I turned off at the Lyndonville exit, drove through town to connect to Route 144, and headed north toward Gannet-a tiny weather-beaten collection of boxy prefab buildings, tar paper-patched trailers, and, with one garish exception, an occasional, abused remnant of nineteenth-century rural architecture. Gannet was undoubtedly, in the eyes of tourists and outsiders, the epitome of “ugly,” but it was also the primary repository of precisely the type of soothing memories I was after.
At the end of every school year, my brother Leo and I would be eagerly packed into the car by my mother-leaving my father to tend to the farm and we’d drive north to spend the summers with my aunt and uncle. Although we lived in Thetford, only sixty miles to the south, the trip took most of the day, sometimes longer when the roads were out.
This afternoon, the trip had taken less than an hour, which was just as well, since my psychological needs were more pressing. Aunt Liz had died several years ago. She’d been a thin, nervous, somewhat scattered woman, given to much activity to little effect, a characteristic she readily admitted with good humor and grace. My uncle Buster had been her counterbalance, huge, benevolent, slow-moving. He owned and ran a ramshackle garage and service station in Gannet, known more as a halfway house for troubled kids than as a place to get your car fixed. A philosopher of sorts, he’d instilled in me the value of listening not just to what people were saying, but why they were saying it-a knack that was to help me considerably as a cop. Together, Buster and Liz had shown Leo and me an alternate way of life from the more isolated one we knew on our father’s farm one with a volunteer fire department, adjoining back yards, and a soda fountain at the local caf.
Route 144 heads off north-northeast, past the struggling Burke Mountain ski resort condominiums, the little village of East Burke, and on into the wilderness toward Island Pond and Canada a narrow, much-patched, rough ribbon of tarmac, following the connecting valley floors through a tangle of brush-choked forest and meandering streams.
The late afternoon sky was blue and cloudless, the low sun highlighting the bare trees, making them look pale purple brown from a distance. The violent coloration of fall had yielded to this timid replacement, a concession to the anticipated dread of winter. I passed several empty pickup trucks and 4 X 4s, parked awkwardly on the shoulder, all with gun racks barring their windows. In contrast to the brutal encounter I’d just had, hunting season was a time of quasi-religious importance to most rural Vermonters, when larders were stocked against the barren months ahead, and when young men with their fathers, carrying old 30-30s, entered a crucial rite of passage from childhood, as I had long ago with Buster. It was also a time when well-heeled flatlanders came north to hunt and drop some greatly needed cash in a region of the state that otherwise rarely attracted them. 1
stopped the car at the top of the low hill south of town. Below was Gannet, whose haphazard cluster of houses and buildings contrasted with the almost rectangular grid of its four streets, the only paved one of which was Route 114. Parallel to Route 114 was Atlantic boulevard to the east, with South Street and North Street connecting the two at the bottom and top of the rectangle. The entire layout was no more than some two hundred yards on its longest side. It was an absurdly regimented layout for such an unruly hodge-podge of buildings and trailers, since not one house was aligned with or looked like another.
About three hundred people lived in Gannet, half of them in town and the rest in the surrounding hills. I put the car back in gear and rolled down the slope, losing my slight aerial perspective and becoming one with the village. Buster’s home, an ancient but tidy ramshackle ex-farmhouse, was the first on the left. Originally a squat and clumsy copy of traditional Greek Revival architecture, one of only about five in town, its outer appearance had been transformed by the practical hand of hard economic times-a prevalent regional feature. The roof was a smattering of rusting and multi-hued, brightly painted corrugated metal panels; the walls, intermixed with a few remnants of the original white clapboard, consisted variously of unpainted plywood, asphalt shingles, battened-down tar paper, and more corrugated metal. And yet the whole structure had the appealing look of a neatly designed patch-work quilt.
Buster was no slob; he just made do. Subconsciously, like a proud apprentice, I picked out those bits and pieces of the building’s exterior that I had nailed into place in years past.
There was a car backing out of the dirt driveway as I pulled up.
It stopped, and an attractive young woman with pale brown hair pulled back in a ponytail got out. She stood uncertainly by her open door, but stuck out her hand tentatively as I crossed to meet her.
“You’re Joe?” “That’s right.” I smiled and shook her hand. It was strong and muscular, which threw me off a little, given her demeanor and her expression-she had the nervous, shy look of a young girl. I guessed her to be somewhere in her early thirties.
“Hi. I’m Laura. I clean your uncle’s house. He’s real excited about your coming. Asked me to do an extra special job.” Her hand went a little limp in mine and I realized I’d held it too long.
“Thank you. It’s good to be back.” She was wearing tight faded blue jeans, sneakers, and a thick sweater. She wasn’t skinny, but she didn’t carry any fat, either. I found her enormously appealing, even sensual, in a no-frills, down-home way. It jolted me a little, and made me think of Gail, whom I’d left behind in a rush in Brattleboro, almost without explanation, like a pain too big to bear.
She gave me a small, crumpled smile and looked at the ground. I’d been staring, and now we were both slightly embarrassed.
She put her hands in her pockets. “Well, I better get going.” “Is Buster inside?” She looked up again, her face clear. “No, he says it drives him nuts to watch me work, makes him feel bad. He’s probably at the Rocky River by now, or maybe at the garage. He’s real excited… I guess I said that. Do you know which room you’re in?” “Yup.” She smiled again. “That was dumb. Not like it’s your first time here, is it?”
“No, although it almost seems like it. I’ve been away so long.” “Buster told me you’re investigating something.” “Yeah. Not here, though. I just thought I’d stay with him while I’m in the area-you know, cheaper than a motel and a whole lot friendlier.” There was a long pause. I suppose neither one of us wanted to start talking about the weather, which was certainly all I could think of at the moment. She broke the silence by turning toward her car, repeating, “Well, I better get going.” I stepped back and shut her door for her. She rolled down the window. “It was nice meeting you.” “My pleasure. Hope I see you around.” She laughed, which made her face suddenly quite beautiful.
“Hard not to in this town.” I watched her back out and drive north, up through town, and thought again of Gail. She, too, was younger than I, although in her forties. She was smart and strong and reasonable, both a successful realtor and an effective town selectman. She, like I, enjoyed being independent, and so we lived apart, getting together only when it suited us both, which had been less and less lately. It had been a while since we’d shared a laugh, or much of anything. I hadn’t told Gail I was leaving for Gannet until this morning, thereby highlighting the sorry state of our friendship. I’d decided beforehand what her response would be, and had thereby guaranteed it. She’d greeted the news, and its late delivery, with a chilling-cold anger. It had been a self-fulfilling prophesy, but it had nevertheless come as a shock. I’d orchestrated things so that only her pleas could reverse them. She, predictably, had passed on the opportunity.