Happy Valentines Day from Washington County
When Everett Bidwell stopped hanging his winter deer on the tree in front of his house, she could tell something was up. Roseanne Delacroix had lived across the street from Everett since she was eleven years old, and it was hard to remember a winter when, if Everett had a deer, it wasn’t hung out there for all the world to see.
Over the years, Roseanne had mentioned to Everett that she didn’t care if he had a deer or not. She didn’t care to have him aging it or chilling it or really just displaying it right out across the street from her front window. Everett simply said that was the best tree he had, and that was the end of it. Until this year.
This year, for whatever reason, Everett was behaving somewhat differently. Roseanne sometimes felt if she squinted a little, he also seemed to have stacked the wood next to his outdoor furnace just a little neater than he had in recent years.
And it was not that she was imagining these things. Since her husband Ray had been laid to rest by Ned MacWhirter’s logging skid three years earlier, Everett had been paying special attention. Once he had left a copy of the Fort Edward Reformer-Dispatch in her mailbox because it featured a picture of him with a twelve and one-half pound large- mouth bass that he caught in McDougal Lake.
Then there was the time he had slowed down on Kilburn Road to show her the new tires he had bought for his truck. And while they were fine new tires, Roseanne had to believe it was not the first time he had driven past her with new rubber. Roseanne believed that a woman knows these things, and she was the first to credit herself with such fundamental knowledge.
Now, Valentine’s day on McDougal Lake is not such a special day that the ice fishermen stay home, and it is certainly too early for the crocuses that begin to peek out in early April. But on that particular day, something happened that no one could remember happening before, in February at least, and it happened right after the blackberry muffins wound up in Everett’s mailbox.
There was Everett in his Sunday suit on a Thursday, with his hair all slicked down, stepping up the walk to Roseanne’s front door, carrying a small brightly wrapped package. Roseanne, who did not notice the package at first, just Everett, thought someone must have died and Everett was there to bring the news. Instead, Everett presented her with a box of fine chocolates he’d gotten from Steiningers in downtown Salem, and asked would she like to join him for dinner.
Well, Roseanne, who already had a soft spot for chocolates and was now developing one for Everett, thought that sounded like fine idea, even if it was only three o’clock in the afternoon. So they jumped in Everett’s truck, the one with the good rubber, and went off to the center of Cossayuna to have dinner at Quack-Ups.
They were able to get the table next to the stuffed mountain lion on the piano, and so Wanda Ferne was their waitress. As anyone could see, everything was clearly working in their favor, and from all reports, it was an afternoon to remember.
