I hope this short story finds the readers of False Choices well and enjoying a fine day. It’s been noticeably cold up here in Northern Michigan this Spring, and we’re just a few days away from the longest day of the year. The farm has been terribly busy lately and I haven’t had much energy for writing, but this story gnawed at me because I felt I hadn’t completed it properly. If you are new here, please
to support my work.
“I’ll be out of business before these two have their first callus,” said Jess.
“Oh, give them a chance, Jess, you’re being too hard,” replied Denise.
“Yeah, maybe, but if I see one of them sit down this afternoon, the stones will be flying not setting. Anyways, how’s the kids?”
“Their fine. The little one’s nose keeps running, hope he’s not coming down with something again. But they’re doing ok this morning.”
“Ok, home by 6, love.”
“Love you, too, bye.”
Jess sat in his truck, finished his ham and cheese, then ate the pickle and the chips. He hated himself for thinking about the good times, before the kids, before the busy weekends with scouts and ball and soccer and swim, before the welding jobs all winter. It was just him and Denise back then, and their profitable little stone business, all square and plumb, no curves tight or wide, no winter work, but a two month vacation in Asheville. Sometimes it was 70 degrees in Asheville in the winter, not always, but there were many, many days like that, spent hiking and grilling, drinking Costco bargain wines, making love in front of the evening fire - there were chilly nights, too. Then, and he could still remember it, the day, late autumn, when the news broke, and ever since, juggling the excitement of childbirth with the draining workload; balancing the deep, profound even, if that’s a good word to use here, feelings of fatherhood, feelings he couldn’t describe, with the yearning for the old days when he and Denise were a two man team, rocking the stone work. He looked out his rear view mirror and the two hourlies were each in their own world, languidly eating and scrolling their phones. ‘Morons’ Jess uttered under his breath. He clenched his hands behind his head and thrusted his shoulders forward to stretch his back. ‘I’m getting old, man, damn, and these stones aren’t helping, and neither are the two morons. Can I make the welding a full time gig and keep our income up? Can I find something entirely new to do? What the hell would that be? This used to be a dream job, back in the day, a regular dream.’
“No, you misunderstood,” explained Jess, “we don’t do precious stones, or semi-precious, or any precious. We collect stones from fields, or sometimes from forests, just simple, field stones. What they are I guess an expert could tell you, slate, or sandstone, or granite, I don’t know, the shape is interesting but that’s about all, other than their age.”
“How many have you collected?” asked the man, studying Jess like he’s run into a nut of some sort.
“Oh, no, no, we don’t collect like that. We collect them from a field for example, and then we sell them; we use them to build walls in and around people’s yards, if they have the money for such things,” explained Jess, with a smile, knowing how the man misunderstood his trade but thinking it should not have been that hard to figure.
The bartender brought Jess’s sandwich, a simple ham and cheese on rye, sharp mustard, with a pickle, the cheapest thing on the menu and Jess’s favorite. He pointed at Jess’s empty glass, “another?”
“Sure, why not,” replied Jess, still smiling about the conversation with the man next to him.
Jess ate and drank methodically. He had a little time to kill while his wife Denise got her haircut across the way. Small villages like this one were familiar and comfortable to Jess; he looked forward to a foray into town for one errand or another, a chance to relax midday with a beer and a sandwich, away from stones and walls and the road for a few minutes. As he ate, in strode Denise, hair cut and ready to go for another month of stone walls, the last month for this season. They had two more jobs to work before they headed to Asheville for deep winter.
Denise was not shy, not with Jess. She took a couple of good bites of his ham sandwich, and made small work of the fries, for which she had an uncommon appetite. She, like Jess, was medium height, but tall for a woman, and well built, the stone collecting had added a good layer of muscle over the years. Her black hair was almost always in a pony tail during work hours, and her face, as fine and pretty as it was, hidden by a ball cap. She was not what anyone would call dainty or feminine. Her hands were nearly as rough as Jess’s and she had long since given up on nice nails. She had a carefree gait, and her flannel shirt, jeans and work boots didn’t hide her figure.
“You want to order lunch, go ahead if you’re hungry Nise,” said Jess, looking at her sympathetically even as his own lunch disappeared.
