'The Way Life Should Be'

Maine is big, and has a long coastline. I mostly know about the coastline, where I live. There were, in the almost thirty years I have enjoyed life here, a few expeditions inland, cross-state to Montreal and Quebec City and New Brunswick. Bad roads, strange people, some holding shotguns, not loaded but broken open, and as I drove by the strange people kept one hand in one pocket, no doubt holding some perfectly good shells. I drove into a gas station and nobody came out to pump--yes, a regular pump, with a glass cylinder filled with orange-colored gas and a handle. I went in and there were strange people, one in a wheelchair. I said I needed gas and the person in the wheelchair asked why. Someone locked the door behind me and we sat around for a while, looking at each other. "I am from away," I said, and a hairy person said, "No kidding." Were they going to rob me? After killing me, of course? Any torture? Did I care?

I remembered my coastal neighbor, a gnarled man named Jezz, leaning down from the antique that he says is a tractor, after I shouted up that there was a dead raccoon in my pond. "In Maine, if you don't care," Jezz shouted, "it don't matter."

"Do I care?" I asked the wheelchair person.

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