It was the very end of fall—when the biting edge of winter starts to consume that preceding season.
Will Northcutt had just moved into the log cabin on the south bank of the mighty Aroostook River in Oxbow, Maine. He’d arrived with a meager collection of belongings and an even scarcer assortment of food.
After awakening from a deep slumber, he noticed two apples on his counter leaning against each other for support, slightly more red than green—probably due to their embarrassment that they needed each other.
Three days prior, he had arrived at the modest two-room abode, and the thirty acres on which it sat. He’d recently inherited the property from an uncle that he barely knew existed. His uncle—a handyman by trade—had no wife or children and lived a simple life here in the northern mitten of Maine.
On his first full day, after unloading his modest pile of furniture and other belongings, he’d driven to Mama Lou’s in Masardis to buy some provisions as he only had some salami and water in his refrigerator, and nuts in his cupboard—stuff he knew wouldn’t spoil.
He had noticed a Volkswagen sunflower bus resting on the dirt outside the store. The floorboards creaked as Will greeted the woman behind the counter with a nod. Normally, before looking for the foodstuffs he needed, he would have at least offered a cheerful “Hey!” or perhaps introduced himself since he was living in rural America for the first time in his thirty-five years. However, she was engaged in an animated discussion with an elderly woman with long white hair that spilled down below a burgundy knit hat.
“I’ve got everything loaded up that you had ordered, Mrs. Eastergaard. Should last you a good month!”
“Oh at the very least! All except maybe the whiskey. And thank you again!”
“You betcha. And thanks for the tip!”
“It’s not a tip. It’s a bribe for you subscribing to the Substack that my grandson set up for me two months ago. I’m publishing all sorts of things on there every day!”
“Will do,” replied the woman behind the counter, with the sort of soft, perfunctory tone that someone projects when they will never act on their pledge.
Will did not get a good look at her face before the door slammed shut. As he searched for a large canister of oatmeal, he heard the wheezing cough of Mrs. Eastergaard’s engine starting up. It sounded like a croup patient.
It had been impossible not to notice the house the several times he’d driven by it in his F-150 since moving into his cabin. Oxbow only has twenty-nine households and fifty-six residents. It was the only structure that he could see as he drove along the stretch of the gravel drive that followed the Aroostook River like a dog following its master home.
There were less than a handful of homes on the entirety of the drive that resides where the Aroostook forms an oxbow tail that looks like the circular squiggle in a children’s marble run game, and three were far enough off the road that he couldn’t see them at all as he rode by.
It looked like it might be the original home in all of Oxbow—a majestic light blue Victorian with beautiful stick and ball fretwork. The paint was peeling off in large sections like the house was trying to shed its coat like Houdini extricating himself from a straitjacket.
It stood on a bluff above the Aroostook, showing its age as it slightly leaned to the left as if trying to correct its failing posture. Tall weeds framed the house, though there were signs of life in that there was a path wide enough for a human to walk through the weeds leading from the long gravel driveway to the front door. Someone had been trampling through the weeds, but he had not seen any vehicle in the driveway—until now.
He did a double-take when he spotted a vintage Volkswagen bus parked on the driveway that had distinctive yellow sunflowers painted on the outside. Mrs. Eastergaard was his neighbor!
Will was amused when he heard the elderly woman tell the counter lady that she was on Substack because when he was not installing or repairing roofs, he was a writer. His second book, Starting After Zero, was almost done, and his first book, Zero, which had sold seventy-seven copies, was still on Amazon. He was as methodical a writer as he was an installer of roofs. He had his work hours, and he stuck with them.
Therefore, when he returned home after spotting the sunflower Volkswagen that afternoon, he still followed his usual regimen. He spent a few hours putting away the provisions and unpacking the remaining items he had brought with him from Massachusetts, ate dinner, took a bath and then worked on Starting After Zero. It was only then that he allowed himself to log onto Substack to do what he’d thought about doing all day—find Mrs. Eastergaard.