“Yeah, I think I’ll get a hamburger to go,” responded Denise, making sure the bartender heard, “and I’ll just finish these fries. We should get moving and drop this load.”
Jess finished his sandwich and paid the bill, Denise took her carryout and walked back to the truck with its “Stone Collectors” logo on both doors, and opened her atlas book to Central Massachusetts. She’s the navigator, always searching the maps for the best way from A to B. Little country two lane roads were their only choice. Jess had no appetite for highways with a load of stones behind their old truck. Denise figured out the route and Jess pulled out, the clank and grind of the trailer made the sidewalk traffic turn to look. Denise directed him from one two lane to another and in about an hour they pulled into the rough-hewn driveway of a newly built architectural marvel, future home of a millionaire from the tech startups along Route 2.
“So this is the one that’s going to be on tv, I guess,” noted Jess.
“PBS of all things,” replied Denise.
Jess parked the truck, still running, and walked up to the house. He came back a minute later with the gameplan. He followed a two lane trail around the house to the back and pulled the trailer up to the center of a large clearing. The builder met him there and they took a look at the stones together. Then Jess let down the ramp and operated the hydraulics on the trailer. The cages of stones came out, first two of them and as Denise pulled forward slowly the whole ‘shebang’ as Jess called it to the builder, skidded out two at a time. “Good work, Nise,” offered Jess, climbing into the passenger side.
Denise drove the truck to the side of the house. Jess grabbed a wooden box of tools from the bed and they walked through the house to the backyard, Denise catching the rough carpenters’ attention.
“Ready for this?” Jess asked. Denise didn’t answer but swung into work mode and started walking stones back to the edge of the patio. The landscaper had prepped the ground with a 24” wide strip of deep sand and pebble for drainage. Jess got the wheelbarrows from the truck and loaded one with stones. In a matter of minutes Denise had a nice first layer of stones started on the one side. Twenty minutes later one side of the rectangle was outlined with the first layer of stones. She and Jess stood back and took a look.
“Ok, I think we’re on our way,” managed Jess. The sun was up and the sweat was rolling off his face. He continued to load the wheelbarrows with stones and unload around the perimeter of the rectangle. Denise placed the flat stones one atop the other in a pattern, and covered each seam with the stone above, putting the best, mossy side out. She tucked small stones between the layers, sometimes pounding them into place. It was impressive how the stone wall took shape, straight as the taut line, solid and steady like it’d been there for generations.
It was 16 years ago that Jess and Denise, complete strangers, both showed up as volunteers at a CSA, or a “community supported agriculture” farm in Western Massachusetts. Local families paid in advance and each week took home a basket of produce. They were also supposed to spend some time working on the farm, fantasy being what it is. Newspapers from Boston to Hartford to New York had detailed, with serious concern, the loss of New England farms, a trend that actually started in earnest when the Ohio Valley opened to settlers in the early 1800’s. Jess and Denise had each heard about the demise of local farms and then found themselves, between college semesters, working at a CSA, one answer to the problem.
On the first Friday at the farm, after a back breaking week of weed pulling and vegetable picking, they watched the “community” roll up in their imported cars, two kids in the back, and then pull away with a box of beautiful produce, enough for a family of eight. The couple who owned the farm were kind, decent people whose main subject of conversation was whether the farm work was worth it. They struggled week in and week out, and the “community” never got more involved than the weekly pass through.
The following Sunday, taking the day off, Jess invited Denise out for a walk. They took an unknown trail uphill through the forest backing up the tillable fields and eventually found themselves on a high ridge, surrounded by trees so large you couldn’t wrap your arms around them.
“I signed up for a couple of weeks, so I’ll stay through next Friday, but I’m leaving on Saturday,” said Denise as they meandered along, finding a path through the old forest.
“Sounds like a plan,” replied Jess. His enthusiasm for the ‘working vacation’ depleted as well.
Then they found themselves standing next to a wall, a stone wall. It extended forward and back past the eye’s sighting, moving with the undulations of the earth. It was three feet wide and broken only in places where a tree had grown up within it and pushed it out of the way. They were both dumbfounded. Who had put it here, in the middle of this old growth forest? And why?
“Geez, I can’t believe this,” said Jess, “these trees have to be close to a hundred years old, so this wall goes back at least till then, and probably further.”
