A Hill of Beans

Back in Confluence, it's time to start thinking about putting out vegetables.

It's embarrassing to admit it, but I do not come from a long line of gardeners, and as such, my knowledge of planting things is rather limited. Neither of my parents had much to do with growing things in our back yard; the three or four plants I can remember having in our house all fell victim to my mother, whose careful skill in nurturing children simply did not translate to horticulture. Our back porch became a graveyard for ceramic pots filled with departed Easter lilies, daisies, and ferns.

Most folks in town have a garden, or they subscribe to one of the community plots by the Episcopal church, so my life has until now easily avoided tilling my own ground. Every Sunday, three or four of the little old ladies in the church will pass me a plastic bag filled with squash and tomatoes, okra and corn, peppers and cabbage. My advice to the good people who troll farmer's markets every weekend: present yourself as a pitiful city-dweller who doesn't know a sprout from a hole in the ground at church. You will eat like a king.

One of my herbal suppliers--no seriously, she brings me rosemary--has fallen ill, though. Her name is Brenda May Elder, and she is suffering from cancer. I doubt I need to describe the trauma of chemotherapy on an octogenarian. Her husband, Eddie, died four years ago, but every spring she would plow the earth in her side yard, spinning the clumps until they became finer and finer, pulling the clay into something rich and hospitable, and then she would drop seeds and seedlings one by one, set things out as she called it.

From there, she mended the plot over the coming months, trudging through the rows in light colored slacks, a collared shirt, and a straw hat. She tugged at weeds and nicked off leaves that ought to be put aside. She knew just what to do. And every Sunday, her bounty would be so great that part of it would be set aside for me.

This spring, she's confined to her living room, tortured by the bay window that looks out onto her yard. The garden has grown over with weeds, but a few wild flowers poke up here and there. It might seem like a stupid thing to do, but I decided to grow a garden so I could give Brenda back all the vegetables she loaned me over the past decade or so.

Ambition being my only worthwhile quality in this endeavor, I knew enough to call on a certain oddball neighbor of mine, Johnny Rabbit. Johnny fought in Vietnam, married a girl there, renounced violence, became Buddhist, spent a decade in Cambodia "helping out," whatever that means, got stabbed in some kind of revolution rally in Asia, gave up religion altogether, and moved to Confluence by accident. Every year, the quiet man on the edge of town had three of the best looking rows of corn you'd ever seen.

I'd used this last compliment as a pickup line of sorts, enticement for the strange bird with the rose colored glasses to help me plant vegetables.

"Johnny," I said, "I'm pretty sure I can put the stuff in the ground. But your plants always look so great. I was just talking about your corn to somebody."

Seriously, this is how I feel like I have to talk to people like Johnny. He gave me an odd look.

"It's a pain in the ass."

"Gardening?"

"The corn. Deer gets to it." He paused. "They'll eat it all."

I nodded. What do you do to prevent that, I wondered out loud.

"Shoot them."

***

So there we were, Johnny Rabbit and yours truly, running a tiller through my back yard, next to the slat fence. I liberated the soil. I have turned the earth, and I am proud of it. Now, from my window in the kitchen, I can look out on four tiny tomato plants, a row of beans, and a half dozen corn stalks. Tomorrow I'll pick up a cucumber vine from the hardware store and maybe some potatoes and cantaloupe. Johnny showed me how to arrange it and set up the garden hose for irrigation, told me which plants do well in our valley, and which ones only seem to invite misery and blight.

I haven't a clue if I will produce a single edible thing. But I know that after the day's work I spent in my yard to simply plant my garden, I will never once take for granted a bag of tomatoes given to me by someone four decades older than me out of pity.

Marilyn, pt. 3

To folks from small towns like this one, New York City can feel like a different planet. I cannot say anything new or better about the city, and though I have been to cities I liked better than New York, there is nothing like walking its broad avenues and feeling the welling excitement that history is at your feet, that you are strolling through the modern capital of the world. Glass towers reaching above, cabs hustling by, trains thundering deep beneath--it can be overwhelming. Or captivating.

"Intoxicating," is how Marilyn Coolidge put it, to be exact. "I have four months to live in New York. It is too much and too little; a casual tourist might come to the city and make a day of it and see a myriad destinations and feel satisfied that he had seen New York. I, however, can't seem to pass a single corner without noticing a nook of some kind and inquiring about its story. I am afraid that four months will not be able to afford me the time to explore and learn about this city the way that would satisfy my curiosity."