It was easy given her unusual name of Danish descent which means a farm situated in the east. Quite fitting, he thought.
Astrid Eastergaard instantly popped up. Her Substack was named, “Daily Dallies.” He noticed that she only had one subscriber and had been on the platform for several months.
Her lack of subscriptions was not due to her inactivity. As he started to scroll through her posts, she published one every single day. She never wrote more than one sentence. Will liked to start at the beginning, so he looked at her first post.
I woke up this morning with a crick in my back, but it didn’t prevent me from making my maple pancakes.
Will smiled; He liked her humility. He went on to the second post.
I ate the rest of the leftover pancakes and though they are good reheated, I wish my daughter was here with me to have eaten them hot yesterday.
That was sad; Will felt her loneliness. He moved on to the third.
Going to the Braden Theatre Presque Isle today though I could watch something on Netflix because there is a chance I might run into somebody.
Will sighed. He knew loneliness being thirty-five and divorced with no children. He came out here since he’d read and loved Walden as a high schooler. He figured that if moving into the woods helped Thoreau find himself, then his uncle’s unexpected gift might be the key to his future. He knew he could survive out here despite the remoteness, given that everyone needs a roof over their head. But even Thoreau ultimately migrated back to town.
He closed his laptop and drifted off to sleep, thinking about his sunflower Volkswagen bus neighbor.
The following day he started what would pass for a job with a general construction company in the area, a gig he’d arranged before moving out here. While he was not one to obsess about money, he was not a fool. He liked eating regular meals and being able to pay his bills. It wasn’t a full-time position, but they were going to use him on all roofing jobs that they had since the old guy retired and they promised there were enough projects for him in the area including Presque Isle to have three to five days of work most weeks.
As he nailed down asphalt shingles on a roof under a dying sun, he wondered what Mrs. Eastergaard had posted that morning.
That night, he logged back in during his traditional Substack writing and discovery hour and noticed that her subscriber count was still one.
He started scrolling through her entire two months of posts. There were lots of food posts—about making cranberry walnut muffins, vegetarian lasagna, cabbage soup, and numerous other concoctions that made him long to visit her kitchen. Other days she recorded her encounters with wildlife, such as Spotted large moose loafing on the shoulder near The Homestead Lodge.
Some posts were logistical such as My Visa bill usually comes by now, but it is not here yet? and I think I can get at least a few more years out of my toaster oven, but the toast increasingly gets stuck. There was one reference to her vehicle. If I didn’t adhere to a biannual undercarriage rustproofing schedule, my sunflower bus would be in the graveyard by now.
Undercarriage? Will smiled as he postulated that this word had not been used since the era of horses and buggies.
Almost without exception, the posts were about the flotsam of her daily life. Will enjoyed their earnestness, although he began to be troubled by one thing. He could find no references to other people, not even the grandson she mentioned in Mama Lou’s. What’s up with that? he wondered.
He did glean one important piece of information from the post that read Happy eight-first birthday to me—thanks for the delectable cake the birthday girl baked for myself! She must live alone.
Will shut his laptop quite roughly. This was too sad to read, especially right before bedtime, even for someone like him who never cried. He tried to distract himself by thinking about the attractive young late-twenty-something woman he’d met earlier today at the new job. He wondered if she was spoken for.
The next evening, after he had removed his “tar clothes” (as he liked to call them given their hopelessly gummed up condition in which they could stand up by themselves), showered and had a spartan dinner, he logged back onto Substack to see what Mrs. Eastergaard was up to. It was strange that she was his neighbor, and he knew her name, but he really knew nothing about her—except exactly what she ate, where she shopped, what movies she saw, what animals she spotted, and that she might be very lonely.
Despite his seriousness in building his author platform and working on his second book, Will wasn’t exactly a serial subscriber. In fact, he only subscribed to six other Substacks, mostly about home repair. He did not have a large following himself. One-hundred-seventeen subscribers had chosen to receive his newsletter, Total Zero.
