Marilyn, pt. 2

The strange thing about people who seem instrumental within a community, who seem like pillars whose absence would surely cause irreversible discord, the ones you just don't know what you'd do without. . .those kinds of people fade away just as quickly as anyone else.

Such was the case here in Confluence when Marilyn Coolidge left for Pennsylvania. Mr. and Mrs. Coolidge held a debutante ball of sorts at their home, although from what I understand it was just as much a going away party for Marilyn as it was a ball for all of her classmates. They all wore dresses, and there was a small band to play music, but as the summer evening wore on, the adults mostly left, and the teenagers all changed clothes and slid into different corners of the night for the evening. Two weeks later, Mr. Coolidge drove Marilyn to Bryn Mawr, and that was that.

Before long, the burning crest of August slid into the cold crisp of fall. A new crop of students appeared just as quickly as Marilyn and her cohort had disappeared. The varsity football team was quite good that year (12-2, quarter finals of the state playoffs), and the town's attention turned elsewhere. Life went on quite quickly.

Of course, when Thanksgiving came, everyone was pleasant and glowing to see young Marilyn back for the fall break. "My, how she had grown up," Mrs. Cooley, my landlord, recalled. "She arrived at the train station on a Tuesday night, and Mr. Coolidge drove her home--but not before they both stopped downtown."

"I remember seeing her in her college clothes. Her face had a new sophistication; her hair was different, her eyes were different. She seemed immensely mature and grown up. It was as if, in the four months passed, she'd transformed into a young woman."

The boys in town noticed, too. Marilyn had taken up piano lessons at college, and during the evenings she would practice on the family's grand piano in the front foyer of the house. There was a large bay window looking out onto the yard, and in the dark of night, you could see Marilyn on the bench, working her way through a sonata or concerto. Whenever she appeared, the traffic on Westside Avenue increased dramatically--suddenly, every boy had to walk the family dog, or go for a run, or even take their father's car to the filling station to make sure it had plenty of fuel for the next day--not that there was a filling station anywhere near the Coolidge house, or that it mattered. Every night, one by one, they would file down the sidewalk, their feet forward but their heads turned sharply, watching Marilyn as she sat, erect, her hands softly negotiating the keyboard, her curly hair glowing in the lamp light.

Five days later she was off again to school, and soon our minds went elsewhere once more--until Christmas, when it all repeated again, and then again at Easter.

Easter was different, though. Marilyn had met a young man who taught at the high school near her college. She came home on Good Friday, and by Easter Sunday, the Lord had risen and the whole town knew Marilyn was dating someone. The evening piano practices continued, but the boys walked by with less frequency--and less hope.

But, as college romances often do, the courtship between the teacher and the tenacious girl ended by summertime, and when Marilyn came home for the summer break, hope had sprung eternal once more for the eligible young men of the town. To make matters even more tempting, Marilyn took a job at the country club instructing young girls on playing volleyball. Never before had a 12 year-old volleyball scrimmage in the yard attracted such a crowd.

And, I seemed to sense from the several who have told me these stories about Marilyn, she occasionally fanned the fury of boys following after her. It must have kept things interesting. One afternoon, a young girl on the team served the ball directly into the crowd, and Marilyn ran over to the young man who'd caught the ball--tripping just as she arrived in front of him and falling into his lap. She recovered quickly, kissed him on the cheek, and dallied away with the ball. The kiss caused a bit of a stir, and Dean May, the club's director, asked her politely to refrain from such behavior in the future.

Perhaps she dated one of the boys in town. Perhaps not. I'm guessing I could paint pictures of Marilyn being taken to Mary's for a soda or cheeseburger. I'm not entirely sure. But that summer folded back into the next fall, and the entire cycle started over. Marilyn was successful at college. She was elected head mistress in charge of the honor council. Her grades were good. She took a liberal arts coursework and concentrated on social work. Every visit back to Confluence, she appeared more as a lady and less like the spindly-legged, adorable girl remembered from her school days. There is a picture of her and her mother in front of the church, dated in early June of her junior year. She is tanned, trim, and stunningly beautiful.

During her final semester in college, Marilyn decided to take an independent study in New York City. And it was there, later that spring, that she met Victor Salarino.

to be continued...

Marilyn

Contrary to what some folks here might tell you, Vic and Marilyn didn't meet here in Confluence. Oh yes, Marilyn was born and raised here--fell into her Mother's lap in the back upstairs bedroom in 204 Westside Avenue. She was the only child of Hazel and Theodore Coolidge.

