After I’d smoked my cigarette I tossed the butt into the fire, cleaned the kitchen, turned off the stereo and lights and made my way to the bedroom, where I fed the fire before I took a hot shower. By the time I was ready for bed Lulu had already staked a claim to considerably more than half of it. I climbed into the cozy flannel sheets under the blanket and comforter and listened to the rain pour down and the fire crackle as Lulu burrowed close to me with her head on my tummy. She doesn’t exactly love the farm. She’s afraid of the coyotes and bobcats. She’s afraid of the wild turkeys, raccoons, possums and woodchucks, the chickens in their chicken coop, the ducks in their duck pond. Afraid of the duck pond. She can’t swim. Only dog I’ve ever met who can’t. Just sinks straight to the bottom glug-glug-glug. But wherever I go, she goes. We’re a team, like Dickens and Fenster. So I held her as I lay there in the firelight, fully intending to read Mrs Parker for a while. Never happened. I was fast asleep before I knew it.
By early morning the storm had passed. Quasimodo, Merilee’s rooster, was crowing his head off and the sky was a shade of blue you seldom see in New York City. Actually, make that never see. I lay there gazing out the French doors at the autumn leaves on the maple trees and at the open pasturage that tumbled down to Whalebone Cove, where six acres of freshwater tidal marsh were home to one of the state’s last remaining stands of wild rice, not to mention several rare marsh plants. Also great blue herons, long-billed marsh wrens, ospreys and the occasional bald eagle.
I threw on a T-shirt, torn jeans, a toasty black and white Tattersall Viyella shirt and my Chippewas. Put on the coffee, fed Lulu, toasted an English muffin and slathered it with Merilee’s blackberry jam. While I ate at the big kitchen table, which originally had been a washhouse table at a Shaker colony in Mount Lebanon, New York, I made a fall chores list. Attending to seasonal chores is a great way to clear your head. It’s a trick that’s worked for me many times before. Actually, it’s a trick that’s never worked for me before but why let a small technicality get in the way?
After I’d drained my second cup of coffee I dug a pair of pliers and Phillips screwdriver from the tool drawer, went outside by way of the mudroom, discovered from the thermometer mounted outside of the door that it was forty-six degrees, went back inside for my flight jacket and headed out again, taking deep breaths of the clean air as Lulu waddled along with me in her vest at my insistence, grumbling. She would have been much happier staying in bed, but if she doesn’t get a proper amount of exercise she puts on weight and she doesn’t really have anywhere to put it – except even nearer to the floor. So she joined me as I fed Quasimodo and the girls, making sure she kept a safe distance from their wire coop.
The guest cottage wasn’t winterized and needed to be closed-up for the season. I unscrewed the screen door from its hinges, carried it inside and propped it against the wall. Latched all of the windows shut. Used the pliers to shut off the water under the bathroom sink and turned on the faucet and shower to bleed the pipes. I also flushed the toilet twice to empty it so that no water would be left in it to freeze and crack the porcelain. Then I stood there gazing at the plain pine writing table and narrow white iron bed, smiling. I had many fond memories of working on my first three chapters in this cottage on summer mornings when the breeze that came through the screen door was cool and fragrant from all of the flowers that were blooming.
I closed the door and moved on.
Chopping kindling was next on my chores list, but you don’t want to chop kindling the morning after a rainstorm. You want a dry, frosty morning when it hasn’t rained for several days. So I fetched a spade and pruners from the barn and led Lulu around the duck pond to my vegetable garden. Specifically to my shriveled, yellowing tomato plants, which needed to be cut back, pulled out by the roots and buried somewhere far, far away since they harbor blights.
I’d just started in on the job when a Connecticut State Police Ford Crown Vic cruiser eased its way up the gravel driveway and parked behind the Jag. It wasn’t the standard silver State Police Crown Vic. It was a dilapidated rust bucket of no particular color tricked out with a humongous black demolition derby front bumper, as well as an array of spotlights and antennae. Lulu let out a low growl of warning, which surprised me. She’s usually happy to greet sworn personnel. And absolutely nothing makes her happier than riding around in a police car.
The trooper who climbed out was in his mid-forties and didn’t have the bearing of a typical state trooper. He was exceedingly short and roly-poly, not to mention unshaven and unwashed. His body odor was so strong I could smell him from ten feet away. He wore no Smokey hat over his unusually large, balding head, and was dressed in what appeared to be a state trooper’s uniform except it wasn’t. His slate-gray long-sleeved shirt was adorned with no nameplate, badge or official insignias. His navy-blue trousers had no royal blue and gold stripe, and he wore
