We left my room. A few minutes later, with cups of fresh tea, we sat on opposite sides of a well-polished writing table in her living room. We had both worked hard, and though neither of us was exhausted, she looked the way I felt—worn out. She had tied her hair back and removed the bulky wool sweater to reveal a faded gray t-shirt that hung in shapeless bunches from her unsubstantial shoulders.
"No sleeves," she said. "I haven't changed seasons yet."
I pointed to the windbreaker draped over a chair. "Neither have I."
She mentioned some previous rental experiences, many of them routine, then talked about the town for a while in general terms—a casual travelogue to fill the time until...I don't know...the music ended?
It was midnight.
"So tell me the truth Calvin," she said, "what would you have done had I not rented you a room?"
"I was prepared to sleep in the bus shed."
"Oh my God, you're that bent on freeing yourself that you'd risk pneumonia? And I'd have been responsible?"
"No, I would have."
"Mountain weather," she said. "You need to have greater respect for it."
"I know," I said, and I did. I'd had an experience years ago that underscored the dangers most effectively, but instead of recounting the whole sorry affair, I sloughed off the comment and blamed some unnamed web site that mentioned Sage as having available lodging.
"Maybe it should be amended to potential or possible lodging," she said, "but you can have this room as long as you need it."
"And I'll help you move the stuff back when I don't anymore."
"And how long will that be, Calvin?"
"A week, maybe longer."
Even now I don't know why I said that. I had no intention of staying any longer than it took to leave, and yet the words were out before I could restrain them. She looked surprised.
"Oh. I thought you were…I don't know what I thought. A week?"
"I'm on my way to San Francisco," I said hurriedly, as if my plan needed defending. "But I'm in no hurry."
"People waiting for you there?"
"Just on my own," I said. "No real schedule."
"Don't you want to know how much the room is?"
"Name your price."
"Seriously."
"I'm serious."
"Well, legally I have to publish rates. It's $75.00 a night, but that's just paperwork. You can stay here for a hundred a week. It's the slow season."
"A hundred a week? That won't even pay for the heat."
"You didn't mention heat, Calvin. Will you be wanting that too?"
"As much as I can afford."
"Then it's a hundred a week. Like I said, slow season."
"You have a fast season?"
"Not really."
I took out my wallet; she stopped me.
"Why don't you see if you like it first?"
"I like to pay as I go." I peeled off five twenties and handed them to her.
"You're good for a week," she said. "You're still responsible for getting meals and such. We don't provide lunch."
"We?"
"The motel corporation and I. More red tape and rigmarole," she said, handing me a key. "This will open the outside door, but you're always free to come through the house if you see a light on…and even if you don't. It'll make it easier for me too. That way when it snows I won't have to clear another path."
"You get a lot of snow?"
She smiled. "Are you sure you checked this place out?"
"I guess that's a yes."
"I'd be surprised if you don't see some by morning. Your tea's cold. Shall I heat it up for you?"
I declined. I really wanted no more food or drink or music or conversation. The previous night I had dozed off for a short time in a bouncing van and then once again in a bus terminal. The simple prospect of getting out of my clothes and shutting my eyes in motionless and private surroundings seemed too appealing to delay any further.
I volunteered to help her with the dishes but, thank God, she declined.
"I'll call Walter for you," she said, picking up a wall phone. "He's probably expecting you back. No sense him waiting up for you."
"Thanks," I said. "I have to return his shoes too."
For the first time she laughed out loud. "No, you don't," she said, and put the phone back down. "That's one thing you most assuredly don't have to do tonight. He could provide a pair for everyone who comes to town for the next fifty years and still not run out. Did you ever see his stockpile?"
"I know where it is."
"Oh, I doubt that very much, Calvin. So now there are two things you need to see—the Tetons and Walter Trucks's shoe warehouse."
"He says he bought them off a guy in a truck, is that true?"
"I don't know why he'd lie to you, Calvin, do you?"
"Of course not," I said, a little too enthusiastically. I was afraid that a misstep was going to cost me that room. "He was telling me about his friend before—the one who died."
"That was a few years back," she said, then without adding anything else, reminding me again that the hour and the labor had exhausted her. Again I offered to help her clean up; again she turned me down. I don't know if she ever called Walter, but she did not go right to bed. Moments later, through the thin door of my room, I could hear muffled television voices—a newscast, I thought, though when I peeked out, the TV was not in my sightline. I've never been a newshound, but I felt out of touch and wondered what was going on in the world...but not as much as I wondered what it would be like to sleep in an actual bed.
Chapter 6
I mentioned before that I had great respect for mountain weather, for the elements in general. Growing up on the Cape had something to do with it: you learn early on the difference between a boater who is reluctant to sail when a squall threatens and a sailor who knows enough not to. The reluctant ones don't come back.
But it is a later incident in the mountains that haunts me more. For a short time right after college, I lived in New Hampshire, having accepted a position at Harrison Academy teaching history (world, American, and ancient—none of which I knew very much about). If you've ever read A Separate Peace or seen Dead Poet's Society, erase those images from your mind. Harrison was not some hallowed and fabled hall of academia steeped in decades if not centuries of tradition. It was merely a twenty-acre receptacle for young men—and in this case women too—who were not fully ready to acclimate themselves to a formal learning environment. Or that's what the brochure said, among other euphemistic assessments of anti-social behavior. But the kids weren't horrible, and they weren't stupid by any means, forcing me to read like crazy every night to try to stay ahead of these so-called reluctant learners. Luckily, most of them were quite content to drift along next to or just slightly behind their teacher...much as I myself had done years before.
But with the workload and its being my first real job, I felt harried all the time and looked forward with an almost lustful enthusiasm to Sundays, especially since one of my Saturday responsibilities was coaching the Harrison girls' field hockey team. If there was something I knew less about than the Gadsden Purchase or the siege of Stalingrad or the Peloponnesian War, it was field hockey. It seemed like no more than a skein of shrill whistle-blowing for some mysterious infraction or other. After a while, though, I found the sounds reassuring: every play stoppage meant 1) nobody would score on us and 2) nobody