The Bucolic Plague

  With the reminiscently familiar stench of my own vomit-covered shirt filling my nose, I ask myself:

  Is this progress?

  Book 1

  Chapter One

  October 13, 2006

  “Don’t panic,” Brent said, “but there’s a huge spider on your shoulder.”

  Not panicking seemed like the least pragmatic reaction under the circumstances. So I went ahead and panicked with unabashed exuberance. Limbs flailed. My head hit the passenger-side window. My waving hands nearly shifted the rental car into reverse at 65 mph.

  “Is it gone?!” I screamed.

  “For the moment,” Brent answered calmly, rationally, predictably Brent-like. “But it’s still in here somewhere.”

  “Let’s pull over,” I said. “I’m not going to drive all the way back to the Red Roof Inn with a black widow waiting to suck out all my blood.”

  “Black widows don’t suck blood,” Brent said, sighing. “They bite.”

  “I bet it came from the apples,” I said. “There are probably more, lying in wait.”

  I was afraid to turn around and look at the five full bushels of apples lined up across the backseat. In my mind they were all teeming with blood-sucking arachnids. Other than this brush with death, it had been the perfect weekend so far—our seventh annual apple-picking weekend. Each fall since we’d first met, we put on our best Ralph Lauren plaids, rented a car from the Hertz on Sixty-fourth Street, and drove north until we found an orchard that we liked. Our only criteria were that it made its own doughnuts on site, and wasn’t crawling with similar Manhattan escapees such as ourselves. Which meant we usually had to travel pretty far north. After picking more apples than we could ever possibly consume, we would spend the night in a budget motel, preferably just off a major highway—not because we couldn’t afford a cozy inn, but because cheap hotels reminded Brent of vacations from his youth. They reminded me of Fleet Week, so it worked out well for both of us.

  “Come on, pull over,” I said again.

  “Let’s wait until we hit the next town,” Brent said. “We need to get more gas anyway before it gets dark. What are we close to?” He nodded at the map I had in my lap, which was more to keep the draft from the car vents off my legs than for any sort of navigation. I looked down, squinting in the rapidly fading late fall afternoon light.

  “We’re two pinkie fingernails away from the next red dot.”

  “That’s not very helpful.”

  “Well, it’s better than being two thumbnails away, that’s for damn sure.”

  I turned to look out the window. This was the farthest north we’d ever driven. It was even more beautiful here than in the Hudson River Valley, where we usually ventured. The sky was wide and rolling, and the hills were dotted with tumbledown farms, picturesque in an abandoned, gray Andrew Wyeth kind of way. The winding road led us into a wide gulley of some sort, with silvery slate walls on either side of us. Bright yellow birch leaves stuck to the rocks, made wet with what looked to be a spring gushing from inside the rocks themselves. As we drove around a slight bend, it looked as if we were coming on a village. It seemed like every hollow in these parts was populated by a few houses (badly in need of paint), a post office, and one or two boarded-up stores. This one, though, felt different, and as we drove on it became apparent exactly how different it was.

  “Wow,” Brent said. “Where’s this?”

  I looked down at the map, and then realized that Brent was right—I wasn’t very good with navigation. I didn’t see this village, or any other, within several pinkie fingernails of where I presumed we were. I looked back out the window. This town was unlike any other that we’d driven through that day—or any day for that matter. It was hauntingly beautiful.

  As we entered the village, on the left we could just make out a hulking old hotel with an almost Spanish-looking facade. From the looks of the sumac and scrub trees that had grown up through the driveway, it had long been abandoned. On our right we passed a low-slung structure with a faded painted sign indicating that it was once THE IMPERIAL BATHS. We passed a second abandoned bathhouse, and then a little farther up the road we spotted yet another huge hotel—this one right on the main street, with a block-long front porch, five stories of white clapboard, and darkened, very empty windows. The sign out front read THE ROSEBORO.

