Category: Small town America

In the Last Days There Will Come Times of Difficulty (2 Timothy: 1-2)

Morse Sheffield lay alone in his bed in the late heat of August. Shades pulled down against the sun, darkening the room. The air, close and heavy. A thin sheet over him. He is dreaming his unpleasant dreams.

Someone on the stairs. Two of them. His father. Leave the cat alone. Do your homework. His mother. Come take your bath. Morse? Morrison? You hear me? Cold and wet. Dust in the air and in his mouth. Knocking on the door. Go away. I’m not dressed. He’d wet the bed again. His legs would not move. Tangled sheets around his ankles.

“Morse?”

“Morse? Are you here?”

A hand pushes against the door.

“He’s in here,” one of them, a young woman, says.

“Oh my God, Morse. It’s like an oven in here. Morse? Morse?”

“It must be a hundred in here.”

“Morse? Can you get up? Simon, open that window. Morse?

“Morse, why is air conditioner off? Can you get up?”

“It’s Didi, Sigrid’s daughter, Morse. Can you sit up? Do you need help?”

Didi.

“Do you have any water? Simon, go get him some water. Help him up.”

I need to go to the bathroom. What time is it?

“It’s two o’clock. Do you need help to get up?”

Yes. Can you give me my robe?

“Get him his robe. And turn on the air conditioner.”

“Don’t turn it on. Leave it. I don’t want it on.”

“But it’s so hot in here, you’ll die. Get him some water. Do you want some water?”

I need to go to the bathroom.

“Simon will help you. Morse, Simon will help you. Get him his robe so he can go to the bathroom.”

“It’s Simon, Morse, can you get up? Morse, lean over this way.”

I can’t. Don’t touch that shoulder.

Simon walks with Morse into the bathroom, helps him turn and eases back him down on the toilet seat.

“Are you okay in there?”

Don’t come in. Just help me get my shorts down.

“Ask him if he wants something to eat. Should I call 911?”

Don’t call anyone. I won’t let them in. I will not go. I’ve told them before. I’m staying here. Just help me pee. Please. I’ll eat something. Don’t call anyone.

For over a week, the heat had been oppressive. Over ninety each day. The nights unbearable.

Sigrid, who came in to clean once a month, is the one who had found him. She knocked on the bedroom door. He told her to leave. To go away. She called the brother. The one with the house by the water. The only family of his she knew. No answer. She called her daughter Didi.

“You have to come to Mr. Sheffield’s house. He’s in his bedroom with the door closed and it’s a hundred and ten up here. He won’t let me go in.

Morse Sheffield had been a Navy man. He joined right out of high school. 1944. An air crewman, flying patrol bombers on the Pacific coast.

He met Margret in college. In ’55 they sailed from New York to Gothenburg on the freighter Drottningholm to meet her parents in Stockholm. They married there and, after Oslo, Paris, and London, they made a home back on the east coast, in the town where his grandfather and his grandfather’s father had grown up.  

He had no trouble finding work. Enjoyed working, no matter the job. He was gregarious. They liked his attitude.

He and Margret were together. They had a daughter. Life had no end.

Then Margret died and, soon after, Agatha got married and moved away.

He stayed in their small dark house on the corner of a quiet street up the hill from the center of town. His sadness weighed him down.

One winter he’d fallen down the back stairs carrying a bucket of trash out to the garage and he lay on the ice in the cold till a neighbor saw him. When the ambulance came, he told them to go away. He thanked his neighbor and told the police officer he would not be taken from his home against his will.

You have no right to take me anywhere. This is my home. Getting old is not a crime. I want to stay in my home. This is my home, and you have no right to take me from it. Living alone is not a crime.

The officer helped him back up the stairs, made a note in his notepad and said, “Mr. Sheffield, you’d better get someone to put a railing up along the stairs there for you.”

Thirty-five more years he lived there. Went working in an office in a nearby town, keeping house, paying the bills on time, reading books on the war, Lincoln, the depression. All the presidents. He kept his Saab running, saved his money, trusted few people, had fewer friends. Year after year. Solitary. Thoughtful. Kind. Carefully generous. Never speaking ill of another. Keeping things in order. Was he happy? It was not a question anyone would think to ask him.

He started his own business and kept it going for a few years, working out of his home, selling insurance for a company in Hartford, never taking out a policy of his own. He never talked about illness, infirmity, or death.

He’d say that keeping your affairs in order, preparing and planning, not being a burden, was what mattered. He wrote a will. Leaving the house to his son-in-law. The one who had married Agatha. His only child. His only daughter, who died young and fresh, just like her mother had.

He turned the lights off when he left a room. Wrote reminder notes to himself and thank-you and birthday cards to others. He cooked when he was able and ate what he made, and then later, when he couldn’t manage the pots and pans, heated up the Swanson’s pot pies and frozen dinners in the microwave. He didn’t renew his tickets to the symphony. He had to stop walking to the beach and the market and the bookstore.

He wrote notes with detailed instructions in uniform capital letters and taped them up on everything. “Unplug when not in use” over light switches. “Do not touch” on bookshelves, file cabinets, the stove, cupboards.

He catalogued boxes of 35 mm prints, names, dates, and places on the back. Made notes of thoughts and quotes and left them folded in the books he’d read. David McCullough. Goodwin. Tuchman. Caro. The Bible.

Didi waited at the bottom of the stairs. Simon had helped Morse fit himself into the stairlift. He rode down holding on to the armrests, in his slippers and his robe.

She had opened the back door and the window above the sink. He ate the eggs and sausage and sipped the tea she prepared for him, eating without speaking, and when he’d had enough, he asked Simon to help him go back upstairs.

You’re both kind, he told them. I don’t want you to call anyone, and please shut the door when you leave.

