Conversations with the Devil

Chapter One New Englanders have always had a close relationship with death. When the Plymouth colonists landed on hostile, unfamiliar shores in 1620, they were faced with starvation, disease, and unforgiving winter. They were saved by the Wampanoag natives, who showed them how to plant and harvest and store food. The natives were rewarded with devastating European diseases like smallpox, typhus, and "bad blood"syphilis. But the colonists survived and prospered. So did death, in many forms. Free to own land, the New Englanders fought the Native Americans and each other to possess it. Free to worship, they killed those who chose heretical paths. Free to create militias, they fought proxy wars for European powers and started new ones. Weathered gravestones commemorating these sacrifices are far more plentiful than the covered bridges, taverns, and forests for which New England is popularly known. Yet death is manifest in more than just the ancient cemeteries, those odd-shaped geometries that occupy an acre or two behind rusting iron fences, defying the lopsided roads that grew around them. Death pervades daily life. Modern families celebrate their ancestors' sacrifices in countless wars and skirmishes, honoring them in portraits and busts, on memorial streets and buildings, and with weathered ivory tombs. Dead leaders of government and industry are celebrated with post offices, official buildings, and schools. Martyrdom is pictured and revered in houses of worship. Along the coast of New England, death rides every breath. The salty sea air is rich with the odor of dead fish and flora. Inland, in places like Delwood, Connecticut, predators of all sizes and species move through the low hills and forests. Schoolchildren learn that the word "fall" signifies falling leaves but adults know better. Like the vespers church bell tolling day's end, it is the echo of our fall from grace. Yet those with the will to persevere and a bright slant of mind wait for hope to be renewed, stronger and more precious, on the other side of winter. Only briefly, of course, for fall returns. Death always has the last word. Outsiders embrace New England's autumnal beauty but the locals resent it. The creeping chill closes windows that remained cheerfully open during the summer. It wraps people in jackets and cardigans, in defiantly colorful and branded sweatshirts. It turns them inward. Grasses wither to brown, leaves burn red, and skies go pale. Spirits fade and die too, locked inside walls and garments. There was nothing anyone could do about that. But Sara Jacqueline Lynch did everything she could to keep the skulls of Delwood from growing too dark and dreary. The psychotherapist always saw more faces in September and October than at any other time of year. Some of those faces were familiar, like Delwood Deli owner Billy Roche. The middle-aged butcher seemed to fall for a new summer transplant every year, a New York sophisticate he fancied more than his wife. The emaciated urbanites talked to him and listened to what he had to say. It didn't matter that the only thing he had to say was about meat and barbecues. He got to look into their eyes. Roche's attractions usually died in mid-October, along with the rest of Delwood. Then there was Barri Neville who could not stand having her children come back inside and wanted to know if it was wrong to wish that she had never had kids. "No. It's good you did," the psychotherapist told her. Sara said it was natural to feelRovin, Jeff is the author of 'Conversations with the Devil', published 2008 under ISBN 9780765346315 and ISBN 0765346311.