Salvaging Life on a Back Road

Does recovery bring a man full circle in spite of himself?

The heater vent on the dash would melt the snowflakes almost as soon as they hit the windshield of my truck, almost being the operative word. With the fan on high and the heat dial all the way to the right I was getting about two thirds of them. The wiper kept up with the other third at least through the first half of the journey. Coming down Rt. 11 on a night like this wasn't going to be an easy trip. WDME radio had called for 18 or more inches before it was over and with maybe over a couple inches an hour falling now I expected more than the forecast.

I had left Island Falls, Maine and was past Millinocket before the snows started piling up in the roadway. It didn't look like a plow had scrapped the surface for the past couple hours if that and now it was becoming whiteout conditions.

There was an accident in Medway on I-95 South so I had to detour onto Rt. 11 otherwise it would have been clear sailing for me in the truck.

I was actually on my way back to Sangerville and knew better. There was no urgency to get there and the world would have continued spinning in the same direction if I had waited another day but there I was beating treacherous miles off a journey in unneeded haste.

Just before coming into Brownville Junction I almost missed it. It was just a quick blur out the side of my left eye as my yellow caution lights danced in the blindness outside the cab. Easing off the gas and coming to a stop I put the truck in reverse and backed up a hundred feet. The spotlight flicked on and illuminated the vehicle.

It looked like it might have been there for a little while with a couple inches of fresh snow building in the skid tracks off the road. 'Well, this is what they make Carhartt parkas for' I remember thinking at the time as I zipped up and grabbed the gloves between the seats.

Trudging through the snowbanks and following the vehicle tracks, I came to where the late model Jeep Cherokee sat enmeshed in a tangle of spruce and fir bows. I could see there were a couple people in the Jeep and as I approached it the driver opened up the door and stepped out.

She was bundled up with a Navy Pea coat and a scarf pulled tight around her head with fancy gloves on her hands. It was difficult to make her out with the blinding snow blowing furiously around us but I called out to her.

"You folks OK? How long have you been stuck here?"

As I got closer our eyes met and for a moment the forces of the Universe brought everything to a screeching halt. The wind and snow were silent and everything else around us was distant and unimportant.

I had not seen her in 6 years at least, but I knew the eyes. I knew them intimately for 10 years before the armies of hell snuffed out whatever I found favorable and admirable in them. The look of surprise on her face probably matched mine.

"Jesus, Martha, what in hell are you doing out here?" I asked.

I didn't really know what else to say.

"Hello, Connor." She replied. She was my wife; I should say my ex-wife.

"We left the road about an hour ago and you were the first vehicle to go by. I didn't even see you until you were already on us." Martha said.

"Who else do you have with you? You need to get in my truck." I asked.

"My daughter." She replied.

That took me by surprise but then I had not kept up with her over the years at all except for a conversation with my attorney three years earlier. I reached down into the Jeep and took the girl's hand helping her out of the vehicle and the three of us scrambled up the bank and climbed into the truck. In a few moments I had 911 on the line and gave them our location. Before the County deputies arrived, a state snowplow came down the road with a wrecker behind it. The Deputies were there 10 minutes later.

Within the hour the Jeep was out of the snowbank and being towed to Milo. Martha and her daughter were in my cab and we started heading back down Rt. 11. I hadn't asked the questions yet but when I glanced in the rearview I caught a startling image of the girl after she had pulled the hood off her head.

The girl's resemblance was the image of my family, a cross between Martha and my mother. Martha must have noticed because she spoke first. The girl had my mother's almond eyes

"Sarah is your daughter." She said glancing at both me and the girl on the quad seat.

----------------------

It had been well over six years since I saw Martha. It was in the lawyer's office where I signed the divorce decree on a chilly autumn afternoon after three months of miserable back and forth between her lawyers and my solitary friend and representative. John D. Williams was a long- time friend and practicing attorney in downtown Portland, Maine and at the time he was my only friend, at least of those we knew as a couple.

