1990s, Vermont

By L.kenyon

There are reasons.

I don’t know if I believe in God as a Christian or a Catholic would have me. I don’t know if I believe in Buddhist’s logic or in the colorful lot feared and praised around the world either – but there are some things that cannot be denied, as much as I’d like to see them figment or fiction.

When I was 22 I had a job making cider and peeling apples for an orchard and gift shop. The peeler and cider press were housed in an annexed barn, high ceilings and concrete flooring, cold and damp, and I mostly worked in there alone. Occasionally one of the women from the pie kitchen would wander in for a smoke by the back door, or the owner’s 12-year-old niece and one of her friends would hang around, giggling with starry eyes held up on the skinniest and gangliest of legs. But mostly, it was lonely work. (Though I never minded, and maybe that’s why I write now.)

The equipment was antique; flaking, ’20s green and rusting pistons, as was the owner – true bastards of inefficiency and failure – once industrial wonders reduced to haunting the wooden planks of a gift shop and the cold emptiness of a barn, barking orders and refusing them – and yet, I loved them both.

One afternoon in the late peek of the autumn season, and when the sky was gray and the fallen fruit had begun to rot, I took off my apron and shut the machines down. I was expecting my mother – I didn’t have a car – but when I rounded the barn, putting a cigarette in my mouth and checking my pockets for a light, the owner called after me.

“Where the hell are you going?” he asked.

“I’m going home, Harry. It’s 3.”

“Na, no, no, we have to make cider.”

He said “we,” as in “me.”

“We just got an order in for tomorrow and we need to get at least three or four crates pressed.”

He said “we” again.

Each crate took at least an hour, and I knew when he said three or four it meant seven or eight. I hung my head nodding, and then continued out into the lot to find my mother.

The cars of tourists and families lined the walkways and wooden planters at the front of the shop, and from the dirt beneath their tires came the smell of rain. My mother’s mini van was among the masses, and I told her I had to stay late and so she left, though she wouldn’t be coming back again that evening.

A few hours later, I had a break and used it to gently ask use of the phone in the pie kitchen; the women in there were as bitter as the rhubarb they baked with. I tried my grandfather and my girlfriend, and then again when I’d finally shut and hosed the machines down for the last time at 10 that evening. They never answered.

I hung around in soaking clothes, hoping to catch a ride, and then soon it was only Harry and me. I called up the pine staircase to his office to say that all was done, that everything was locked up and shut down – dropping hints as subtly as I knew how. And as I stood in the sudden, vacated quiet, I realized that it was pouring outside.

He called back, unseen and headless from his hiding place amongst the rafters, “Make sure you shut the lights off.”

And I did.

But before I left, I had one last cigarette in the doorway of the barn. As I stood shivering and watching the smoke get sucked away into the cold and rain, from somewhere in the darkness behind me Harry’s radio boomed into life. Stevie Ray Vaughn was wailing, “The sky is crying.” Irony had never tasted so bitter. I pitched my smoke into the night and stepped out into the rain thinking I could smell pot, and I imagined Harry rolling around shirtless in his money.

Route 7 is a long, dark and winding road. The wind whipped and lashed out resentfully, carrying with it hard, freezing sheets of rain that snapped pine and oak, and saturating even the leather of my sneakers. Occasionally cars passed bye, their wipers set on high, their lights on low, shimmering and then disappearing, but never stopping. And mostly, I was alone.

I was freezing. My teeth chattered. The gravel on the sides of the road had begun to wash away and I was forced to walk the yellow lines. My feet were going numb, and with every step they chased a warm and uncomfortable water back through the seams in my shoes, only letting more of the cold in. And after only an hour of walking, I still had at least seven miles to go. I thought I was going to die. I think I would have.

I climbed a long, slow hill, passing the cemetery where my grandfather is buried now, and when I reached the top where the first of the sidewalks and streetlights of town began, I knew I was in trouble. From the deepest and hollow most corners of my lungs, there came a sudden cough that doubled me over like I’d been struck in the middle.

I got myself moving again, though on the sidewalk and much slower than before; the cough had sent a bad jolt, changing my thoughts of anger and self-righteousness to fear. I thought I was going to die.

My feet finally went numb and my hands were on their way. There would be nowhere to go to get warm but home; in a small town everything closes at dusk (even the 24-hour coffee shops) and the one I thought might actually be open and could make it to didn’t have a phone. I was going to die, and the fear propelling this feeling quickly surpassed all thoughts of self-pity and reasoning. It was real.

I think it’s in man’s nature, or I know at least it’s in mine, to call upon God when at the bottom looking up. And on that late rainy night in October, I was kneeling at the base.

My walk had become a hobble and my hair had begun to freeze – and then I spoke aloud because my thoughts no longer seemed to be working.

I said, “God, if you’re real, please for the love of you, cut me a break.” And then added, “Please, I promise I’ll live right.”

And then, just like that, a car pulled over onto the sidewalk a few yards ahead. I didn’t think anything of it. As I passed, the driver leaned over to roll his window down and call out to me.

“Hey, you need a ride?”

I stopped under a big sumac and peered into the car. Behind the wheel sat a little man, the dome light weak and dim but enough to catch the color of his beard in winks of copper and gold. He asked me where I was going and told me it was on his way.

He seemed OK and I thought if he were to try anything funny I could probably handle myself. But when minutes of silence had passed between us – him stealing strange glances at me, and me staring out at the passing wet blacktop, considering the jump and roll. I began to suspect I’d made a mistake.

The wipers clacked and streaked across the glass and soft music played from his radio just quiet enough to be beyond audible reach. And still he looked at me. And still I sat tensed and ready for a hand on my knee or an unwelcome pass.

None of those things came.

When we pulled into my driveway, he finally turned to me and spoke. “I’ve been trying to figure out a way to say this to you,” he said. I thought, oh dear God here comes the part where he leans over to kiss me.

“Do you know why I picked you up?”

I shook my head.

“When I saw you on the sidewalk back there, the Lord spoke to my heart.”

I felt ashamed, and I still do.

“I’m headed over to church now, and if ever you’d like to come along, call this number.”

He handed me a card. I never called. I don’t remember where it went.

I was raised a Baptist for the most part, and I don’t know if I’ve been running from God or if we’re all just alone in the end, but that night before I peeled my clothes off and took a hot shower, I stood at the window, smoking and smiling to myself, knowing that I was loved.

L.kenyon is from Vermont, where trees grow. Now he lives in New York, with concrete skylines and a pet television set.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Monday, October 23rd, 2006 | Email This Post

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