Mr. Coolidge was a blood member of the particular family I'm certain you're thinking of, and his business was in commerce and trading. He spent most of his young adult life in the shipyards downstate, but after a crane dropped a cargo load of freight on him when he was 28, breaking his back and damn near killing him, he brought his wife to our town, and took up the law for a living. He wasn't a very good lawyer from what I understand, but his family had great political connections, and thus he was often able to turn things the way he intended.

But that isn't to say he was a bad man. Rather, the citizens of our sleepy township adored him. Most remember Theodore Coolidge as a fair man, a solid gentleman who resisted the temptation of plowing the easier row his family name afforded him, and a hard worker. Naturally, between his lawyering and the family business, money came his way; but he donated generously to many civic projects that came to Confluence after the war. Hence the Coolidge Library, the T.L. Coolidge Memorial Highway leading into town, and the now-defunct Hazel Meadowbright Coolidge Convalescence Home that sat off of Winter Street before it closed following the establishment of the state hospital across the mountain.

Marilyn was their only child. She was born right smartly in the middle of Confluence's hottest summer. I am not certain if temperature influences tenacity, but perhaps the unbreakable spirit that saturated Marilyn later in her life was borne from the fire of her birthday.

If you read through the archives of the Confluence Spectator, you'll find her birth announcement and several notes about her in the months following. The townspeople apparently enjoyed seeing the Coolidge family about--or at least the newsletter's editor figured it wise to publish more than the occasional social note regarding one of the town's more upstanding families.

Here is a paragraph from the Spectator shortly after Labor Day the year she was born:

"End-of-summer festivities and Confluence's Labor Day Celebration marked the end to an taxing and flagrantly hot August. Families came out for an afternoon of entertainment, thrills, and singing. Mayor Conrad Holmes delivered a fiery sermon from the steps of the Municipal Building, and the Calvary Quintet out of Berryville roused the crowd with its message of salvation. Perhaps the greatest attraction however, and one that did not appear on any billing of events, was the debut of Ms. Marilyn Edisto Coolidge with her parents, Mr. and Mrs. T.L. Coolidge. The proud Coolidge family attracted quite a crowd...."

Mrs. Cooley, from whom I rented my first apartment in Confluence, later told me that Marilyn's very existence was seen in town as a miracle of sorts. Apparently--and this is a little-known fact, one certainly not published anywhere--Mrs. Coolidge nearly died in childbirth, having lost a seemingly irrecoverable amount of blood. Mr. Coolidge himself underwent the transfusion that saved her life.

And though no one officially recorded the difficulties of Marilyn's birth, word soon enough spread about the wonder. Poor Mr. Coolidge had suffered enough, what with a broken back that nearly crippled him. His very act of delivering blood directly into his wife's body, however, was the minor miracle needed for him to achieve sainthood in these parts.

My kind landlord went on to tell me about the day Marilyn was christened. It was a wonderfully warm October day, warm enough to throw open the windows of St. Michael's, and every eye in the congregation refused to leave the baby. Old folks cooed at her. Younger folks couldn't help but smile. And the children...well, they were fascinated by her. The baby's soft skin radiated in the orange light inside the church. Never had the dedication of a child to God been more gripping, nor had any member of this community thought harder about or took more seriously the bond of agreement to raise this child in the right.

All of this sounds a bit overdone, as if Marilyn were the Christ-child, and it's possible Mrs. Cooley's memory of this is sweetened with sentimentality. But they all, every one of them, loved Marilyn.

She became the star of the town. In grade school, she delivered the leading lines in the Christmas play. In a time when female athletes were rare, she took it upon herself to establish a girl's volleyball team--in the seventh grade. If you've ever scratched your head at the sand courts behind the gymnasium at the junior high school, you should know they're there because Marilyn asked for them.

The stories could fill pages and pages, tales both hilarious and substantial, both charming and arresting. The time she tripped Conrad Holmes in the middle of the street. The time she pulled Francis Templeton out of the Tinton River. When she was in second grade and she brought home the town drunk, demanding that her father let him have a bath. The winter she fell on a patch of ice and broke her leg and four boys from the senior high took turns carrying her about until she could walk again.

