I’ve known Henry Shick for thirty-five years, thereabouts. We met at the feed store out on Route 39 where I was buying fencing for my cattle. Henry, a strapping, red-haired fellow, was laid off from his job as mechanic at the aluminum plant up river in Warren that spring and was doing odd jobs to make ends meet for him and his wife Leona. He was wrestling with the boiler system at the feed store and we nearly collided in the tool aisle. We got to talking. I liked him straight off and said he should call me as I needed some help with the gas heaters in my workshop. Which he did call and he did fix them. I got him to rewire a stretch of my cattle fence. I could’ve done that on my own or with the help of my son, Chester, Jr. But I was flush with money from the prior year’s cattle sale, my best when I was a young man, and the spring lambs I’d sold, so I figured it was part of my tithe and the ‘love thy neighbor’ thing, have some skin in the game on that regard.

My wife, Janet, she’s dead now five years, the bone cancer took her fast. We had joined the Elks Club in East Sparrow shortly before I met Henry. The club was doing a membership drive and I’ve always been one for pitching in to help a cause. We invited Henry and Leona to join and they did and our friendship grew. It was nice being with folks the same age and interests. We’d meet at the Elks Friday evenings for fried fish dinners; some of the unemployed locals fished the Allegheny River and supplied the club with perch and walleye. Henry refused to sit at the bar, so we’d settle at a table, working the scratch-off tickets and our drinks, and talking about our work, church events, and the weather. 

Henry wouldn’t touch the tickets, as he’s dead set against gambling, and he won’t touch alcohol, only a glass of ginger ale with a lemon slice. Leona liked her gin. As I breathe, she could drink many men under the table. Such a petite thing and yet such a thirst. Henry didn’t like it, being a devout church-goer and all, and made it known to her on occasion, his blue eyes hard on her. 

“St. Paul said to the Ephesians, ‘Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit.’” He’d raise his head a bit, look down his nose. Leona would wave him off.

“If God didn’t want us to have a drink, he wouldn’t have allowed grain to ferment. And when have you known me to be debauched, Henry Shick?” she’d sniff. When Henry turned his head, she’d stick out her tongue.

With Janet gone, my Friday dinners with the Shicks stopped. Henry stayed in touch, but I wasn’t up for socializing; I didn’t feel complete without her. After a couple of years, Henry called and suggested dinner at the Elks like the old days. Leona didn’t join us, the explanation being that she had ‘things to do’. After a couple more dinners, it eventually became ‘she’s not feeling well’. Henry wouldn’t say, he can be real private when he wants, but I was of a mind that the gin caused her mysterious condition. She confined herself to their home up on the ridge above the river in West Sparrow. From what little Henry shared with me about her during that time, Leona didn’t much get out of her chair. I hadn’t seen her since Janet died and they stood behind me, hands on my shoulders, as I grieved at the funeral home. 

So, it was just me and Henry getting together at the Elks. After dinner we’d roll a game or two of duckpins, and then sit at a table talking. Eventually Henry got quiet and stared a hole in the bottom of his glass. I learned to just shut up when he gets to that. Then he was up and gone and a bitter cloud remained.

I tried once to get Henry to open up about Leona. I told him about my son’s decision to take an agricultural sales job in California, move his young family about as far from western Pennsylvania as you can go, and forsake taking over the farm. That was a day. All the plans we’d made about succession of the property, ruined. The hay was ready for cutting and I was replacing some of the pickup teeth on my tractor’s baler when Junior stopped by. 

“Got a few minutes, Dad?” His voice had that quiver in it that I knew well.

“Sure. Go ahead,” I’d replied and turned back to my work.

“Well. Yeah… I got a job offer last week.” 

“Oh? That’s news.” I waited for him to continue. “Who made you this offer?”

“It’s with Houck Agriculture Supply.”

“Never heard of that outfit.” The pickup teeth were suddenly misbehaving in my shaking hands.

“Yeah. They’re out in Sacramento. It’s a sales position working the northern Central Valley.”

“I see.”

“Well. Yeah… I’ve accepted the job. They’ll start me at eighty thousand plus bonus, benefits, company truck. I’ll be leaving end of the month to get started on training. Darleen and the kids will follow once the house sells.” Upon hearing all of this I jammed a pin that secures the baler pickup teeth through the skin between my thumb and forefinger. I pulled it out, kept working, listening to what I didn’t want to hear.

“That’s good money and all,” I’d said, gritting my teeth. “Congratulations, son. Sounds like a great job. Darleen’s on board?”

He told me that, yes, Darleen was on board but the kids weren’t happy about it, and he told me about the company and the job itself and a lot more that I didn’t really hear, I’d just kept at my work. When he’d finished, he stood nearby like a scarecrow while I kept at the baler repair.

“Dad. Well, I’m just not cut out for farming. It’s not me.”

“I see. Hand me those channel locks, there,” I said. After a few minutes of both of us saying nothing, Junior left.

“Gotta run. I have a conference call with their sales manager.”

“Right.”

“Hey, you’re bleeding. There, on your hand.”

“I’m fine.”

“Yeah, but it’s…”

“I’m fine,” I’d said, keeping my head low and my tongue on a short leash.

I needed to get this off my chest and Henry was the only one I could talk to about it. And I’d hoped to find out about Leona in the process. Was she deathly sick? Did they need help?

“It’s no secret that I was counting on Junior to continue the farm,” I groused. “Which I took over from my father and he the same from his. Then he does this.” Henry nursed his ginger ale and watched a waitress clear tables while I laid my troubles on our table.

“So, he knew that, you’re saying. You talked about it and all?” he said, tilting his head up and looking down his nose with those hard blue eyes.

“Hell yeah, Henry, of course we talked. He knew it. Damn.”

“Easy, big guy. I’m just asking a question.” He leaned into the table. “Go on.”

“The hardest part was not saying anything. I didn’t want to guilt him into staying. That never seems a good field to plow. And I can see it’s a fine opportunity for him. But it’s gnawed at me. He was on board with making it his farm once he finished his night courses. Which I paid for. Then he up and changed and off he goes out west.” 