He logged back in and then after working on a post about his close encounter with a black bear that morning that he thought had a similar temperament to his late grandfather.
Then he ventured over to Daily Dallies. As always, it was a one sentence missive.
Is anyone out there?
It was simple. Direct. Poignant.
Will took action. He hovered his cursor over the button and clicked “Subscribe.”
He leaned back in his chair, the glow of his laptop illuminating his face, and instantly felt a deep sense of disquiet. He stroked his beard, as if to calm the conflict he felt inside his heart.
He had violated his own personal code of conduct by contacting a neighbor, when he valued his own privacy—particularly because he had not disclosed that he lived in cabin down the road in the lot next to hers. Who knew where that click would lead?
Despite his reservations, he felt a strong urge to help her. She wrote that post because she was alone in the world—an old woman living in a remote place that wasn’t easy even for a strong young man like him. And even someone who loves their own company sometimes needs to interact with others. Heck, even Thoreau kept three chairs in his house.
The following evening, after a long day of nailing down shingles on a steep roof over in Masardis, Will was home. After his dinner and bath, he pecked away on the keyboard on Starting After Zero for his usual one hour as he applied his typical discipline.
However, he just wasn’t feeling creative as he was eager to see what impact his subscription may or may not have had. Well maybe eager was not an apt word—unless you define excitation as a state of tremulous unease. Anxious was probably a more accurate term. He chided himself for being a pansy—why should he fear the reaction of an eighty-one-year old widow?
When he logged in, there was the typical one sentence post waiting for him.
All is right with the universe, a miracle has happened and I have a subscriber—which is as much as I could ever expect or need!
Will was touched. He had done the right thing. It was clear that her only previous subscriber had been herself and that having another subscriber was deeply meaningful to her.
Nonetheless, he still felt trepidation as to where this connection might lead. He really did not know her at all as a person.
7.
However, he soon found out more. Over the ensuing weeks, as winter started blowing snow down on the County (as Aroostook residents call Aroostook County), her posts revealed that her repertoire expanded to blueberry, blackberry, and persimmon pancakes. He also learned that her husband Ernie must have died ten years ago—a fact gleaned from a post last week. I cooked my husband Ernie’s favorite roast on his birthday but he has not been able to wolf down any for a decade so I had to eat it by my lonesome.
It shook him to his core.
He confirmed his interpretation of her post by finding an online obituary of Ernest Eastergaard on legacy.com. It was very sparse, but indicated that he died in 2014 at age seventy-five, leaving a wife Astrid.
He was also unsettled by the fact that every other Tuesday, Mrs. Eastergaard posted a rather cryptic note about driving to see a doctor in Presque Isle. She left unsaid what the visits were for. The brief glimpse he caught of her in Mama Lou’s lent the impression that, while she was elderly, she was not frail. She had appeared to have a relatively sturdy set of shoulders and she’d moved fairly briskly out of the store.
He thought about it for several days and then one night, he decided to act after reading her latest post. It was a line from the Gordon Lightfoot song, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”
Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?
Will tapped out his first reply to Daily Dallies. “That song was a classic!”
Minutes later, he received a “like” showing that she hearted his reply, though he wondered if his reply had been trite, as her post might have signaled her struggles with an unknown medical condition.
The following morning, Mrs. Eastergaard posted, “Houston, we have contact!”
Will replied that evening, “This is Major Tom to Ground Control.”
Mrs. Eastergaard posted a new note the subsequent morning in the spirit of David Bowie by adapting a famous line: “I’m stepping through the door and floating in a most peculiar way because the stars look very different thanks to you today.”
Each subsequent day, there was another witty exchange between the two. However, they never crossed the line from wry humor to the personal. Neither inquired as to the location, well-being or family of the other. She remained stuck at two subscribers, and he had added a mere five for a grand total of one hundred and twenty-two.