“Revolutionary war,” said Denise, turning around to try and see where the house might have been.
“Yeah, by the size of these trees, you’re probably right,” replied Jess.
They both stood there astonished. They started walking along the wall, to see how far it might go. They went up and down another quarter of a mile or so. There was a small dirt road below them that they noticed when a car went by. At the top of a small hill they looked forward and the wall kept going, sometimes obscured by vines and dead leaves, but the outline clearly visible as it swept up and down the land.
“That road’s not far away,” mentioned Jess, thinking about the houses he worked on with his uncles’ construction company, and how the owners might appreciate stones like the ones stretching out in front of him.
That night he and Denise made a small fire in the farm’s burn pit and Jess managed to find a couple of log cutoffs and an old plank to sit on. Denise brought a blanket and before long they were under it together looking at the magnificent midnight sky.
“What did you mean by the road not far away today, by the stone wall?” asked Denise.
“Well if you had to get the stones out of the forest and into a trailer for example, it means a lot to have a road nearby, for access, you know,” replied Jess, thinking again about the wall.
“What are you going to do with the stones?” quizzed Denise, confused.
“Well they could be part of a landscaping project and a home’s yard,” began Jess, “people put up walls around patios and that, the stones have value, and they have a look that only time can create. There’s nothing else like them out in the world. Concrete ‘stones’ don’t come close. I think people might pay handsomely for stones like that, and let’s be honest, they’re invisible, well nearly, lying there in the forest covered with moss and time, God, a lot of time.”
“But in the forest they’re part of history, part of families long gone and forgotten, who struggled and worked that rocky ground,” protested Denise.
“That’s true, I guess” replied Jess, “but you know Denise that someday they will disappear. Trees die and fall, animals make homes, kids on dirt bikes. Everything eventually goes away. Putting them in a family’s yard is a way of preserving them,”
“Bullshit,” exclaimed Denise, “you see a buck and you’re grabbing, you’re rationalizing.”
“That’s also true,” mumbled Jess.
Their time at the farm came to an end, an unremarkable end, but they exchanged addresses. A few letters were mailed. Denise always included these little cartoons she liked to draw. One had Jess lying under a starry sky with nothing but $ signs in his little bubble. Jess understood the jibe, but it didn’t lessen his interest in the stones. After they moved into new places at the beginning of fall term, Jess out of money and back with his parents in Worcester and Denise likewise with her sister in Milton, outside of Boston, there were phone calls. Several, actually, and each one longer than the last. The day after Christmas, Jess hopped a train into Boston and met Denise in bustling Back Bay. She reached out her hand in greeting, which amused Jess, he wasn’t beyond a little shyness himself, but he gave her a peck on the cheek, too.
They strolled and talked, had lunch and strolled and talked, the air was just warm enough that they could handle being outside most of the day. They stopped for coffee, and Denise invited Jess over to her sister’s place, “stay for dinner, too, if you’d like.”
Jess said he’d like that. They took a train out to Milton, and Jess met the sister, Helen, and the baby boy Alain, all of 8 months old. When Denise returned from the bathroom, Jess was peeling carrots and onions in the kitchen and hearing about the family’s French Canadian history; first Northern Maine forests, felling trees, then New Hampshire quarries, factory work in Boston’s south side. Their father was in the Boston Police Department, and Helen’s husband was in the trades.
“Doesn’t sound so awfully different from my family,” offered Jess. Irish Catholic stock, from the ship to Boston’s south side, grandfather a janitor in the Parks department, father worked in the print shop of the Globe, Jess the first to college, uncles all in the trades.
“So what do you study?” asked Helen.
“Landscape Architecture, Horticulture,” answered Jess. “I’ve worked plenty with my uncles at their job sites. The new homes for the high tech people all have extensive landscaping, I mean it’s not like these people are going to pick up a rake or shovel any time soon, so I saw an opening, you know, a place in the market, where I might make a living. My uncles thought it made sense, too. Landscapers can make some good money these days. It’s not just cutting the grass.”
Jess was busy peeling an onion. Denise was standing behind him listening. When Jess stopped talking she caught a look from Helen. She knew what the look meant, and it made sense to her; and how Jess thought about the stones made sense now too, in a way it didn’t before.
