“Homebrew?” I asked, thinking of the delicious dark ale I’d had the last time I dropped by.
“You betcha.”
“Any oatmeal stout left?”
“Two. I’ll save ‘em for ya.”
“Thanks, Jack. See you in a few,” I said before hanging up.
A four-way stop marked the end of Dave and Jane’s street. I paused there and put the truck into park, then ushered Fred into the backseat and buckled both of the dogs in. The roads were a little rough out by Jack’s, and I didn’t want to risk them getting hurt if I slid into a snowbank. They whined at the constraints at first, but settled down once we got closer to town and they had more to look at out of the windows.
The one set of lights in what passed as the downtown area were red when I reached them. Because of course they were. Three cars sat ahead of me waiting for them to turn green.
I eased to a stop at the end of the line. “Can you believe this traffic?”
Fred and Sam yipped in response.
I reached into the plastic container in my cup holder and dug out a few treats for them as a reward. Yes, I had trained them to bark in response to that exact question. And yes, I still laughed every time. You have to find creative ways to keep yourself entertained in rural areas.
The light turned green. In just a few miles, we were back in the woods, starting the long climb into the foothills. Jack’s place was on the opposite side of the valley as my sister’s. He lived close to the top of a hill about twelve feet shy of mountain status. The most direct road was so steep that I wouldn’t risk taking it now. This soon after a snowfall, you had to begin the ascent going about sixty if you had any hope of keeping enough momentum going to get to the top.
I hadn’t been driving fast enough the last time I attempted it, and the tires had lost their grip halfway up the hill. Thank God for the house I had just passed and my years of experience on ice-slicked roads. I’d managed to steer the truck into their driveway during the slide. To anyone watching, I would have looked like a demolition derby queen with nerves of steel, but the truth is I’d been terrified. My hands shook for nearly an hour after, and I’d stayed far away from that road in bad weather ever since.
Taking the long way added another ten minutes to my trip, but I didn’t mind; I wasn’t in a rush. Plus, the views were nicer along this route, especially after a storm. Two-hundred-year-old stone fences marked the property lines of the houses. Here and there, a merry spill of golden light shone through the forest, offering a brief glimpse of a log cabin or an A-frame in a clearing beyond.
I caught sight of twinkling Christmas lights down a long driveway and had a brief flashback to a snowball fight I’d had there as a kid. The Masons had owned it then. They’d sold the place to the Andrews when I was in middle school and moved to New Hampshire in search of better jobs.
That was a common theme in my area. People moved away to find jobs, or go to school, or to get away from the suffocating monotony of small-town life. Few ever returned, and our population was a dying one as a result.
The truck’s engine whined as I navigated switchback after switchback on the climb up. Soon even those brief glimpses of homesteads fell away. Pine trees replaced oaks as I neared the top of the hill, butting right against the road. Their branches crowded out the star-strewn sky and dropped clumps of snow on the roof of the cab.
The road opened up again when I crested the summit. I slowed the truck to a crawl so I could take in the dizzying view. Mountains loomed in the distance, their jagged outlines only visible because of the absence of stars. Resting far below them on the valley floor was the town. Its lights glimmered like the swirling mass of some small galaxy, the pinpricks of white that spread out from it the planets it had pulled into its orbit.
“Would you look at that,” I said. I’d lived here most of my life, but sometimes the beauty of my hometown still stole my breath away.
I brought my focus back to the road and shifted into four-wheel low to begin the descent. Jack’s was the first driveway on the right. There weren’t any streetlights here, so I looked for the red reflector on his mailbox.
The dogs got antsy when I turned off the road. We were at Jack’s, and that meant bear hugs and dog treats were about to happen. Fredpulled at his harness. Sam whined as he strained to look out the front window.
“I got it, I got it. Just hold on,” I told them. “And don’t even think about howling out here.”
God only knew what might answer if they did. This side of the valley bordered the wilderness. Like, no one lives beyond this point, you will die if you don’t know what you’re doing out there, wilderness.
Aroostook County, Maine was the largest east of the Mississippi, with over four million acres of mountains, trees, and waterways. Beyond our town, there was nothing but rugged, mostly impassable terrain dissected by roaring rivers. Instead of humans, it was populated by coyotes, moose, fishers, bears – who were thankfully fast asleep in their dens – wolves, and probably, though the US Fish and Wildlife Service would deny it too, mountain lions.
With the thought of wolves still plaguing me, I drove slowly, searching the tree line on either side of the truck for the tell-tale reflection of eyes. Jack’s driveway was unpaved, and thanks to my glacial pace, I gave him plenty of time to hear me coming.
He stepped out onto the front porch as I pulled up. In his mid-sixties, he still stood ramrod straight, with broad shoulders, salt and pepper hair, and a face that was tan even during winter thanks to snow glare. The few wrinkles he had were clustered around his eyes and mouth, a dead giveaway for how much he smiled.
He looked like an instafamous hipster grandpa. One that could out bench-press men half his age. The women of our small town, many much younger than him, considered Jack to be one of the most eligible bachelors in the area. I knew him well enough to say that those women would forever be disappointed. Jack had loved his late wife in a way that would make any other relationship pale in comparison. She’d diedthe same year as my grandfather; the year Jack would tell you was easily the worst of his life.
When I was younger, I’d called him Uncle Jack, though he was more of a great uncle. Once removed. I think. His father had been married to my grandfather’s mother for a few years, so whatever that would make him. Ex-great uncle, maybe?
Their parents’ marriage hadn’t stuck it out, but even though they were over a decade apart in age, Jack and my grandfather’s brotherly relationship had endured the split. Jack had been a constant fixture in my life because of it. After my grandfather’s death, I spent a lot of time on this hill with him and his wife, Renee, who had already accepted the finality of her cancer diagnosis and had given up fighting it.
I practically moved in after she passed. Jack and I spent those days felling trees, clearing a swath of forest beyond his home for planting, coaxing tillable soil out of the rocky terrain, and basically working ourselves to the bone to keep from succumbing to grief. Now, three years later, I still came over at least once a week.
Jack yanked open the passenger door as I rolled to a stop. “Where are my boys?”