There are several pictures of her in the files of the Spectator, providing a documentary of sorts as she grew up. There is a feature article of her volleyball team and an accompanying picture of her as a brand new adolescent: khaki skirt hiding spindly legs; volumes of auburn hair, curled, running every which way; a toothy grin, the lightest freckles, and steel gray eyes that never changed. Later, in the high school yearbook, her picture taken to honor her position as the class secretary completes the transformation from young girl into young woman. Her grin and her eyes were much the same.

Marilyn graduated with honors. That summer she became a debutante, although from what I understand the festivities weren't as formal as old Southern cotillions tend to be. She never would have wanted it that way. Rather, the event became a going-away party of sorts: Marilyn had enrolled at Bryn Mawr. Confluence's darling sweetheart was leaving.

to be continued...

Camp

I was taking the trash out to the curb last night when Aldus, my neighbor, met me in the driveway having done the same thing. It was strange meeting my neighbor in the evening and having the benefit of light past 6:30. He had just gotten home, he said.

Aldus, in addition to being an upstanding citizen here in Confluence, volunteers his time with the scouts, all of whom are young enough to be his grandsons. They meet on Monday evenings at a lodge behind the Methodist church, and once the weather gets a little warmer and there's light later in the day, they meet outside, clusters of boys in their drab olive pants and khaki shirts and sneakers of all colors.

There are many offices in life whose occupants earn an overstated gratitude from me. They are people like Aldus, who hold positions in life (some voluntary, some elected, some by the grace of the Lord) that I will never have the time, energy, or respect to accomplish. I took time last night at the curb to begin another round of over-sentimental thanks for Aldus and his scouts.

"Aldus," I began, "this is so wonderful for these boys. For our future. You're shaping our country. Not just with the school board, but with these boys who are soon to be men, who are soon to take our places." I admit I'd been drinking a little bit of wine.

He nodded, humble old Aldus, unsure of how to respond to such gushing.

"You teach them strength, and you teach them responsibility, and the Motto, and the Oath, and these are things we need, God knows we need these boys to grow up into good people, and you're helping them with that. You know," I said with an air of suspense, "I was a Scout once."

I begged my father to take me for sign-ups the day after Roman Tholdore came to our fifth grade class with a steel and flint set that would throw sparks when you rubbed the two pieces together. We were all pyromaniacs at heart, so naturally every boy wanted to join. After dinner that night, Dad drove me down to...well, I guess it was the Methodist church where I grew up...in his Pontiac Ventura. Then it was official: I was a Scout. My mother sewed the badges onto my shirt. I had rank. I belonged to a troop. I was eleven.

I won't bore you with what happened on the meetings, which were occasionally interesting, but the real fun came every summer when we left for camp. Our troop traveled across state lines to Camp John Whaley, which coincidentally is about fifty miles up the Tinton River from here in Confluence. It is in the middle of nowhere, but every summer it became a city of boys.

We went for three weeks. Each scout troop picked a campsite on one of three hills surrounding a low clearing that bordered the lake. Our troop favored a spot that was in line sight of the water, and there we dug in for our stay. We slept on cots in old military tents, the canvas kind that were large enough to stand in. The cots stood on old wooden pallets.

Every day at Camp John Whaley began in high liturgy. At 7am, someone on staff would play an old vinyl record over the camp's loudspeakers. For some reason, the only song we woke up to that I can remember was La Bamba. We would trudge out of our tents, dress, and walk down as a troop for morning ceremony at the Mess Hall, a wooden lodge about a hundred yards above the lake.

There, in the yard, every troop would assemble and line up in patrol divisions. We recited the Scout Oath, and then the Pledge of Allegiance. A bugler would play Reveille, two boys would raise the American flag, and then--while the flag was run up the tall pole--we would fire a Civil War cannon. If La Bamba didn't wake you up, the canon did.

Our ears still ringing and our nostrils tingling from the smell of gun powder, we then heard the morning announcements and the breakfast menu from the Cook, a man of very short stature who did not appear to have a neck whatsoever. No matter what time of day, all meals were served with Bug Juice. We took our meals inside the Mess Hall, which was adorned with dozens and dozens of deer and elk trophies and a stuffed black bear that stood on a ledge over the entrance.

Only after this daily ritual did we attend to life at camp, which was filled with prescribed activities. We swam in the lake, where the water ran so cold it seemed to kill you from the groin inward. We shot rifles. We tied knots, braiding half hitches and surgeons knots out of twine. We crafted pocket knife holders out of leather. We learned survival techniques. At the end of the day, we would reverse the morning ceremony prior to dinner at the Mess Hall--the Oath, the Pledge, the bugle, flag, and cannon. And then it was back to the campsite to retire for the evening.