“Denise studies history, wants to teach history,” said Helen.
Denise stepped forward and put an arm on Jess’s shoulder.
“You’re crying Jess,” said Denise.
“History will do that to you,” joked Jess.
They married after sophomore year. His uncles lent some help and Jess bought a small trailer able to handle a load of stones. He talked to landowners around Worcester who had forests, and whose forests had forgotten stone walls, He did his first wall for cheap, himself, working an entire week with a book about natural stone walls opened on the front seat of his old beater truck. The homeowners were so pleased they paid in full and added a big tip, too. The stones’ moss gave the nouveau riche homeowners from the west coast a patina of New England belonging. Jess was in business. He and Denise, or Nise as he called her now, celebrated with a special meal, an incredibly tough steak which made them laugh uncontrollably; Jess returned from his truck with his stone working tools to take one more stab at it.
By the end of July Jess needed help with the work he had signed for, and with no other applicants he reluctantly accepted Denise’s offer. At the end of August, it pained him that she took a semester off from school, as he did, to keep the business up and running, but it was temporary, just until they established a name and reputation and new business started to find them. By December and the first snow they were exhausted. Denise went back to school in January. The money bug bit Jess hard, and he couldn’t turn back now, and they didn’t want to live in that sad basement apartment in Roxbury any longer. With a borrowed skid steer he spent his energies removing stones from the forest to a loading ‘zone’ he established near a road but out of site, so when spring came he could move fast and start to lay stone walls and get paid.
On his way to look at a new forest wall, Jess noticed a bunch of rusty old industrial wire cages in the yard of a small fabrication shop. He turned around. At the front desk he asked to speak to “whoever’s in charge.” Reluctantly the woman called back, and a man in overalls appeared. “Those cages, get’em the hell out of here” said the man. With a hi lo and a borrowed worker, Jess got eight of the forlorn cages into the bed of his truck and trailer, all strapped down. He dropped them off on the side of his uncle’s workshop. He spent a few weekends welding them back into shape. The cages were the solution to moving stones from the forest to the road with as little disturbance as possible and in a quarter of the time. He could fill the cages up beside the wall and then move them out of the forest one at a time and load them on the trailer effortlessly with the Skid steer.
First of May, he was already behind schedule. Denise finished the semester and came back on board, and she never left his side again. She became adept at placing the stones while Jess supplied them to her. Sometimes Jess would dig part of the wall and lay the gravel to get her started, and then he carried on with the digger while she laid stones. They didn’t talk a lot during work, but afterwards on the way home they talked about the day and the job site and the crazy construction people they met. Then they enjoyed dinner, music or some tv and most nights they made love, too. They were young and the pleasure of the other’s body was irresistible to them both. After a couple of years they didn’t worry about birth control, the business growing and money in the bank, new equipment purchased. They talked about looking for a house afterwards, lying together.
For the next five years they made love but nothing, not even a tickle of pregnancy. For the first two years Denise didn’t concern herself with it. “It’ll happen, always does, right?” she said. By year five she was concerned, and by year ten, she was depressed about it, sometimes agonized about it. But bound by rectangular stone walls they built a life befitting a childless couple. They had a house in the country in central Massachusetts and a winter retreat in Asheville, North Carolina, where their bones and muscles self repaired and they relaxed, from the small business hustle. They took up hobbies like cooking and woodworking that filled the time away from the stones. Denise had several nieces and nephews now, as did Jess, and they spent time with them when the opportunity arose.
Jess didn’t bring up the subject of children himself, but he responded thoughtfully when Denise did. There were moments when he knew it hurt her, when he caught her staring at a young mother with a baby. Denise hated to hear about a neglected kid, and she was unable to watch a movie or show that included any cruelty to a child.
One afternoon, driving home from a job site, they saw a farm where the farmer had removed a wall himself and put all the old stones behind his barn, the pile was massive. They stopped to ask if the stones were available, for sale even.
