Legends

They found their way to the house on the river with “B & B” and “Lelia Sayles” etched on a shingle hanging from a branch of an ancient oak, and reached through the tear in the screen to work the knocker on the front door. As they didn’t have luggage, Martin was obliged to cough up $30 in advance for a room with a matrimonial bed, bathroom down the hall, kindly go barefoot if you use the facilities during the night so as not to wake the ghosts sleeping in the attic. They went out to get a bite to eat at a diner across from the public library on South Main and lingered over the decaf, both of them trying to put off the moment when there would be no turning back. Parking on the gravel in Mrs. Sayles’s driveway afterward, Martin decided the Packard’s engine oil level needed checking. “I’m every bit as agitated as you,” Stella murmured, reading his mind as he propped up the hood. She started toward the house, then wheeled back when she reached the porch, her left palm drifting up to the triangle of pale skin visible on her chest. “Look at it this way, Martin,” she called. “If the sex doesn’t work out to everyone’s expectations, we can always fall back on the erotic phone relationship.”

“I want sex and the erotic phone relationship,” he replied.

Stella angled her head to one side. “Well, then,” she said, laughter replacing the nervousness in her eyes, “maybe you ought to stop monkeying with the damn motor. I mean, it’s not as if either of us were virgins.”

“How’d it go?” Mrs. Sayles asked the next morning as she set out dishes of homemade confitures on the kitchen table.

Martin, irritated, demanded, “How’d what go?”

“It,” Mrs. Sayles insisted. “Heavens to Betsy, the carnal knowledge part. I may be pushing eighty from the far side, but I’m sure as hell not brain dead.”

“It went very nicely, thank you,” Stella said evenly.

“Loosen up, young fellow,” Mrs. Sayles advised when she noticed Martin buttering a piece of toast for the second time. “You’ll be a better bed partner for it.”

Hoping to change the subject, Martin produced the picture postcard.

“My great-great-great-grandfather, name of Dave Sanford, built the first sawmill on the banks of the Genesee River,” Mrs. Sayles explained, all the while rummaging through a knitted tote bag for her reading glasses. “That was long about 1809. This house was built in 1829 with lumber from that mill. Belfast was a one-horse town in those days. Nothing but forests far as the eye could see, so they say, so they say. When the lumber boom wore out the forests, most folks turned to raising cattle. The White Creek Cheese Factory, which is famous ‘round here, was founded long about 1872 by my great-grandfather—”

Stella tried to steer the conversation back to the Amish. “What about the picture on the postcard?”

“It’s going to stay a blur until I come up with my reading spectacles, dear child. Could have sworn I put them in here. Never could figure out how a body can find her reading spectacles if she’s not wearing them. Well, I’ll be, here they are, all the while.” Mrs. Sayles fitted them on and, accepting the postcard from Stella, held it up to the sunlight streaming through a bay window. “Like I was saying, I know the Amish crowd up on White Creek Road pretty good because of my family’s connection with the White Creek Cheese Factory. Hmmmm.” Mrs. Sayles pursed her lips. “Truth to tell, I don’t reckon I recognize any of the Amish on this here picture postcard.”

“How about the houses and the barn?” Martin said, coming up behind her, pointing to the two clapboard houses built very close to each other, to the barn with a mansard roof on a rise across from them.

“Houses, barn neither. Mind you, there are an abundance of Amish living on the small roads sloping off White Creek. Picture could have been taken on any one of them.” Mrs. Sayles had an inspiration. “There’s a fellow, name of Elkanah Macy, works as a janitor over at the Valleyview Amish school on Ramsey Road. He moonlights as a handyman for the Amish out in the White Creek area. If anybody can help you, he can. Be sure to tell Elkanah it was me sent you around.”