Packing for a three week stay at camp is a careful art. Naturally, we all packed enough underwear for five or six days. That part was fairly common. The rest of the inventory, though, was carefully put together following decades of scouting experience: flashlights; batteries; pocket knife; swimming trunks; soap; the Boy Scout Handbook; pornographic magazines (usually supplied by Ronald, who was the troop's pervert); playing cards; and, finally, two or three cans of spray deodorant and matches.

Now, you might think our overstock of deodorant was simply a product of a young boy's obsession with hygiene. Having walked by teen clothing stores in the mall and nearly fainting from the overwhelming odor of cologne, I would understand that assumption. However, I must stress that we used spray deodorant, and its purpose had nothing to do with smelling nice.

The game was this: the pallets on which our canvas tents were pitched were excellent hiding places for creepy crawlies of all kinds. We forced the younger scouts to fish out a bug, with points awarded to whomever produced the largest. Spiders were the best, and trust me, the tents were full of them. And then, in bursts of glee that are quite shocking to me now, we would set loose the bug on the dirt, all of us scouts surrounding it, our deodorant cans aimed behind cigarette lighters, and unleash a torrent of fiery Old Spice upon the bug until it expired. We called it the Circle of Hell. I fully expect these escapades to reappear when I face our Maker on judgment day.

One day, our troop was selected to raise the flag, a duty that fell to the senior patrol leaders of the group, Doug and Jeb. While they were carrying out the ceremony, they noticed that, hidden between two of the stones at the foot of the flagpole, was the largest moth they'd ever seen. Quickly, over breakfast, we began to hatch a plan to capture said moth, which I couldn't see from my vantage point in the yard, and subject it to the Circle of Hell. Later, in first aid class, we decided to use this as an initiation of sorts for the newest scouts.

That night, after lights-out, we snuck down to the yard outside the mess hall, our cans of deodorant in one hand and flashlights in the other. Sure enough, the giant moth was still there. I was amazed at its wingspan, seven or maybe even eight inches across. Carefully, one of our Tenderfoots coaxed it onto the end of a long branch. We had never torched anything like this before.

Older scouts always had first dibs on getting the initial shot in, so Jeb leaned in and fired first, but his aim was a little off, a singe at best, but certainly not enough to set it ablaze. We all rushed in towards it, our plumes of fire lighting up our faces. Death--and innocence--filled our eyes. What happened next defied all rules of nature and cemented this story into the annals of our troop--as recorded, I swear to you, by our Troop Historian.

The moth took flight. It was on fire, and it was flying. Suddenly, the game had changed: instead of chasing some spider around on the dirt, we were spraying our flame throwers into the air, following this floating lantern as little pieces of its wings fell off in cinders.

Of course this escape of gravity did not last long, although in the minds of every scout present (pledge to truth and honesty aside), it lasted forever. Then, ever so gently, the innocent moth turned into a smoldering spectre, and it glided slowly, reverently back down to the earth. Every boy there stopped at the beauty of it, watching its final descent.

Until it landed on top of the cannon and lit the fuse. We were helpless, watching the wire burn quickly towards an irreversible end. The moth had fired back.

We scattered in every direction, diving into the grass at the report. The blast shook our bodies and woke up the whole camp. Who could have known that the Cook, his chin abutting his breastbone, packed the cannon every night before he went to bed? And how else could we have explained, after we were caught, how the cannon fired by itself in the middle of the night? Together, we boys had borne a legend.

This is why I envy Aldus, who has his own troop now, and I told him so last night after we took the trash to the curb.

"Here," he said, reaching into the pocket of his shirt. He pulled out a steel and flint set. "This is for you."

Good Stories and Gravity

It's been a busy week for me, but I wanted you to know that I've been spending a lot of time thinking about Vic and how to tell his story. I'm not sure if that surprises you or not, but I can begin by saying this: Victor Salarino was at one point the most talked-about person in Confluence.

That means there's a certain weight to this story, and it's hung on me all week while I was in Chicago to visit my sister. I walked the streets, the El trains shaking across God's earth above me, and Vic's story was with me.

I was sitting at the bar in the lobby of the Palmer House downtown when I knew that to begin telling you about Vic, I needed to be closer to the start of our story. So when I got back to Confluence yesterday and drove back to my place up on the hill, I unloaded my suitcases, let the dog out, and without even checking the mail, climbed into the old Wagoneer (which, you'll remember, Vic himself helped repair), and drove downtown.