“That is good money,” is all Henry said.

I had figured that if I’d shared with Henry this hard time for me, that would help me somehow and, perhaps, he might be moved to talk about Leona. Henry just listened and nodded at the right times. But, those two don’t have children so he couldn’t much relate, I guess, and Henry started staring into his glass. I realized that I didn’t have much time before he would scoot. So, I threw some bait at him.

“How do you handle it? You know, family things that get you by the short ‘n curlys?”

“Me? Nothing’s got me,” Henry stated. “The Lord has me in his hands, that’s all I need.”

And that’s how my fishing expedition about Leona went bust. Then I felt like a gossip once he went quiet again. But a few minutes later, Henry looked up from his empty glass and revealed some part of the depths of his darkness as he made ready to leave. 

“That’s the trouble, Chester,” he started as he watched the waitress carry her bus pan back to the kitchen. He slipped his readers into his overall’s bib pocket.

“What’s the trouble, Henry?”

“Well, you reckon you know someone. Someone you’ve known for a long time. You know all about them, you’re sure. The years go by and then they start doing things or say something and you think, ‘Who is this person?’ And your faith in everything gets a kick in the backside.” Then he tossed a few dollars on the table and strode out the door, no ‘good night, good by’, nothing. What had Leona done, I wondered.

Two years ago, on my seventieth birthday, I sold the farm, came home from the closing and damn near cried. Not about money. I’d made a handsome amount on the sale, thank the Lord. But now I was, more than less, homeless and without family. The farm itself was family after all these generations. I felt as if I’d sold my father and grandfather right out of their graves. I opened a bottle of Tennessee whiskey and didn’t leave much.

 Junior called and suggested that I move out there but California held no interest for me. I laughed at his suggestion. We haven’t talked much since. I bought a house up on the ridge in Henry’s neck of the woods and found West Sparrow to my liking. Most of the homes in this neighborhood, which stretches a mile along the ridge of this mountain, are seasonal places for hunters and fishermen. I fixed her up inside-out and built a deck off the back to enjoy the big view of the river valley and forest. 

To keep the boredom at bay, last year I took a job with the township in their roads department. Better put, I am the roads department: manager, machine operator, and chief bottle washer. It’s a small municipality, maybe four thousand folks, so I didn’t expect a big crew. But I also didn’t expect to be the entire crew. My first project was regrading the gravel roads and clearing the drainage ditches here on the ridge in West Sparrow. That’s when I met Meredith Rush, the Egg Lady. That’s also when I first learned of Henry Shick’s odd obsession with the Egg Lady.

Meredith Rush grew up in what she calls the Main Line of Philadelphia, claims she’s related to the Rush family of the colonies and the Revolution, and the Pecks family, railroad barons from the Industrial Revolution. And she’s a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution. ‘Revolution’ seems to fit her. 

Now, you mightn’t tell all that blue blood from her place here in West Sparrow, which consists of an acre of woods and weeds with old appliances and lawn mowers here and there, a car getting swallowed up by the brush and such. She has two pale green mobile homes: one for her and her dogs and the other for her many chickens. The mobile-home-turned-chicken coop is surrounded by chain-link fence that forms a pen under the trees, with various ramps and perches built from scrap wood and old signs and crates. But the fence has gaps and the chickens roam wherever they please, which is how I met the Egg Lady.

One morning early last summer, when I climbed into the grader I found a chicken roosting in the cab’s seat. I scooped up the bird and made my way to the house-of-chickens, the hen under my arm and two eggs in my shirt pocket. Meredith offered apologies and thanks and a dozen eggs for my trouble. She told me she moved here to be an English professor at the small college up the road in Warren. Said she was working on a book about her family that she was determined to complete before her birthday.

“My twentieth thirty-ninth birthday,” she said with a wink. “The chickens provide me with eggs, companionship, and some walk-around money.” A small refrigerator sat on the crowded front porch where she kept those green and brown eggs. A red plastic cup with dollar bills and change sat on top of the cooler, business transacted on the honor system.

It wasn’t hard to see that Meredith probably turned heads back in Philadelphia when she was younger and didn’t smell like dogs and chickens. She wore her graying blonde hair a little too long, her blouse a bit too open, and her blue jeans a bit too tight, it seemed to me. She has them high cheekbones that all the gals wish they had. She holds her head high up and likes to look about with her green eyes when she’s talking to you, like she has so many things on her mind that you wouldn’t possibly understand. But I found her to be pleasant and neighborly. I wished her well on her book. She said to stop by anytime I like, buy some eggs, maybe stay for a cup of coffee.

That Friday I met Henry at the Elks. While we were playing duckpins I mentioned my encounter with Meredith Rush the Egg Lady. Henry guttered his next two rolls. 

“You’ll want to keep your distance there, Chester buddy.”

“You’re the one in the lane, Henry. I’m just sitting here watching you roll gutter balls.”

“I mean with that Rush woman. The Egg Lady.”

“How so?” I watched Henry inspecting his bowling ball. Then he set it down and sat at our table.

“You gonna finish? You still got your third roll, yet.”

“Did you buy any of her eggs?” 

“Well, no. Like I said, she gave me a dozen for returning her hen.” Henry made his eyes wider and puckered up his lips.

“And?”

“And what, Henry?” Now he was raising his head up, looking down his nose. “And are you gonna finish your frame? I’d sure like to get to my rolls.”

“I’ll bet you she doesn’t wash them eggs.” Henry’s eyes flashed.

“So what?”

“And she sells them dirty eggs in used egg cartons she gets from who-knows-where.”

“Well, she can’t sell them in a paper bag.”

“And who knows how many hands have been on her…her cartons. It’s all unsanitary, Chester.”

“Oh, man.”

“And just where does she get them cartons? From every Tom, Dick, and Harry up on the ridge, is where. And who knows how she gets ‘em?”

“What’s that supposed to mean? It’s not Christian-like to gossip, you know.”

“There’s gossip, Chester. And then there’s facts. And the fact is, I heard tell that Mack Pindle and that Rush woman…”

“Her name is Meredith.”

