were on Route 111 now, headed south. A Vermont highway that happened to be in New Hampshire. Orphaned and out of place.

As we skirted Seymour Lake, he asked, “Is her pain more important than yours?”

“Yes.” That came out without thought, without hesitation.

Behind us, a car flashed its headlights. Once. Twice.

He stared at me, his expression unreadable.

The headlights flashed again, impatient.

Finally he whispered, “Why?”

There was a wide shoulder ahead, and I pulled off to let two cars pass. People in a hurry, with places to go. I took the opportunity to look Jacob in the eye, to be present to his pain. Pain that I could end, maybe, by saying the word I refused say.

“Because I love her. More than art. More than life. I won’t do that to her.”

A tear escaped from his eye, but he didn’t seem to feel it. His left hand clenched his knee in a vice-like grip.

I reached over and touched his hand gently, saw his grip loosen as he became aware of it. Softly, I said, “Jacob? . . . . I’m sorry. Very sorry.”

And I was. Sorry for him, for Kara and Brea, sorry for all of us, caught in a tangle of love and longing. But I knew the location of the Day Star in the firmament of my life, and I would hold true to that.

I don’t know how long we sat there, kindred souls in wordless communication. More cars passed us, rattling the truck as it idled. I understood his pain, felt it in the core of my being. A good man, quiet and grounded, knocked wildly off his bearings by the force of his feelings, like clay on the wheel, thrown off center by a careless hand.

But over time, his expression softened and he looked away, out his window. “I want to learn to love like you do, Kez. I don’t know if my heart is that big.”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that. While I wrestled with it, I got us back on the road and resumed our progress. We crossed the Pherrins River and made a hairpin turn onto Route 114, heading north again. Farms. Streams. Ponds. At Norton the road darted left, as if it had bounced off the invisible border with Quebec. Due east now, we traveled in silence through the borderland.

We came to Canaan. The Promised Land. Milk and honey. Just take it from the people who are living there. Your right, your need, is greater than theirs. Isn’t it?

Isn’t it always?

I turned onto Route 3, which would take us to our destination, leaving Canaan behind. “Jacob . . . I don’t know that my answer is right. I only know it’s right for me.”

“Doesn’t matter,” he said, smiling as a flock of birds rose, startled, from a field on our right. “I don’t know what I’ll say to Brea. And maybe, whatever it is, she won’t accept it.” He wasn’t finished with his thought, but he paused, considering.

I kept us heading north.

“Whether I’m with Brea, or someone else,” he finished, as we pulled off onto the long dirt road that led to Janey’s place, “That’s how I want to live my life. Loving like you do.”

To be continued . . . .