I slid the car into a parking space just across from Mary's, near my office, and went in for a cup of coffee. I sat at the counter near the windows so I could gaze across the street, just a block down, to the old Tower Building. I closed my eyes.

Soon, I was there, back so many years ago to that summer when I first showed up and rented the apartment from Mrs. Cooley. The humidity that summer was suffocating, and my pad didn't have an air conditioner. Every afternoon, when the temperature broiled anyone stupid enough to sit in a place like mine, I'd get into the Jeep and drive downtown. And often I'd go to Vic's.

It's an understatement to say that Vic ran Confluence's only antique shop. I spent hours inside the Tower Building, where Vic kept his curiosities. It was a three story brick building with a minaret of sorts climbing above the vestibule and forming a point topped with a spear-like steeple and weather vane. The shop occupied all three stories.

I could spend years talking about the tidbits I discovered nosing through Vic's shop. Downstairs was one of the most massive buffets I've ever seen, laced with golden fixtures, topped in marble, and supported by rich wood legs the size of tree trunks. It belonged to King Umberto I of Italy.

There was a collection of thousands of vinyl records. An autographed picture of Elvis Pressley when he was in the service during WWII. A lock of John Lennon's hair. Exquisite china sets. Silver knickknacks. A row of seats from the old Dodger Stadium in Brooklyn, which sat in front of a veritable Hall of Fame collection of baseball cards. Three jukeboxes.

And there were ordinary items, too: stereo-vision goggles. Hubcaps from an old Buick. Old pictures--boxes and boxes full of them that Vic had bought at estate sales. Old rugs. Old tools, lathes, hammers, and the like. Wood-shafted golf clubs. The store seemed endless in its supply.

A lot of these finds were displayed in antique drug store display cabinets, which created little lanes to walk through about the shop. At the front, near the mammoth buffet, was a wooden counter left over from when the Tower Building was in fact Confluence Drug and Rx, where Vic kept a vintage NCR machine. Most of his business, though, was recorded in the ledger book he kept to its side.

I assure you I didn't take in this amount of detail all at once. The first time I'd walked into Vic's shop, the day after he'd fixed my car, my eyes didn't know where to start. I was sweating from moving about all afternoon, the summer sun blistering anything that sat still too long, and I wasn't even sure if Vic would recognize me in a pair of shorts and damp t-shirt.

It took a moment to adjust to the darkness inside. "Hello?" I asked. There was such a jumble of stuff strewn about the place that it could have easily camouflaged a dozen men, let alone just one.

I heard wood creaking, and soon Vic appeared from the winding staircase near the door carrying a half dozen or so small boxes. I turned to face him. "Hello, Vic!"

"Hello, son," he said, keeping his eyes set on balancing the load. "How's the hose holding up?"

"So far, so good," I said. "I've been driving it around some this afternoon, and as hot as it's been, there have been plenty of opportunities for it to overheat again."

Vic moved over to the counter, dropping the goods and arranging them one by one. I stood quietly to watch, figuring he might say something back, but when it was clear he wouldn't I began to feel awkward.

"Hey, I wanted to come by to say thanks again for your help yesterday."

Another pause, his thick hands opening each of the little packages carefully. "No problem."

"I've actually rented an apartment here in Confluence," I said. "I really like it here."

"Very good," he said, his voice rising and falling over the words in a sort of grandfatherly way. "What are you going to do?"

"Well," I began, my mind searching for something that would at least verify my standing as an adult--and one with a college degree to boot. Still, I narrowly avoided kicking my toe into the floor like a stumped third grader. Victor's silence didn't help. What would I say? I had just finished four years of expensive private school and taken a degree and now I had nowhere to go, no assignment, nothing at all to direct me.

"I'll start looking for a job this week," I said. "In the meantime, I was just coming out to pick up some things to clean up my apartment and get it organized."

"Mmhmm."

"I've taken the studio apartment behind Mrs. Cooley's house, above her garage."

"Have you?"

"Do you know Mrs. Cooley?"

A grin flashed across his face. "I do," he said, resting his hands on the counter and for the first time bringing his eyes to mine. "She's..." his voice trailed off, his silver eyebrows arched upward in search of the right words. "...quite bountiful in her verbosity."

I didn't know what to say. Vic finished with whatever he was doing to the row of boxes and walked around the counter to me, reaching out his hand. "Well, son, welcome to Confluence."

