“Toby! Toby! Where are you? Come here Toby!”
Toby was standing in the driveway of his family’s home gauging the wind speeds that morning by staring at the tops of a nearby stand of white pines. This meant he was close enough to hear his mother’s cries even with the windows closed. As was often the case, Mrs. Pelgren’s plaintive and desperate pleas were unrelenting once they started.
“Toby! I can’t do this alone. Come here, Toby! I need you!” Toby pivoted and slower than usual went for the side door of the house which let him into the kitchen where his mother was sure to be.
What is it this time?, he wondered. Something to do with his father most likely. Toby’s dad now required custodial care that was reaching the point beyond which Toby and his mother could competently manage. But the Pelgren’s, being who they were, did not consider obtaining additional care providers. Their situation was to be endured collectively, despite the burden each family member underwent individually.
“Yes, Mom?”
“Please sit down Toby before you go running off somewhere again,” Mrs. Pelgren said. “I need to talk to you.”
Toby sat obediently knowing more was about to be asked from him.
“I can’t do it all with your father, Toby. It’s just too much! Mrs. Pelgren looked at her son with her signature pained expression — the facial feature she seemed to wear most often nowadays.
“I know it’s difficult, Mom. You know I do what I can to help out Dad and I’ll do more as I have the time.”
“I hope so dear. I really hope so. It’s so tough. He needs so much. There is never enough time for me to do the things I need to do.” Mrs. Pelgren’s eyes became moist.
“I know Mom.” He did not like to see his mother in this state, but Toby knew he couldn’t change things. He stood up to go out to his car. He needed to get away from the house and his parents. As he walked behind his mother to get to the door he kissed her on top of her head.
Toby set the canoe into the river downstream about a half mile from where the river began to serve as a drain for the lake near the village. This stretch of the river required patience on the part of anyone hoping to navigate any kind of boat. True, a kayak would be more maneuverable when weaving in and out of the tangle of low-hanging boughs and half fallen trees that punctuated this wooded portion of the river. But Toby didn’t want to fish from a kayak. He grew up fishing with a canoe, was comfortable fishing with a canoe, and that was that.
Practice allowed Toby to zig and zag and work his way to the opening of a pond that was not too far downstream and which was cut off from houses and people due to its being surrounded by impenetrable wetland and the rough surrounding woods leading up to it. These same conditions made back casting during the summer in this small pond nearly impossible, so Toby decided to try wading.
Given the lack of rain ten days prior the water depth was manageable for his waders and he knew from past experience that the muck on the bottom in certain spots would not be too gummy. Toby was particularly excited to use some caddis flies his friend Dave had made. With the boat secure Toby waded in from the pond’s edge and spent the next three hours catching several 10-inch brook trout.
As Toby stood thigh-deep into the water of the still pond his mind vacillated between two states of awareness. One sensitivity involved being absorbed by the nature encircling him. The natural world and God were one and the same for Toby. There was no distinction. The shimmering light, the temperature of the water, the songs of birds, and countless other ambient expressions of nature at this time and in this space felt like caresses from the Creator.
The other impression occupying his consciousness was the seduction of fantasy. There were several at play. But they were all variations on a theme. They entailed Toby moving through life with confidence, finesse, and joy in his heart. Actions played out in locations that were imaginary — a reflection of his disdain for rootedness and routine.
Flipping between these mental states left Toby confused and imbalanced. It often did.
It happened again. Toby was in that place where he was too alert to nap, but to fatigued to function. He knew from experience that if he gave himself enough time he may eventually grab an hour or so of shut eye.
What intruded his thinking that afternoon was one of his reoccurring thought obsessions. Toby first read about this incident in one of the boy adventure books his grandmother used to give him at Christmas when he was younger. This book, the title of which was now long forgotten, consisted of a collection of tales meant to capture the interest and imagination of boys, who of course, liked risky and hazardous escapades. Perhaps Toby’s grandmother felt he needed a prod or two in that direction.