She wrote these words in fine blue ink in her diary--one of several volumes she completed over the years of her younger life. Later, when she married, she packed them away, and decades later, when I came to Confluence and met Vic, I learned he had kept them in the back room of his shop downtown. Reading these journals is alternatively fascinating and voyeuristic. I am embarrassed at such an intimate disclosure of Marilyn's early adulthood--no one keeps a diary with the intentions of it falling into the hands of a rotten journalist fifty years later--but I am grateful that it allows a clearer account of the time she spent away from Confluence.

Marilyn lived in an apartment with two other girls from Bryn Mawr in Manhattan's Upper East Side. Lots of college students lived there, and she made friends quickly. "I love the girls in my building," she wrote, "but I have yet to meet a single one from New York. Everyone on my floor seems to have come here from somewhere else. We have such fun, though. Madam Harrison, who runs the building, is entirely more enlightened than any of the dormitory mothers back at school. We can often come and go as we please, and occasionally one of the girls even manages to sneak back a boy or some other contraband!"

She wrote that boys could often gain entry via the service entrance to the building, and while she never tried it, she was quite curious what it would mean to bring a boy home. She wasn't a prude as far as I could tell, but her small-town background weighed heavily on her: "If I were never going home, I cannot imagine the trouble I'd find in a city like this."

Late in the fall, Marilyn went with a group of girls to The Village Vanguard. (I have relished the chance to read her account of this legendary spot.) They listened to jazz and watched the intellectuals, and later there were Beat poets who read. Several of the girls paired up with boys.

"Alice had Jerry and Kitty had Dan. Well, Estelle and I had Vince and Tom, and neither of us could figure out which boy wanted which girl. Alice and Kitty decided to leave with their dates, and none of us could hear much over the band anyway, so during one of the breaks Estelle managed to convince the boys to take us down the street to a place called The Spot for drinks.

"The Spot was jammed, so we walked down a bit to the Washington Square Hotel and sat at the bar. I wasn't having a bad time, but I started to feel bored with Vince or Tom or whichever one was supposed to be courting me. Estelle seemed just fine with them both, and soon I began to feel that perhaps they were both interested in her!

I excused myself, walked to the lobby, and sat down on one of the great leather chairs they had near the fireplace. I imagined Estelle would come out sooner or later, and I would find my way home. I was tired."

Before she knew it, though, a man had taken the seat across from her.

"Are you waiting for someone?" he asked.

Marilyn was startled from her thoughts. "Excuse me?"

"I was just wondering if you were waiting to meet someone," he repeated.

"Well, not exactly," she replied, looking him over. He wore a dark wool suit, a blue tie, and expensive-looking shoes that reminded her of her father's.

"In that case," he said, standing up, "it would be my pleasure to buy you a drink. Have you ever been to the bar here?"

"I just came from there," she laughed. "My roommate is in the process of choosing a boy, I believe."

A glint of mischief came into his eyes. "If we go back in, then, we will have to take great care to avoid being spotted," he quipped. "Come on," he said, taking her hand. "I know the perfect hiding spot."

He led her to the back corner, where they sat in a plush velvet booth, side by side, looking out towards the bar. He ordered their drinks and lit a cigarette.

"I'll start. I'm Vic," he said.

"I'm Marilyn."

And so it was that, there in the corner of the Washington Square Hotel bar sat the cradle of their marriage. He was older, sophisticated, and a good drinker. She was pretty, new to town, and well aware that he had a mind to take her back to his apartment. Still, she was fascinated:

"Everything Vic told me seemed to tell me something else. He was the son of Italian-Americans who lived in Brooklyn. He went to Princeton on a football scholarship. He had three brothers and no sisters. His family owned a small chain of department stores. He liked modern music but said he loved hearing his mother sing more than anything. He was modest but he liked nice things, and he had a nice place across town he'd love to show me sometime.

"It was," Marilyn wrote the next day, "rather tempting."

Soon, though, Estelle figured out that Marilyn was there in the bar with her, and together they found their way back to Madam Harrison's building. Vic showed up the very next afternoon on the concrete steps leading to the door. "You deserve to have a real New Yorker show you the city," he said. His car was waiting down the block.

to be continued...

For Love and Spring and Dogs

It is a perfect spring day. My back yard is full of birds, and the pear trees have exploded into blossom. The dogwoods are soon to follow. The sugar maple in the corner is hung with what my nephew calls twirly-birds, or the helicopter like seed pods that will take flight later. What's better, none of the bugs have hatched out yet. Living in a valley with two rivers can mean dealing with mosquitoes. I am hopeful that the long, hard winter killed some of them off.