“Whatever. I heard that Mack and the Egg Lady had themselves a little get-together, all private and such.”

“What you hear around town is not necessarily fact. Who told you this rotten chin-wag?”

“Well, nobody actually told me. I figured it out on my own. I got eyes, you know. A couple months ago me, Mack, and Walter Burns were in my driveway, looking over Mack’s log splitter, it wasn’t working, was either the control valve or the pump, I figured. Anyway, she comes by and her car poops out right at the end of the driveway. We went to see what was up with her vehicle, got to talking with her. She’s all friendly, sweet talking. And that blouse…” Henry got quiet, picked up his ball and began inspecting it again.

“Well, detective, what’d you figure out?”

“Turns out she’d just run dry on gas. I was nice as pie to her, told her I had five gallon in the garage and she could have it. But she paid me no mind, said she would rather buy it. Point is, she was all focused on Mack and before you know it, Mack has her in his pickup and off they go. They didn’t come back for half an hour. Gassed up her car and they both took off.”

“Well, Henry, the GasGo station is a fifteen-minute ride down 39.”

“Hells bells, Chester! Whose side are you on?”

“Whose side? What are you talking about?”

“What I’m talking about is you should’ve seen the big smile on Mack’s face when they got back.” Henry’s face was all red and his left leg jumping up and down like a piston. “She gave him a hug. Walter saw it. My guess is that they went to his house. And he likely gave her some egg cartons, to boot.”

“Oh, for the love of…you call that your ‘facts’?  More like speculation.” We stared at each other. “Or sour grapes,” I continued. Henry jerked back like he’d touched a hot wire. “She favored Mack’s offer to take her to the station to buy some gas with her own money. Roll your last ball, Henry, or forfeit the frame.”

Henry glared at me and then he smacked his big palm down on the table. That turned heads in the club. He stood up, shaking his head, and snorted. He grabbed his bowling ball and threw his third gutter rat. We finished the game and then he left, waving off my offer to buy him a soda. 

I figured Henry would cool down, come to his senses, but we didn’t meet at the Elks for dinner or duckpins for the rest of last summer. I rarely spoke to my Junior, too. He was still honked off at my reply to his suggestion to move to California. The few times we did talk, it was awkward. Once, when I called him on his birthday, Darleen answered and she kept me on small talk about the weather and the kids. She thought she’d covered the receiver but I’d heard her whispering, ‘It’s your dad, for crying out loud.’ I heard Junior say, ‘Tell him I’m not here, I’m traveling for work.’ 

My work kept me busy enough. The West Sparrow project took longer than I’d figured, all of last summer, and I’d found myself wishing for some company. No Junior, no grandkids, no Henry. Folks at church, some of them invited me to Sunday dinner, which was nice. But nothing lasting came from it, which was my fault. Being alone, I was getting used to that, and yet hating it all the same.

I got to stopping at Meredith’s place to buy eggs and, after a few weeks and a couple of offers, I sat with her over a cup of coffee. We found the talking easy to do. At first it was pretty light fare, my years as a farmer and my current work, and her chickens and dogs. But after a month or so we talked longer, over whole pots of coffee, which she percolated in an enamel pot, old style. She knew what she was doing, the coffee was always perfect. Her house smelled of dogs but I like dogs, and I’d worked with cattle and sheep for forty years, so dogs are an improvement on those.

One day, she set the pot on the table, fetched a box from her fridge, and spread its contents on a small silver platter which she set in front of me. They looked like puffed-up cookies with icing filling, all different bright colors, reds and greens and blues.

“Try one of these, Chester. I made them yesterday.” I chose the yellow one and it was delicious, almond and lemon, just the right sweetness. She suggested the blue one and it tasted like blueberry. I looked over the cookie and then at her. Her eyes were all bright. “Do you like them?”

“I sure do.” I reached for a red one. “What are they?”

“Macrons,” she said, as if she’d just won a duckpins tournament. She sat up straight in her chair, arched her back, and gathered her hair behind her head and then let it fall to her shoulders. I’ve always admired the subtle ways women do things, little things, that can make a man feel giddy. “They’re the French version of Italian macaroons. Those are made with coconut but not so with these little marvels.”
“I like macaroons, all that coconut with the maraschino cherry. These are amazing. May I?” She suggested the orange one and it was my favorite. “You say you made these, Meredith?”

“Yes, I did.” She paused. “For you. I thought I’d change up our coffee hour a bit. Just for fun. And I like doing something nice for a friend.” So, we were now officially friends.

“That’s right kind of you. And it’s nice to have a new friend.” I found myself smiling and the smiling was easy to do with her.

By last October Henry and I were back to our old ways but, just like the frost that was starting to come on to the ridge each morning, there was still a bit of frost in the air between us. One Friday evening at the Elks, after we’d finished our duckpin game and fiddled with our drinks, Henry his ginger ale, me my Tennessee, he said he’d felled an old white oak on his property that summer and wanted to split and stack the wood for the coming winter. I took the bait, hoping this would complete the mending of our friendship, and showed up at six-thirty the next morning. By nightfall we had put his chainsaws and log splitter through a good workout and had two cords of wood stacked in his ricks.

“I have some meatloaf, mashed potaters, and a peach pie I picked up at the church fundraiser the other day,” he said. So, into his kitchen we went and grazed that table. I didn’t see Leona at all that day and so asked about her when we’d finished our feast. Henry cleared the table and washed up the dishes without a word. I waited. I knew well enough not to rush him when he was boarded up like that. When we sat down in front of his fireplace with coffee and the peach pie, Henry opened up.

“Leona, she’s not so well,” he said staring into the fire. “And she doesn’t seem to care.”

“What’s ailing her, Henry? Is she sick?” 

“Oh, she’s sick alright, Lord knows…” His coffee cup was shaking in his hand and he saw me looking at it. He set it down.

“What does that mean?” I leaned closer to him to get to his eyes. 

“She’s alive. But it’s not much in right living, no sir.” He turned to me and saw my confusion. “Come on. Follow me.”

