April
“T.S. Eliot said ‘April is the cruelest month,’ and I say ‘Why did T.S. need four extra words to state the obvious?’” Grace looks up from her coffee.
“I really haven’t spent a lot of time pondering that issue.” Henry has not been awaiting her response and is quickly in full rant mode.
“’April,’” says it all. The only descriptor necessary might be ‘Fuckin’ as in ‘Fucking’ April,’ but even that seems superfluous. T.S., whose initials stand for ‘Tough Shit,’ was ripping off Geography Chaucer, and, while I’m not a scholar of Olde English, I don’t see where Chaucer expressed even remotely the same sentiment. Chaucer was all about April showers bringing May flowers and the rebirth that springtime brings to the planet. I can only state one thing for sure. Neither of these dudes lived in Vermont.” He pauses long enough for Grace to resume her leisurely coffee. “What time did Ryan say he’d get here?”
Ryan Keough is Grace’s sister Tasha’s son. He is currently a gym teacher at the Fred Tuttle Junior High in Tunbridge, Vermont. From ages 10 through 17, he spent extended portions of his summer vacations at The ‘Stead, living with Grace and Henry. Ryan has been a more constant presence in their lives than their own children. He called several days earlier and offered to come up to The ‘Stead on his upcoming teacher service day to help Henry with the usual spring chores. Henry welcomes his presence because he needs the assistance, and also, he genuinely enjoys Ryan’s company
“He didn’t, but he knows you like to get started early, so he’ll be along. You get started, and I’ll send him out.”
“What do you think is on his mind?” asks Henry.
“I don’t know, maybe nothing. It was just a feeling I had when he was on the phone.”
“No one ever went broke betting against your intuition.” Henry puts a down vest over his T-shirt and flannel, then an insulated nylon jacket over that. He wears the nylon because it is impervious to blackberry thorns and the smoke of the day’s burn pile. He grabs his insulated work gloves and heads to the back door. “Rain’s coming at 4, so I’m lighting off at noon, whether he’s here or not.”
April in Vermont is when the winter’s accumulation of dogshit pushes its way upward, layer-by-layer, through the snow. It’s when the baseball season begins for the rest of the world, while you are looking for a patch of earth that isn’t snow-covered or mud. It’s when the rest of the world thinks forsythia and daffodils while you are thinking, “Where did I leave my ax, because I need to start chipping ice off the patio?” To quote Charlie Brown, “Argh-h-h!”
Henry is ready for this day. He has been anticipating it since last October when he pulled all the squash and pumpkin vines and piled them into a tangled mess. “What are you going to do with that mess?” Grace asks.
“Rough compost,” is his initial answer. ‘Everything else goes in the spring burn pile. This includes sunflower stalks, grain-laden heads of amaranth, fruit tree prunings, weeds, grasses, leaves, scrap lumber, broken Adirondack chairs, but no treated or painted wood. Over the months of late fall, Henry piles it high, then lets winter alchemy- rain, snow, cycles of freeze/thaw– to shrink it to a third of its original bulk. Now, Henry uses his six-tine utility fork to pull the pile to an open spot in the back field. His movements are slow and methodical. Nothing moves quickly, but after an hour, progress is evident. Ryan arrives, ready for action, even bringing his own work gloves.
Ryan is 29, solidly built but trim, with a full beard that balances his full head of brown hair.
“This is where art meets science,” says Henry to no one in general, but to Ryan in particular. He has been watching the weather forecast for days. The sun is breaking through scuttling clouds during the morning but, as the forecast promised, the clouds thicken, and by noon rain feels imminent. It will mature to a steady rain by nightfall. He and Ryan will be able to have a couple of beers this afternoon knowing that there is no chance of a grass fire.
At noon, they are ready for “torch off.” Henry lets Ryan do the honors. When the fire fails to catch, Henry fires up the leaf blower until the flames are licking six feet into the gray sky. Conditions are perfect. No wind. Dry wood, but not parched. Time for poking and pontificating.
“Couldn’t have done it without you,” says Henry, leaning on his six-prong fork.
“A wise man once told me, ‘Plan your work and work your plan.'”
“And who would that be?” asks Henry, playing dumb.