But, we were outgunned and we both knew it. I didn't get screwed legally as much as I was stripped of my dignity. Perhaps it was the draw of the judge or the fates just lined up against me the wrong way. I was labeled a philanderer in a court of no-fault divorce with the burden of alimony heaped upon me for good measure. It didn't matter that Martha made as much as I did. The judge was an old fashioned hardcore feminist.

Martha got the house in Gorham if she wanted to keep making payments and we were supposed to split the equity whenever it was sold. John, with my blessing, worked out a deal to swap the equity for eliminating the alimony payments. By the time it was over, I was living in an apartment in South Portland and running a bicycle down Congress Street to work rather than drive my truck.

Martha was an attorney with a corporate practice group bucking for the next several rungs up the career ladder. I was just a sales and marketing guy for a consulting group downtown but it paid damn well, as much as a corporate practice lawyer using her naked ass to get ahead.

It wasn't me that was the real philanderer in our failed relationship. That role fell to a particularly sleazy up and comer by the name of Daniel Seagerson. He worked for the same firm as Martha and they were assigned to the same case files more often than not. As Martha once put it, they just clicked.

Apparently clicking was more than what she represented it as being. He clicked her in his apartment. He clicked her in any hotel room he could get her in and finally he started clicking with her in my own damn bed. One afternoon after arriving home earlier than planned, I clicked the safety off with a Glock 17 aimed right at his head.

I found him buried deep in my bride's lady parts and made it pretty clear that it was time for him to leave. He made no bones about that especially with a full magazine loaded and ready. Of course, I never would have shot him but he didn't know it. Martha knew but she didn't say anything.

I sat at the kitchen table waiting for her to clean up and get dressed.

"How long, Martha?" I asked her when she sat down.

We didn't have a knock down drag out fight. I think we were both resigned to the fact that the marriage was fucked.

"Six months, Connor, and I never intended for it to get out of control like this. I mean it." She replied, without tears.

"In my bed, Martha?" I asked incredulously.

She looked away in shame and whispered.

"This was the only time."

It didn't really matter to me if it was one time or a hundred or if she had been fucking Seagerson for six months or six years; finding him fucking her like that was an image that wasn't going to be faded and erased through any kind of reconciliation any time soon. Looking back on it, I was completely blind-sided since it came right out of nowhere.

I don't think our intimacy had suffered any even with our heavy workloads and schedules. I knew I wasn't lacking in prowess or ability or even equipment. Martha admitted using hotels and his place rather than our bed for her trysts, her word, not mine. For whatever reason, Seagerson wanted to fuck her in our bed thinking it was some kind of extra thrill for him. Martha claimed she resisted it but in the end fucked him there anyway, well, at least half fucked him before I walked in.

"I'll have to find some other place to live, Martha. I don't think I want to stay here. We'll have to sell the house." I said to her.

"Connor, please, I don't want a divorce. Please, let's try to find some way to work this out." She replied with her first tears.

"Well, hell, Martha, let's give that a shot. Let's see, you've been fucking him for what, six months now, you said? He looked to be about a modest 6 inches of strange dick you had there and for that many months, you must have had that bastard's dick buried in you what, maybe 60 or so times? Sounds reasonable to me. Let's see; 60 times 6 inches; that's 360 inches of cock or 30 fucking feet of strange! How in hell are you going to get that much cock back out of your little pink married pussy??

"Fuck you, Martha." I finished with the anger I had bottled up inside.

She was crying profusely at that point but I just rose from the table and went upstairs to the scene of the crime and packed a couple bags. I ended up spending the night in an extended stay hotel in South Portland and somehow made it back to work in the morning.

Martha had called me a couple of times that morning begging me to reconsider and I told her I would have to think long and hard about it but I didn't think it was going to work out. Again that afternoon I told her to give me a few days.

By the end of the week I was on the fence considering a sit down with Martha to discuss how we could ever proceed with rebuilding our marriage. I was honestly considering giving her a chance to prove herself to me. Before that could ever happen the winds of hell blew me flat on my ass.

