[Finally, signs of spring appear, but for Vermonters that’s the signal to put up your best defenses, because Mother Nature is about to whack you upside the head. SB SM]
March
March in Vermont arrives this year like a constipated lion, dumping eighteen inches of heavy, heart-attack snow on Town Meeting Day. In other parts of the country, the first Tuesday of March might suggest the stirrings of spring, but in the White River Valley, it is merely the peak of “Mud and Misery” season.
The snow melts as quickly as it arrives.
Citizens gather in the gymnasium of the White River Regional High School, a space that smells perpetually of floor wax, stale Gatorade, and damp wool. They are here to perform the sacred, grueling rites of local democracy—a tradition older than the state itself, dating back to the first meeting in Bennington in 1762. This is direct democracy in its purest, most abrasive form, where neighbors legislate their own lives face-to-face.
The crowd is a patchwork of the town’s soul: farmers with cracked knuckles, young telecommuters in high-end fleece, and “Old Vermonters” who remember when the valley was more sheep than people. In an era of digital disconnection, this floor meeting is a stubborn relic. It is a time for people who might only otherwise see each other at the general store or while pulling one another out of a ditch to argue, civilly or otherwise, about the collective future of their dirt roads and book stacks.
Today’s primary bone of contention is Article 14: whether or not to allocate $12,000 to keep the George Aiken Library on Main Street from collapsing into its own basement.
The library’s namesake hangs in a dusty portrait in the hallway—a reminder of a different kind of Republicanism. Before he was the most senior member of the U.S. Senate, George Aiken was a Putney nurseryman who “pioneered with wildflowers” and preferred to be called “Governor” even in the halls of D.C. He was a maverick who championed the common man, fighting for rural electrification and the food stamp program. Aiken famously suggested that to end the Vietnam War, the U.S. should simply “declare victory and leave”—a piece of Yankee wisdom that Henry often quotes when he’s finished with a particularly stubborn chore. To let his namesake library crumble would be, in the eyes of many, to let that plain-spoken Vermont pragmatism crumble along with it.
The measure always passes, but the ritual requires a performance.
“In my day,” sputters an old man in a frayed Carhartt jacket, standing at the microphone, “we didn’t need a line item for ‘community cooling centers’ or high-speed fiber optics. We had books, we had woodstoves, and we had common sense! This budget is a bloated carcass!”
Henry, seated in a row of squeaky folding chairs near the half-court line, leans toward his wife, Grace. “Shut up, you old coot,” he mutters. Then, in a low, gravelly mimicry: “In my day, men were men, and women were glad of it!”
Grace admonishes him with a sharp, practiced elbow to the ribs. “Shut up, Henry. Behave.”
“He’s been saying the same thing since the Carter administration,” Henry grumbles. “He just changes the dollar amount.”
“We can leave right after they vote on the skateboard park,” Grace whispers, checking her watch.
“Skateboard park? In Vermont?” Henry asks, incredulous. “What are they going to do, skate on the ice? Or maybe the mud? It’ll be a very slow sport.”
“Shh. Kids need a place to hang out that isn’t a gravel pit. We’ll leave right after the vote.”
Henry groans, “What’s wrong with the gravel pit? You’re surrounded on three sides by walls of soft, absorbent sand. You can shoot guns and lose your virginity! It’s a perfect palace for teenagers!”
Three weeks trudge by. The land is alternately stiff and soupy. Grace announces, “I’d like to get the fence straightened this afternoon.”
“Grace, look outside. It’s a swamp out there. It’s too wet.”
“Humor me. I see that crooked fence from the kitchen window every day. I hate it when it’s more horizontal than vertical.”
“Okay, but we’ll have to do it again in a month.” Henry looks at his wife. He loves the way her silver hair catches the flat March light, the stubborn set of her jaw. “‘More horizontal than vertical’ … kind of like us,” he says softly.
“Just indulge me, your loving wife.”