Leona had her own wing of their house now, a bedroom, a second room, a bathroom, a walk-in closet. We stood in the doorway. The room reeked of gin and tobacco. Leona lay like a ragdoll in a recliner, working the remote for the large television hung on the wall, channels changing, the volume loud. The baseboard heaters had the room like July. Leona wore a house dress and was downright mesmerized, a glass in one hand and a cigarette burning in the other. Her legs were scrawny with gnarled, blue veins, the yellow skin of her arms hung like bread dough, her face was barely her own, all wrinkles, splotches, and dark bags under bloodshot eyes.

“Leona, honey. Look who’s here. Leona!” She turned to us. Well, she was the definition of ‘lights on, nobody home’. Henry cleared his throat. “It’s Chester Austin. He helped me with the wood splittin’ today.”

Leona stared at me until I got the willys up my backbone, it was like being examined by the Angel of Death. Then I saw her eyes flicker a bit and she smiled. “Good evenin’, Shester. Nishe of you to help Henry, here…all that wood choppin’…lot of work. Thanks, honey.” Then she turned back to the television, crushed her cigarette into an overflowing ashtray, and drained her glass. She reached for her bottle on the little table nearby and nearly fell out of the recliner. Henry moved the table closer to her and kissed her on the head. She turned to avoid his affection and waved her hand like she was shooing a horsefly. He looked at me. For the first time since I’d known Henry, he looked weak and lost.

Back in front of the fireplace with another cup of coffee and we sat. I cracked my knuckles and stirred my coffee and cleared my throat. Henry remained sullen. I was about to make ready to leave when he sat forward in his big, old leather chair. He hung his head and studied the worn carpet. He sighed, long and rough, right from his soul, it seemed. 

“This is goin’ on four years.” I barely heard his words. “I’m married to a slave. The bottle’s her master.”  I put my hand on his broad back for a moment. He turned his head. “I’ve never known true-blue loneliness, Chester, until now.” 

“Gotta be rough.”

“All I do is work so I can keep my head screwed on right. Around here, all I do is keep house and tend to her. Make sure she doesn’t burn the place down. Her sister, damn her. She brings Leona the gin when I’m out on a job somewheres.”

“Have you tried…”

“I’ve tried everything!” He looked at me now. “I’ve begged Leona to stop the drinking. Tried bribes and such. Threatened to leave her. Took her to the doc and he gave her what-for, that she was drinking herself to death. In one ear and out the other it goes. She says she’s happy and fine. She says I gotta find my own happiness.” Now his face pinched down and his eyes got hot. “ ‘My own happiness,’ ” he growled. “I’m her nurse and servant now, not a husband. And it’s not like she took with a disease. If that was the case, I’d have no complaint. I vowed ‘in sickness and in health’.” Henry set down his coffee cup and stood, stretching his big frame. He leaned against the fireplace. “But this, this is self-inflicted.”

“I don’t like to get in the middle of marital things, and Leona is as much my friend as you are. But I have to side with you on this. It ain’t right.”

“What else ain’t right is that we haven’t so much as kissed the past four years now. And though I’m gonna be seventy soon, I have my needs. I still wake up with a morning rocket. But there’s no landing place for that anymore.” Then he said no more. I walked home in the brisk October night, a harvest moon lighting my way and the breeze carrying the spicy smell of the fallen leaves. My head was filled with images of Leona, looking so worn and depleted, and my heart full of my best buddy Henry, so down and defeated.

I’d finished the West Sparrow project by then and moved on to some smaller things so to wrap up the season, which I was anxious to do. I had to get the plow truck ready for the snow that would soon arrive. All of this kept me from visiting with Meredith. After kicking around an idea for a spell, I stopped by her place the day before Halloween.

“I’ll take two dozen eggs, Meredith,” I said while giving her two Irish Setters the belly rubs they expected when I visited. “And, being that we’re friends and all,” I said looking up at her, “I’ll take you to dinner tomorrow evening, if you’re willing.” My heart competed in my throat for my voice. I felt like a school boy. “The Mountain View Saloon is the best restaurant here in the valley, I think, good steaks and chops, not everything’s deep fried like the other places. And for Halloween, they have a contest for best costume. That alone’s worth the price of admission.” I looked back to the dogs, not wanting her to see my face when she declined my offer, as I’d feared.

“Chester, that’s sweet of you to offer,” she began. My heart went thud in my chest. I swallowed hard on the regret that spouted up from my gut. “Do we have to put on a costume? I haven’t been to a Halloween party since my college days at Penn.”

When the costume contest took shape, we had a load of fun making a five-dollar bet on who would win. I said it would be the Grim Reaper Biker. Meredith placed her money on the headless Dolly Parton and scooped up my five and waved it in my face good-naturedly, teasing me as the winner tried to find her way to the judges table but instead ended up in the men’s room. Buster, the bartender, leaned against the door as the decapitated Dolly tried to get out. The place went nuts.

We ordered coffee and cheesecake for dessert. I asked her about growing up in Philadelphia’s Main Line. Since we were now moving beyond friendship, I’d figured it suitable to ask about her past life instead of just her chickens and dogs. Meredith told me about her family’s socials, the European vacations, the country club, and her years at something she called ‘finishing school’.

“Mother was an irresistible force,” she winced. “She was determined that I would become a proper lady, with all the attendant social graces and etiquette. Which was all fine for the most part, but it left little opportunity for me to be myself. Or to traffic in a bit of good-old, teen-aged mischief.”

Then it was on to the University of Pennsylvania to be an English major and focus on becoming a novelist, her heart’s desire. She rattled off a list of women writers that she aspired to equal but the names meant anything to me, so I just nodded a lot.

“I had no choice but to enroll in an Ivy League school, just like all of her friends’ children,” Meredith said. She got quiet and stirred her coffee and I felt like an intruder. The night had been going so well and now she had a rain cloud over her head. I figured I’d better bring some sunshine back into the conversation.

“Tell me about your books. I mean, other than the book you’re writing now.”

