Gather: Chapters 11–22

Drew and I were just running back and forth, emptying bowls and buckets of water, bringing them back fresh filled from the spigot.

Ansel’s daughter and her family joined us, too, and we’re all just elbow to elbow, and Ansel said some prayer about provisioning our own pantries from the land, and we made room for another chair when Mom got home from Westview, bringing flowers.

We sat there gorging and talking till the sun got low and the oak leaves on the hill took on the same color as the pumpkin pie, which we decided to eat cold.

I’d level the stove, maybe build a portcullis or whatever those roofs on posts are, and put some stone down under the barbecue, and plant some flowers.

Mom went inside while I spliced the power cord being as how goddam squirrels had eaten through it.

So Trent asks us where we want to be dropped off, and Mom says anywhere near Angel’s will be fine, and Trent says how about right in front of Angel’s, since that’s on their itinerary, too, and I feel Mom get all slack-tense, not wanting the neighbor’s Audi-in-law listening while she’s asking for a job pouring coffee for tips.

The door has an hours sign on it, and when you push it open, it triggers a copper bell with a clapper that just scares the frigging hell out of you.

We’ll waive the safety-check fee this time, and we’ll deliver a new tank, free of charge.

I pointed to where the town put in a new culvert after the spring thaw, but everything around it was already eroded and it probably wouldn’t make it through the next big storm.

Mr. Charpentier had written on the board POETRY AND PLACE, POETRY AND PEOPLE, POETRY AND POLITICS, POETRY AND THE PROFOUND, POETRY AND PARODY.

Another regular was this guy in a Carhartt jacket so new you just wanted to pour a bit of motor oil on it and maybe help him fray the cuffs a little.

“You have a way with words, Ian. Strong writing. Know that poetry has the capacity to change the world! Also, consider use of the apostrophe in your Over every hill...line. Think about how you could use an apostrophe to maintain the meter here.”

“Oscar Wilde, the author, was an interesting man. What I wrote wasn’t a paper. I guess you could say it was a treatise.”

“A treatise is something somebody writes when they get carried away with a subject and they indulge themselves, going on for way too long,” Mr. Paerson says.

So what happens is, Dorian himself dies from the wound to the picture, and his cadaver, which is his dead body, it all of a sudden looks hideous-old, like the painting did, right before he stabbed it...

If humans die off, nature, just like the picture of Dorian Gray, will return to its pristine form in the blink of an eye.

Paul’s family owns one of the four dairy farms left in our valley. They milk fifteen hundred. Counting heifers and dry cows, they’ve probably got over two thousand head, easy.

I told him that the closest I ever came to playing darts was throwing a kindling axe at the trunk of this old dead white pine at the far end of the work shed by the outhouse.

The whole thing turned into a family conference about owning land and stewardship, which was their word, and capitalism and greed, also their words, I guess, and keeping people out, and I’m just wondering if there’s any other family like this on the planet, but they decide, with some help from me, to be honest, if someone calls them and asks if they can hunt there, they should say yes, unless there’s a good reason to say different.

The whole thing turned into a family conference about owning land and stewardship, which was their word, and capitalism and greed, also their words, I guess, and keeping people out, and I’m just wondering if there’s any other family like this on the planet, but they decide, with some help from me, to be honest, if someone calls them and asks if they can hunt there, they should say yes, unless there’s a good reason to say different.

I put the thermostat at forty-eight degrees so as not to have the furnace run all night, which it did anyway, and the dog and I stayed warm under every blanket in the house, the two of us and those three one-liter bottles I filled with hot water.

“It’s time for us to make amends,” says Mr. Collins, and he gets down on his knees.

We were comparing ups and downs of different governments in Europe after World War II when John comes into the kitchen.
“Dad’s a Socialist,” Sylvia says.

It was just a tiny bead job, which is pretty much what soldering is, but it felt good, getting a flashlight working again.

“Yup. He’s all right, for a liberal. I can’t say I agree with him all the time, but he just might have a good head for business.”

So add the one fifty from Mrs. Ellsley’s daughters, plus my mill job and morning tips from Angel’s—that’s how I come to have over a thousand dollars of my own by the end of January. You always think you’re flush with cash until you find out how much it really costs to live.

I ask Mom why we’re getting a letter from the collector of delinquent taxes.

Stories of hunts going back a hundred-plus years, stories people only remembered because they heard them being told, not because of being there. There might be talking everywhere, somebody’s loading the woodstove, somebody’s cleaning a gun, couple guys are looking at a topographic map.

I sat there with that letter in my hand, and we’re idling by the mailbox.

I looked around inside, thinking of what I would take once we had to leave—maybe Gramps’s workbench, with the cuts and nicks from the chisel, holes from the drill, and hammer marks from him and his father, who knows how far back, and from my father and from me, pockmarked into the top, but the bench was more like a counter, as it was nailed right to the studs of the shed frame instead of having back legs of its own.

I looked down at the sill, thinking to jack the whole shed up, counter, tools, and all, and use a winch to pull the whole goddam thing onto the trailer bed out in the black raspberry patch there.

I couldn’t sit still, nor pay attention in class, and I’ll admit to being a little high-strung.

Then he’s all, “Do you have a pass?”
I’m like, “Stint didn’t give me one.”
“If I call the art room, will Stint’s account corroborate yours?” he asks.

As I’m walking away, he’s saying he regrets having to write a discipline referral for disrespectful behavior.

Ask them about a forgiveness program, or at least paying installments.