PUTNEY — A number of years ago, after having unsuccessfully applied for any and every job in the newspaper (and hanging the rejection letter from the Brattleboro dump right next to my undergraduate diploma), I was offered a position as a client advocate for the Windham County Day Program.
I was an independent contractor, working 20 hours a week at $8 per hour, with no benefits, no vacations. My responsibility was to drive around with people who had developmental disabilities and “integrate them into the community.”
In other words, I was in charge of organizing slave labor for a variety of organizations that would, in return, grow to feel fondly towards their slaves.
In December of 1991, I was transporting a client (who I will call Bill) to and from his volunteer job. He was enormous: he was 6 feet, 3 inches tall, and he weighed 260 pounds.
My major responsibility was to make sure he showered and shaved before we went to his job. He hated the bathroom at the group home where he lived and would use it only when he had no choice.
On this day, I was tired and didn't want to argue, so I let him leave the home with two days of scruff to go to his job setting the table for the subsidized lunch at the newly renovated senior center.
The seniors were an accepting bunch, and they saw how Bill meticulously placed the silverware. He lay each piece exactly 2¼ inches from the edge on the design of the white paper placemats.
Bill liked the seniors because they joked with him.
“Fine day out,” someone would say.
“You can keep it,” Bill would respond.
Having set the table and chopped onions and cabbage for the meal delivery van, we still had an hour to kill of my contract time. You can pad your hours 10 minutes here and five minutes there, but a whole hour might raise a flag.
Occasionally, we'd give clients a couple of dollars out of the “Tootsie Roll money,” funds raised by the Knights of Columbus for people with disabilities.
I reminded Bill that he had $2 and that we could do whatever he wanted.
“Christmas is coming,” he said. “I think I'll get myself a Christmas present,” he responded, chuckling through his teeth.
Now at that time, there were very few stores open along Main Street in Bellows Falls. Most had soaped windows and signs that said “Space For Rent” or “For Sale By Owner.”
When I rattled off the list of choices he lost some enthusiasm.
“Sam's?” I asked.
“Too expensive.”
“Ernie's?”
“I've seen all their stuff.”
“How about Rite Aid, over in Walpole?” I offered enthusiastically.
“Naw,” he said.
Then he asked, “What was that place we went with the maple men?”
Back in the spring, I'd taken him to Harlow's Sugar House in Putney to see if they needed any help collecting sap. (They didn't.) I got paid for mileage as well, so sometimes I'd take clients to nearby towns to make a little extra, but I was worried about gas today.
“Harlow's. You want to go to Harlow's?” I asked skeptically.
“Yeah, let's go there. I like those maple sugar men.” He said, and I thought, “What the hell. I might have some room on the credit card for gas to get home.”
* * *
If you've ever driven along Route 5 between Bellows Falls and Putney, you pass the bizarre and unlikely theme park, Santa's Land.
Santa's Land consists of a few acres of petting zoos, mechanical panoramas, and one huge central gift store that sells everything for the Christmas enthusiast, from chocolate Santas to Russian-doll-style one-inside-the-other-egg Santas with a little tiny Santa in the middle that would be an obvious choking hazard if they weren't always lost almost immediately.
Driving past the red roof with fake snow and huge Santa statue visible over the pines in the parking lot, Bill realized immediately that this was the place.
“What's that place?” he asked.
“Santa's Land,” I said. “It's for little kids and tourists.”
“Let's go there,” he said, and I swooped around in an illegal U-turn.
When we got to the gate, we discovered there was $5 admission fee to get into the park. Bill only had his $2 in Tootsie Roll money, and I only had the credit card that I hoped would work long enough to get some gas.
Luckily, it cost nothing to enter the gift shop, and there were all kinds of things to see in there.
The shop had only opened in the last half an hour. We were the first customers, and the clerk eyed us carefully as we moved between the aisles. The place was intended for the children of affluent tourists, and we were scruffy local men with bad teeth.
Naturally, Bill gravitated to the chocolate and other candies.
* * *
Around this time, an irate mother and her well-groomed son, who looked to be about 8 or 9, came into the store from their morning at the theme park.
It seemed that the ride on the little train had not been everything the boy hoped, given the foul expression on his face.
The two moved aggressively through the aisles and came upon us in the candy section. The mother's expression turned from irritation to fear when she saw us loitering by the chocolate snowmen.
What were two grown men doing in a family-oriented business in a family-oriented season? she was clearly wondering.
Bill's girth and bewildering stare made us all the more threatening, and they inched backward in the aisle, trying to look nonchalant in their retreat.
As they moved, the kid discovered a small paper Norwegian flag among the international ornaments.
His mother, still wanting to get away from us, told him to put it back in rushed, hissing tones. She pulled it out of his hand and popped it back in the jar with the others.
She pulled his arm, and he started to cry, dragging away toward the other end of the store.
Bill noticed the commotion and he moved over to see what the kid had wanted so badly. He pulled one of the flags from the jar and peered at it intently.
He looked up at me, waved the flag and smiled.
It was $1.79.
“Is that what you want?” I asked.
“I think so,” he replied confidently.
“Well, you have just enough money, so if you get that, you won't be able to get anything else,” I explained, musing at how value is determined by other people. Because the kid wanted it, it was now the coolest thing in the store.
“I understand,” he reassured me.
We walked to the counter and he held the flag up to the woman who waited there.
“One-ninety-eight,” she said, and I handed her the wrinkled dollars.
“Thank you,” said Bill, who made a point of always saying please and thank you.
Then he stepped away from the counter and circled over to where the mother and kid were looking at stuffed reindeer, near the windows at the back of the store.
“Hey, kid,” he said, towering over the little boy, who peered up at the unshaven man who smelled of senior center cabbage and onions.
Bill handed him the little paper flag.
“Here,” he said. “Merry Christmas.”
Then he straightened up and smiled at me, one of those smiles that seems to leak out of a person's eyes and change the very particles of the air in a cheesy tourist gift shop.
The mother hissed at her son: “Say thank you.”