Before the Mellowing Year, Book Two, Part II

By Jeffrey Anderson

After hard life lessons learned in Boston, Zach Sandstrom is granted a second chance in central North Carolina. Best of all, he discovers not one but two new loves there. But will he be able to keep these opportunities in balance? How will he adjust to this unfamiliar territory and its demands?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jeffrey Anderson
• Release date: Aug 9, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463010594

Book preview

Book Two, 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.

Begin then, Sisters of the sacred well,

That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring,

Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string.

Lycidas, vv. 15 – 17

John Milton

Before the Mellowing Year

Book Two, Part II

Williamsburg

Barton guided his Mercedes into the nearly empty gravel parking lot of the Jamestown Settlement under pewter gray skies. They walked briskly across the lot to the warmth of the Visitor Center, paid their admission to a matronly woman in a bonnet and colonial-period dress, and were directed to the small theater where a twenty-minute film on the history of Jamestown would begin in a few minutes. They entered the empty theater and Barton led the way to seats in the exact center. He took off his navy pea coat and laid it on the next seat over. He sat down and opened his shoulder bag and took out a small battery-powered cassette recorder.

You don’t mind if I record the film and some of our conversations, do you?

Zach laughed. Just so long as you don’t catch the groans of the guy in the raincoat in the back row.

Barton actually turned to look behind him. Seeing no one there, he turned back to Zach. Don’t get any ideas.

I left my raincoat at home. He held out his fur-necked bomber jacket as proof.

Knowing you, probably at the dry cleaners.

No comment, Zach said as he sat down.

Barton shook his head and pushed the record button as the lights were lowered and the film began.

They’d driven up along the interstates yesterday under increasing clouds and cooling temperatures. The four-hour drive had been quiet and uneventful and they checked into the Jackson Motor Lodge in Williamsburg just before dusk. After a brief nap on their separate double beds (Barton was a great believer in afternoon naps), they freshened up then walked through the streets of the modern village (a campus town normally teeming with students but empty this weekend with students still on holiday leave) and into the restored colonial village. It too was largely deserted, with only the occasional family or couple encountered along the cobblestone walks lit by gas lanterns. They found their way to Christiana Campbell’s Tavern situated on the main street of the village and were seated promptly for dinner. They ate a good meal of fried chicken, spoonbread, and green beans simmered with fatback, topped off with pecan pie and coffee. The late night walk back to the motel through streets that were now totally empty was welcome exercise after the carbohydrate laden meal. They took turns in the bathroom (Barton first), stripping to their underwear (Barton in his BVD briefs and white V-necked undershirt, Zach in his boxers and long-sleeved red T-shirt) and readying for bed. Zach slid between the sheets and turned off the light just after eleven o’clock.

If Zach had worried about travelling with Barton (and why wouldn’t he?—he’d never travelled with anyone except Allison and, long ago, his family), those concerns were quickly dispelled with Barton’s easy and unpresumptuous manner on the road. Yes, Barton had a schedule and an itinerary that he intended to keep; but as long as Zach adhered to that schedule (which wasn’t difficult, given the frequent reminders) Zach was otherwise free to do as he pleased. For now, that consisted of tagging along behind Barton; but he could foresee occasion when the two of them might go on separate outings, meeting back at the motel or somewhere in the village. This freedom and self-reliance was a welcome change from needing to always be attentive to Allison when they’d travelled.

Perhaps more importantly, despite their frequent jokes about masturbation and other bodily functions, Barton took great care not to push this teasing too far, not to in any way threaten Zach with unwanted touch or proximity or advances. And from his side, Zach took care not to be overly cautious or sensitive to Barton’s every move or comment. Rather quickly, at least in their travel and rooming habits, Zach began to see Barton as a brother, devoid of sexual interest or intimidation. Whether this was in fact true—that Barton had moved past sexual attraction to Zach—was a secret he kept closely guarded. And, of course, Zach didn’t ask.

When the rather tepid film (even by the low standards of tourist documentaries) ended and the lights came up in the room still empty save the two of them, Barton clicked the tape recorder off but kept it by his side for the walk back into the lobby and gift shop. There he engaged—and recorded, with her permission—the woman who had taken their admission in a conversation about an earlier layout of the excavations and settlement. In particular, he wanted to verify the former location of the large Pocahontas statue now placed near the Visitor Center. She confirmed his memory that it had been mounted on a granite pedestal near the old church and moved sometime after the anniversary celebrations in 1957.

With this critical piece of information secured, Barton then deftly interrogated the woman about her own past and family history, discovering that she was raised in the same area of eastern North Carolina where he was born, still had relatives the next town over from his home town of Surry. Zach stood off to one side, nonchalantly leafing through postcards and glossy coffee-table books as he listened closely to the woman’s ready surrender of her life story to Barton’s quiet inquiry, including an allusion to her former life before some tragedy sent her packing to Virginia. Barton thanked her for all her help and wished her well, claimed he’d check on her cousins next time he was in Surry. Zach joined him as he walked out the door and headed toward the recreated Indian village.