"Thank you," I grinned. "When can I get a tour of this place?"

"The town?"

"The shop! There's so much in here!" I turned towards a tall, glass case in the middle of the store, where a bright red evening gown hung suspended in the air, as if it were worn by a trapped ghost. I pointed to it. "That dress there," I said, "what can you tell me about it?"

Vic sighed. "That dress once belonged to Marilyn."

I would add that name to the list of celebrity collectibles I'd come across later, but I was wrong. Victor wasn't referring to Marilyn Monroe. It took me quite some time to find out the story about that dress, and I've already gone on too long here. Don't worry. We'll get there, you and me, together.

In the meantime, now, as I stare across the street and watch the city workers hanging metallic shamrocks from the street lamps, I'll leave you with this: Vic, and his wife Marilyn, gouged a hole in this community. I didn't know it at the time, when I first met him. But if you talk to most anyone in Confluence who is old enough to remember the whole story, you'll find that people here were polarized by the entire ordeal. And most people, I later found out, were on Marilyn's side.

Beer, Buzzards, and Barrel-Chested Men

I know I left you hanging there with the story of Vic, and I promise I will get back to him soon. There's plenty more to say about him, about his shop full of curiosities, and about Marilyn. In fact, I've been thinking back and forth in my head about how much I should say, whether or not it's too much. These are the things you have to be careful about when you're a small town newsletter publisher.

There are other benefits to knowing folks and being known, and that includes being in the thick of Confluence's surprisingly vast and occasionally odd social scene. Sure, we have plenty of regular events that most towns have, oyster roasts, and benefit dinners, and so on. But there are a host of lesser-known parties, some seemingly underground, others approaching infamy. They are engagements that occur at set times established long ago, things like Ginny's St. Patrick's Day party, Julio's September 14th party, Will's Egg Nog, and the Bordeaux's Bastille Bash.

Now that I type them out, they seem awfully trite. People everywhere, I'm sure, celebrate occasions like these in their back yards with several dozen invited. (Well...now that I think about it...Julio is the only person I know who celebrates September 14th. I'll have to tell you about that one later.)

But the one party I always enjoy the most is Log Party. It takes place every April on the first weekend the weather is warm enough to enjoy sitting around outside. As you can imagine, this involves a mixture of forecasting, the duty of which falls to the Log Party host, Job Altmann. Job consults a variety of meteorological experts in setting the date: the Farmer's Almanac, his father in law's ankle (which swells when rain is coming), how much moss is growing in the forest, and occasionally, weatherchannel.com.

Anyway, once the date is set, the Log Party invitations are mailed--a surprisingly formal move on Job's part given the party's rustic intentions. I cannot say the guest list is a veritable who's-who of Confluence, even though it took me several years to gain my first invitation. There are folks who are well heeled, and there are folks who are not. This isn't the kind of party where anyone suffers the indignity of being asked what one does around town. What we do, actually, is sit around, drink beer, cook a pig, and engage in a competition of splitting logs.

Although his vocation is irrelevant to the story, I'll tell you that Job is the pallet man in Confluence because he hosts Log Party at his shop. Job builds the wooden pallets you see at the bottoms of truck shipments, and he constructs them in a large metal building that's well off the main highway on the west side of Tinton River. He owns a few hundred acres of pine forest out there, and the only way to the shop is a log truck road, a dirt path that winds around the forest floor before arriving in a clearing. He keeps a couple of trucks there, a second metal shed filled with wood, and a saw operation in the third. In the yard between these buildings, though, Job will erect a large tent, pull in a cooker for the pig, and set up the log splitting area. After the contest, we'll build a bonfire out of the spent logs and end the night.

It is a lonely place any time other than Log Party. Job works alone, every day, putting boards into a frame and tacking them together with a nail gun. He stacks them up, straps them together, and loads them onto a flatbed truck to sell. And that's it.

I must admit I've only been out to Job's a handful of times, and only once have I gone out there for something besides his party. A couple of weeks after the party two years ago, I needed to return a tool I'd borrowed from him, so I drove my Jeep down the path and found him working away mid-day. Job is very quiet. I have never heard him curse. He doesn't play music while he works. There's a large industrial fan in the corner of the assembly shed, but judging by the looks of it, he never turns it on. We didn't say much that day. I gave him back the tool, and when he walked me back out to the driveway, he showed me a hornets' nest out in a pine tree that had already grown to an alarming size.