"Are you Connor Patrick Smythe?" the polite gentleman asked me in the shadow of the door to my hotel room.

"Yes, sir, I am" I replied.

It was the cliché of all divorce clichés. He handed me a large manila envelope and asked me to sign for it. When I did, he thanked me and abruptly left. I didn't even have to open it to know what it was. It had Martha's law firm heading and address on it. She was divorcing me without a sit down.

I knew her attorney. He used to be her boss until he moved to family practice and if anybody could be called a shark lawyer, he was it; utterly bloodthirsty. The night I left I cried like a baby for what had happened to our marriage. Now, I just wanted to scream in rage. She was out to turn the victim into a burn the bastard celebration and she had Hades finest team backing her up.

The terms were simple; fifty percent of the house that she would continue to live in until it was sold, split other assets 50% and $2,000 monthly alimony. It was outrageous but it was worse. The law firm got a restraining order against me to keep me 500 feet away from her and the house. I literally could not call text, email, talk to and even see from a few feet away. I couldn't even drive down the same street.

The first thing I did was call her. Fifteen minutes later I got a call from one of the attorneys giving me a 'courtesy warning' not to do it again or they would turn the matter over to the police. He suggested I work through my attorney. I basically begged him to let me talk with Martha but he refused. My next call was to my attorney and good friend, John Williams.

For the next three months John went back and forth with Martha's attorney and we went nowhere. John insisted that I be able to meet with Martha and the other side refused saying she had no interest. Finally they put the case in front of a judge and when it was over the judge gave Martha everything she asked for or at least what the attorneys asked for. I never saw Martha until I had to officially sign the divorce decree in her attorney's office.

She was sitting across from me at a conference table and not once did she look me in the eye. For the life of me I just could not fathom what was going through her mind. For my own peace, I just thought of her and that Seagerson prick fucking in my bed the last time I saw her but to be honest I was hurting big time and I'm not one to hide my emotions well. At least I didn't have any children to lose.

The amended agreement that we were there to sign excused me from making any alimony payments in return for my share of the house equity. I had a purpose for doing that even though it probably cost me more in the end. I wanted to make a clean break. My wife of ten years had fucked me over with another man for six months and then went Medieval on the divorce settlements without ever explaining why.

With everything concluded I shook John's hand and rose from the table.

"Martha, I don't ever want to see your face ever again as long as I live, never. I was willing to talk and maybe work this out but you had no interest. I have always loved you and probably always will but not a single time did you respond when I begged to talk to you. I would have done anything to put the brakes on this but now? Never again. " I said to her.

She looked up at me with the color drained from her face and tears were flowing down her cheeks and she then turned and looked oddly at her attorney. I left the room at that point and walked out onto Congress Street. I think I sat in my truck and cried for half an hour. I was a free man but I had permanently lost somebody I truly loved, still loved, but it was as if she had died. She didn't exist anymore.

I received the final divorce decree with the amended settlements in the mail about a week later. My apartment was already packed up and I had my truck hitched up behind the U-Haul when I picked up my mail for the final time. The decree was there along with a couple of remaining bills. There was also a personal letter from Martha and I tossed it along with the decree into a satchel on the front seat of the moving van.

It was an odd feeling traveling down Congress Street for the last time. I had always loved living here and I never thought I'd leave but life does deal its own hand on occasion and often it's at odds with what I might have expected. I suppose I should be used to that but why surrender to it.

So I found myself tooling up I-95 toward the Newport exit and on to a new chapter, no, make that a new book entirely in my life. I left the company I was working for to take a job with a small wood products manufacturer up in Guilford, Maine. It wasn't sales & marketing. Instead I took on a role as a wood buyer with their procurement team. I use the tem team loosely. It was just me and a woman named Jessica Lynch and I reported to the plant manager. Jessica reported to me.

I found a little place to live in Sangerville, a little village just a short ways from the plant. There wasn't a whole lot there other than a general store, a gas station; a couple restaurants and a four way stop intersection. But what I did find was peace.

