Before the Mellowing Year, Book One, Part II

By Jeffrey Anderson

At age twenty, Zach Sandstrom leaves his small-town farming community along with his newlywed wife Allison in search of--something. Over the ensuing years and in places as diverse as the Wyoming wilderness, the Boston metropolis, and the North Carolina piedmont, he eventually finds it, though by paths he neither anticipated nor fully chose.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jeffrey Anderson
• Release date: Jan 4, 2018
• ISBN: 9781370203642

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Book One, Part II

by

Jeffrey Anderson

Copyright 2018 by Jeffrey Anderson

Smashwords Edition

This story is a work of fiction.

Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Though this e-book is being distributed for free, it remains the copyrighted property of the author and may not be reprinted or reproduced without the permission of the author. If you like this book, please encourage your friends to download a copy at Smashwords.

Book One, Part II

March 31st finally saw temperatures reach sixty degrees downtown, first time since early November of last year—nearly five months of temperatures below the normal human comfort level, many of those days punctuated by snow and sleet or cold rain, all of them (even the clear ones) tinged with the gray of winter. Zach’s body and spirit felt the weight of every one of those long light-deprived, warmth-deprived days.

So when the thermometer finally crept toward sixty late in the morning of this Friday, Zach was more than ready to break out of his winter doldrums and embrace the promise of spring. This auspicious day came on the heels of a week of days and nights above freezing, a period during which the last of the snow mountains finally dissolved and the ground actually began to dry out and firm up after its extended captivity as either frost or muck, often both in diurnal cycles. Zach loaded three books and a light lunch of a fluffernutter sandwich (thick layers of marshmallow creme and peanut butter between two slices of white bread) and a bottle of birch beer (another local specialty) into his green canvas rucksack and headed for the Esplanade. He knew it was open again, had scouted it out earlier in the week with a celebratory run along the Charles. But he’d not yet actually sat on his bench. The days had been too cool, the wind off the Charles too brisk to be comfortable sitting for long. He wanted his first repose on his favorite bench for this calendar year to be warm and relaxed.

So as he descended the stairs from the footbridge over Storrow Drive, he looked out across the brown grass of the Esplanade and the blue water of the Charles with both hope and expectation. The hope he felt was innate, the bred into his blood hope of a farmer at the first breath of spring, the irrepressible and reckless assumption that thawed earth and warming temperatures guaranteed germination, growth, and new life. The expectation he harbored was both new to him and more complicated, reliant as it was on the resilience of his spirit and the resourcefulness of his imagination. Where he’d found nothing but dead ends and disillusion in his searches of last fall and winter, he was bold enough to believe that he could find his way out of this maze where his choices and his circumstances had dropped him, this set of seemingly insoluble dilemmas the world had placed before him. He could not go back, would not for a moment entertain that option. But he firmly believed, on this day of warmth and promise anyway, that he could will his way forward.

He sat on the bench and set the rucksack beside him. He looked around quickly to confirm that there was no one nearby (the closest pedestrian a jogger far down the path and headed away) then closed his eyes and soaked in the moment through his other senses. He felt the sun warm on the left side of his face and neck, the cool breeze off the water straight in his face, the smell of long-frozen marsh mud finally come back to life, the taste of the brown lawn trapped between dormancy and rebirth. He heard the low rumble of traffic behind him on Storrow Drive, the honk of a car horn in front and to the left on the Mass. Ave. Bridge, the rhythmic chant of a coxswain for the BU crew somewhere off to his right, the screech of gulls high above, the roar of an ascending jet still higher. He absorbed these sensations one by one, fed his starved soul.

Then he opened his eyes on the MIT dome. In all these months away from here, he’d forgotten about that sight, forgotten how critical it was to his survival in this city. But there it was now—soft limestone beige in soft perfect arc above the chaos of low and slovenly Cambridge (seeming all the lower in his mind now with the memories of his two stints in the trucking terminal—they’d called him back once more, giving him the opportunity to quit in person—hidden somewhere beyond and beneath that dome). Arrayed around that centerpiece, everything else he saw—from the blue sky to the gray-green water to the muted colors of the Cambridge and Boston skylines to the traffic on the bridge and across the way on Memorial Drive—seemed stuck between the brutal winter just past and the fresh spring bearing down, seemed stunned by the day and the opportunities it offered. It had been an awful winter. It would take a while to recover.

Zach pulled out his wax-paper wrapped sandwich and opened his bottle of birch beer and ate that lunch in apparent silence and stillness that wasn’t silent or still at all, was crammed with stimuli from all directions and into all senses. And thus he began his healing.

After lunch he took out the books he’d brought along from the ample supply he had checked out from the Library. He was in a short-story phase and had brought along bookmarked volumes of Hemingway and Katherine Anne Porter, but the one he chose was a best of collection of stories from two years ago. He occasionally read such anthologies and thereby got a quick survey of the range of short fiction currently being published. He rarely read a story that rose to the level of some of the masters of the genre (two of whom were represented in the other volumes in his rucksack), but he enjoyed their range of styles and subjects and at least sometimes encountered a voice that was compelling if not captivating.