The fence is “split rail” style, though Henry prefers the term “glorified driftwood.” Grace brought it home in the back of their now-rusted-out F-150 more than a quarter-century ago, looking as triumphant as a hunter with a prize buck.
The memory is vivid: Henry standing in the driveway as she kills the engine.
“And he wouldn’t take a dime for it!” she shouts, hopping out of the cab.
Henry walks to the tailgate, peering at the grey, lichen-covered wood. “That’s because it’s rotten, Grace.”
“It’s character, Henry! He was going to throw it out.”
“That’s because it’s useless. Look at these posts. There’s nothing left in their hearts of them. This fence will be as unstable as…” He searches for the right phrase, maybe something about her mother, or perhaps his own mental state, but everything that comes to mind feels like a landmine. He settles for: “…as everything else about this place.”
Yet, the fence defies his cynicism. Much like the Aiken Library or the Town Meeting itself, it stands the test of time, aging as gracefully—and as precariously—as the couple who straighten it every year. It is a rite of passage, the official bridge between the “Long White” and the “Big Muddy.”
Timing is paramount. The earth needs to be pliable but not squishy; you have to get the posts upright before the grass grows high enough to hide the rot. Look closely, and you see that gravity is defied only with the help of strategically twisted baling wire and hidden lengths of rigid rebar. It is a miracle of Vermont engineering, held together by spite, habit, and swear words.
Out in the yard, the wind whips through the valley, smelling of thawing manure.
The unwritten deal is simple: Henry can complain as much as he wants about the “decrepitude, folly, and absolute waste of time and energy” the fence represents, so long as by sunset, it appears straight from the vantage of the kitchen window. He can swear, bluster, kvetch, and belittle to his heart’s content, so long as the line is true.
“Move it a c-hair to the left,” Henry commands, bracing his shoulder against a corner post.
Grace freezes. “I hate that word.”
“What word?”
“Cunt.”
Henry blinks, a puff of white breath escaping his mouth. “I didn’t say ‘cunt.’ You said ‘cunt.’ I said ‘c-hair.'”
“‘C’ stands for ‘cunt hair,’ Henry. It’s vulgar. Watch your mouth.”
Grace holds the post steady, her boots sinking an inch into the muck. Henry is poised with a flat-headed sledgehammer, a brutal instrument marketed under the name Monster Maul.
“Ready?”
Grace nods. Henry brings the hammer down. CRACK.
The sound echoes off the barn. He moves the post a half-inch deeper into the subsoil. He tests the stability with a rough wiggle. “Shall we give it one more?”
They repeat the dance. CRACK.
He wiggles it again. There is still some play—the post is essentially sitting in a milkshake of Vermont clay—but he pronounces it “Solid as the Rock of Gibraltar.”
Grace does not let the conversation go. She continues as if the two bone-shaking smacks of the Monster Maul are a mere comma in a sentence. “Really … men are so simplistic. Put a club in their hand, and they have to refer to everything in terms of genitalia. Is ‘c-hair’ really the smallest unit of measurement in the male language?”
“It’s precise,” Henry defends. “But it doesn’t stand for what you think it does.”
She takes the bait. “Okay, smart-ass, what does it stand for?”
“It’s an abbreviation for the technical term ‘a curly one.’ If I said, ‘Move it a tenth of a millimeter,’ you wouldn’t know what to do. I say, ‘Move it a c-hair,’ and you know exactly …”
“Okay. What’s the proper trade term for a unit of measure smaller than a ‘c-hair’?”
“A red c-hair,” Henry answers instantly.
“And smaller than a red one?”
“Half a red c-hair. But you don’t need anything smaller than that. You’re already in a world that’s beyond the ability of tools to measure. You’re in the quantum realm of carpentry.”
“And what about units larger than that?” Grace asks, a playful glint in her eye. “I assume multiples become impractical. What term has the male of the species come up with to communicate a foot or more? About the size of your…?”
