CHAPTER 1

The winter of 1987 was cold enough to freeze the Housatonic River and the town of Kent erected an elaborate float on the thick ice. Each year the townspeople organized a pool to guess the date when the ice could no longer bear the float’s weight. Two days after a January blizzard I picked March 21 and my writing partner, Monty, close April 4. Neither of us were natives to the town.

Coming from Maine anyplace west of the Connecticut River wasn’t really part of New England, although Kent came very close with its private school, worn hills, and hemlock pine forests. The pale-skinned producer spoke with a Georgian drawl. His family bottled Coca-Cola there. Monty never mentioned the Civil War, as we wrote WHERE THE HIGHWAY ENDS, a screenplay about love and murder in the Florida Everglades.

We lived in a turn-of-the-century cabin set on the shoulder of a pine-strewn hill. Monty had converted it into an Adirondack camp complete with a chandelier of deer antlers. It came from Scotland.

Every day snow drifted against the windows of the cabin. A big fire warmed the living room, as Monty and I discussed the previous day’s scenes during breakfast. He was a vegetarian. No meat was allowed in the house.

No eggs. No Bacon.

Soy milk. Tofu.

I lost weight.

We worked every day from 8am till 4pm. I typed out the interactions between a burnt-out drifter and a young heiress. Both the main characters were both good-looking; James Dean if he had survived his car crash with Nico of the Velvet Underground. The location was the last untamed barrier island in Florida. The dialogue was terse. Seven word sentences with a few long paragraphs about love, nature, and wealth. We read the dialogues aloud after dinner. Monty got to play the male. I was the girl. Anyone peeking in the window would have thought we were mad.

On Wednesdays Monty drove into Katonah for health food supplies and I roamed through the pine forests with his dog. Maulwin loved chasing deer and one afternoon he pelted across the river in pursuit of a buck. The ice broke underneath the Shar-pei.

Twenty feet from shore. He sunk into the black water.

His hooded eyes blinked with canine desperation.

I stared back at Maulwin.

Every winter people drowned trying to rescue friends and dogs from an icy death. His paws futiley scratched at the edge of the break. He wasn’t getting out without help.
“Damn dog.”

I crawled on my belly from the shore. The ice crackled like brittle glass. Maulwin whimpered with a hopeful shiver and I tossed the jacket to him. He bit on the sleeve and scrabbled from the frozen river. My reward was a sloppy hand licking and we silently agreed that his master was better off ignorant of this near drowning.

“Maulwin awfully quiet.” Monty observed upon his return from shopping. The Shar-pei lay on the floor, as if he were entering a deep sleep. Good dogs know when to play dead.

“Really?” I patted the Shar-pei’s head. “Seems the same to me.”
February laid more snow on the ground. March added a few more inches. The valley stayed below freezing until the end of the month, then a southern wind melted the ice from the eaves and on April 4 the float sank into the river.

Monty won the $300.