One Shenandoah Winter Read Free

stopped him, it was for mowing down a stop sign and carrying it until his busted radiator had given up the ghost. “Only way I knew to keep him from getting behind the wheel was to take the truck home with me.”
    â€œBut why drive it today?”
    â€œWe’re going out to see him this afternoon, Dawn and I.” She drove down to where the street joined with the nicest bridge in town, one fashioned from granite so polished it reflected the morning sun like a water-born jewel. She took an easy right onto River Road and continued, “Driving his truck over reassures him that I’m keeping it up.”
    â€œI still think . . .” Brian’s voice trailed off as she pulled into the weed-choked lot. Beneath the mass of greenery should have been a gravel parking area. “I thought they were going to regrade this.”
    â€œSo did I.” But Connie was far more concerned about how the clinic itself appeared. The fresh paint lay on the old structure like a new coat on a cadaver. “This place looks plain awful.”
    â€œWe should have had it rebuilt long ago.”
    â€œWhere were we supposed to find the money?” It was a litany so often expressed she didn’t even have to think the words. They just came. Lack of funding defined her every action for the town she loved. “Don’t worry, Brian. This doctor knows about our situation. We didn’t paint him a rosy picture. No chance of that and be honest over why we haven’t had a live-in doctor for almost three years.”
    It was not just the loss of their town’s only doctor that caused hardship these days. But the problem typified what Connie and the rest of Hillsboro faced. Down below, the world had entered modern times. People worked at jobs that meant something. If they didn’t like what they did, they walked out and went somewhere else and found another job. Flatland life was like that. But a good-paying job that gave a fellow a feeling of worth was often out of reach in the hills.
    And it was not just work that separated them. Down below, the world was changing at a pace the hillfolk could hardly believe. People didn’t just have more money in the flatlands, they had more things to buy. Televisions had appeared in most homes, if word could be believed. Up in the hills, those who had TV sets didn’t watch them much because the snowy reception hurt their eyes and they could hardly hear what was being said.
    Apparently the flatland world stopped dead in its tracks for shows like Rawhide, The Ed Sullivan Show, and American Bandstand. The newspapers were full of things that were little more than words on the page, like how a wall was being built down the middle of Berlin. And just this summer, President Kennedy himself had declared the goal of putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade. People would talk of such things and just shake their heads. It didn’t hardly seem as though they were living in the same world any more.
    Hillfolk liked to brag about going down the mountains and seeing such changes for themselves. When they returned home more often than not they declared stoutly that it didn’t mean nothing but trouble to come. As though pessimism were the only defense the hillfolk had against hardship and isolation.
    As Connie climbed down from the truck, she tugged at the front edges of her jacket, pretending to clear away the creases but in truth wishing she had worn something that did not make her look so thick. There were days when she could look in the mirror and see a woman who had retained her youthful energy and grace. Today, however, she had applied her makeup without really looking, fearing she would inspect herself and come up with a word like hefty. She hated mirrors on mornings like this.
    Together with Brian she started across the unkempt lawn and listened for some sign of life. The clinic’s front door was open, but the only sound came from the river chuckling from