“Oh, there’s not much to tell, Chester. I’ve started three different novels and haven’t finished one of them. I’ve published some short stories. It was difficult to get started after everything that happened in my senior year.” Now the rain cloud turned into a storm. Her eyes got all wet and she pulled a handkerchief from her purse. I was at a fork in the road. I could ignore the comment, hopefully avoid more storm clouds for Meredith, or I could ask, be the nice guy, and risk hearing something I didn’t want to know. 

“What happened?” I didn’t plough this field this far just to turn away because of a stone or two.

“Oh, it’s not pretty.” She sat up straight and put away her handkerchief.

“There’s a lot of that in most folks’ lives, I guess. Mine included.”

Then the downpour came on. She was beginning to feel like an old maid at age twenty-three, she never walked on the wild side, like the other women in her sorority. “I was still a virgin in my senior year. Never stayed out all night partying. Never touched marijuana or anything. No rock concerts. Everything had been arranged for me. My life was about as exciting as a bowl of oatmeal. I didn’t want to be oatmeal forever.” 

There was a guy in her literary criticism class in her final semester. He wore his hair long, a black leather jacket, and an earring. He had a motorcycle; she’d never known a guy with a motorcycle. One thing led to another. She moved into his apartment, learned how to roll joints, dressed in the lingerie that he’d bought for her, and skipped classes so to romp all afternoon in his bed.

“He was fond of narcotics, white tablets of something or another, and he bought them from a guy at the edge of South Philly. He encouraged me to try it and, voila, after a couple of weeks I was hooked. I couldn’t get it often enough.” She hung her head, her face was all flushed, her hands folding and unfolding. I felt like a peeping Tom listening to her unload this truckful of dirty laundry.

“He had a Corvette his father had bought for him. One night, we went to a pharmacy in Bryn Mawr. He told me to wait in the car. He had figured out where the drugstore owner lived. He’d broken into this man’s house one night and stolen his store key, made a copy, and returned the key that same night. He was inside the store for a good while filling up a cooler with drugs. He had a Physician’s Desk Reference and knew what to look for. I knew it was all completely wrong but still, I was impressed with his planning.”

“He was a daring cowboy, for sure,” I said as she stared at the floor.

“He said we were Penn’s version of Bonnie and Clyde and I ate it right up. Like a fool.”

“Everyone plays the fool at least once in their life, Meredith. I’ve starred in some of those rodeos.”

“Don’t excuse this, Chester. You’re being too kind, now.” I nodded my agreement and she continued. “What he hadn’t planned on was this: the store owner had installed a silent alarm. Suddenly there were headlights all around the car and a policeman shining his flashlight in my face. They made me get out of the car and asked me questions. When they led him from the store in handcuffs, I took off. Where I was running to, I had no idea. I just wanted to run, to just vanish from my life. I didn’t want to be Meredith the drug addict. I didn’t want to be Meredith the sex toy. I didn’t want to be Meredith the good girl from the Main Line with charm school manners and a degree from Penn. I just didn’t want to be. Of course, they caught me. If I could’ve died on the spot, I’d have chosen that.”

The young man disappeared. His parents had big money and deep connections. Meredith’s parents had their money and connections, too, but not equal to his folks. “Mother and Father tried their best to keep everything hush-hush. But a newspaper reporter eventually rooted it all out and the family was scandalized.” The invitations to cocktail parties stopped. The country club crowd avoided them. She was sent to London to stay with an aunt until the scandal became worn out. When she returned, she finished her degree at Penn. Then her parents gave her a hundred grand and turned their back, told her to leave. She landed the job at the college and moved to West Sparrow.

“Damn. I can’t imagine that, turning out your own child.” Chester, Jr. filled my mind and I had to excuse myself to the men’s room to compose myself. I figured that two of us being weepy wouldn’t help Meredith and it was certainly not going to help this date find a way out of the woods.

When I walked her to the door of her mobile home that night, she thanked me for the dinner, reminded me of the bet she won, and so on. I offered my handshake but she put her arms around me instead and we stood there in the dark.

“I never saw my parents again. I wrote letters, telephoned. They rarely replied. Father died five years ago. Mother passed a year later. I just wanted forgiveness.” She paused. “And to forgive them. That’s still in my heart, what they did. It’s too late, now.”

“Maybe not,” I said. She looked up at me and I saw the question in her eyes. “I don’t pretend to know much of anything, but forgiveness seems to me to be the Lord’s department. Might be worth a look.” That moment marked the beginning of a new part of my life. And it was followed by the beginning of a strange chapter of my friendship with Henry Shick.

Leona died a short time later on Christmas Day. Her liver had failed. Henry buried her on his land. I dug the grave with the road department’s backhoe. There was no viewing, no funeral to speak of except for the pastor, Mack Pindle, and myself by the grave. When the pastor had finished his homily, we four lowered Leona’s casket into a cement box in the ground. The pastor declined Henry’s offer for lunch but accepted the envelope of cash. Mack mumbled something to Henry and headed home. Then Henry began to move the mound of dirt into Leona’s grave with a spade. I suggested the backhoe but he just kept throwing dirt. I went to his workshop, grabbed a shovel, and together we filled in the grave, shovel by shovel, while the snow fell and the crows jabbered at us from the barren oak trees.

Henry had a rough go of it at first. He showed up at my front door one Friday evening in January this year, with a duffel bag and a box of groceries. Meredith and I had gotten to the point of taking turns hosting and cooking a Friday supper and watching a movie. She stayed in the kitchen while I dealt with Henry. He said he couldn’t sleep in his home as Leona was still there. 

“It’s not her ghost, Chester. At least not one that I can see. Can’t rightly describe it. She’s in every room.” I told him to put his bag in the back bedroom and meet me in the kitchen.

His surprise visit had me scrambling. How should I introduce him to Meredith? My friend? Girlfriend? I figured three months of dating equaled the boyfriend-girlfriend title. But ‘girlfriend’ sounds downright awkward, being that I was now seventy-two and Meredith pushing sixty. 

Well, it was awkward, at first, for Henry that is, and a touch for me, too. Meredith was all grace and goodwill. Henry kept stealing looks to me when he could, arching his bushy eyebrows. Finally, I drew my forefinger across my throat. Henry coughed and then behaved. I brought out a bottle of the Tennessee whiskey and, what do you know? Henry accepted my offer for a snort. And so did Meredith. Somewhere in West Sparrow, pigs were flying.