I took my dogs down to the Tinton River yesterday afternoon. I was finishing the laundry and dug out the old Frisbee that the youngest one likes to chase. She has a bit of retriever in her, and there's nothing finer than seeing her sprint full out down the river bank, ears tucked back, eyes set on catching the disc before it sets down. When she grows tired of the chase, she'll walk over to the water and plunge her snout down into the cool water, shake loose the surplus, and plop down into the mud. Later this afternoon, I'll have to bathe her in the back yard with the hose.

The older dog doesn't care much for the games her canine sister plays. Mostly, the eldest will wander around, stopping occasionally to sniff out a hole in the bank. There's a snaking grove of birch trees down where we walk, and she has a favorite that grows out over the river, its root ball jutting out like a shelf above the water. She'll perch there and watch the other dog chase Frisbees. Strange how one favors sport and one favors rest.

These are good days for dogs. I know I was rife with cabin fever this winter, but the dogs needed spring, too. The younger dog lives in the house with me, and this past week, she's whimpered every morning to be let out as soon as the sun rises.

So I let her out, and then I'll drive down to my office in town and do some work, and then I'll drive back home for a bite of lunch. The younger dog will come inside and eat with me, and then I'll put her in the car and bring her back to my office for the afternoon. I have a small balcony at the end of the hall, where a pair of French doors opens onto the street, and I'll leave them open in weather like this and the dog will curl up in the sun for a nap.

Then, when it's time to quit, we'll go for a walk. Sometimes I'll take her down to FDR Pub, and we'll sit outside on the deck while I have a drink and watch the river. A man, a dog, and a beer never fail to make conversation.

Watching the dogs play by the river, and watching all of the town dressed up today for Easter, their white dresses and seersucker suits radiant in the spring-glow, I am convinced that life might never be as good as it is today. This is a feeling I've been having more and more often, a slow reminder to pay close attention to everything around me. I am reminded of Hawthorne, in The Blithedale Romance:

"Priscilla had now grown to be a very pretty girl, and still
kept budding and blossoming, and daily putting on some new charm, which you no
sooner became sensible of than you thought it worth all that she had previously.
possessed. So unformed, vague, and without substance, as she had come to us, it
seemed as if we could see Nature shaping out a woman before our very eyes, and
yet had only a more reverential sense of the mystery of a woman's soul and
frame. Yesterday, her cheek was pale, to-day, it had a bloom. Priscilla's smile,
like a baby's first one, was a wondrous novelty. Her imperfections and
shortcomings affected me with a kind of playful pathos, which was as absolutely
bewitching a sensation as ever I experienced. After she had been a month or two
at Blithedale, her animal spirits waxed high, and kept her pretty constantly in a state of bubble and ferment, impelling her to far more bodily activity than she had yet strength to endure. She was very fond of playing with the other girls out of doors. There is hardly another sight in the world so pretty as that of a company of young
girls, almost women grown, at play, and so giving themselves up to their airy
impulse that their tiptoes barely touch the ground.

Girls are incomparably wilder and more effervescent than boys,
more untamable and regardless of rule and limit, with an ever-shifting variety, breaking continually into new modes of fun, yet with a harmonious propriety through all. Their steps, their voices, appear free as the wind, but keep consonance with a
strain of music inaudible to us. Young men and boys, on the other hand, play,
according to recognized law, old, traditionary games, permitting no caprioles of fancy, but with scope enough for the outbreak of savage instincts. For, young or old, in
play or in earnest, man is prone to be a brute.

Especially is it delightful to see a vigorous young girl run a race, with her head thrown back, her limbs moving more friskily than they need, and an air between that of a bird and a young colt. But Priscilla's peculiar charm, in a foot-race, was the weakness and irregularity with which she ran. Growing up without exercise, except to her poor little fingers, she had never yet acquired the perfect use of her legs. Setting buoyantly forth, therefore, as if no rival less swift than Atalanta could compete with her, she ran falteringly, and often tumbled on the grass. Such an incident--though it seems too slight to think of--was a thing to laugh at, but which brought the water
into one's eyes, and lingered in the memory after far greater joys and sorrows
were wept out of it, as antiquated trash. Priscilla's life, as I beheld it, was
full of trifles that affected me in just this way."

And so it is that my own life in this little town is full of trifles that affect me in this way. I have sat now and written this much, mostly to avoid some work I've left to do for an upcoming story in the Spectator, one that will be difficult to get right for the dear readers of Confluence. I've decided to publish an article on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the car accident that claimed the life of Marilyn Coolidge Salarino.

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.