Chapter One

There are certain smells and sounds that become hardwired in our brains, associated with a certain time or place. The smell and sound of bacon cooking hits me that way. No matter where I am or what I am doing, the splatter and hiss and the smell transport me back to The Farm. It brings along with it a tumble of associated memories.
The day always started the same. Winter, Summer, Spring or Fall. It made no difference. The mornings on a dairy farm proceed with an almost metonymic regularity. Uncle Fred was a little hard of hearing, so he had one of those old Big Ben alarm clocks that ticked so loud you could hear it clear upstairs when things were quiet. The alarm was sufficient to awake everyone in the old two-story farmhouse. The first business of the morning was to get the old wood stove fired up, and the coffee on. The sound of the opening and closing of the firebox of the old cast iron kitchen stove is so distinct, I can hear in my head just by thinking about it. When I was young, it was such a comforting series of events. I would be tucked away in my portion of the upstairs, knowing that I had another half an hour of so to lie there and drowse. Once again it was morning, and all was right with the world. Later in life things did not always start so comfortably, but I always had those memories as a kind of stable base around which the currents of everyday life flowed.
There were times when I cursed the sameness of it all. Life done to a metronome, everyone knowing the dance and keeping perfect time, but under the frustration was unshakeable belief that there would be a tomorrow, and it would be pretty much the same as today, and it wasn't such a bad thing.
Once that tumble and roll of memories start, you have to just ride along with it, not knowing exactly where you are going to end up. Sometimes it might be picking Huckleberries up on Grouse Creek, the next it might be bucking bales in the gawdawful hot tin-roofed whore of a barn, or when that same barn finally fell over on the bull, a couple of calves and a couple of suckling pigs.
I don't often eat bacon any more. The grease is hard on my digestion, and it is likely to give me heartburn for half the day. I don't order it in Restaurants because there is so much that I like better. But this morning had found me in front of the stove with a fork in my hand, listening to the sizzle and spit while I took a tumble through my memories.
This morning they landed right smack in the middle of Star Parker. That was a subject that covered a considerable amount of territory. Living in the country, you get to know everyone, or at least get to know ABOUT everyone. If you don’t know what you’ve been up to lately, just go up the road a piece and ask the neighbors. They’ll be able to tell you things about yourself that you never even knew. I had known of Star, then known Star, then didn’t know her at all. We have been in and out and crossways of each other’s paths for most of out lives. Sometimes we were on the same path, sometimes we were in collision. The ride could be as smooth as the glide of a canoe on a quiet mountain lake, or it could be a real trainwreck. Our relationship had been both. At least we never had the lack of good sense it would require to go and get married or anything. One or the other of us would always gain our senses before things went that far, although there were times when it was a close thing. I’m not saying we were never Lovers. I’m not saying we were never in love. It just always seemed that when she was in love with me, I was in love with someone else. And when I was in love with her, she could look right at me and never even see me. An Astrologer would probably say that our stars were not in alignment or something.
Star was in the grade behind me at school, so although I knew who she was, I didn't pay much attention to her. She was just another part of the landscape, until a bunch of us went ice-skating out on the slough one night. I suspect that she had arranged the order of loading into J.B.s old Buick so that she could end up in my lap. Anyway, that is where she ended up. I had never really noticed how nicely rounded her backside was, nor how well she had filled out upstairs. I had plenty of opportunity that night. She found so many reasons to twist and turn and put parts if her anatomy in my face that I was in quite a state by the time we got to the slough. A teenage boy is in a constant state of turmoil anyway, and after the provocation I had, I had to get myself under control just to get out of the car. I can't swear for sure, but it sure looked to me like she checked to make sure she had the effect on me that she wanted. I may have been under control, more or less, but it was still evident that I wasn't entirely under control. I could almost swear I caught sight of just a little "I did that ' in her grin.