  We were speechless as Brent slowed to a crawl and turned up a side street. This village was incredible. The road was in as much disrepair as the buildings. Every street was lined with abandoned summer hotels and boardinghouses. There wasn’t a light on in the windows of any of them. The only sign of life was a hunched woman in a babushka who walked along the frost-heaved, uneven sidewalk. She didn’t even glance at us as we slowly drove past her.

  “All these empty old hotels and boardinghouses,” I said. “It’s like The Shining meets Petticoat Junction.”

  “Ugh. Do you smell that?” Brent asked, wrinkling his nose. “Eggs. Rotten Eggs.”

  “Well, obviously the whole town is way past its expiration date.” The air did smell awful.

  We wound our way up and down the hilly backstreets of this near ghost town in a valley. The wind picked up a little and the yellow and orange leaves scuttered across the empty streets. It was downright eerie.

  “Did you find where we are yet?” Brent asked again.

  “Hang on. Slow down—I see a plaque or something.”

  Brent pulled the car over to the side of the main street, though that was just a formality. We could’ve stopped right in the middle of the street and no one would’ve had to drive around us. There simply wasn’t any sign of life anywhere. We got out of the car and walked over to a sign planted next to the sidewalk. Someone had a wood fire burning somewhere. Other than the old woman, who seemed to have disappeared into thin air, the smell of smoke was the only indication that anyone else was in the vicinity.

  “Welcome to Historic Sharon Springs,” Brent said, reading from the metal sign.

  I leaned in to read over his shoulder. I noticed that there were similar historical society signs all up and down the main street—practically one in front of each abandoned building. It had the effect of making the entire street look like a series of dioramas in a Natural History Museum. With the sun nearly vanished, and most of the streetlights not working, it was nearly getting too dark to read.

  The Town of Sharon (originally called New Dorlach) has lived with a dual identity for two centuries, home both to families with agricultural and rural roots, and to visitors and proprietorswith visions of resorts and spas. Sharon is one of six original towns to form Schoharie County in 1797. Sharon’s dual identity is also about ethnicity and social tradition. Native Americans were lured here by the healing qualities of the sulphur, magnesia and chalybeate springs…. During the second half of the 19th Century, Sharon Springs was home to over sixty hotels and rooming houses accommodating over 10,000 visitors each summer. By the early 1900s, Sharon’s indigenous Christian mix had become distanced from the summer clientele with the influx of European visitors, primarily from Judaic tradition.

  “Sulphur water. Hence the smell,” Brent mused. “This is where people used to ‘take the waters.’”

  “It looks like somebody took the people.”

  “It’s beautiful, though, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I said. “In a very odd way. It doesn’t feel as dead as it looks.”

  “Martha would love this town,” Brent said. “The old architecture is amazing.”

  “Well, she better get here quick. One good snowstorm and it’ll be a pile of rubble.”

  We climbed back into the car and slowly made our way to the other end of the main street, taking in all of the abandoned glory. Before the hill that led out of town, the road bent slightly, enough to hide one final old hotel from our view until we were right in front of it. It was ablaze with light. And people moving about in the windows. After all of the abandoned darkness, I nearly had to shield my eyes.

  “Whoa. People!??
? I said.

  “The American Hotel,” Brent read from the sign out front.

  Neither of us actually had to suggest stopping. Brent automatically turned into the gravel driveway. It was full of cars—so full that we had to park on the grass. We got out and walked around to the front entrance. The front porch stretched the length of the white wooden building, punctuated with black shutters at each window. It was lined with comfortable old wicker rockers and meticulously decorated with piles of pumpkins and cornstalks. If Norman Rockwell were gay and owned a hotel, this would have been it.

  There was another porch above our heads, running along the length of the second floor, and there looked to be a floor above that as well. There must have been several dozen rooms in this place.

  “Do you think—” I started.

  “No way. A place like this has got to be booked months ahead of time.”

  “Way out here?”

