Falls Road: a short story

I lived on a farm on Falls Road in those days, a shortcut mile over hay grass and nettle fields to school. After class I’d hike across the playground to a pinch in the tree line. A girl didn’t think twice back then. This was September of 1967. I was fourteen.

The trail cut through autumn growth, sloping to a train bed that ran through town and along a gravel trench, before rising to a thicket of scrub behind the Shelburne Museum. I followed a fence past the blacksmith shed and beneath the Ticonderoga's steam funnel cresting over the trees, then north to the IGA parking lot. Beyond that, town land and empty meadow. Most days this saved me fifteen minutes home.

The boys hid where the dirt path dropped to the railroad tracks, shielded by elm and drunken maple. They had bothered me for weeks, prodding me in the school hallway, outside the cafeteria, and after gym class. Tugged my dress, knocked my books to the ground, the cruel way boys flirt. I didn’t figure it to go further. But I’d made a cutting remark to Perley Hannifer and he wouldn’t let it ride.

When I reached the edge of the tracks, they stepped out. Their knees damp from rotting leaves. Their ignorant faces curdled by angry brows and hungry mouths. They handled me like the hogs and cows they tended so intimately on farms as far away as Hinesburg and Vergennes.

Perley lay on top. A backwash of Fresca and macaroni gagged in my throat. Gravel scraped my skin where thin cotton pulled away. I conjured a train pounding down the tracks, fierce with God’s holy revenge, the iron coupler smashing us to nothing. But it never came. I lay there until the leaves lost color with the falling night.

This carried on through October. If I took another path, they found me. I learned to lift my skirt so the cinders wouldn’t stain, but I couldn’t keep from bruising my legs. Someone must have seen, yet no one asked. And who was there to tell?

Thursdays were a respite. The boys stayed late in shop after automotive class. The day I’m remembering was early November, the air cool enough to wish for a winter coat. I passed the open cement bay on my way to the playground. Everyone heard the crash.

Some fool backed a car on the lift cockeyed, and the boys got to work on the axle beam or the oil pan or whatever they do down there. The car groaned and slid off the lift. Most got away safely, but Perley had been on his back. By the time I pushed through, he was half a man. His lips like salted worms. A froth of bubbles spilled from them. He never walked again.

Soon other Perleys took his place. Each season, Champlain Valley Union High bussed in a fresh crop of dark-browed boys who treated women like farm animals. Always with the same ignorant hunger.

One by one the war picked them off. Their ignorance made a feast for Nixon’s appetite. I learned that all men are hungry, even the old. Vermont is a small state, yet nineteen thousand were called. There’s a memorial down by Bethel. I know some of the names. Some, I still hold a grudge.

After graduation I became a free love girl. I gave it away with flowers in my hair. But it was my choice. The world had changed. Giving is one thing. I have no tolerance for taking. I’m glad for what happened to Perley.

I’m a nurse at Winooski Senior Center now. The farm on Falls Road was torn down long ago. A convenience store stands in its place. I drive by on my way to work, past the school, the museum, then fifteen minutes across the bridge in traffic on Route 7. Some days I hardly recognize where I am anymore.

Perley occupies a private bed in rehab. The men who shipped to Vietnam, there’s something missing inside. Something cold and inaccessible. My first two husbands were like that, barely kept the lid on. But Perley never went. He stayed here. Soft and vulnerable. Helpless.

At the end of my shift, I lock his door behind me. Fold back the sheets. I wash his warm genitals and empty his colostomy bag. I tend to him with intimate care.

So many Septembers come and gone. God help me, I’d do it all again. Loosen the screws on the lift. All of it.

Frank Ladd grew up in Shelburne, Vermont. Now he lives west of Boston, where he is working on a first novel between gigs as designer, developer and art director.

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