They pulled off the road and into the farm’s yard, far enough that the trailer was out of the road. The farmer came running out of the house, his eyes mad with anger, maybe desperation. Jess apologized again and again and finally the man, maybe late thirties, a little portly and balding, stopped yelling. He calmed enough to explain that while backing a farm trailer out of his drive just a few days ago, the trailer ran over his small son, injuring the boy, but not killing him. Denise gasped, opened the car door and threw a leg out like she was going to be sick. She just needed more air. Jess knew that their barrenness bothered her, but he never realized the depth of it for Denise until that moment. The farmer had Jess’s arm, he couldn’t get out of the truck or reach across the seat to Denise. Finally the farmer said “go ahead, take the stones, take whatever you want.” He turned then and walked back to his young wife, her face etched with worry, holding the child near the clotheslines, his little leg and arm bandaged. Jess didn’t know where to turn first. Finally he reached over and pulled Denise back into the truck, then he turned and made his way to the back of the barn and parked next to the ancient stone pile.
“Are you ok, Nise? asked Jess.
“Oh God, did you see that little boy?” answered Denise, wiping her eyes, “what an idiot, running over his own child, what was he thinking?
“It was an accident, Nise, just a really unfortunate accident,” consoled Jess.
But today was a different day. The sun was mostly out, it was New England autumn, shades of red and yellow colored the tree line. Jess loaded the wheelbarrow again with mossy stones and made his way back to Denise who was not working, but sitting on the small wall she already built. Jess was confused. She was eager to get there and get the job done and they had only been laying stone for an hour.
“Everything all right Nise?” asked Jess.
“Yeah, it’s alright. I’m just late, very late,” replied Denise, a faint smile warming her face.
“Wow,” managed Jess, staring at Denise, his stomach rising. He turned, cap in hand, and looked at the cages full of stones. His unruly mass of brown hair trembling in the breeze. Then he put his arm around Denise and sat with her quietly.
“How late?”
“Late enough, I took the test a while ago, and again last week. I’ve got an appointment with the Doc tomorrow.”
That was the day, Jess remembered it like it was yesterday. At the age of 36 they were pregnant. Their bodies wove into a tight, unbreakable bond. “Oh Jess,” Denise kept whispering. The doctor had confirmed it, and though Jess thought it at the time but never mentioned it, all hell broke loose in the stone business.
Jess hired a cousin to help with the last two jobs of the year. The boy, as Jess referred to him, was too young, too clean and unworn to be of much help. ‘By the time he has his first callus I’ll be out of business,’ Jess thought.
It had all been strapped down, organized to the finest details. The business was as dependable as the stones themselves. It had grit and heft, and after 15 years it had its own sort of ageless moss, a fine patina of knowledge and confidence. Now with Denise out of the picture little details were missed, like invoicing and scheduling equipment maintenance and paying the bills on time. The walls, built now by Jess, missed some of the touch, structural and aesthetic, that Denise brought to the work. The clients were still happy, but Jess knew that he had more to learn about the process that Denise had perfected over 15 years of effort and thousands of tons of stones.
Jess and Denise took that winter in Asheville as they had for many years, but when they buttoned the place up in February to return home, they handed the keys to a realtor. It was no longer possible to keep a winter retreat as new parents. It was an extravagance on the family ledger, too.
Just as the new season was in full swing the baby was born, a healthy little boy. Denise was a full time mom and Jess was plagued by two boys who signed on for summer work. The property in Asheville sold finally. Jess and Denise settled into parenthood. Instead of the two of them working 8 hours a day, he worked 10 to 12, and Denise managed the home. She was delighted by motherhood. All those years of waiting had finally borne real fruit and she made damned sure to taste that sweet life everyday.
When Jess got home in the early evening, as spent as the coffee grounds from the morning’s breakfast, Nise had stories to tell about their day and their baby boy. Jess looked at his wife while they ate and she talked, gathering the details of the day into a pretty fun narrative, a little family history. Jess was amused, but his head drained quickly after work, and it would take another hour before he started to feel like himself. In the meantime he laid on his back on the hardwood floor of the family room and his little boy would conjure up funny little games that often ended with the boy hurling himself into combat with the old man. Wrestling was their favorite pastime.
Just as this routine became steady and accepted by all parties, Jess was met at the backdoor, his oily face stained with stone dust and the salt of his own sweat, by Denise’s “Guess what!”
‘Oh my God, she’s pregnant again.’ Jess knew it before she said it, and again they hugged. But this time Denise stepped back and looked at Jess, trying to figure out what she just sensed for the first time ever. “You ok?” asked Denise.
