Six Years

Chapter 7

On television, the detective always goes back to the scene of the crime. Or, come to think of it, maybe it’s the criminal who does that. Whatever. I was at a dead end, so I figured that I’d go back to where it all happened.

The retreats in Vermont.

Lanford was only about forty-five minutes from the Vermont border, but then you had another two hours plus to get up to where Natalie and I first met. Northern Vermont is rural. I grew up in Philadelphia and Natalie was from northern New Jersey. We didn’t know rural like this. Yes, an objective observer might again point out that in such a secluded venue, love would flourish in an unrealistic way. I might agree or I might point out that in the absence of other distractions-like, say, anything-love might suffocate under the weight of too much togetherness, thus making this proof of something far deeper than a summer fling.

The sun was starting to weaken by the time I passed my old retreat on Route 14. The six-acre “subsistence farm” was run by writer-in-residence Darly Wanatick, who offered critiques of the retreatees’ work. For those who don’t know, subsistence farming is farming that provides the basic needs for the farmer and his family without surpluses for marketing. In short, you grow it, you eat it, you don’t sell it. For those who don’t know what a writer in residence is or what qualifies him or her to critique your writing, it meant that Darly owned the property and wrote a weekly shopping column in the free local paper, the Kraftboro Grocer. The retreat housed six writers at a time. Each writer had a bedroom in the main house and a shack or “work cottage” in which to write. We all met up for dinner at night. That was it. There was no Internet, no TV, no phones, yes lights, but no motorcar, not a single luxury. Cows, sheep, and chickens meandered around the property. It started out soothing and relaxing and I enjoyed that unplugged, unconnected solitude for about, oh, three days and then my brain cells began to rust and corrode. The theory seemed to be if you make an author feel this numbingly bored, he or she will flock to the salvation of his legal pad or laptop and produce pages. It worked for a while and then it felt as though I’d been placed in solitary confinement. I spent one entire afternoon watching a colony of ants carry a bread crumb across the “writer cottage” floor. So enamored was I with this bit of entertainment I strategically placed more bread crumbs in various corners in order to create insect relay races.

Dinner with my fellow retreat scribes was not much of a reprieve. They were all precious pseudo-intellectuals writing the next great American novel, and when the subject of my nonfiction dissertation was tossed up, it landed upon the old kitchen table with the thud of a heaping pile of donkey dung. Sometimes these great American novelists did dramatic readings of their own work. The works were pretentious, tedious, self-involved crap written in a prose style one might best describe as “Look at me! Please look at me!” I never said any of this out loud, of course. When they read, I sat with my most studiously enraptured expression frozen to my face, nodding at regular intervals to appear wise and engaged and also to prevent myself from actually nodding off. One guy named Lars was writing a six-hundred-page poem on Hitler’s last days in the bunker, written from the viewpoint of Eva Braun’s dog. His first reading consisted of ten minutes of barking.

“It sets the mood,” he explained, and he was correct if that mood was to punch him hard in the face.

Natalie’s artist retreat was different. It was called the Creative Recharge Colony and had a decidedly more crunchy-granola, hemp, hippie-esque, “Kumbaya” commune feel to it. They took breaks by working in a garden that grew organic (and I am not just talking about food here). They gathered around a fire at night and sang songs of peace and harmony that would make Joan Baez gag. They were, interestingly enough, wary of strangers (perhaps because of what they “grew organic”) and there was a guarded, cultish edge to some of the staff. The property was more than a hundred acres with a main house, true cottages with fireplaces and private decks, a swimming pool designed to look like a pond, a cafeteria with fantastic coffee and a wide variety of sandwiches that all tasted like sprouts covered in wood shavings-and on the border with the actual town of Kraftboro, a white chapel where one could, if they so desired, get married.

The first thing I noticed was that the entrance was now unmarked. Gone was the brightly painted CREATIVE RECHARGE sign, like something you’d see advertising a kids’ summer camp. A thick chain blocked my car from heading up the drive. I pulled over, turned off the ignition, and got out of the car. There were several NO TRESPASSING signs, but those had always been there. With the new chain and without the Creative Recharge welcome, the no trespassing signs took on a more ominous tone.

I wasn’t sure what to do.

I knew that the main house was about a quarter mile up the drive. I could leave my car here and walk it. See what’s what. But what would be the point? I hadn’t been up here in six years. The retreat probably sold the land, and the new owner probably craved privacy. That might explain all this.

Still it didn’t feel right.

What would be the harm, I thought, in going up and knocking on the door of the main house? Then again, the thick chain and no trespassing signs were not exactly welcome mats. I was still trying to decide what to do when a Kraftboro police cruiser pulled up next to me. Two officers got out. One was short and stocky with bloated gym muscles. The other was tall and thin with slicked-back hair and the small mustache of a guy in a silent movie. Both wore aviator sunglasses, so you couldn’t see their eyes.

