October 15
I'll argue that leaves changing color is less fortelling of winter than all the men I've been seeing steadying themselves high on ladders tending to weak spots in their roofs and eves. The smarter ones do it now but there are always a few to be pitied come about January when the ice has already damned up and sent water stains down their interior walls. Not much fixing you can do to a roof that's buried in ice and snow but they climb up there anyway, vowing next year they'll tend to it earlier.
Roofs are funny things. For the most part you don't give them much thought. Unless of course you don't have one, then it's probably hard to think of much else.
Some years back, just about this time of year, a fellow took up residence in the cellar of Moore's General Store. No one knew who he was, where he came from, or when precisely he showed up here in Rural. Folks who tried to start up conversation with him, including myself, learned he wasn't much of a talker, but his face and hands showed the wear of a hardworking man. And I don't mean to come on all mystical but I'm sure his eyes were those of a father and that there were children somewhere that he was painfully missing.
Just about everyone in town was aware he was spending his nights in Ernies' cellar, but only a handful knew that at closing time Ernie Moore left the his day-old breads and leftover soup in a cardboard box atop one of the three garbage cans behind his store. Seems this fellow wouldn't take the food if it was passed straight to him at the store counter, but he would help himself to what's been discarded. And I know on more than one occasion various members of town offered him food, a room, and money. But he always declined. None of us much understood his denying himself our help, but we eventually figured out that charity takes a different flavor depending on which side of it your mouth is on.
As will happen in small towns, more and more townfolk learned or figured out that they too could help out the guy by leaving their donations in Ernie Moore's trash. Someone left a good man's coat, another left a pair of worn-in but not worn-out work boots. And when the weather turned colder we all felt a little warmer when we saw the fellow was wearing them.
But by December it got so that Ernie couldn't get rid of his real trash on account of there being donations piled all over the cans. (I heard someone left a 19" color television there.) But it's hard to ask folks to stop when they think they're being neighborly, so Ernie didn't make a stink about it, he just bought more trash cans.
It was on the morning after the first snowfall that Ernie (and then the rest of us) discovered we hadn't been seeing the full picture. Ernie got himself out of bed well before dawn that day since there would be shoveling to do before he could open the store. He started up a fresh pot of coffee then layered his clothes and heavy coat on over his long johns and went outside, shovel in hand. But there was no snow to be shovelled in front of his store, nor was there any in front of the post office, or the school or my store either. The whole village had been pretty much shovelled clean.
Later that day when I stopped by the store for the paper, and to thank Ernie for clearing the snow off my steps he told me that he hadn't done it. "Nor did I rake your leaves away last fall." he also said. His left eyebrow arched up like he'd just shared a revelation with me. Puzzled for a moment, I recalled the previous fall and remembered happily believing I was getting a lucky break from the wind as all the leaves never amounted to much on the ground around the store. Before I could ask who'd done it, Ernie tilted his head toward the side door where the homeless fellow was standing drinking something hot from a styrofoam cup--the kind of cup that's served at the counter there at the store.
The fellow stayed in town a while longer and continued cleaning up what nature left us till early spring. Then we just stopped seeing him. Rumors have him up in Wallingford. And I doubt there are few folks who don't give a thought to that fellow when the sky starts spitting snow.
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