Solitude standing

In Tritown, only the lonely get to stay alone

by Sally Cragin

Illustration by Lennie Peterson

For the past couple of centuries, Tritown has been the kind of place where people adapt to change with great reluctance. With some exceptions, of course. Hollis the Mountain Man's Aunt Winnie (named for Lake Winnipesaukee, though she can't swim) has agreed to be interviewed by a pack of fifth graders from the Phineas T. Bosely Middle School doing what they called "a Minellium Project" about the changes she's seen in her many decades. Winnie stuns them with her enthusiasm.

"I'd have to say the most important invention in the 20th century is the oil burner," she tells the disappointed kids, who were expecting rhapsodies about the personal computer or maybe color television.

"C'mon downstairs, and I'll show you," Winnie invites them, leading the pack through her house to the cellar door. Descending the creaking wooden steps, she cautions the kids to mind their heads and walk on the wooden planks (dirt cellars in Tritown, a place without public sewage tend to stay dank for generations). She points to a hulking metal mass in one corner. "See that old clunker?" The kids solemnly nod. "See that black pile next to it?" she asks.

"Wow!" squeals one geologically minded pupil. "Anthracite!"

Winnie snorts with derision. "Actually, most of that's bituminous," she answers. "Makes a hell of a mess. That's how we heated this house when I was growing up. Coal-man came, dumped off a ton through that chute there . . ." She points to a trapdoor set in the stone foundation. "And then it was us kids' job to keep the stoker full. See what a mess it is?" she asks, holding up a piece of coal. The kids can't resist, and each plunges a hand into the pile. A small cloud of 200-million-year-old dust rises, and one pupil asks, "Did it keep your house warm?"

"Warm enough," answers Winnie. "But oh my, it was dirty. No wonder my mother dusted every day." The kids give her blank looks. No one's mother has time to dust. "All right, that's the end of our tour," Winnie sums up, herding the group toward the stairs. "You can keep the piece you have, but no one touches the railing or anything until we're at the kitchen sink and washing hands. Thank gahd for my nice clean oil burner."

Later that day, in her favorite wooden rocking chair, with the latest selection from Mystery-a-Month face down on her knee, Winnie daydreams. It has been years since anyone but Hollis the Mountain Man has been down in that cellar with her. Having those kids there, even for just a few minutes had been like 60, 65 years ago, when Winnie and her friends would go downstairs for coal to decorate the snowman outside. How different this lot was from the kids of her youth, who wore knickers if they were boys and dresses if girls. No one had bright colors -- maybe a red scarf at Christmas -- but these kids all wore pink and orange and green. Still, the faces were similar enough -- these were all the grand-kids and -nieces and -nephews of her contemporaries. Nice to have kids in the house, thinks Winnie, and good that those kids have each other, like we did. She smiles wanly, and clasps her bony hands together over her book, as her chin slowly descends to her collarbone.

SCANT YARDS AWAY, at All Faiths Church (formerly the "Presby-Congo-Metho-Baps," until the Unitarians and a small Episcopal crowd joined), the Sexton pro tem, Lorencz the Hermit, has felt an increasing need to be alone. Since taking on the job as janitor-in-residence, he has dispatched his duties with surprising competence. Mostly, he's liked having an enormous bunch of keys to wear at his waist. (To be brutally honest, most of them are keys to doorlocks that have been replaced.)

As he makes his nightly perambulation through the church, checking window sashes, replacing errant hymnals, and straightening pew cushions, he enjoys the stillness of the church and the cool, slightly musty aroma that emanates from a building that is never quite adequately heated. Sure, there have been drawbacks to the job -- the choir that practices on his balcony (which others call the "choir loft") and the tendency for Pastor Washburn Henry ("Call me Wash!") to prepare his sermons in a booming baritone at the crack of dawn on Sunday, a time when Lorencz is cycling toward his alpha-cycle after a Saturday night at the Rod 'n' Reel. Lorencz thinks if he never hears "Lord be with you" again, he'll die a happy hermit.

But mostly, Lorencz is starting to feel uncomfortable because the church building is, well, a building, and it's in the center of Tritown. His former dwelling, a tricked-up wheel-less schoolbus in the woods, and the abode he called home before that (a converted outhouse), were always a bit dangerous in the deepest months of winter. Sure, he had plenty of what he thought of as "personal fur covering" to keep him warm, but last winter, he thought he might shiver to death out there. But now, with the green spikes of the daffodils poking through the turf, and the forsythia bursting into bloom like countless tiny banana skins, the call of the wild is upon him again.

When he opens the tiny window of the apartment behind the clock tower, he can only faintly smell the woods, where the mysteries of mycellium were burgeoning after a spring shower. And when he looks up, he realizes with sorrow that the sodium-vapor glow in the night sky obscures everything but the most obvious planets and Orion's belt and shoulder medals. The visible stars wink at him like a lopsided jack-o'-lantern, mocking his confinement.

After all, he had given his word to be Sexton, and Sexton he would be (even though the job involved absolutely no sex). Where would the world be without vows, he thinks angrily. Continuity is it! he barks to himself, slamming the window shut. Agitated, he patters down to the basement. Everyone in Tritown is bound by some physical law, he reflects. Hollis the Mountain Man has to drive that potato-chip truck twice a week, and Myrt Skully has to shut Hasky Tarbox off once he's jammed a couple of dollars' worth of Elvis Presley songs in the old Bally juke box. (Hasky tends to get maudlin and then violent if he listens to the King while lit). And Hollis's great-aunt Winnie and Delia Ellis Bell the Partial Yankee (there was a questionable great-great-grandmother) are obliged to be in church every Sunday because they're on the vestry.

Vestry, let's try, west trees, trees, trees, trees. . . . Lorencz's brain chemistry begins bubbling like a pot of pudding left too long on the stove. With a broom in his hands, he begins sweeping mechanically, square by square. But he isn't doing a good job of sweeping. He needs a finer implement, maybe a whisk broom, or -- aha! -- a wire brush! That would work just fine for these tiny cracks between the tiles, tiny cracks that are just the right size for his favorite mushroom, the mushrooms that are growing in the woods right now, because it's the first full moon after the Equinox.

Lorencz sinks to his knees and realizes that he has seen more people in the past few months than he's laid eyes on the previous year (not counting, of course, his visits to the R 'n' R for an occasional libation). And even the casual conversations he's engaged in ("Yup," "I'll get onto it." "That should be replastered.") have taken more out of him than he'd thought.

Could a man be poisoned from too much socializing? As he sinks to his elbows, the better to maneuver the toothbrush along the minuscule grain of the tiles, he dimly remembers a conversation with Hollis back in those halcyon days by the pond. "You only have so many words in you in the course of a day," Hollis had said as they were drinking homebrew and staring at the water. And then said no more.

But if he keeps moving the wire brush along the tile, he won't have to talk to anyone. And what a wonderful invention the wire brush is. So convenient. Just the right size for getting this tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny spot to fa-a-a-a-a-a-a-de . . . n

Sally Cragin teaches creative writing at the Fitchburg Art Museum.

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