The yarn which struck Toby hard when he first read it at about age ten and which now was keeping him from sleeping was that of the wreck of the Monica Hartery. The Monica Hartery had been a seventy-three foot coasting schooner built in 1927 in Newfoundland and was being used by its owner at the time of its demise in 1933 as a trading vessel in and around the coast of Newfoundland.
In December of that year the Monica Hartley had sailed from Channel, Port aux Basques, Newfoundland to North Sydney, Nova Scotia to pick up a load of Cape Breton coal. The ship carried a crew of five.
After the coal was loaded, nasty winter weather set in. It delayed the departure of the Monica Hartery for several days. The crew members, all of whom ranged in age from 28 to 32, were anxious to set sail for Channel, Port aux Basques so they could be home for Christmas. Despite the continuing bad weather the impatient crew left North Sydney on December 23.
It is known that the night of December 23 and into the early morning hours of December 24 in 1933 the southwest coast of Newfoundland experienced a furious wind and blinding snow. A portion of the schooner’s decking was discovered floating near the entrance of Rose Blanche harbour, some forty-six kilometers to the east of Channel, Port aux Basques, on Christmas Eve. Later that day three bodies were found washed ashore nearby. A fourth was discovered three and half weeks later.
Toby felt so sorry for the lost crewmembers and their families. It seemed so unfair. Injustice disturbed Toby very much. And God was being very unjust on that day in 1933. The men just wanted to get home for Christmas. What kind of God would do such a thing! Toby still pondered the same thought.
Toby picked up the cappuccino for Nellie and a black coffee for himself. He balanced them carefully as he walked to the round high top table in the café where Nellie sat waiting.
“I’m glad I could get you to meet with me today, Toby,” Nellie said. “You’ve been hard to reach lately.”
“Well, you know. There’s work and there’s always stuff to do around my place,” was Toby’s response.
“Oh, yes. Your place. You mean your parent’s place, right Toby?” Nellie tried to make eye contact with Toby as she spoke, but his gaze would not meet hers. He looked downwards instead.
“Yeah, well, our place. I live there too,” said Toby still avoiding Nellie’s eyes.
“When are you going to get out of there, Toby? It’s way past time, don’t you think?”
Toby had feared Nellie would do this if they met for coffee. They had been friends since first grade and they knew each other well. Maybe too well was how Toby felt at that moment.
“It’s not so easy, you know, Nellie. Dad is sick as shit and Mom is going batshit trying to take care of him. I have to be there right now to help out.”
“Yeah, it’s too bad about your dad.” Nellie paused. “But you’re going to have to get of there sometime. You’re not going to be one of those losers whose always living with his parents, are you?”
Toby winced slightly. Nellie noticed. “I’m only trying to help you, Toby.”
Clearly Nellie was being impatient with him. Toby did not like it that she was.
“We’re going over to Jimmy’s shop after work, Toby. How about you coming with us?” It didn’t often happen that the guys Toby worked with would ask him to join them for beers after work.
Toby hesitated before responding. It left just enough time for Larry to quip, “C’mon Toby, drink a beer with us!”
“Sure. Thanks. OK,” Toby stuttered. The invitation left him floating somewhere between grateful and anxious. He knew he should do this. It is healthy and good to interact with others Toby was often told. But social situations almost always left him a bit fearful.
So, the four of them that comprised the crew of Don’s Landscaping hopped into their pick-ups and went over to Jimmy’s garage, which served as a tinkering workshop for many of Jimmy’s crafty hobbies and also as a man cave where beers were drunk and cigarettes and joints were smoked.
After his second Bud Light Toby knew he had had enough, but as was often the case at times like these he wasn’t quite sure how to extricate himself from the gathering. “Gotta go,” Toby said as he straightened himself up from the folding metal chair.