“I’ve not had a glass of the brown since… since…” Henry started, his face nearly as red as his hair.

“…since fire was invented, I think,” I finished for him. He bellowed and Meredith giggled and now we were getting somewhere, I figured. And get somewhere we did. Henry told his stories of his time in the Army and working at the mill, even ones I’d never heard three times before. I offered up various strange incidents that I’d experienced all of those years working with livestock and fending off coyotes and wildcats.  Meredith chimed in with jokes, and I mean gut-busters, that made Henry and I laugh until we nearly fell out of our chairs. I was relieved that my friend didn’t stay on his high horse. Meredith was tickled by Henry’s storytelling and his big-as-a-mountain laugh.

That was a fresh bottle of the Tennessee I’d opened and by bedtime it was nearly empty. I steered Henry to the bedroom and he collapsed on the bed with a big, slobbery sigh. I walked Meredith home through the glittering snow crunching under our boots, and an owl hooting, and the trees all covered white. That was our first kiss. It was worth the wait.

A week later Henry got the courage to return home and settled in. I was happy for my old friend. And over the next few months I grew a lot of happiness in my own life as me and Meredith continued dating, which grew into a courtship. We hit it off and were together as often as my road work and her teaching would allow us. I’d put on hold the duckpins and dinners with Henry at the Elks and he’d said he understood, knew I’d been alone since Janet’s passing.

Near the end of winter, a man from the state’s Bureau of Food Safety showed up at Meredith’s home, saying they had received a complaint of someone selling unwashed eggs in used cartons. Meredith showed the man around her chicken mobile home and the pen, how she gave the birds free range, fresh water, good feed. She showed him the small refrigerator on her front porch that kept the eggs fresh. Hewrote her two citations and a two-hundred dollar fine. Meredith promised to wash her eggs and to sell them in new cartons and the bureaucrat promised that he would return to check up on her, without notice. Meredith said her dogs might not be so friendly the next time he came by. 

She called me. We sat at her kitchen table reading the papers he’d issued to her, all the government gobbledygook getting her pretty worked up.

“Who did this?” she fumed. “I’ve minded my own business from the day I moved in.”

“I can’t imagine,” I said, although I knew.

Henry denied it at first, but eventually ‘fessed up to it. “She’s no right to not do what all the farmers around here must do,” was his explanation. “Look at Everett Muncy, you know him from church. Good man. He’s got himself five hundred chickens. He has to sell them eggs clean and in new cartons. What’s good for the cock is good for the hen.” I stared him down. I reminded him of my hospitality in January and Leona’s grave, and said if he’d been anybody else, we’d be outside now, gloves off.

“I just did what I thought was right. Don’t be sore at me.” He couldn’t look me in the eye.

“Why the hell not? You called the authorities on my gal. Why didn’t you just say something to her?” He admitted he’d not handled it well and apologized. I forgave him. But I wasn’t settled on why he was nice to Meredith one month and setting a trap for her the next. Nor did I tell Meredith about this.

In the early spring, I got a notion. I went to the jewelry store in Warren, came home, and sat down to write out what I would say and practiced it. I must’ve proposed to my fireplace ten times ‘til I figured I had it right. And wonders will never cease, I did get it right.

I suggested to Meredith a hike in the forest on some trails I knew of from my hunting days, get out and see what God had made of the world now that winter was done. I guided us to a trail that cut along the edge of the ridge high above the river valley. I stopped at a clearing, gave her my binoculars and said to find my place by spying out the big deck on the opposite ridge. She was pleased with herself when she found it. As she turned to tell me, I was down on one knee, holding the ring in the palm of my hand. I was about as composed as a rabbit in a kennel. The word ‘yes’ never sounded so good.

We didn’t have many folks to share the news with, just Henry, the pastor and his wife, Mack Pindle, Everett Muncy. Meredith has no family to speak anymore. Henry stared at us at first, looking like a deer in the headlights. I didn’t expect a parade, but his silence was odd. When I asked if he’d be my best man, he popped up a bit taller and he shook my hand for nearly a minute. “Yes, I surely will,” he cried, “and make no mistake, Chester, you’re above your pay grade with this great gal.”

I called Chester, Jr. and he was really happy for me, said it was about time I’d gotten back into the scene. I asked about Darleen and the kids and his job. We exchanged ‘I love yous’ and that was great. It had been too long since we had such a good talk and I felt right as rain.

On a sunny afternoon in May, me and Meredith sat on the deck at my place, drinking lemonade and watching bald eagles hunt the river below us. The honeysuckle was in bloom, all that big honest sweetness, and pale green mayflies were jitterbugging all through the air. The dogwood trees were full of their white crucifix blossoms and all was right with the world, it seemed. But Meredith was quiet. She lifted her head high and looked around for a long time. I waited for it.

“I think I need to explore that forgiveness department,” Meredith said. Her hands were working overtime, folding and unfolding like a bird preening its wings. She looked away.

“I’ll pick you up Sunday at eight-fifteen. Service starts at nine or so, once the pastor finishes his doughnuts and coffee.” She smiled that genuine smile of hers and reached for my hand. “Henry’s a member. And a deacon. Well, he used to be, but still thinks that he is. Folks are nice. Most of them.”

It was late summer when the rumor about Meredith got around the church and made its way back to us. She was a loose woman who liked to entertain men at her place in West Sparrow. Everett Muncy waited for us in the parking lot after service and told us of the horseshit that was being spread around the congregation. I guess he felt an affection for a fellow chicken farmer. Meredith cried, of course, ‘cause her broken heart’s so close to the surface. Then she went on the war path and I saw a different side of my gal.

“I’m not too old and I’m not too genteel to give this rumor monger a bloody nose,” she said. “I’ll give everyone in that church something to talk about, damnit. Sully my name, my character, with this rubbish?” She looked cross-eyed at me, turned her back and, as I breathe, spit on the ground. She stormed around and around my truck, opening the passenger door, making to get in, and then slamming it shut, and continuing her rage. I asked her to hold her fire, that my F150 wasn’t the cause of all of this. Then she marched back toward the church. I intercepted her. 