Log Party is one of those things you remember around March, one of the things that keeps you counting down the weeks until, finally, the invitation lands--or occasionally doesn't--in your mail.

Last year was a good party, and the first time I participated in the sport of log splitting. Generally, Job sets up a dozen or so White Ash trunks, and our job is to chop them into two. Two men compete at one time, and the first to divide the log into two wins. You may have seen something like this on television; those men are professionals with real equipment. Our group, on the other hand, brings axes used at home. There is an edge to the game, but it is largely for fun and enjoying each other's company. I should also mention there is an element of danger to the entire event, as most of us have a few drinks in us before it starts.

I am a writer. I do not lift heavy objects in my job other than the thesaurus--which I still keep in paper copy. I grew up in a neighborhood with houses heated by natural gas. I did not learn to chop wood until much later in life. I am not a man admired by other, burly men for my barrel chest, and I assure you the majority of men at this party are barrel-chested men. Joining this spectacle of timber halving was rather intimidating.

But all of that has faded away since last year. I went up against Jerry, a fellow who works at a transmission repair shop. I had brought an axe I bought a decade ago at Sears. Jerry's axe made mine look like a butter knife.

I had a strategy, though, one I knew could pay off for me: simply, I made sure Jerry always had alcohol in his hand.

Perhaps it is cheating or unethical, but Jerry knew full and well that he was slipping off the pier and into the lake of intoxication. He knew that with it came the tendency to become easily winded. He was fully aware of beer's false bravado.

He also knew he was matched up against a novelist, and so by the time Job counted us off (quietly, steadily, he says, "Three, two, one, go.") I'm certain Jerry still had the advantage. We chopped and chopped. My arms ached. My hands grew trembly. I quickly broke into a sweat, but I never looked to see how Jerry was doing. I simply threw my axe into the White Ash, turning the angle of the head left and right, catching breaks once in a while when I'd carve out a good chunk of wood.

And before I realized it, I heard the men cheering, and I realized my log was split. I had won, barely. Job came over, a small grin under his beard, and took the cutlery-sized axe from my hand.

"Son," he said with a sigh, "I wouldn't even take this axe to a buzzard hump."

With a comment like that, who couldn't look forward to Log Party again? The chance to see friends, to eat pig roasted over fire, to bathe in wood smoke, to tell jokes until the laughter echoes in the forest. To do all of this under the guarded watch of my good friend, Job.

Smoke Signals

I ought to apologize for my absence as of late. February was too much for storytelling. But now that it's March, I've resolved to hike out of this winter's solid repetition of steel gray skies and bone-chill cold. March is here, Mrs. Owens' daffodils are peeking up a good inch or two, and I will tell another story.

When I first came to Confluence a number of years ago, I did so in a burst of youthful idealism. Somewhere in my thick, recently educated skull, I'd figured that there were few things left in life that were pure, and I was determined to find whatever I could and save it before it was too late. (If that sounds like an opaque glossing over of my mentality at the time, please understand it's purposeful. That'll be the subject of another story later on.)

Anyway, I showed up in this sleepy town driving an old Jeep Wagoneer. All of my possessions were in the back seats of the truck. It was summertime, and my air conditioning never worked, and I had tooled through the hills looking for the right place to stop, looking for something that felt right, something that resonated deep within. I was looking for some kind of sign, as if God would put a bully hand in my face. It never occurred to me that such a sign might be a busted radiator hose on the side of a two lane highway four miles outside of town.

But there I was, steam bellowing from under the hood of the Jeep, when a man named Vic pulled up behind me on the shoulder. He was driving a contraption I still can only describe as akin to the vehicle featured in the Beverly Hillbillies. In all reality, it was a 1950s model fire truck, but rust had ruined any of its red color and a hundred odds and ends hung off its sides as he guided it to a stop behind me.

"Overheating?" he shouted from the window.

"Busted hose," I said.

Vic shut off the fire engine's diesel motor and walked up to peer under my hood. Steam still poured from the engine block. He was a square man, with thick shoulders, and a head full of wiry silver hair. "Well, you're in luck. I've got an old Dodge engine block up at the house, and I figure a hose off one will work in place of this one."

"That's awfully kind," I began, "but it's no trouble for me to pick up a new hose. Would you mind giving me a lift to a garage or parts store? I think I can probably fix it."

"I'd be obliged, but you're forgetting that it's Sunday. Blue laws keep the parts house closed. Besides," he said, peering at his watch, "Mr. Cloer's still up at church anyway. Won't be out till well after dark."