“But Toby”, said Don. “We want to hear more about what you think, you know about the big stuff. Life. And what it all means. You’re the thinker here. You got your ideas cooking up there. Give us regular guys some of your wisdom.”
Toby was the quiet one at work. He did his tasks silently and rarely got involved with the dramas that always seemed to occupy the other guys. Whenever he did give an opinion on some matter there were winks and nods and comments like, “So, this is what the professor thinks, guys!”
Toby didn’t mean to sound different from the others. He really did want to fit in.
“Sorry, but I got nothing more for you today. Thanks for the beers. See you tomorrow.” Toby walked out of the garage to the sound of three guys shouting, “Awwww!” and laughing loudly.
“OK, Toby!” Don yelled. “Maybe next time!”
Toby’s father was ill. It had been nearly two years since Mr. Pelgren began to display debilitating symptoms. He was devoid of most of his energy. He tried to navigate his thoughts through a sea of brain fog. And he was chronically short of breath.
“Hi Dad,” Toby called out as he entered the living room walking by the dusty old recliner where his father most often slumped.
“Hi son,” Mr. Pelgren said.
The sun was rising. The television was on. Domestic details were all in their place that morning, including poor old Mr. Pelgren in his chair.
“Do you want me to take you for a drive today after work, Dad?”
Mr. Pelgren angled his head ever so slightly in Toby’s direction. “Maybe, Toby. Let’s see how I’m doing then, OK?”
“Sure, Dad. We’ll see how you’re doing then.”
Mr. Pelgren returned to staring at the TV with his now typical blank and absent glare. Mr. Pelgren’s gaze told Toby that his father did not comprehend a thing going on with the television program. But Toby also picked up on the fact that his dad did not seemed distressed or in pain. He was just there. Not comatose, but also not animated. I guess this is a good thing, Toby thought.
“See you, Dad. Gotta go to work.”
“Bye, Toby.”
Mr. Pelgren knew he was dying. Every element of his reality was colored by that fact.
Toby liked his alone time. He did not exclaim to others that he liked to be by himself. Everyone who knew Toby simply knew he preferred to be solitary.
There were spaces in the woods near his home that he had discovered as a boy and which he returned to often even as a young adult. These were among his places of solitude where Toby went when he needed to feel more grounded.
That sense of being rooted, of being stable, was far too elusive for Toby. What with work at Don’s Landscaping and the constant pressures coming from his parents combining to drain him of not just his energy but of his soul, Toby desired respite. The woods gave him peace. The towering pines and oaks were his sentries and his angels protecting him and providing comfort.
During the week passed, Toby tried to get along with people as he did most times, but much of the effort left him more spent than usual. So on this day, Toby walked along his trail, one he had trod enough over years to establish as his path, ushering him to the cliff.
The cliff was a granite outcrop shaped perfectly by the glacier which had scraped and shaped this land ten-thousand years ago. It was a forty-foot drop from the precipice to its base, which is where Toby built a campfire site of ringed stone about fifteen years prior. Beside it he placed a log he had found, which held a divot just right for him to sit on.
Toby did not light a fire that day. Instead he sat still scrutinizing the beech and poplars and maples nearby. He was restless. He felt it and examined the feeling as if on high looking down on himself, detached and disembodied. Toby thought that if he could just see the true cause of his anxiety, then he could somehow effect his emotions — make them more positive, more enlightened.
Despite his mental exertions, his unpleasant and restive mood remained. So, Toby just let the rustling of the leaves by the gentle breeze and the undertone of bird song wash over him as he continued to stare at the beech and poplar and maple trees.
Nellie called his phone. “Hi Toby! I’m going over to West Leb for some shopping. Want to come with me? I can pick you up.”
“Thanks, Nellie. Yeah. God knows I need to get away.” Here Toby paused. “But Nellie. Don’t be going on about how I need to leave home and strike out on my own and be independent and all of that kind of shit. Can you not be doing that today?”