The job grew on me as did the employees and the area. As a buyer I was all over the northern end of the state and spent a lot of time on the road. Within a couple of years I was entrenched in Piscataquis County with no desire to leave. Martha and I were 22 when we married and for ten years I never set foot in this part of the state. Maybe if I had, we would have moved here and the divorce would never have happened. That was probably wishful thinking on my part.

For the moment I was a single 32 year old man with a good paying job living in an area where those kinds of jobs were scarce. Women on the hunt for husbands knew it too. I had no shortage of dates and company of the female persuasion but I had a stopping point; I had no interest in remarrying. That caused a few of the women to lose interest but for several of them, it didn't matter. I was a decent looking guy pretty favorable in the sack and I could pay the way out on the town when the occasion arose. Some folks are simple that way.

I think it was just after the 3rd year anniversary of the divorce that I received a certified letter from a law firm down in Portsmouth NH. Something like that usually gets my attention and this was no exception. I opened it and read through the letterhead cover and unfolded the enclosed check. It was a cashier's check for $523,700 and according to the letter it represented my share of the equity from the sale of our old house in Gorham.

I wasn't going to kick a gift like that into the trash so I ended up depositing it in my bank account and the next day I received a call from my old friend and attorney John.

"Connor, I trust all is well in the beautiful foliage of northern Maine?" He asked me.

"It's beautiful up here, John. You and the woman should come up and visit. I've got a spare room for you whenever you want." I replied.

We bantered around for a bit before he got to the purpose of his call.

"Listen, you should have received a settlement check from a firm down in New Hampshire." He said.

I indicated the affirmative.

"Good. There's a story behind it if you want to know but I don't want to go into it if you'd rather not."

He knew my feelings on the matter of Martha and knowing anything about her but I was curious about this. We had agreed to the alimony swap and the dollar amount seemed awfully large for a 50% settlement so I told him to go ahead.

"Well, Connor, here's the deal. Martha came to visit me a couple weeks ago out to the house. Dottie is still pretty cool toward her but in any event, she sold the house and moved to Portsmouth. I guess she quit her job at the old firm she worked at right after the divorce was settled, same day I think and went to work for some company in Westbrook. To cut it short, she picked up everything, sold the house and moved to run a garden nursery and store. She quit law altogether.

"So, she came to me for contact information and decided to give you 100% of the sale proceeds from the house."

"Why?" I asked.

"Well, I asked her that question and she kind of looked off for a bit and said I quote 'he deserves every penny of it and every inch of my flesh if I could give it to him', unquote. To tell you the truth, Connor, the woman was carrying a lot of guilt and as we both know, justifiably so. There was something else about her I couldn't put my finger on, like there was something else she wasn't sharing but I didn't press her on it. In any case, she told me if you ever wanted to reach out to her she would make herself available.

"So, the money is yours and I suggest you put it into a nice piece of property up there and enjoy life." He said

We bantered back and forth a while longer and ended the call. It explained a lot of things but I thought back on our last meeting and how she wouldn't meet my gaze and said nothing in her defense through the whole meeting. I didn't think there was a need to reach out to her for anything. Discovering she had walked away from law was a big surprise. She lived for it or at least used to. But, in the end, that was her life and our paths never expected to cross.

I had to pay a capital gain on the sale of the house after I returned a signed revision of the divorce decree but that still left most of the balance. A piece of that balance found its way to the purchase of an old 19th century house on the back road to Dover. When I was done, I still had the better piece of the money in the bank and a big rambling place to call my own again.

Big old houses are wonderful things when you have the aptitude and desire to craft them into something you can love and live in. I have it and this place was perfect. It sat on five acres with a small stream running next to it and had several more rooms in it than I really needed, a few with previously closed up fireplaces. Over the next several months it became a labor of love and eventually some of the folks out at the village diner started referring to it as the Smythe house. That meant something to me because it said the local people were accepting me as one of them which is not always the easiest thing to accomplish among these northern Maine folk.