I’m actually heading to Vermont in a couple of days. Why don’t we meet there? Maybe easier to go over the pages in person.

You’re kidding! What are you in Vermont for?

To find out more from you, duh. (Jake didn’t write.)

A reading. But I was thinking of staying for a day or two. Need to get some work done. And I miss Vermont!

He so did not miss Vermont.

Where’s the reading? I’ll come!

Ugh, he would, wouldn’t he? Where was the fictional reading?

It’s actually a private event, in someone’s house. In Dorset.

Dorset was one of the swankier towns in the state. Just the kind of place somebody might import a famous writer for a private event.

Oh. That’s too bad.

But why don’t we meet in Rutland? That is, if it’s not too far for you to travel.

He knew it wouldn’t be. Even without the prospect of a free private manuscript consultation with a bestselling author, Jake had long observed that Vermonters seemed willing to drive all over their state at the drop of a hat.

Not at all. Straight down 7.

They arranged to meet on Thursday evening, at the Birdseye Diner.

This was so good of him, wrote Martin, and Jake said no, it wasn’t, and that was no lie, not even an exaggeration. Martin Purcell was his best way into the place that had somehow produced TalentedTom: end of story.

Also, it was time to take a closer look at the town that had produced Evan Parker. Long past time, actually.

CRIB

BY JACOB FINCH BONNER

Macmillan, New York, 2017, page 98

Samantha’s mother didn’t trust doctors, so she figured one of them would try to persuade her the growing lump in her right breast was cancer. By the time Samantha saw the lump herself it was actually protruding over her mother’s bra strap and things had gone, of course, too far. Maria, ten by then and in fifth grade, tried to persuade her grandmother to accept the scorched earth radiation-plus-chemo the oncologist at Community Memorial in Hamilton was suggesting, but Samantha’s mother found the chemo unpleasant, and after the second cycle she announced that she’d take her chances with God. God gave her another four months, and Samantha hoped she was satisfied.

A week after the funeral she moved into her parents’ old bedroom, the nicest one, and put Maria into the room she herself was vacating, the room with the cannon ball bed in which she had dreamed of escape and sulked through pregnancy, all the way at the other end of the hall. That pretty much set the tone for their remaining years together. Samantha had a part-time job by then, processing bills for a branch of the Bassett Healthcare Network, and after a training course on a company computer she set up in a little room off the kitchen, she was able to work from home. Maria, since the age of six, had been getting herself up in the morning, and from the time she was eight she was feeding herself cereal and packing her own lunches. By nine she was pulling together her own dinners, maintaining the shopping list, and reminding Samantha to pay her taxes. At eleven her teachers called Samantha in for a conference because they wanted to skip Maria ahead a grade. She told them absolutely not. She wouldn’t give any of those people the satisfaction.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Nobody Comes to Rutland

Opting for double duty from a single falsehood, he told Anna that he was going to Vermont for a few days to do a private event and finish the revisions Wendy wanted. Naturally enough, she wanted to go with him.

“I’d love to see Vermont!” she said. “I’ve never been to New England.”

For a moment he actually considered letting her come, but of course that was a terrible idea.

“I think if I hole up somewhere I can kind of power through what I need to do. If you’re there with me, I’m going to want to spend time with you. And I just … I want to do that after I get something to Wendy. So I can enjoy it, and not feel I should be doing something else.”

She nodded. She seemed to understand. He hoped she understood.

Jake drove up through western Connecticut on Route 7, stopping for lunch in Manchester and arriving at his inn in Rutland around five. There, in his rock-hard four-poster, he finally acquainted himself with Martin Purcell’s stories, which were flaccid and pointless, populated by forgettable characters. Purcell had a particular interest in young people as they faltered between adolescence and adulthood—not surprising, perhaps, given his work as a high school teacher—but he seemed incapable of looking beyond the superficial. One character had an injury that prevented him from finishing a promising track season. Another failed a test, putting her college scholarship in jeopardy. A seemingly devoted young couple—devoted for teenagers, at least—became pregnant and the boy, instantly, abandoned his girlfriend. (Jake wondered at Purcell’s claim that this was, or was meant to be, a “novel in stories”—the same conceit he himself had used with his second book, Reverberations. Jake hadn’t fooled anyone then, and Purcell wasn’t fooling anyone now.) In the end he came up with a few points to make and a fairly obvious suggestion of how to move forward—focus on the young couple, let the characters in the other stories move into the background—and then he went to meet Martin Purcell at the diner.

In Vermont, people with money lived in places like Woodstock, Manchester, Charlotte, Dorset, and Middlebury, not in Rutland, and while Rutland was much larger than most other Vermont towns it felt like a semi-depressed drive-through today with many of its great old houses repurposed for bail bondsmen, abortion “counselors,” and welfare agencies, and interspersed with strip malls and bowling alleys and the bus station. Jake’s inn was less than half a mile from the Birdseye Diner, but he drove the three minutes. As soon as he got inside the door, a man stood up in a booth halfway down the length of the room and waved. Jake waved back.

“Wasn’t sure you’d remember what I looked like,” said Martin Purcell.

“Oh, I recognize you,” Jake lied, sliding into the booth. “Though, you know, as I was driving here I thought, I should have tried to find a photo online, just to be sure I didn’t sit down with somebody else.”

“Most pictures of me online I’m standing behind a bunch of robotics nerds. I coach the club at my school. State champs, six out of the last ten years.”

Jake tried to rustle up some enthusiasm to go along with his congratulations.

“Really nice of you to drive down,” he said.

“Hey, really nice of you to look over my stuff!” Purcell said. He was greatly excited. “I’m still in shock. I’ve been talking to my wife about it. I don’t think she believed me when I said you’d agreed to do that for me.”

“Oh, it’s no trouble. I miss teaching.” This, too, was a lie.

The Birdseye was a classic specimen of a diner, with aqua-and-black-checkered tiles and a shining stainless bar and stools. Jake ordered a burger and a chocolate shake. Purcell wanted the chicken soup.

“You know, I was surprised you wanted to meet in Rutland, though. Nobody comes to Rutland. Everybody comes through Rutland.”

“Except the people who live here, I guess.”

“Yeah. Whoever the genius town planner was, who decided one of the state’s busiest routes ought to run down the main street, he should’ve been tarred and feathered.” Purcell shrugged. “Maybe it seemed like a good idea at the time, I don’t know.”

“Well, you’re a history teacher, aren’t you? You probably see things from more of a backward-looking perspective.”

The guy frowned. “Did I tell you I was a history teacher? Most people, because they know I write stories, assume I teach English. But I’ll tell you a dark secret. I don’t love reading fiction. Other people’s fiction.”

That’s no secret to me, thought Jake.

“No? You prefer to read history?”

“I prefer to read history and write fiction.”

“You must have found that challenging at Ripley. Reading your classmates’ work.”

Their waitress brought Jake’s milkshake in a full glass and a half-full steel tumbler. It tasted amazing and sank straight to the pit of his stomach.

“Oh, not really. I think when you go into a situation like that you adapt. If I’m going to be asking people in my workshop to give my work a generous and close reading, I need to do the same for them.”

Jake decided this moment was as good as any. “Sadly, my own student didn’t feel that way. My late student.”

Purcell, to Jake’s dismay, sighed at this. “I wondered how long it would take us to get around to Evan Parker.”

Jake retreated instantly, but not very persuasively.

“Well, I remember you mentioned he was from this area. Rutland, right?”

“That’s right,” said Purcell.

“I guess he’s been on my mind today. He had some kind of a business here, I think? A bar of some kind?”

“Tavern,” said Purcell.