The Way to Stone Hill

It’s Sunday.

Stella and I are at breakfast in the kitchen of the old farmhouse. Holly is sleeping by my feet. It’s quiet. There is no sound but the tick of our battery-driven wall clock.

It is now almost two years since we first came to live in the old house, balancing the time in those two years between trips to Mississippi and back. We have done considerable cleaning of the house and grounds during those two years. There is a great deal more to do. But for now, things have improved considerably and we find ourselves pleasantly content here, comparatively comfortable despite the old house’s slanting floors and the dampness that comes from the basement.

As I mentioned, it is Sunday and, between Stella and me, the papers are spread on the table among the breakfast dishes. It’s a lengthy table, donated to us by a generous family in Blairsville. On some occasion since, we inserted the table’s two extensions and, finding we liked the increased room, we left the table that way. Now it holds among many things, the scattered pages of the Sunday newspaper, the large plate of Stella’s homemade nut bread slices, nicely topped with butter and honey, my coffee and Stella’s tea.

One of the things we did with the first small insurance check we received was to replace the ground floor windows (we boarded up the windows in the small rooms upstairs) with large double pane windows, five feet wide and four feet high. There are two of these large windows in the kitchen, one at the end of the table and the other is placed just behind Stella’s chair. This is the east side of the farmhouse and Stella sits bathed in the morning light.

It is a pleasant sight.

I’m on the opposite side of the table and I sit deeply involved in reading my favorite Sunday comic, “For Better or For Worse.” Taking a cue from the ticking clock, I reach for my coffee.

I take a brief sip. It’s bitter!

“Stella, the coffee’s too strong! I can’t drink it!”

Stella had obviously been enjoying her part of the newspaper and pulling it to one side, stares at me.

To be blunt, it’s not a good stare.

Now, Stella and I have been married for more than thirty years and I can tell by the noncommittal quality of her stare the strong emotions that are surging within her. Since Stella drinks tea and not coffee, she makes my coffee one cup at a time in a small, inexpensive espresso machine.

Now she is faced with a choice; should she tell me what to do with my coffee or should she get up and make me a fresh cup.

It’s the age old battle of good and evil that rages in every one of our human breasts throughout our lives and at this moment there is a tremulous tempest raging within hers.

During moments like these I am the consummate coward and I quickly drop behind the raised shield of the Sunday comics. There is silence for what to me seems an interminable moment. Then I hear a rustle indicating that she has gotten up; then more noise, steps, indicating she is going away from the table.

Perhaps because it is Sunday, or perhaps because the bright sun has lit the room around us, perhaps because we are comfortably warm and that there is promise that this will be a beautiful day, perhaps for all of these, the balance has tilted to the side of good; I feel I will get another cup of coffee.

Soon Stella returns and a fresh cup is placed in front of me. I start to reach for it.

“Wait, it’s hot!” she cautions. “Let me get you an ice cube.”

Now, there is a short fuss of getting the ice tray out of the refrigerator, then a cube of ice is dropped into the cup of steaming coffee. I smile at Stella and murmur my thanks and she smiles back and returns to her side of the table.

There is now silence but for the wall clocks tick, tick.

I lower the paper and reach for the new cup.

Now, I really don’t know what happened next.

They say that trauma victims have trouble recalling what happened that caused an accident until weeks and even months after the accident. This is true with me as to exactly what actually happened.

I must have hit the steaming hot coffee cup with something, perhaps the paper. Whatever caused the event to happen is unimportant, the cup is hit, it goes flying and its scalding contents go ahead of it in all directions, on me, on the table, on the Sunday papers and on the floor.

Stella, on the other side of the table sits untouched, staring in amazement at me and what has happened. Holly, who had been under the table until now, leaves the room, a black blur.

I scream in pain, run out of the room and taking my clothes off in the farmhouse’s small bathroom, wash the coffee off my face and hands with soap and water, and rub myself dry with a large towel. I find some vitamin E in the medicine cabinet. They are in soft gel pills and I break two and apply their contents to the worst burns. There is immediate relief.

Finally, still completely naked, I go to the bedroom, pull some dry clothes out of my dresser, put these on and return to the kitchen table, stopping on the way to get some old towels from the dirty clothes bin.

I throw out the soggy pages of the newspaper, wipe the length of the table, and, getting on my knees, start wiping the floor under the table.

I stop.

A pair of Stella’s shoes is under there with me, sitting to one side. I look at them. Some of the coffee has managed to get into them. How could that have happened? Using one of the smaller towels, I hurriedly wipe the shoes as clean as I can and then, having done all I could, put them carefully back in their original resting place and proceed to wipe the rest of the floor.

All this I find takes a bit of time; the coffee had spread unbelievable distances. Holly comes to the doorway and watches me. I’m a little angry at myself and wave a towel at him, a good scapegoat. He disappears.

Finally it’s all done, or at least as best as I can do. I get up, leave the room to put the towels in the dirty clothes hamper in the bathroom, rewash my hands and return to the kitchen.

There at my place at the table is a fresh cup of hot coffee.

I pick the cup up and sample it.

It is perfect. It even has a new cube of ice.

Across from me Stella sits, smiling. I smile back. It’s going to be a nice day in the old house after all.

I decide not to tell her about the shoes.

A couple, fleeing the devastation of a vicious storm, finds refuge on a small derelict farm in the foothills of southwestern Pennsylvania. Intending to stay on the sixteen acre farm only until such time as the their small coastal Mississippi town recovers from the storm, they find themselves working hard to bring it back to its original state as a working farm.

Paul La Violette and his wife, Stella, plus a large tomcat named Holly, face many problems which are told in the book in a series of short stories that are at times humorous and at other times somber. All of Paul’s years of experience as a marine scientist working in the ice-covered Arctic Ocean and the sweltering hot Mediterranean Sea are brought to bear as he and Stella cope with the abrupt change in venue from the laid back life of coastal Mississippi to the isolated farm with its short summers and cold, snow filled harsh winters.

The inherent beauty of the small farm, its pond and creek, the amazingly abundant wild life around them, and the rich wonders of the deep woods, in the end seduce them into building a comfortable home and making permanent their stay on the farm situated just off a small county road in southwestern Pennsylvania.

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