“Sure. OK. I promise,” Nellie chirped. “You know how I feel about it, but I won’t stress out your fragile mind this afternoon. I’ll be over in about twenty minutes, OK?”
“See you then,” Toby replied.
Toby had known Nellie since they had attended elementary school together. They had been friends ever since. Toby used to get teased by the other boys for having a girl as his best friend, but in his heart Toby could never understand what was wrong with that.
One line Toby and Nellie never crossed was to refer to each other as boyfriend and girlfriend. Neither one of them ever pushed for that designation. They were simply happy to just be friends.
Nellie wanted to buy some clothes and other things that Toby did not pay much attention to. He wandered around the stores Nellie took him to looking at the merchandise with no particular interest in any of it. What caught his eye more was watching Nellie examining this and that as she determined which items to put into her shopping cart.
She has confidence, Toby thought. She doesn’t worry like I do.
Toby saw how Nellie’s countenance was genuine. Her appearance was relaxed. And the natural look on Nellie’s face settled into a slight smile even when there was nothing obvious to be grinning about.
Toby took comfort in observing these traits of Nellie’s. He was glad she had asked him to join her that afternoon. And she did not press him about how he needed to be more autonomous and separate himself from his family. Not once.
Toby could not shake the memory of what had happened back up at the hunting camp on Cooper Hill Road. He was passing the road’s entrance in his truck on the way to a job site. The incident had been four of five years before as best Toby could remember.
A group of fathers from the town, including his own, had taken their sons to do some bear hunting up at a camp some of the dads owned jointly. Toby did not want to hunt black bears, but his dad did, and Mr. Pelgren wanted Toby to join him.
One thing about the experience that began to grate on Toby’s nerves early on was when he observed a few of the men and lads baiting bears with old junk food from the town’s general store. It was stuff like stale Drakes Ring Dings and Devil Dogs and expired Hostess Twinkies. It seemed to Toby cheap and lazy and unfair to “hunt” bears that way.
Sure enough, Tim’s dad, Mr. Thurston, shot an adult black bear which sported a thin white crest on the side of its neck. He strung it up back at the camp for everyone to see. Mr. Thurston called for the boys to gather around, so he could demonstrate how to butcher the bear.
When time came around for Mr. Thurston to slit open the bear’s gut out fell bile-covered Drake’s Ring Dings, Devil Dogs, and Hostess Twinkies. Most of the junk food was still enclosed in its packaging.
All of the boys and some of the fathers laughed. Toby looked around him in disgust and his mind was suddenly transported to a state he rarely dwelt in.
“This isn’t funny!” Toby snapped. “This isn’t real hunting. It’s fucken’ gross!”
Everyone stared at Toby. Mr. Pelgren looked toward the ground.
“Hey, Pelgren,” Mr. Thurston called to Mr. Pelgren. “Your kid’s got a big mouth! If you don’t have the stomach for this Toby, look away.” The snide use of the word “stomach” made the guys laugh again. Mr. Pelgren looked up at his son with consternation, if not alarm. He knew this was not going to end well.
The next morning a note was found by Toby pinned to the cabin door of the room he was sharing with his father. It read, “Ur not wanted. Go hom.”
Toby and Mr. Pelgren left the hunting camp and the boys and their dads and went home. They were never invited back to the hunting camp.
It was one of those nights.
Toby laid awake in the dark of the bedroom he had had for as long as he could remember. The house had a deafening silence. Toby did not know what time it was. Three or four in the morning? He didn’t know and it didn’t matter. He was wide awake. A dream had awakened him. That he was sure of. But what the dream was about he did not know. He was left only with impressions and feelings, mere remnants, no clearly recalled details.
Toby propped himself up in bed and did not turn on the light deliberately so that he could more easily let his emotions flow through him. He had enough experience with his own style of emotional reflection to know to not fight his feelings or suppress them when they were potent enough to awaken him. His sentiments were guideposts, signs of changes to come.