‘You, of course,” says Ryan. “Whatever work ethic I have was learned here at The ‘Stead on those summers when you were keeping more animals. Knowing how to work is one of my best attributes. I try to pass it along to my students.”
“They’re probably about the age you were when you started coming up here.”
Henry and Ryan reflect on some of their experiences working together during those summers. Ryan tells Henry that he’s always considered Henry a mentor, because his own father, a civil service bureaucrat, can’t tell one end of a hammer from another.
Grace joins them, bringing sandwiches and a pot of tea. The discussion veers to “what’s the best advice you ever received?”
Grace says hers is “Whenever you have a choice and one of them is ‘or else …,’ always take the option of ‘or else.’” She learned this from the lawyer handling her divorce.
Henry references “Your first loss is your best loss,” in negotiations.
Ryan contributes the technique of taking whatever offer is made and repeating it back to the offeror in an incredulous tone, to see how he will react.
Grace mentions one she learned from Henry. “Make your offer, then shut up. The next one who speaks, loses.”
Henry has been quiet, but when pressed, comes up with “Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey,” followed by a roster of how many times the advice has proved useful.
The debate is spirited, and everyone can declare victory.
Grace leaves them to poke and prod the now diminishing flames. A light drizzle has begun. Ryan turns serious and asks, “Henry, have you ever done something so bad that you’ve never dared tell anyone?” Henry tries to lighten the moment by saying, “Okay, what’s her name?”
Ryan laughs and says, “Her name is Jenny, but that’s a different story, and I’ll get around to telling you that. But have you ever found yourself in a situation where you are living a lie?”
Henry ponders, prods, then proceeds. “When I met Grace, we were in an impossible situation. She was married, and I was married, with a wife in a mental institution. She was the wife of a college president, and I worked for a company where the owner was the Chairman of the Board of the college. Talk about a mess and a conundrum.”
Henry poked with his magic six-pronged fork. “What’s that called?” asked Ryan.
“I don’t know,” said Henry. “It’s kind of a bastard child of a hay fork and a hoe, but it was something I lived with intimately from April through November. I bought the original at a yard sale about thirty years ago. After twenty years, the head separated from the handle, and I spent the next five years trying to figure out a way to reattach it. I tried solutions involving strapping, epoxies, and duct tape. I even appealed to people like Emil, who is a lot more clever than me, but no one could come up with a solution that lasted more than a week or two. One day I came across this in the A.J. Leonard Catalog. It wasn’t quite right but was a reasonable approximation. It didn’t have the right lilt or feel. The angle of the tines was not quite right. It didn’t smell quite right. It was like comparing just a pretty girl to a first love. You can’t go back, but still, he was glad for the new one.”
“I get it,” he says. “Her name is Jenny, and she’s the first love. I met her back in Brattleboro, and this spring she’s graduating from college and heading off to law school. I can’t wait for you and Grace to meet her. You will this summer.”
“I look forward to it,” says Henry. “The last time you spent the summer up here, we thought you were going to end up in jail. You were so fascinated with guns.”
“I know. I wanted to be Rambo, or a Navy SEAL. I can’t remember. I was fascinated with guns. Now I don’t even own one. I was such an idiot. I dropped out of college to become a local cop in Brattleboro. What an idiot I was.”
“That didn’t last long … mercifully,” says Henry.
“It was a huge mistake,” says Ryan, kicking at some embers on the periphery of the flames. He grabs a metal leaf rake and starts pummeling embers back into the flames. The drizzle has intensified into a steady rain. “I hated being a cop. I hated my fellow cops, and I hated myself for being one of them. They did so many awful things. What did you do when things got really bad with you and Aunt Grace?” asks Ryan.
“I did the manly thing … I ran. Quit the job, stopped seeing Grace, retreated into a cave, bought the old Bobbin Factory on Court Street, and started from ground zero. I’m getting pretty wet … you think this fire can take care of itself? This will burn down, even in the rain, for a few hours. Then I’ll ask Farmer Drew to make his annual delivery of manure and hay. I’ll dump the manure right on the smoldering embers. In a year it will be part of the garden. Let’s go inside.”
“I really like being here,” says Ryan.
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