The New Year arrived, and the heavens dumped several feet of frosting on the County. Will worried about whether Mrs. Eastergaard had enough wood for her stove and food in her pantry, but figured that she’d been there for decades and knew what to do.
Each night, the post that appeared on his screen provided assurance that she was fine.
I must make my final confession that I’ve never been a writer, but I AM a baker and perhaps my words do infuse my reader with some flavor from my description of my cakes and pies?
Will gave the post its deserved heart, and responded, “You are indeed a writer, and the brilliant flavor came through on your very first post—the one about the maple pancakes.”
He had barely time to reflect on his post, when she broke two cardinal rules—no more than one post a day, and sharing personal information.
You are the kindest soul, and it is a shame that you’re too far away from here in Oxbow, Maine to come for breakfast tomorrow morning at 8 a.m. when I’ll be making those maple pancakes but I’m extending an invitation regardless.
When people break rules, the dam often breaks and there is no telling what might happen. Will’s cursor sat pulsating on the screen like the beat of his heart. It guided him in framing his reply, which he quickly posted.
“I also live in Oxbow and enthusiastically accept your gracious invitation, and will not be a moment late.” He fired off his reply and heard a whooshing sound as his message sped off through the internet in search of Mrs. Eastergaard.
He waited for her response—since all rules had been suspended—but none came. He wondered if he had traveled too far beyond the crossed line by accepting her invitation. Or maybe she thought he was some weirdo stalker since she was obviously under the impression that he was one of the three-hundred-and-forty-six million Americans who lived outside Oxbow, Maine—and not one of the fifty-six that lived inside its spacious and wild limits. Perhaps it was just too close to home.
The following morning, a Saturday, the white stuff started piling up outside his cabin window together with his doubts. Was he still invited?
He peered outside his window, and the visibility was very poor since the combination of snow, sleet and wind had conspired to apply a veneer of crystal stucco on the panes. The wind howled. Was it even safe to venture outside?
Her house sat a good half-mile down the road from his cabin, and the snow that had accumulated overnight and during the past few days was nearing a foot deep. The gravel road that meandered downhill from his property toward hers was only visible by the slight indentations along its powdery fringes.
He was a man of the woods and of his word, he thought as he strapped on his snowshoes and made for the door. Regardless of her reaction when he actually showed up, he wanted to check on her welfare since the roads were not going to be passable, possibly for a week. The forecast was snow for the next few days.
He had plenty of time to think as he worked his way to the barely perceptible road, and then traversed its many uphill and downhill undulations as he neared her home. He passed a stand of mighty pines and then he saw her home rise to his right. It was bitter cold and he felt the few bits of his face not covered by his ski mask sting as they froze.
Mrs. Eastergaard’s house had three stories, and the accumulated snow on the chimneys, dormers, and fretwork made it look like an abstract painting. The gravel drive was, like the rest of the acreage, buried under snow, and the Volkswagen bus had become an oblong white cake topped with whipped cream.
He noticed that a dim light emanated from the second-floor room just above the front porch, but that there was no light on the first floor. Odd, he thought. It was just a few minutes shy of the invited time and he knew from her morning posts that she was always up before 7 a.m.
He slipped as he climbed up onto the porch and removed his snowshoes, knocking them against a wooden post to free them from snow.
He rapped on the door. No one answered.
He knocked again, more loudly since there was no doorbell. He grew concerned when she did not materialize upon that louder knock. He listened very carefully as other than the occasional gust of wind blowing snow against the house, it was eerily silent since he was in the middle of nowhere.
His knocking became a pounding, but still there was no reply. Now it was his heart pounding; He felt something was wrong.
Will had never committed any offense. While a bit of a free spirit, he was always conscious of where lines are drawn. But there is always a time to take action and be unconcerned with consequences. It would likely take any authorities he called hours to plow through this snow, if they were able to get here today at all.
Will prepared to kick the door open if necessary. But first he gave it a firm push with his right hand as if to prime it. To its surprise, it yawned open. It had never been closed. He figured that he could not be trespassing since she invited him and had not locked the door.