How do you do that? Zach asked in amazement.

Do what?

Get complete strangers to tell you things about themselves they wouldn’t tell their pastor or best friend.

Barton grinned. I grew up in the South, boy. How do you think we get all those stories to tell?

I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.

We just ask, but in the right way. It also helps to be a stranger—no danger of the stories coming back to haunt you.

Until Barton Cosgrove puts you in his next novel.

The names are changed, to protect the innocent.

The lone guide at the Indian village was a black girl whose light-toned skin closely matched the color of her buckskin leggings and tunic. She sat cross-legged on a reed mat on a raised platform inside the village’s centerpiece—a curved roof longhouse of the sort that Zach had seen in comparable recreated native villages in New England. The young woman—barely more than a girl, maybe a student earning spending money during her break—greeted them shyly soon after they’d entered the dim and smoky space (there was a small wood fire burning in the midst of a circle of stones, beneath a hole in the roof meant to draw off the smoke but not working well on the low and damp day). They did a slow circuit of the large room, studying the various exhibits of native tools and weapons and cooking implements.

When Zach ended up near the guide, he asked, How many people would’ve lived in this longhouse?

Probably twenty to twenty-five, most likely all members of a single extended family—three or even four generations, numerous married couples, many children.

Sounds like a recipe for disaster—the mother-in-law not only in the same house but in the same room!

The girl laughed. We assume they had a different social order.

Zach laughed. That, or a big stick.

Maybe both, the girl said, looking away when Zach briefly caught her eye.

Barton came up and asked about the Indian uprisings—there were two major incidents, according to their guide, in 1622 and 1644—and how many native Americans currently lived in the Jamestown area. The girl answered his questions in great detail. Zach listened politely for a few minutes then sauntered back outside.

Barton caught up at the crude granary—an open-sided structure with a woven-reed roof and sheaves of corn hanging like ghosts twisting in the damp breeze from a rough beam across the middle. The short ears dangling from their husks were of the multi-colored variety, what Zach’s family had always called Indian corn though its hybrid origins were twentieth century, long after the eradication of these sorts of villages and their inhabitants turning cloddy soil with stone tools.

Barton said, You might learn more if your curiosity extended beyond females between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four. He didn’t look up.

Zach laughed. That might take some radical reprogramming.

Mandarin Chinese is a difficult language, Barton said. People learn it every day. He looked to Zach with a neutral stare.

They read from right to left, don’t they?

Barton just shook his head, turned and headed for some mounds of dirt along the river, the excavations at what was thought to be the original fort.

2

The next morning dawned clear but cool. After a brisk loop through the colonial village, including a brief stint with Zach in the stocks at the village green—For the crime of whistling on the Sabbath Barton announced as he took a photo, using one of the offenses listed on the informational plaque, then whispered as Zach lifted his big form out of the well-worn sockets, Really, it’s for jerking off too often and Zach had answered, Then you’d have been permanently restrained and Barton had replied Only if they caught me—and a speedy round of packing in the motel room (neither had brought much or distributed what few things they’d brought far), they walked to the Sunday Brunch at a nearby restaurant called The Cascades. They ate their fill of eggs (Barton had Eggs Benedict, Zach scrambled) and pancakes and pastries and ham and bacon and sausage (this single meal was intended, by Barton’s planning, to tide them all the way back to Shefford) then hit the road around noon.

They’d decided (Barton decided, Zach offered token agreement) to take the rural back roads home, through the low-country farms and fields and pine woods of Tidewater Virginia and eastern North Carolina. The first leg of this trip included a ferry ride across the broad James River from a spot near the Jamestown Settlement to the Scotland slip on the far side. Barton parked the car in the line waiting for the small ferry bearing down on them to dock and unload its cargo. They climbed out of the car and walked the short distance to a pier where a replica of the Susan Constant, one of the three original Jamestown ships, was docked and open for touring.

They walked together across the small open deck, the boat rocking gently from side to side in the shallow swells sent forth by the approaching ferry. Even safely tied off to this pier on this clear and placid day, the ship seemed vulnerable and frail. It was impossible to imagine it packed with four dozen ill-prepared passengers and their inadequate stores making their way across the dark and often stormy Atlantic.

How desperate would you have to be? Zach wondered aloud.

People risk their lives to save them every day.

Crossing the Atlantic in this?

Barton shrugged. Worse fates.

Shoe-horned in with a bunkmate that hadn’t bathed for a month?

Now that might be a bit much, Barton laughed.

I’ll take the soft leather seats of the Mercedes, thank you.

And its munificent and unfailing captain.

Let’s not get carried away, Zach intoned though they both knew he’d thrown his lot in with that captain long before, counting on that munificence and reliability—which, so far at least, had proven to be good bets.

They returned to the car and boarded at their turn, never left the safe confines of their gold metal ship riding the waves atop the rusty metal ferry beneath them, all the way to the other side.

