• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

I began some mornings at Melby’s, where I was slowly drawn into the town’s conversation. There was a general wariness about me at first, especially since I bought the New York Times, but it seemed to dissipate as I developed a breakfast routine. I sat at the same stool, always ordered two eggs over easy with dark toast and no butter, and quietly read the newspaper. The talk around me was mostly about the weather, the Red Sox, the latest outrage by the state legislature, logging, farming or the condition of the town roads. These were well-worn subjects. Customers inquired after each other’s health, and the responses acknowledged the greeting but revealed nothing: Can’t complain. I’m okay, I guess. Not bad, you? Been worse.

One morning, a big man, well into his sixties, leaned toward me about three seats down the counter and said, “What do you think of them Sox, huh!” It was an exclamation but it wanted an answer. Clearly a door was being thrown open. I was prepared to handle the weather or the roads, maybe even to weigh in on the state budget, which I might have mischievously suggested was too low given the condition of the state’s schools, which in turn would have caused any number of the frugal countrymen around me to choke and blast their eggs across the counter, but at the moment I had no opinion whatsoever about the Red Sox. I had not yet keyed into their play for the season. I was mute for a slow count of five, then responded, “Well, they’re something else, aren’t they?” It was a volley of rhetorical ambiguity with no meaning on either side, but it was response enough to show good faith, and he was off and running on the beauty of Josh Beckett’s slider, which he had stayed up late into the previous night admiring. I added nothing to the conversation but encouraging assent and wonder at the young man’s extraordinary ability with the ball.

I learned over the following mornings that my acquaintance at the counter had been a long-haul trucker, a senior owner operator, and that the trucking company had canceled his contract. “Can you imagine that?” he said. “After all those years, they just cut me loose.” He still couldn’t grasp the abrupt and coldhearted action. Things like that just did not happen in the United States of America—although, he added with a scornful laugh, he guessed they did now. “After all those years,” he said again, still in disbelief. The company had wanted him to work for less pay, he said. He had calculated that he could not afford his rig’s payments at the new rate, so he sold the truck and retired. “I tell you,” he said as he put a big fat hand flat on the counter, “I miss it.” He lifted his frame off the stool and hauled himself out the door.

It was one of many conversations and glimpses I would have of the hard luck and hard work that were facts of life in this remote corner of New England. It set me thinking a good deal over the summer about the country in general. I could not help but connect the headlines in the newspaper to the lives and attitudes of people like Billy, the truck driver and others I would meet who were struggling outside the tightening circle of jobs that provided decent pay and a little security. The cabin was not only teaching me about the hillside; it was giving me an insight into America.

It rained off and on that last week of May. Billy and I worked when we could, he being more insistent than I that we keep going even when the drizzle turned to light and steady rain. There was a big pile of rocks a few yards off from the cabin, overgrown with moss and small trees, and Billy was convinced it was an Indian burial mound. “Used to be a lot of Indians around here, long time ago,” he said. “That’s how they made their graves.” He said he knew of some places where there were Indian markings on the ledges of cliffs, and that he would take me there if I wanted. “I used to find arrowheads and Indian tools all the time when I was picking potatoes,” he said. “ ’Course, the owner made us give them to him. He’s got quite a collection. I’m sure