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THE NEW VALLEY

Grove Press

Contents

Ridge Weather...........................1Stillman Wing...........................83Sarverville Remains.....................189

Chapter One

It was the hay bales that did it. The men and women who knew Osby least, who nodded at him from passing trucks or said "Hey" while scanning cans of soup in the Mic-or-Mac, they might not have seen the change come over him. But the few who knew him a little better would have noticed Osby's usual quietness grown heavier, that he stuffed his hands in his sweatshirt pocket a little more often. They would have chalked it up to him missing his father, figured it for nothing more than a rebalancing of the weight of a life that suddenly contained one instead of two people. They would have been wrong.

The truth was, it didn't even make sense to Osby. How could rolls of old dead grass scare him so? What was the sense behind it being that-the sight of those wasted bales on that wasted government land-that finally dug from him his tears? But it was the bales. And afterwards, he had known only that it was going to get worse.

In those weeks, as the memory of old Cortland Caudill receded to the horizons of peoples' minds, even those passing Osby in the supermarket aisles would have felt the sadness still hanging off him. Though it probably would have seemed pretty normal to them. In a place like Eads County, people sometimes get like Osby did. They're scattered all over the valley, hidden from each other by the old ridges and thick woods, by log walls of age-sunk cabins, new ranch-house brick, by paint-peeling clapboard and trailer home siding so thin the propane bill is twice what it should be, never mind the electricity for the glowing space heaters that struggle in each room.

The First Congregational Church of Harts Run had always looked pretty to Osby. Some early mornings, when he was out on Route 33 before the sun had scaled the ridge, he would round the bend and see the church way up ahead, perched at the top of the hill as if God had put the limestone there as a plinth. Once in a long while-it had happened just a few times in all his thirty-eight years-the sun would rise exactly as Osby came barreling around the corner, and the church would light up right before his eyes. Times like that, he would take a sip of coffee, turn the radio down so it blended with the rumble of the Sierra's engine, and imagine it was his headlights, and not the sun, that pulled the church out of the half-dark. He liked to pretend that if he hadn't come along just then, the church would have stayed dim all day. That, as much as anything else, was why he chose to hold the funeral there.

The day of the service, it was warm for January in the hills. When Osby arrived at the church, about an hour before everyone else, he swung open the truck door and held out a hand, palm up in the air, gazing at the sky, testing the sun like most people would rain. Thirty-eight, thirty-nine, he thought to himself. If it kept up like this, the pastures would stay clear of snow; he'd save on hay. He wondered if the ground up at the family cemetery would have thawed a little if he'd waited a day on the funeral. Not much, he decided. It was always colder on Bowmans Ridge. Even on those fall days, years ago, when he was a kid and they used to go up there for picnics. Earlier that morning, breaking up the frozen topsoil with a pickax, the memory had come to him: his father, shivering as he walked beneath the old apple tree, over dry leaves between the graves, searching for a good patch of sunlight in which to spread the blanket.

Now, Osby switched on the radio and sat in the truck cab, waiting for the DJ to hand over the weather report. Every autumn, as far back as he could remember-five years old? four?-he would climb the apple tree, shimmy out on the twisted limbs, and shake down a fast thumping of fruit. From twenty feet up, he would watch his father wander below, stooping to pick up the few good ones, carrying them back to Osby's mother. She would sit in the sun, soft and edgeless in a thick, lilac sweater, her knees drawn to her chest, gazing over the valley. His father would crouch next to her, peeling an apple with his pocketknife. He would hand her slices. She would reach up and take them from his fingers.

The year before she died, his mother was too weak from the chemotherapy to handle the rough ride up to Bowmans Ridge. So it was just Osby and his father standing by the truck, the breeze between them making noise in the leaves. After a while, his father strode to the tree, yanked an apple off, came back. Osby listened to him chew and watched the furious movement of his jaw. Halfway through the apple, Cortland snapped open his pocketknife and cut off a slice. Carefully, Osby took it from the offered palm. They looked out at the valley. Osby was twelve.

In the truck cab, the DJ blared on. Glad of the noise, Osby shook his head, smiled a little. What a strange man his father had been.

Forty-one degrees and sunny, according to the radio.

Osby grinned. He'd figured out long ago it was about three degrees cooler up in the hills. He glanced around the empty parking lot, as if looking for someone who might congratulate him. There weren't even any tires grinding up the gravel yet.

The church never did get more than half full, but the minister gave as good a sermon as could have been expected. Some of it was pure bull-how Cortland had stayed by his wife to the end; how to his last days he had never questioned God's will. Some of it was half-right-how Osby's father had worked all his life to make the farm prosperous; he had never meddled in business that wasn't his; he had single-handedly raised his son into a fine man. And some of it was dead on-how Cortland Caudill had loved his cows.

Osby figured he couldn't have done much better. His father had not been a communicative man. He wasn't a bad man, not even a bad father. He wasn't mean to anyone; he just wasn't especially nice to anyone, either. Outside, melted snow dripped off the church eves. It sounded like spring. Osby felt he ought to miss his father, but he didn't, not really. Neither, he guessed, did the others in the church. His father hadn't really cared to make many friends.

Osby looked around at the thirty-odd people, most of them his father's age. They looked peaceful. The minister didn't mention the one thing that would have made everybody uneasy, didn't even acknowledge it with any special condolences to Osby. So there wasn't much to be upset about in the room. Swaths of sunlight streamed through the windows, warm like only strong sun through glass on a winter's afternoon can be. Inside, Osby guessed, it was a comfortable sixty-nine, seventy degrees.

At the end, the minister asked if anyone wanted to say something, and the whole roomful of people looked at Osby. He wished they'd go back to sitting happily in the sunlight. The minister shut the Bible very quietly and smiled right at him. Osby smiled back, but felt just afterwards that it was the wrong thing to do. He glanced at Carl and, sitting at Carl's side, Lynne and their two boys further down the pew. Carl scratched his newly trimmed beard, jowls shaking, and flicked a glance back at Osby. It was a look Osby knew: the worry that came over his friend when Carl realized Osby was going to say something.

Osby...