by Sonja Hakala

In Carding, Vermont, there are certain people who seem to capture everyone’s attention. There’s the eccentric Amos Handy with his ubiquitous Bermuda shorts and wild Hawaiian shirts, worn in all but the coldest weather. There’s Diana and Stephen Bennett who own the Crow Town Bakery, the place where all the locals know the menu by heart. There’s Andy Cooper over at the general store, and postmaster Ted Owens, and Stan the tow-truck man all of whom have earned renown for their well-run businesses. There’s Edie Wolfe who is remembered by older folks as the daughter of Senator Danielson Wolfe and by younger folks as the executive director of the Carding Academy of Traditional Arts.

But these folks are all adults, people who have had time to etch their personas into the town’s collective unconscious. It’s unusual for that to be the case with a child.

But then you’ve never met five-year old Alfred Tennyson or, as everyone calls him, “Little Freddie.” His parents, Lee and Christina Tennyson, certainly never have met another child quite like him. “I sometimes wonder if he was sent here from an alien culture to observe us,” Lee once muttered to his wife.

“I still wouldn’t change any part of him,” she whispered back.

“That’s for sure. Life wouldn’t be half so fun.”

To start with, there’s Little Freddie’s physique. In general, the Tennysons are considered a rather sylphlike family. The men are lean and the women graceful. On Christina’s side of the genetic equation, the women are curvy. In fact, Lee has been caught making eyes at his own wife on more than one occasion.

Little Freddie, on the other hand, is built like a football tackle. There’s not an extra ounce of fat anywhere on the child. It’s just that you’d never mistake him for a gazelle.

But that’s not what gets folks to smiling whenever he’s around. You see, Freddie is a boy full of glee. Everything delights him—milkweed fluff, kittens, icicles, falling leaves, Houdini the Tennysons’ obstreperous goat, blueberry muffins, books from the library, sleeping, waking—it all makes Freddie squeal with joy.

It’s fair to say that his energy sparks up every corner of the Tennyson household. It’s also fair to say that his parents are often exhausted and sometimes they worry that Freddie’s many loves will make it hard for him to focus long enough to learn how to read or count or master skills he will need in the future.

His pre-school teacher has been ringing that alarm bell for a while now. “All he wants to do is play in the sandbox,” she said. “He needs to learn how to focus.”

But Lee and Christina aren’t willing to corral their son’s many enthusiasms. After all, it’s the non-conformists who make life interesting.

Now today is the first day of April, a date that’s marketed by those with something to sell with pictures of daffodils and nesting birds. But while flowers and feathered creatures may be happening in some places, here in Vermont, spring is announced by the “scree” of  returning redwing blackbirds and the tire-sucking mud of thawing dirt roads.

Still and all, it’s a beautiful day, full of cobalt skies and the gurgle of water from the melting snow. Freddie, of course, loves it all and couldn’t wait to clamber into his mother’s pickup truck when he was released from school.

“Water. Sap buckets,” he said over and over again as they picked their way up Belmont hill. The ditches on both sides of the road were full of runoff and the brook licked the underside of the bridge that connected Hooke Road to Belmont Hill.

Freddie stretched himself as tall as possible in his seat when his mother geared down to tackle the slope of their driveway, praying she’d make it to their back door without getting cross-threaded in the the ruts that reappeared in mud season. Freddie loved the challenge but not so Christina, if the tight grip she has on the truck’s steering wheel is any indication.

With a deep breath, she started the trundle up the hill, the steering wheel jerking in her hands every so often. She skirted one soft and muddy spot only to hit a pothole hidden at the bottom of a puddle and so on and so on. Finally, with a judder of the truck’s front end, she pulled into the barn attached to the Tennyson home. With a deep sigh, she set the brake and leaned over to undo Freddie’s seat belt.

But the little guy was already out of his harness and marching across the barnyard to stand at the top of the driveway. 

“Mom, what makes all the holes and mud so bad?” he asked.

Christina waved her arms in a circle. “It’s been really cold for a very long time,” she said, “but now all of the snow and ice is melting. You know how the ground gets hard around Thanksgiving time when it freezes?”

“It wrinkles when it does that,” Freddie said.

“Yes, wrinkles,” Christina agreed. “Well, all that cold is coming out of the ground now but only a little at a time.” She grabbed a stick from the edge of the yard and jabbed it into the soil. It didn’t sink in more than an inch. “See, only the top of the ground is soft while everything underneath is frozen so when the snow melts, the water can’t soak into the ground. But it’s got to go somewhere so it runs down the road.” They took a few careful steps to the top of the driveway. “As it travels down hill, it takes some of the dirt with it. Eventually, you get holes and when we drive over the road, our tires sink into some places but not into others so we get ruts.”

“And lotsa mud,” Freddie said in a very serious tone.

“Yes, lots of mud. Come on, I’ll make you a snack,” Christina started to say but Freddie was already marching toward the back of the barn.

“Not hungry Mom,” he called over his shoulder.

Christina’s face crinkled up in a question mark. Freddie was always hungry. “Okay,” she said with a shrug.

Freddie stayed outside all afternoon. Every so often, Christina spotted him leaving the barn with another shovel or trowel in tow. She could see the full length of the Tennysons’ infamous driveway from their living room, and she checked on him often from there. Once she walked out to stand at the top of the road to remind her son to “keep an ear out for your father’s truck so you can get out of the way.” 

Freddie nodded “yeah, yeah” but never looked up from his labors in the mud.

I sure hope he isn’t making the road worse, she said to herself as she walked toward the chicken coop to check for eggs. Though I’m not sure how it could get much worse.

It was twilight before Christina spotted the headlights of Lee’s truck. He’d been thinning a wood lot of dead trees and had picked up their older son, Scott, on his way home. She rushed outside to make sure Freddie was out of the way only to find him standing at the top of the driveway, tools abandoned in the snow off to the side, his arms crossed firmly over his chest, his eyes fixed on his Dad’s truck.

Christina turned to watch with him, and noticed that Lee’s headlights weren’t zigging and zagging to avoid the potholes and washboard areas. She glanced down at Freddie. His face was rapt and instead of his usual freeform gaiety, he looked serious.

“Did you hire someone to work on the driveway?” Lee asked when he finally stepped out of his truck.

“No.” Christina looked down at Freddie. “That was your son’s doing. He’s been out here all afternoon.”

“Really?” Lee turned to look down the hill but it was too dark to make out any features. “What did you do, Freddie?”

“Fixed it,” he said, extending a pair of muddy gloves. 

“How did you learn to do that?” Lee asked.

“Sandbox,” Freddie said. Then he started toward the house and the beckoning lights of the kitchen. “I’m hungry. Can we have cookies and ice cream for supper, Mom?”

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The Carding Chronicles are short stories written by author Sonja Hakala about the Vermont town that no one can quite find on a map. They feature the characters in the four Carding novels.

The Carding books are available from Amazon and the Chronicles appear here, on this website, every Monday. Hope to see you next week.