In the evening, Didi returned with a small dinner she prepared. When she could not waken him, she called the police. The ambulance came and took him to the local hospital. He refused treatment and was moved to a bed near a window in the nursing home nextdoor. He took no food. He accepted only pain medications he could take with a sip of water.

Morse Sheffield passed away in bed in a quiet room near a window. Neither in the bed of his dreams nor in the one or in the manner of his own choosing.

Small Potatoes

Moses Singletary was scheduled to be the first speaker at the Thursday evening Board of Selectmen meeting public comment period but he was late, and so Marvin Swallows and Bertie McGinty went ahead and had their turn making their comments to the board. According to procedure at board meetings, their comments would be taken up at a future meeting, though by experience, no date would be set for that and, given the way the board worked, it was possible, and even likely, that they would never reach a decision about when they might even get to scheduling a discussion, let alone actually taking up the issue in a future public meeting, by which time their comments would be buried among the “Old Business” issues on the agenda, which required the re-initiation by the chair and agreement of at least two of the other four members, for discussion, and so they had not gotten to any issues raised in public comment periods in thirty-seven years of recorded board meetings. Nearly all the women and most of the men town, when they paid attention, either called it the BRA, Board of Recalcitrant Adolescents, or something the local paper wouldn’t print The new board chair, Brett Bogart, was the owner of a successful local business, Small Potatoes, located in the center of town, with, admittedly, the best fresh homemade French fries on the planet, served in neat European-style folded paper cones, with a variety of seasonings, available at no extra charge. The shop was a fixture in the community and his family was one of some sway and influence. Brett’s campaign slogan and his approach to governance was, “Our business is Good for Business” and most in town knew it meant something like, “Keep the status quo, support and protect, at all costs, the interests of the businesses in town and beware of outsiders or do-gooders who will bring ruin to what we have and cherish now and will want to build more parking” Marvin Swallows began speaking, raising, once again, his concern about the bell tower in the town square. “Anyone can see,” he said, “that the sea wall is cracking, eroding from below, on land that’s sinking each year in some places and rising in others, and soon, maybe in the next nor’easter it will fall, taking our houses with it and none of us can get flood insurance and we have to apply for federal assistance now to make the structural changes, and we can’t afford to just study it for another three years, because our homes are all we have and none of us are your town millionaires. So I make a motion that the Board…” “… I’m sorry, Mr. Swallows, that’s out of order. This is the public comment period, you can’t make motions at this time, next, Ms. McGinty… next,” Chair Bogart said. “Can’t you let Marvin finish,” said Ms. McGinty, “I’ll give my time over to him.” “Sorry, no can do, Bertie, and you’re out of order, too. That’s not the way we work. Next… Mr. Singletary.” Moses looked surprised. He was just getting his thoughts in order, having forgotten his introductory remarks, and reordering his notes. His hands were shaking. His voice was tremulous. “Chair Bogarts,” he said. “I’m not going to ask to give my time over to Marvin there so don’t cut me off, thank you. I have a petition here signed by forty-seven certified residents of the town, many of them right here tonight with a request for the Board to put the issue of the policy of the Board appointing or removing members of town committees, boards, and commissions, up for a vote on the next meeting agenda.” “It’s Bogart, no “s” Mr. Singletary, and time is short. Please get to the point of the petition you have there.” “I will Mr. Chair, but I have the floor, and this is the public comment period, and I am speaking for the public.  So please don’t interrupt me again until I relinquish the floor, as you so willy-nilly do to others. I will read the policy proposal, but I will say first and foremost, that this policy and every policy you may make is less of a concern to us than the board’s total lack of consistency with which policies are implemented. The board has an appalling record, for all to see, of following or not following policies or applying policies arbitrarily or retroactively to suit the board’s whims and preferences. And let me remind you that the board is elected by the people to do the administrative work the people have assigned to it and nothing more.” “You are out of order!” “No, you are out of order. Like it or not it, this is a public comment period, whether or not you like what the comments are or who is making them. But before I do, I want you to know that we all see what’s going on here. Whether it’s affordable housing, or the water regulations, or COVID mandates, or zoning, or the climate committee work, things we all care about, your wishes or your will are not our command anymore. “Moses, you’re not delivering the freaking ten commandments here. Get to your point, if there is one.” “You want the point? Here it is. If you remember your history, Alexis de Tocqueville visited us in the 1830’s and wrote a book praising our form of Town Meeting democracy… “Mr. Singletary you’re…” “This is not a question-and-answer period, Mr. Bogart, it is for public comment, and I will continue my public comment…” At that point there was, for the first time all evening, a round of applause from those in attendance. “You tell him, Moses!” they cheered, and they clapped louder, and Bogart called for quiet, and Moses kept on speaking, “… but de Tocqueville soon came to realize that democratically elected officials, like yourselves, when unchecked, would hold too tightly to their power and authority and democracy would be undermined and he said, and I quote…” Bogart banged his gavel on the tables. “No French quotes are allowed in here, Moses.” He turned beseechingly to the Town Clerk. There was a long moment of silence. Looks among the members of the board were exchanged. The Town Clerk rose to her feet. “I see no reason why quotes of any sort are out of order here,” she said. “You’re out of order too,” said Bogart. “The time for public comment has expired.” And then, in the silence that fell, forty-two of the fifty-three members of the public in attendance for the comment period, feeling somewhat vindicated, collected their things and made their way out the door. They gathered in the parking lot in the fading mid-summer light. They looked at one another. They all realized that Moses had not read a single word of the petition on board policy he came to read, and the warm sense of hope that they had felt when they left the building was, all too quickly, evaporating like sweat off a pig’s nose, into the cool night air.