Short and Stocky hitched up his pants a bit and said, “Can I help you?”

They both gave me hard stares. Or at least I think they were hard stares. I mean, I couldn’t see their eyes.

“I was interested in visiting the Creative Recharge retreat.”

“The what?” Stocky asked. “What for?”

“Because I need to creatively recharge.”

“You being a smart mouth with me?”

His voice had a little too much snap in it. I didn’t like the attitude. I didn’t understand the attitude either, except for the fact that they were cops in a small town and I was probably the first guy they could hassle for something other than underage drinking.

“No, Officer,” I said.

Stocky looked at Thin Man. Thin Man remained silent. “You must have the wrong address.”

“I’m pretty sure this is the place,” I said.

“There is no Creative Recharge retreat here. It closed down.”

“So which is it?” I asked.

“Pardon me?”

“Is this the wrong address,” I said, “or did the Creative Recharge retreat close down?”

Stocky didn’t like that answer. He whipped off his sunglasses and used them to point at me. “Are you being a wiseass with me?”

“I’m trying to find my retreat.”

“I don’t know anything about any retreat. This land has been owned by the Drachman family for, what, Jerry, fifty years?”

“At least,” Thin Man said.

“I was here six years ago,” I said.

“I don’t know nothing about that,” Stocky said. “I only know that you’re on private property and if you don’t get off it, I’m going to bring you in.”

I looked down at my feet. I wasn’t on the driveway or any private property. I was on the road.

Stocky moved closer to me, getting into my personal space. I confess that I was scared, but I had learned something in my years of bouncing at bars. You never show fear. That was something you always heard about when it came to the animal kingdom, and trust me, there are no wilder animals than human beings “unwinding” at late-night bars. So even though I didn’t like what was happening, even though I had no leverage and was trying to figure a safe way out of this, I didn’t back away when Stocky got all up on me. He didn’t like that. I held my ground and looked down at him. Way down. He really didn’t like that.

“Let me see some ID, hotshot.”

“Why?” I asked.

Stocky looked at Thin Man. “Jerry, go run the license plate through the system.”

Jerry nodded and headed back to the squad car.

“For what?” I asked. “I don’t understand. I’m just here for a retreat.”

“You got two choices,” Stocky said to me. “One”-he held up a pudgy finger-“you show me your identification without any more back talk. Two”-yep, another chubby digit-“I arrest you for trespassing.”

None of this felt right. I glanced behind me at a tree and saw what looked like a security camera pointed down at us. I didn’t like this. I didn’t like this at all, but there was nothing to be gained by antagonizing a cop. I needed to keep my big mouth shut.

I started to reach into my pocket to get my wallet when Stocky held up a hand and said, “Steady. Slow down.”

“What?”

“Reach into your pocket, but make no sudden moves.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

So much for keeping my big mouth shut.

“Do I look like I’m kidding? Use two fingers. Your thumb and your index finger. Move slowly.”

My wallet was deep down in my front pocket. Extracting it with two fingers took longer than it should.

“I’m waiting,” he said.

“Give me a second.”

I finally got ahold of the wallet and handed it to him. He started to look through it, as though on a scavenger hunt. He stopped at my Lanford College ID, looked at the photograph, looked at me, then he frowned.

“This you?”

“Yes.”

“Jacob Fisher.”

“Everyone calls me Jake.”

He frowned down at my photograph.

“I know,” I said. “It is hard to capture my raw animal magnetism in photography.”

“You have a college ID in here.”

I didn’t hear a question so I didn’t answer one.

“You look kind of old to be a student.”

“I’m not a student. I’m a professor. See where it says ‘staff’?”

Thin Man came back from the car. He shook his head. I guessed that meant the license plate check came back negative.

“Why would a big-time professor be coming up to our little town?”

I remembered something that I saw on television once. “I need to reach into my pocket again. That okay?”

“What for?”

“You’ll see.”

I pulled out my smartphone.

“What do you need that for?” Stocky asked.

I pointed it at him and hit the video record button. “This is on a live feed to my home computer, Officer.” That was a lie. It was only recording on my phone, but what the heck. “Everything you say and do can be seen by my colleagues.” More lies, but good ones. “I’d very much like to know why you need to see my identification and are asking so many questions about me.”

Stocky put the sunglasses back on as though that would mask the rage. He closed his lips so tight that they were quaking. He handed me back my wallet and said, “We had a complaint that you were trespassing. Despite finding you on a private property and listening to some story about a retreat that doesn’t exist, we decided to let you off with just a warning. Please leave these premises. Have a nice day.”

Stocky and Thin Man headed back to their squad car. They sat in the front and waited until I was back in mine. There was no other play here. I got into my car and drove away.