And so it was with this volume as he read through the first three-quarters of the twenty or so stories, in the warmth of the sun and the cool breeze off the water, soaking in all the sensations of the real world around him as he happily engaged the characters and events recorded in the fictional worlds of these diverse stories.

Then he read a story by a writer he’d never heard of named Barton Cosgrove. From the first sentence he was hooked. The original but lucid style combined with the frank and clear-eyed exploration of fundamental human dilemmas to cut through all that Zach thought he knew about literature and life, and form a sort of new frontier of seeing within the prose and, ultimately and instinctively, within Zach. While Zach couldn’t have put words to this visceral response to this first sampling of Cosgrove’s fiction (how could he? he was too caught up in that story), he knew in his heart—that fast, that immediate—that something had just changed in his life. A huge new door had just swung open—not just open a crack revealing a glimpse, not just a plain old door into a plain old house or even a mansion, not even a big roll-up door into a warehouse or a hanger, but a doorway ripped open in the heretofore sacrosanct sky, a doorway exposing new worlds, new ways of thinking and seeing, and most importantly new chances for a life.

When he’d read the last sentence, he closed the book slowly and set it carefully on the bench beside him. The volume seemed now a living thing—demanding of care, capable of harm. He splayed his broad hand completely over the cover, either trying to safeguard its contents or absorb them—he couldn’t say which. He lifted his eyes on the day—same afternoon, maybe a touch warmer, the breeze a little gentler, the traffic noises fading to a hum around the edges of his consciousness. There on the Charles, almost invisible near the Cambridge shore, a one-man rowing scull cut a thin silver line west into the sun, into this broad new day.

2

Matt took one corner then another of the dark wool blanket he’d scavenged from the supply room and helped Allison spread it out on a sunny patch of brown but dry lawn off to one side of the Public Gardens. He stood beside the blanket and stared at Allison with that boyish grin and those cute dimples. She blushed under his gaze, reached down and picked up the bag lunch she’d set off to the side while spreading the blanket, and sat quickly on that blanket, at first facing directly into the enticing sunshine, then quickly turning so that the sun was striking the back and right side of her head, warming her but not blinding her. She may or may not have been aware that this turn also meant she’d be back-lit by that sun if Matt turned that gaze on her while seated beside her. Matt smiled and nodded to nothing in particular, picked up the bag holding the two hot dogs and a canned soft drink he’d bought on the way over here, and sat on the blanket, not beside her but almost directly in front of her. This brought another momentary blush to her cheeks, a blush she quickly willed away with the inner choice that she’d not let herself be held hostage to his ploys for the whole hour, not submit completely to his instinctive or intentional charms, however enticing they were (rivaling that warm spring sun). She crossed her legs Indian style (glad for the brown corduroy pants that at least spared her having to worry about how she sat) and opened her lunch of a peanut butter sandwich with the crust cut off the bread and apple. She nibbled on the sandwich and gazed past his face, full lit by the sun and making him squint a little, and looked at the end of the kidney-shaped pond, the sun casting chains of diamonds on its bright blue surface.

After their meeting on the roof (which had not included a single touch, not even the incidental brush of fingers when he passed her the beer), Allison played it cool with Matt for a long time; and he’d seemed happy to oblige her. They ran into each other occasionally in the break room or on the stairs, and always exchanged nods or simple greetings. But after rebuffing his knowing smile two days following their rooftop venture, Matt had limited all his greetings—both spoken and unspoken—to the category of friendly and professional. Then the Blizzard took him and virtually all of the maintenance crew outside for several weeks of doing pitched battle with the snow and ice, and later with the flooding caused by the melting of all that snow and ice. Allison rarely saw him during this period; and when she did, he seemed distracted and distant.

Mary had moved on from her crush on Matt, was now dating a shelver from the Public Library. But Ian had remained ever vigilant over all her workplace interactions and seemed pleased at the coolness between her and Matt though he never spoke of it, never even said Matt’s name in her presence. So she was glad Ian was out of work today, having taken a vacation day to help Sean open up a friend’s cottage on the South Shore. Mary’d given her a perplexed look from across the lobby as she and Matt headed out the door, and all she could do was offer a shrug in return. She could handle Mary. She was, after all, just having an impromptu outdoor lunch with a co-worker.

As beautiful as the pond was in the bright sunshine of this glorious afternoon, it somehow seemed to Allison empty and forlorn without the swanboats floating by on it (it’d be several weeks—probably early May—before those boats were trucked in and put into service). It was O.K. not to have the boats when the pond was drained for cleaning (as if had been late last fall) or ice-coated with people gliding by on skates, as if those lumbering swans had turned into graceful humans, or snow-covered with prone snowmen presiding over what seemed simply a continuation of the adjacent paths and sloping fields. But with the water so blue and inviting and the sun so warm and casting those chains of diadems across its surface, there was something missing in this scene, some part of the painting yet unfinished.