“You will not prevent me from confronting the person who has assassinated my character, Chester Austin. It’s me that they’ve attacked, not you. And aren’t you angry?”

“Damn right I am,” I said. “I just think it best not to jump into action with your hair on fire. Let’s go back to your place, talk this over, figure out how to handle it.”

“That’s one way to do it,” she agreed. “But this isn’t the first rumor about me in this town. When I moved here, I was the different one. I don’t work on a farm, or the lumber mill, or the gas company. I’ve been the oddball because I work at the college.” Now the tears were gone and her eyes were blazing. She had her chin high up and her heels dug in. “I’m tired of being a target. Now I get to take some shots.” 

What could I say to that? And besides, this writer-turned-warrior showed me something about my future wife that I hadn’t seen before. And I liked it.

I followed Meredith as she strutted into the church straight back to the social hall where the congregation had gathered for a lunch and a presentation by Mrs. Smith of the 4H Club. Her heels made that sharp, hard, dok-dok-dok sound on the old oak floors as she strode past the tables and right up onto the platform. Mrs. Smith smiled and started to say something, but she cut that off when she ended up in Meredith’s sights and stepped aside. Meredith turned on the congregation, which was buzzing like a bee’s nest by now. She held up a hand and the buzzing subsided.

“You folks don’t know me. The reason for that is that no one in West or East Sparrow has shown the least interest in getting to know me. What I have to say likely applies to only some people here, I suspect.” Everyone stared at Meredith. I could hear the big wooden ceiling fans creaking and the music from the wind chime in the pavilion behind the church.

“It has come to my attention that someone in this congregation has trafficked a vile rumor about me, that I like to have sex with all the men in town at my home.” That did it. The pastor’s wife dropped her iced tea, the glass shattering on the floor. I leaned against the back wall, watching each table erupt in gasps and wide eyes and fingers pointing, and falling deeper in love with the Egg Lady.

“I’ll dispel this garbage right now: not true! Not a word of it. What I do…” she continued, her voice rising. She put her hand to her mouth. “What I do in my life is my business. What you do in yours is your business. That’s as things should be. I had a long Episcopal catechism in my youth. So, to the persons who are defaming me, I say to you: watch out!” She slapped her hand on the podium. “Proverbs warns us, ‘Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord.’”

I saw Henry leave through the side door and hustle to his pickup. I turned to go outside to confront him but changed up. I didn’t want to leave Meredith alone in case things backfired on her. And I didn’t want to miss a minute of her branding this herd. I decided to deal with Henry later.

“If anyone wants to debate this with me, meet me outside,” Meredith finished.

Then she was strutting back through the hall, with all of those awestruck eyes turning to watch her, and straight past me through the door. Now everyone was staring at me. I shrugged my shoulders and said, “Don’t look at me. You’re the ones who unleashed the whirlwind.”

We went straight to my home and I shared my suspicions about Henry along the way. Meredith took it all in. She’d turned off the AC and insisted on riding with the windows down, she wanted the wind, even though it was ninety degrees. She looked like a goddess with her long hair floating all about and her green eyes hard ahead. We sat in the driveway, just quiet, and the late-summer cicadas were screeching all around us. I pulled an old pack of cigarettes from the visor and lit up.

“Meredith, go on in the house and cool down. There’s lemonade in the fridge. I’ll be back.”

“You’re going to see Henry, aren’t you?” 

I just sat there pulling on my smoke. It tasted like sawdust.

“What good do you think will come from fighting Henry?”

“I don’t recall saying anything about fighting Henry. I just need to put him straight. I can’t allow anyone, not even my best friend, to run down my fiancé with damned lies.” She climbed down to the driveway. “Go easy, my champion,” she said and closed the door.

I found Henry at Leona’s grave at the back of his property. He was sitting on a five-gallon bucket, his red-haired head in his hands. The sunlight that made it through the oak trees shifted about on the ground. He was talking to Leona but got quiet when he heard my footsteps crunching on the parched grass. 

“That you, Chester?” He didn’t look up.

“Yes. Stand up, Henry.”

“If you came here to accuse me of spreading the rumor, well then, I guess you’re partly right. I opened my big mouth in front of Walter that day Meredith ran out of gas in front of my driveway.” He paused and swatted at a horsefly buzzing him. “It was Walter who’s done the gossiping at church.” Then he let out a long sigh and still wouldn’t look at me. “But, if you came here to fight me, I won’t do it, Chester. You can swing away all you like but I’m not gonna punch back. My limit is one fight with a friend per day.” He looked up at me and I saw the red and black swelling on his left eye and his busted lower lip. His good eye was bloodshot, his cheeks were wet. He looked like he’d swallowed a skunk.

“Who gave you the shiner?”

“That would be Walter Burns. He looks worse than I do. He might need a doctor…”

“Ah, shit. What a mess.”

“It is a mess.” He rose and turned to face me. “At the 4H meeting today, the women at my table were talkin’. I knowed it was Walter right off. Then in comes Meredith all fired up. I damn near cried for her. She’s a good gal, Chester.”

“You called the health department on her last winter.”

“I was wrong and I apologized for it. I thought that was put to bed. You holding a grudge on me?”

Was I holding a grudge on Henry? I’d said I’d forgiven him back then. Maybe I said it but didn’t actually do it. That would make me a hypocrite. I was the one who had suggested to Meredith that she should try forgiving her family and herself. Now the fire in my gut turned to a sour weight. I unclenched my fists. 

“Walter was wrong to spread the rumor. I put him straight. But it all started with me. So, if’n you want to put me straight, I can’t blame you. Here I am.”

“You told me your suspicions of Meredith and Mack Pindle once, when we were bowling at the Elks. How do I know you didn’t say the same to others? Now you’re blaming this on Walter?”

“I’m telling you I’ve kept mum since then. This got out ‘cause of Walter.” He took a bandana from his overalls pocket, wiped his neck and face, and pressed it against his swollen eye, his other eye now fixed on me like an injured dog.