That night he recognized anxiety, fear, and uncertainty. He also discerned anticipation — a type of expectancy which helped to smooth the rough edges of his more agitated feelings. These sensations were conspicuous enough, but for this night anyway, they did not carry the force to develop into some kind of actionable plans.
Instead, Toby sat in bed and in the dark suspended in what was like an ether consisting of part imagination and part objective reality. He communed with his demons and gave thanks to his angels while floating there. The wait until first light seemed to take forever. It often did.
As Mr. Pelgren declined, Mrs. Pelgren grew increasingly agitated. The combination made the Pelgren home insufferable. Toby knew what he could control and what he could not control. The circumstance he found his parents in he could not control. Realizing the lack of command he had gave him some degree of ease in an otherwise unbearable situation.
If Toby’s father understood or accepted his fate he did not let others, especially the members of his family, know about it. His energy and self-control lessened as his sullenness and despondency grew.
“How are you doing today, Dad?” was Toby’s typical line of greeting to start each day.
A grunt with flat affect was the usual reply.
“I’m sorry this is happening to you.”
“Yeah, well I’m sorry to.”
“Want to go for a ride today?”
“And have me shit up your truck seat again?”
“I’ll cover it proper this time.”
“No. I don’t think so.”
After a couple of minutes of silence except for the blaring television Toby asked, “I’m going to turn down the TV, alright Dad?”
“I don’t care.”
Toby lowered the volume. Mr. Pelgren stared at the television screen unmoved. The repeats of old shows from the seventies played on while Toby and his dad sat quietly. Toby felt trapped and sorry for his father and mother at the same time.
Mrs. Pelgren sat quietly by herself at the kitchen table gnawing on a fingernail and looking worried.
Loneliness was far from an all encompassing experience for Toby. He rarely felt lonesome. However, today was different. Toby wanted to be with Nellie. He wanted to be near her self-reliance and her serenity.
Toby texted her. -Hey, wass up?
-I’m trying to figure out this sewing machine.
-Sewing machine? What sewing machine?
-One my Grannie had.
-So, ur starting to sew?
-Yeah. Thinken about it.
-Since when?
-Since I decided to sew. -Did you text me for a reason?
-I want to hang out with you.
-OK. Come over. -I’m gonna stay with this machine though.
-OK. See ya soon.
By late that evening Nellie and Toby could stitch together two pieces of old fabric on Nellie’s Grannie’s sewing machine. They smiled at each other enjoying the thought that they had done something new together.
When Nellie hugged Toby goodnight at her kitchen door as he was leaving she kissed his left cheek. This was an unusual thing for Nellie to do. Toby liked it. A lot.
It was a Saturday morning in winter. The snowbanks on the side of Route 4A were still white and not yet showing the grime of late winter.
Toby was driving his truck, but he had no destination. This was a fantasy drive. That is what Toby called these drives when he just wanted to let his imagination expand unhindered. On that day, Toby’s mind was conjuring possible places he could be aiming for as destinations as he drove his truck.
He was envisioning places far away. Locations he saw on YouTube videos or on the several travel sites he liked to scan.
Toby first pretended to be going to Door County, Wisconsin. He remembered seeing a picture of a restored red pick-up truck parked against a blue painted barn with white trim. An apple tree was nearby. The picture made him feel peaceful. So he wanted to be in Door County.
From there he would drive north in Wisconsin and connect with U.S Route 2 heading west. He saw himself traveling across northern Minnesota trying to find the headwaters of the Mississippi River.
Toby’s next make-believe was of him feeling free and untethered driving mile after mile on Interstate 10 in Texas. He would explore the hill country west of San Antonio.
Finally, he pictured himself in Indiana parking his truck beside a cornfield just before its harvest. In his daydream he walked deep into the field of cornstalks, all of them taller than he was. He visualized becoming fearful that he would be lost amongst all that tall corn.
In the evening, he would feel content sitting alone in his motel room with his only task being to figure out where he was going to drive the next day.
