Chapter 9 - The Maple Grove
Three months later, the snow had finally let go of the low hills around Hastings.
The Michigan spring had come in all at once, three weeks of seventy-degree days that turned the ditches into ribbons of yellow marsh marigolds and made the gravel roads smell of sweet, damp loam and drying oak leaves.
Ellis and I spent Saturday morning at the sugar shack.
The old cedar building had survived the winter, though three of the cedar shingles on the north roof had blown off in an April gale. Ellis was up on an aluminum ladder, a mouthful of galvanized roofing nails between his teeth, his hammer making sharp, solid *taps* that echoed through the woods.
Below him, on an old wooden bench Sanford had built from two-by-fours, sat Grandma Marin.
She had an old wool blanket tucked over her knees, despite the warm sun that fell through the high branches of the maples. Her garden hat—the wide-brimmed straw one with the faded blue ribbon—shaded her eyes as she watched Marcus clear the rotted branches from the trail with a chainsaw.
The woods were alive with the sound of red-winged blackbirds and the trickling of the small creek that ran through the culvert under Lincoln Street.
“Essie,” Grandma called out.
I set down my rake and walked over to the bench, wiping the sweat from my forehead with the back of my work glove.
“Look there,” she said, pointing with her cane toward the corner post of the shack.
The wood had grayed with forty years of sun and rain, but the letters Grandpa Sanford had gouged into the cedar with his Barlow knife were still there, clear and deep:
**E. S. - 1999**
“He knew,” Grandma said, her voice quiet under the sound of Marcus’s saw. “Sanford wasn't an educated man, Essie. He only went to the eighth grade before his people put him to work on the threshing crews. But he knew how people were built. He told me once, when you were twelve and stayed up all night to nurse that stray beagle through the distemper: *‘Clara’s going to break that girl if she can. Because Essie looks like work, and Clara only likes the show.’*”
I sat down on the dry grass next to her bench, leaning my head against her knee.
The wool of her blanket smelled of lavender soap and old paper—the same smell that had lived in her linen closet on Lincoln Street thirty years ago.
“How is Bridget?” Grandma asked softly.
It was the first time she had spoken Bridget’s name since the morning in Arthur Vance’s office.
“She moved to Lansing,” I said. “She’s working as an administrative assistant for a state senator’s committee. It’s thirty-four thousand a year. She has an efficiency apartment four blocks from the capitol. Marcus helped her move the furniture two weeks ago.”
“Did she ask for money?”
“No,” I said. “She didn't ask. Marcus told her that if she asked for five cents, he was going to take her car keys and throw them into the Grand River.”
Grandma smiled. A small, dry crease at the corner of her mouth. “Marcus is Sanford’s nephew, all right. What about Clara?”
“She doesn't call me,” I said. “She sends cards for Easter and Memorial Day. With two-sentence notes about the church choir. Dad is still running the building on Division, but Arthur Vance gets the check directly from the escrow company now. Dad’s knees are worse. He doesn't go out much.”
Grandma reached down and laid her hand on my hair. Her fingers were stiff, but the palm was still warm, the touch firm and certain.
“Good,” she whispered. “Some people need to get small before they can stop hurting the people around them.”
Ellis dropped down from the ladder, his work boots hitting the soft leaves with a solid thump. He wiped his hands on his jeans, walked over to us, and leaned down to kiss Grandma’s forehead.
“Roof’s tight, Marin,” he said. “Won't leak until 2040 at least.”
“You’re a good boy, Ellis,” Grandma said, patting his arm. “Sanford would have liked you. Sanford liked men who didn't talk while they were holding a hammer.”
Ellis grinned, his gray eyes crinkling in the sun. He looked at me, reached down, and took my gloved hand, pulling me up from the grass.
May you like
“Come here, Essie,” he said. “I want to show you something.”
***