So how was your winter? Matt asked.

She looked from the pond to him. He’d moved just far enough on the blanket that the sun wasn’t directly in his eyes and he could look at her without wincing or squirming. At that moment he seemed both beautiful and vulnerable, no longer the in-control relaxed charmer he’d been just a moment before and for all the time she’d known him. What had happened while she was looking away? Cold. Snowy, she said with a wry smile. Yours?

He laughed a bit nervously. Pretty much the same. He looked away, down the hill toward the pond, his face growing grave as if missing those boats as much as she, maybe more than she. My mom died just after Christmas.

Allison froze, staring at the side of his face. Then she felt as if she were falling, far down into a dark well despite the ongoing warmth and light of the sun on her shoulders, across the whole scene. She finally managed to push out one word from her suddenly dry mouth and throat. How? She didn’t add the second word that was crying out inside her—why?

Cancer, he said to the pond. It didn’t take long, which was good. Changed Christmas for me, probably forever.

He turned to face her again, tried out that old smile on that new face. He was who he’d been a minute ago, but then he wasn’t. She was who she’d been a minute ago, but then she wasn’t. I’m so sorry, Matt. Why didn’t you tell anyone?

I thought I would, when I got back after the funeral. But everyone was talking about the fun times they’d had over the holidays and I didn’t want to spoil the mood. Then after a few days, I was glad I’d kept silent. Work was one place I could come and not have to talk or think about it.

Allison didn’t know what to think or say. Part of her wanted to hold him; part of her wanted to run. I don’t know what to say. I’ve never lost someone close, or known someone who has.

There’s nothing you can say.

Then why did you tell me?

He looked again down to the empty pond. His gaze, which formerly seemed alive and intimate, now seemed distant and sad. I don’t know. You’re the first person I told from work, and I didn’t plan on telling you. He looked at her with quiet gravity then offered a helpless shrug. I don’t know why I did.

His boyish good looks suddenly had depth and substance, and the former implied intimacy his eyes had carried was no longer implied but very real, and very potent. She again felt the impulse to run but resisted and held her ground against those disarming eyes and all they spoke. Thanks for telling me.

He nodded slowly.

She reached out and brushed his near hand lying like a lost soul on the blanket.

He held steady under her light touch for a few seconds, then slid his hand away and used it to take out one of the hotdogs and his can of soda from the brown paper bag at his feet. After taking a huge bite of the hotdog and a long swig of the soda, he asked, So what are you going to do this weekend?

There was a weekend forthcoming? This was Friday? Allison had no idea, had completely forgot. She wished again for a swanboat—just one to float across her vision, rivet her gaze, call forth her future.

3

On his walk home from the Esplanade in golden late sun and cooling air, Zach came to understand his discovery of the Barton Cosgrove story as a powerful and far-reaching omen. If the world and fate held hid in its store of possibility propitious guides such as Cosgrove’s mesmerizing prose alongside the threats and disappointments he’d come to accept as inevitable, then at least he had a chance at a better future. And he also had a choice to trust and seek and nurture those positive twists of fate that might not be mere fate but could be divine intention—a munificent God’s nudging of his life. How else might one explain his spying of that anthology on the long shelf of new releases in the Library, his grabbing it from the dozen or so books on his desk to place in the rucksack, his selecting it over Hemingway and Porter (safe and trusted guides) while sitting in spiritual suspension in spring warmth on the bench, his persisting through all those mediocre short stories to unearth this gem? How could all those improbable choices be simply an accident? They couldn’t, or so he chose to believe. He had a chance in this struggle, which is all he could ask for. And he might—could he be so bold to hope?—have a powerful ally in the battle.

After showering and changing, he headed out into the early evening and tracked Allison down at Jimmy’s in the Pru, where she was seated along with Mary at their usual table in the corner. He’d anticipated the typical crowd of Hancock employees blowing off steam at the end of the work week, and was surprised to see only the two of them at the table. He was even more surprised at the sudden disappointment he felt at the lack of a crowd, had actually been looking forward to dissipating some of his new-found energy and enthusiasm into that impromptu aggregation. He was still more disappointed that Ian wasn’t there—not that he would confide anything directly to Ian, but that the lanky Irishman would surely sense some of what he was feeling without a word said.

He weaved his way through the crowded bar to the table in the corner. Caught up in his own upbeat mood, he failed to notice that the two girls were tight-lipped silent and frowning down at their drinks. What did you two do—scare everybody off? It was the sort of comment Ian would make, and he thought they would be amused.

They weren’t. Mary didn’t look up. Allison glanced up and forced out an unconvincing grin. Everybody had better things to do.

Even Ian?

Off today—helping Sean down in Quincy or Hingham or some such place.

So this is it?

Just us, she said in a far-off voice that was neither apologetic nor offended.

Zach nodded and smiled. It would take