“Mrs. Eastergaard!” he called softly so as not to wake her if she had overslept. No answer.
He walked slowly into the foyer. There was a sitting room to the right containing built-in bookcases jammed full of books that circled the entirety of the room other than the window. A coffee table in front of the sofa was piled high with additional volumes like the Kerplunk game. A pair of reading glasses with a metal chain was lodged in the book on top of the pile where she had left off. He gingerly opened it to the flagged page and it was the passage in Great Expectations where Pip and Miss Havisham discuss her ghastly bride-cake.
He sighed and moved out of the sitting room and into the kitchen. There was a bulletin board that looked like a piñata, so many notes were stuck all over it in a panoply of colors. He looked closer and saw that many of them were recipes ripped out of magazines.
The kitchen counter was the neatest area on the first floor. It had implements all lined up ready to use, like an operating theater. He spied a jar of maple syrup waiting expectantly on the ledge like a debutante at a ball. Clearly, she had been anticipating making the maple pancakes this morning.
He checked the other rooms on the first floor. No one was there. He called out her name again, wondering where she was.
He crept upstairs, calling her name like a Canadian goose leading its flock so that his voice would precede his footsteps. Between his calling her name and the creaky steps, even a deaf senior would not be taken by surprise.
The door to the bedroom that faced the front of the house—the only room that was illuminated—was completely ajar. When he entered, Mrs. Eastergaard was propped up in bed, smiling at him.
She held an iPhone in her left hand, and it was plugged into a socket with a long cord. The glow from its screen animated her face.
“Mrs. Eastergaard, I am so sorry! I am your Subscriber you invited for breakfast. I got very worried when I arrived on time and know you’re always very punctual with your posts and you were nowhere to be found downstairs!”
Mrs. Eastergaard continued to smile at him but did not move.
The terrifying realization washed over him as he drew nearer. He touched her right hand, which was pointed with the index finger touching the screen of her phone, and it was ice cold. Surprised by his boldness, his hand encircled her wrist as he felt for a pulse. There was none.
The rigor mortis had cemented her grip on her phone. He glanced down and saw that the bright screen displayed his reply about accepting her gracious invitation. Her right finger still touched the reply that she had started to tap out.
“I am so happy that you...” It stopped there.
Will breathed heavily and raced downstairs and exited the front door onto the porch, stupidly descending the snow-covered front steps without grabbing his snowshoes. He immediately found himself sinking up to his knees in the white powder, bent over and gasping for air. The entrails of his breath froze in the air like bent pancakes, and then disintegrated into powder that fell into the snow drift. He had lived his entire life in the Northeast, but he had never felt this cold.
He stood there, staring out at the wilderness for several minutes. As he started to go back inside to call the emergency number, he felt unfamiliar nuggets stuck to his face and realized that tears had frozen on his face and beard.
The following day, back at his cabin, he sat in his easy chair waiting for the police to arrive to interview him. He noticed that—from this new angle—the apples on his counter had a small sliver of space separating them. He thought that it was tragic that they had never touched while they were alive.
To read the next chapter in this series, titled “The Aftermath,” click here.
Exceptional short story. Superbly written. So good, that I found myself speed-reading near the end to find out what happened, and then going back over the passages that were read too quickly to suck out every drop of marrow. Halpert is a master of his craft and his gift needs to be shared with anyone and everyone still interested in reading thoughtful and hopeful short stories.
I am so sorry for your loss @roseenglund I am glad that I offered you some inspiration with my story. Stories come when they are ready. In the event that it helps you, I'll share a bit here about part of my writing process.
I keep my writer's notebook close at hand and when I feel a particular emotion and connect it to an observation about someone or something that I think is interesting, I record it. When I sit down to write, I look over my list of fragments and often one of them jumps out at me as a story idea or inspiration for an opening line. I then research information about the topic before I set sail on drafting. I am sending a supportive breeze your way from Ohio as you set sail on your writing journey...