“Right, Henry.” I turned and spit.

He hung his head and sat back down on his bucket. A mess of crows came down the ridge, jabbering and shrieking as they harassed an owl, chasing it from tree to tree until the whole show stopped right above us. The heat was something, bearing down on me and Henry. Then my inner voice nagged me that this rift was my fault now. Even so, I wouldn’t let it go.

“It looks to me, Henry,” I started and the venom just poured out of my big mouth, “like you was just jealous.” Henry protested but I rolled right over him. “You and Leona were falling apart over her drinking at the same time me and Meredith became a thing.” Henry’s head fell lower and my inner voice told me to stop, but I smacked it away. I reminded Henry of his lament of no affection or sex while Leona sank deeper into her gin bottle in the last years of their marriage. “Am I right?”

“Not the way you think you are,” Henry cried out. The crows were diving at the owl perched on an oak limb above us, cawing and raising hell. The sun roasted us and now black flies emerged from the shady woods to attack, drawn by our sweat.  “It’s worse than that. I wished it weren’t.” Henry sucked in a deep breath and stood to face me. Now he looked like he’d swallowed two skunks. “I just told this to Leona, so you might as well hear it, too.”

Henry confessed that, during the time when Leona was rejecting him, he had desires for Meredith after he’d met her the day she ran out of gas. He spat out these words like he had a mouthful of mud. I’d never seen this man so hangdog. Then Henry reminded me of a time at the Elks, when I was on my ‘fishing expedition’ to find out how Leona was doing since she didn’t come around.

“I sniffed out what you was up to. Good thing you were a cattleman and not a detective.”  I felt my face grow hotter and redder. 

“Yeah. I was nosey. I was concerned about Leona.”

“I knowed it was your good intentions. You remember what I said to you before I left that night?” 

I shrugged. Henry grabbed the tops of my arms, his grip like a bear trap, and shook his head, like he was trying to erase all the words coming out of his twisted mouth.

“I said, ‘You think you really know someone that you’ve known for a long time. Then they do something and you think, “Who is this?” And your faith in everything gets a swift kick in the ass.’”

“I remember. You were talking about Leona and her drinking.”

“I was talking about me. I thought I knew myself to be a Christian man, a faithful husband. Then I met the Egg Lady and couldn’t stop thinking of her… and that blouse. I wanted to know her, Chester. I mean, know her. The longer it went on, the more ashamed I was.” We stood there in the heavy heat, the crows making their racket, the black flies biting us.

“Henry, just so you know, I’m losing circulation in my arms.” He looked at me and I looked at his hands squeezing my arms. He thought about this and then released me.

“I sure as hell made a mess of everything, didn’t I?” 

“Nothing that can’t be worked out, I’m guessing. It’s not like you killed somebody.” Henry was quiet. “You didn’t kill Walter, did you?” He shook his head.

“No, I didn’t kill Walter. But he might be wishin’ he was dead right about now.”

“Ah, shit to hell, Henry.”

“I’m sorry for this train wreck I’ve caused, Chester.”

“Well, let’s go see Meredith. You owe her the apology more than me.”

“But I’m apologizing to you.”

“Let’s go see Meredith. There’s some cold lemonade. I’m parched.”

We sat around the kitchen table and the lemonade did its work while Henry explained everything to Meredith and apologized repeatedly. I wasn’t sure how this would all go, given Meredith’s crusade earlier. She listened but said nothing. She closed her eyes, folded her arms on the table, and rested her head on her forearms and sighed. The mantle clock ticked away in the living room and the floor fans hummed. Henry watched Meredith like a father waiting for his first child to be born. I wondered if she’d fallen asleep.

Meredith shuddered and let out a deeper sigh. When she raised her head, she looked around and she was in complete control of everything, there was no doubt in my heart. Later that night she would tell me that something divine had moved in her, spoke to her. “I never experienced anything like it,” she said. “It was more of a knowing, not actual words. Told me to start the forgiving now or never. It rattled me.” 

She got up and went to the living room, returning with a fresh bottle of the Tennessee. She set three glasses on the table, peeled the foil from the bottle, and poured.

“You’re the most… unique man I’ve ever known, Henry.” He frowned and looked down at his glass. “I’m grateful that you told me these things. I just hope that we don’t have another conversation like this.”

“No. Never. I’d rather eat a rattlesnake.”

“I forgive you, Henry.” Meredith smiled and there was peace written across her lovely face. She raised her glass, me and Henry did the same, and things were mostly settled.

In the months that followed, Meredith went on to finish her book about the story of her family. The ‘writer’s block’, as she called it, was more of a stone wall built from how things ended so ugly with her parents. She said that forgiving Henry opened everything for her, freed her from that lousy past that haunted her soul and hindered her work. She found a publisher that liked her work and the book will be published next summer.

I won’t lie. Things haven’t been the same between me and Henry. But that’s my doin’ and I know it’s wrong. We sometimes get together at the Elks and roll duckpins. The three of us have gone to the Mountain View Saloon for dinner a couple times. Henry even met an old coworker there and they’ve started dating. 

But I’m having a hard time fully forgiving Henry for the mess that he made. I know I should forgive him. I want to do that, yes, I do. But it’s not happening. Now I’m having doubts about Henry as my best man. The conviction isn’t there like it was before. Two weeks ago, I called Everett Muncy to ask him if he’d be my best man. But when he answered, I just fumbled around asking about his chickens and how things went for him at the county fair earlier this fall.

These things keep me awake at night and too often at that. Like they are tonight. It’s late November now. I’m sitting alone on my deck, in my big coat and a wool hat, looking at a black sky with a million stars. I have a glass of the Tennessee to keep me warm. Meredith is sleeping in her mobile home with the Irish Setters crowding her bed and the chickens roosting in their coop. Perhaps she’s dreaming of our wedding next May. I hope so. I’m sitting here talking with the Lord about me and Henry, listening for an answer. So far, the only thing I’ve heard in return is that I’ll get an answer when my heart is right. Which I hope is soon.