The drive through the flat fields and intermittent single flashing light small towns held Zach’s attention for the first half hour. They shared the occasional laugh—at Hitler’s Used Cars with its three forlorn vehicles on a sandy lot in the middle of nowhere, at The Realistic Beauty Salon (Who wants realism at a beauty salon? Barton asked rhetorically)—and Barton occasionally volunteered nostalgic recall of some incident or person associated with this highway or that town.

But after a while Zach slipped into a lazy and relaxed half-daze, his eyes sometimes open on the fallow fields and muddy tracks, sometimes lightly closed with the bright sun pushing pink through the skin of his lids. Such a trusting stupor was rare for Zach on the road. He was always either driving and alert to all its known and hidden demands, or closely observant as a front seat passenger—watching for upcoming turns or obstacles or threats. But today he gave all those anxieties over to Barton, trusted his driving ability and his planning and his obvious familiarity with the roads and the region.

And, beyond the moment and their immediate surroundings (however deeply they resonated through Barton’s past and spirit), maybe at just this moment Zach began to trust not only the man driving but also his vision of life, his purpose and placement in the world—in 1980 in North Carolina (they’d crossed the state line twenty miles back), and across the globe in all history. Barton honored that history, that world, by first fully engaging it wherever he found himself, whatever the circumstances, then striving to contribute to it, whether through his attentiveness and openness in the moment or through the subliminal processing of those moments to be shared in verbal or written story-telling at some later date. To Zach’s early (and mainly subliminal) assessment, this seemed not only an interesting and bottomless endeavor but also a noble pursuit, a calling every bit as adventurous and challenging (and hopefully less foolhardy) as that driving those souls pointed toward a new destiny on the far side of the vast sea as they boarded the Susan Constant in England over three and a half centuries before. Not that Zach thought all or any of this in so many words. His thoughts, if he had any—really, no words, just feelings—were that he was content and at peace. After a further while, that peace, that lazy torpor, spawned the image of a certain blonde girl, recalled the feel of her pliant skin laid full-length along his complementary body. And at that moment, Zach didn’t see her as a separate calling, knew it as all one and the same.

Surry, the birthplace of Barton Cosgrove, Barton announced in loud voice.

Zach shook himself awake and sat upright in his seat. He looked to both sides of the road for the sign Barton was reading then realized it was hypothetical, not real. Some vandals burn down your sign?

The town elders are still debating its placement.

Not by the landfill, I trust.

Barton laughed. There actually was some talk of a sign, after the first novel got so much attention. Mother gently discouraged the idea, though I think she’d hoped they’d not listen to her. Then some of my later work was viewed as ‘too dark’ and the idea got shelved.

Are you sorry?

He gave a sly grin. I wouldn’t have told them no.

He guided the car down the empty Main Street and across the railroad tracks, pointed out the former one-room depot, now defunct, that had been the site of many dramatic events in his boyhood. He pointed out the Methodist church then, a block farther on, the Baptist church that had been the polar anchors of a furious tug of war between his parents (his father was Baptist, his mother Methodist) to the point where he spent little time in either building. A few more turns down narrow side streets brought them to a one-story white clapboard house with a rusting tin roof and a shallow porch across the length of its front. The paint had flaked down to bare wood in spots and the yard was spotted with dirt and shivering brown weeds.

Barton stopped the car in the road directly in front of the house. I was born in the room behind that window. He pointed past Zach to the window at the left-hand end of the house, blanked white by a lowered roll-up shade.

Does it feel like home?

Yes, and no. We spent only a few years here, before moving on. We came back over the years, but always as expatriates. If it’s home, it’s more in my blood than in my heart.

Who owns it now?

A distant cousin.

Could use a little work.

Between tenants, I guess.

He cranked the car and drove on. Three turns and two minutes later, they were again passing through flat fallow fields. Five minutes later they merged onto the interstate that would take them the rest of the way to Shefford.

Just outside of town, speeding along at sixty-five miles an hour with no other cars near and the sun setting huge and orange straight ahead, Barton asked, So how’d you like being my research assistant?

Are you kidding? All expenses paid travel and food—I loved it.

Barton nodded. Me too.

I didn’t snore too much?

No, but might need to bring some air freshener for the bathroom next time.

Zach laughed. Only if you bring some of the same.

We’ll share, Barton said. In Rome.

Zach looked at him with a tilt of his head. Rome?

A whole section of the novel takes place there. The sights are crystal clear in my memory, but I haven’t visited for twenty years. Figured I’d go check it out over spring break. I’d like to have you come with me.

I don’t know what to say.

Say yes, or no.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Be crazy not to.

My favorite city in the whole world. You’ll love it.

Zach nodded in silence, still stunned by the invitation, already starting to wonder what it meant for his life.

North Carolina

Classes started the next day. Unlike last semester, when he took five classes, this semester Zach was taking the normal increment of four, three in his English major (including two taught by Barton) and one in German literature (in English translation). He was excited to return to class, looked forward to the give and take of discussions and the externally imposed discipline of assigned reading and