“Don’t say it,” Henry warns, though he is smiling.
“About-the-size-of-your-dick?” Grace laughs. “And do you use multiples? ‘Move that truck three-size-of-your-dicks to the right’?”
“No, that sounds silly. You’d say, ‘About the size of MY dick.’ Perspective is everything in measurement.” Henry hefts the maul. “Do you want to straighten these fence posts? Or do you just want to talk dirty all morning?”
“Are you expecting any bombshells from Burton tonight?” Grace asks. They are moving to the fifth post, their boots making a rhythmic schloop-schloop sound in the mud. Burton, Henry’s 51-year-old son, had called earlier, saying that he was driving up from Boston, accompanied by a young lady.
“I have no frigging idea. The ink’s barely dry on the divorce papers.”
“I wish he had given it a little more time with Jody. She was definitely a good one.”
“Me too,” Henry grumbles, gesturing with his chin. “She was only 19 when they married, but she was the adult in the relationship. How long were they together? Ten? Eleven years?”
“Must be eleven. He had his fiftieth birthday a year ago.”
“I don’t get it. Jody’s young, beautiful, and brews a helluva pint of beer,” says Henry, showing his exasperation. “Burton hires her as a waitress at 19, he teaches her the business, then he gives it to her in the divorce.”
“Shrewd, just like his dad.”
“Move that post toward you about an inch. Good, hold it there!” Henry pauses. “But he let his head get turned, and now she owns the brewery he spent a decade building in the Court Street Bobbin Mill. The boy thinks too much, but never about the right stuff. Move the post toward you … just a scooch. Good. Hold it there!”
CRACK. CRACK. CRACK.
He drops the maul and grabs an iron bar, tamping the dirt around the base with short, rhythmic stabs. Grace gives it a gentle wiggle and pronounces it “Solid as … I dunno. What’s something solid?”
“My bowels after eating cheese.”
“Not very poetic. Try again.”
“As solid as Vermont granite.”
“Too much like Gibraltar.”
“As solid as … your opinions on equal pay for equal work.”
“That’ll do.”
Henry laughs, but his eyes linger on the last fence post. “Someday, my dear, we’re going to have to face the fact that these posts are mostly pulp and memory.”
“Never!” Grace says defiantly, throwing a hand up with a flourish. “These posts are good for another twenty years.”
“Lest we forget, they were garbage twenty-five years ago.”
Henry gathers his tools—the bar, the pliers, the roll of rusted wire—and trudges toward the next leaning rail. Grace follows. Both are clad in the unofficial uniform of the Green Mountains: faded denim, untucked flannel, and boots that have forgotten what it felt like to be clean.
Her gray hair has mostly escaped its pins, fluttering in the gusty March breeze like a flag of truce. Henry watches her catch up to him. The way she moves, even with the slight hitch in her hip, makes the air feel warmer.
“I don’t know how you do it,” he says.
“Do what?”
“I get older, paunchier, more wrinkly, and significantly crankier. And you? You just get more beautiful.”
The compliment hits her, but she does not let it break her stride. A small, secret smile plays on her lips. “Nice try, big boy. But we have eight posts left to go before this ‘Stead has its proper veneer of antiquity.”
“I assure you,” Henry laughs, “this antiquity is the real deal, only the veneer is false. Behind the veneer…” He trails off.
“…is yet another veneer,” she finishes.
By evening, the wind dies down. The sun dips behind the ridge, turning the slush to a crust of ice. Henry and Grace stand in the kitchen, a kettle beginning to whistle. Henry looks out the window. The fence line runs true, if you don’t look too closely.
“When will they get here?”
“He said around mid-afternoon. That probably means after dark.”
“I can’t wait to hear all about the indoor golf business.”
“Seriously?”
“No, I’m being sarcastic. I can’t wait to meet the new Wonder Woman either.”
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