We both stood there, an old man and a young one, staring helplessly at my motor.

"Well, come on up to the house," Vic said.

I walked with him back to the fire engine, which grew larger with each step. Vic's Curiosities and Antiques was painted in faded gold letters on the doors. The engine roared to life, and we were off. I took another look back at my Jeep in the rattling side mirror, its front section puffing away like a sad signal fire.

We introduced ourselves--rather, Vic introduced himself. He lived up at the top of the mountain, as he called it, and ran an antique store in town. Lived in Confluence his whole life, but--and this is important, he said--he didn't think of himself as being of here.

Yes, this was how I first came to Confluence. By accident, by coincidence, by sheer serendipity, in the shotgun side of a fire engine, driven by its Wrestler of the Year, 1954. We passed along the river road, then turned up the steep drive just past the old Watts Store. We bumped along the pothole filled road. Suddenly we veered into a muddy driveway and stopped.

"Just a second," Vic said, fishing around in the floorboard. We had pulled up to a cinder block house with bedsheets in the windows. The door stood open, and a young girl, maybe my age at the time, with ratty brown hair slinked up to it. She was barefoot, wearing only a dirty t-shirt and a pair of cut-off jean shorts. "Got it," Vic said, producing a grocery bag containing a single loaf of white bread.

To this day, I've never asked Vic who he was bringing bread to, and I've never found out.

Vic's house was, indeed, at the very top of the hill. He had a view of the western slope, away from town, looking out into the Tsalave valley. His house was modest, nothing extraordinary, but as we pulled around the side of the yard, I found myself staring at a metal garage that was at least twice the size of the main dwelling. Vic killed the engine, and we approached a side door. It wasn't until he was negotiating a fist full of keys that I noticed the garage had no bay doors--only a large, singular door about thirty feet across.

And if you are wondering, yes, the entire time I was fully aware of the fact that I had broken down on the side of the road, accepted a ride from a stranger in a retired emergency vehicle, observed said stranger deliver groceries to a woman who by all appearances could have been a redneck hooker, and waited patiently as said stranger brought me to a garage larger than his house and, for all I knew, potentially the place where he meticulously dismembered his victims' bodies before wrapping them in plastic and freezing them. Like I said, I was young and idealistic. I was actually proud of the fact that I had followed this man here.

The large, sliding door, it turns out, was to allow the helicopter to be wheeled in and out. Vic didn't have a garage, he had a hangar. Well, there were cars, too: a perfectly restored 1957 Cadillac, a vintage Porsche, a convertible Pontiac Comet, and a Shelby Cobra. It was the perfect moment for me to emit some kind of low whistle, but my jaw had dropped so far open that I couldn't purse my lips.

"This..." I eventually stammered, "isn't what I expected."

"Aw, the old truck's mostly for show," Vic said. "I park it in front of the shop, and it brings people in."

"What do you sell in there?" I asked.

"Old stuff."

"What kind of old stuff?"

Vic didn't respond. He had pulled an old sheet off an engine block, and he was using a pocket knife to unscrew the clamps on the hose. Then he scraped the thermostat off--"Just in case"--grabbed a tube of silicon and a five gallon jug of water, and in a flash we were back in the truck, rattling back down the steep drive, and back at my Jeep. I felt as though I'd entered a time warp.

The sun was setting by the time we finished the repair. Although I knew my way around an engine, I let Vic do a lot of the work. I was still stunned a bit by him: he had a regal air but nothing about him fit together. He was stocky, definitely with the build of an old wrestler, but if his fingers were thick with strength, his mind was nimble with smarts. He didn't mind grease under his fingernails, but judging from his helicopter and vintage car collection, I estimated he didn't spend his entire life doing this kind of work.

"This is a patch job, son," he said when he'd finished. "I can't believe I didn't ask, but have you much farther to go?"

I hesitated. Truth was, I didn't know where I was going. "Not really," I found myself saying. "Maybe I'll just pull into town for the night and see how it holds."

And that was that. My decision to spend a day or two in Confluence was based entirely on whether or not a radiator hose stayed put. It did, for another several weeks. I've been here a lot longer than that.

My father had given me a modest sum of money after I'd graduated college, and the next day I used part of that to secure an apartment behind Mrs. Cooley's house. And later that afternoon, on my way to pick up supplies, I passed by Vic's store and decided to stop in and say hello.

to be continued...