“I’ll be fine, thrilled but spent, sorry, not much left in the tank today,” offered Jess.
They had a quiet dinner. Jess caught Denise staring at him a couple of times and he knew she wanted to talk but he couldn’t find the energy. All he could think of was his old man, short of temper in the evenings, drained of patience, he made quick work of discipline with a slap to the head of Jess and his brothers, once and a while his sisters too, but gentler. His uncles did the same thing with his cousins. He hated those ‘dope slaps’ as they were called, and promised himself he would never do that, never strike a kid like that. Yet he suddenly and very alarmingly understood his old man’s favorite tactic, in the midst of chaos, to take control and calm the troops for at least a few hours. He knew himself well enough to know how he felt about other drivers at the end of the day, or the two morons after a day of correcting their mistakes or cajoling them for a lack of effort. Was he his father? He didn’t have the energy to think about it now.
He left the table and took his place on the floor. His boy was soon on him and the two played with trucks and blocks for the better part of an hour, while Denise cleaned the kitchen.
“Do you want to give Jay a bath and get him ready for bed tonight?” asked Denise, leaning in, a dish towel on her shoulder.
“Sure, how ‘bout it boy, you ready for a washup?”
“Yeah.”
Hand in hand, Jess and his nearly three year old son walked off to the master bedroom.
“How ‘bout a shower tonight, Jay, you want to try it?”
“Yeah, a shower, like Dad.”
Jess helped his son remove his clothes. Then he dropped his own on the bathroom floor while the water warmed.
“Let’s get all soaped Dad,” Jay said.
“That’s the idea son. Let’s shampoo that gargantuan cranium of yours first.”
With his head soapy Jay began his monster dance, threatening his Dad with a wild look and his menacing little arms.
“Ok, Godzilla, close your eyes,” said Jess, lifting the boy up to the shower head and giving the little towhead one more scrub to remove the soap.
“I’m not Godzilla, Dad,” Jay declared, pointing at Jess, his little feet back on the tile floor, “you’re Godzilla.”
Jess offered Jay his own small bar of soap. “Do it like this Jay,” said Jess, showing the boy how to get into all the little crooks and crannies. When they were both soaped up, they stood under the water and rinsed off. “Ahh, you did a good job Jay, all clean.”
Jay dried himself off, and then Jess helped him brush his hair and teeth. Jess got into some comfortable shorts and helped Jay with his pajamas. The boy loved to hear what Jay did at work, especially the loading and unloading of the truck with the Skid steer. Jess told basically the same story four or five times until they laid down together in the boy’s little pineapple bed and read about all the vehicles that they use at an airport. It wasn’t long before the boy’s eyes closed and he was out, like only a child can be, completely oblivious to the world. Jess left him with a kiss and two pillows to prevent him from rolling out of his new bed. When he turned Denise was standing by the door, her face asking for some explanation. How did it make sense, the cold hug at the door with the announcement, and this scene with his son?
Jess shut the door behind him and on their way back to the family room, he started to explain, to put nouns and verbs together in some understandable way that conveyed the mixed up feelings he had.
“I don’t know what else I can do to make it work. I’ve cut out just about everything, hunting, fishing, time with my brothers, sports, and where will I fit in another kid, jeez, of course I’m thrilled Nise, I always wanted a family, you know that, and I love having a family, I’m sure the baby will be wonderful, and it’ll all work out, but when I come home now it’s difficult to find some energy, any energy. What’ll it be like with four of us?”
They sat down together in the family room. Denise rolled back and put her feet on Jess’s lap. “C’mon, you know the routine,” she laughed, pointing at her feet. Dejected by the new order, his face made Denise howl. “Oh, get on with it Jess, our parents did it, and we’ll do it. Only two or maybe three, who knows? But we’ll manage just fine.”
Jess reluctantly started the foot massage which would indeed become routine for the next seven months. Denise moaned and laughed. “You know the kids could have the same birthday, God willing,” said Denise.
“We should make that happen, regardless of the actual day of birth, a little white lie, no one will know, and it’ll save us the second party. That’s like 21 free days right there. And what’s this about three?”
“You know my family has a history of twins!”
Jess dabbed his eyes with his shirt.
“Tears of joy, no doubt,” laughed Denise.