  Brent opened the front door and warm air flooded onto both of our chilled faces.

  “A woodstove,” he remarked happily.

  “A full bar,” I added happily-er.

  The burning stove and carved wooden bar were located at the far end of the cozy lobby decorated with well-worn antiques and memorabilia from Sharon Springs in its spa heyday.

  It almost felt like an episode of The Twilight Zone. Had we stepped across a threshold to a different era? This was the one building in town that looked as if it had anyone in it, and now that we were inside, it looked as if it had everyone in it. Connected to the lobby was a restaurant, in which every table was set formally and full of patrons. The noise, after driving around those deserted streets, was almost too much to bear.

  A voice bellowed from behind the host stand, near the hotel desk complete with little cubbyholes for keys.

  “Hello! Welcome to the American!”

  It was a bear of a man, tall, broad shouldered and chested, dark haired, with a full beard and mustache to match. He reminded me of a drawing of Paul Bunyan in a picture book I had as a child. After greeting us, he held up a friendly finger motioning for us to wait as he turned back to chat with one of the waitresses who had come up to ask him a question.

  Brent studied a framed postcard of the American Hotel that looked as if it had been printed a hundred years ago. It was summertime when the photo was taken, and the sidewalk outside was lined by a row of stately trees. The grass and trees were both manicured to perfection, and several horses were tied to hitching posts. The men and women on the porch were all smiling broadly and were wearing suits and ties, or full dark skirts. It’s rare to see a photo of that era in which the people are smiling. Sharon Springs must have been a very popular place at one time.

  “Okay! Sorry about that…Do you guys have a dinner reservation?”

  I turned back around to see Paul Bunyan stepping out from behind the host stand wearing…a kilt.

  Not that Brent and I were the least bit secretive about our relationship, but whenever we traveled around small rural areas, we were always a little self-conscious of appearing gay. We did this less out of concern for our own safety, but more out of respect for communities that may not have had a fair chance to grapple with the subject beyond the occasional Jerry Springer episode.

  And there stood Paul Bunyan in a kilt.

  “Ah no,” Brent said. “We didn’t make a reservation. We were just driving by. But if we can get dinner, we’d like to.”

  Paul Bunyan winced and sucked in his breath.

  “Gosh.” He looked down at the reservation book. “We’re really booked tonight. I’m very sorry.”

  My heart dropped into my stomach—in which there was plenty of room. I’d been looking over the menu posted by the front desk and had already picked out my three-course meal. Everything looked delicious and local.

  “But you can eat here, in the bar area, if you’d like,” Paul Bunyan offered brightly. We quickly accepted.

  Our dinner plates arrived and were taken away in a satisfied blur. I’d eaten in restaurants around the globe, but I didn’t think I’d ever eaten a better meal. It wasn’t simply the food—it was the warmth of the fire, the coziness of the bar, and the slight mysterious air of this Brigadoon.

  As the last course was being cleared away, Paul Bunyan came by our table. We motioned for him to join us, and he pulled up a comfy leather chair.

  “I’m Doug,” Paul Bunyan said. He squinched his eyes at us, inspecting. “You guys are from the city,” he deduced accurately. “What brings you way out here?”

  “We got lost,” Brent said.

  Doug laughed a big hearty guffaw. “So did I,” he said. “Twelve years ago. And I still can’t find my way back. Take me with you!”

  “Please do,” another man said as he approached the table. This man was a bit leaner, with a scruffier beard than Doug’s and thinner, lighter hair that was graying at the temples. “Is he bothering you?” he asked, putting his hand on Doug’s shoulder.

  “Am I bothering them?” Doug said. “Here I was, literally minding my own business, when in walk these city slickers demanding a meal.”

  I could already tell that I liked the brash Doug.

  “Table twelve wants you to drop by,” this second man said.

  “My public can wait,” Doug said. “I’m hatching an escape plan.”

  The second man rolled his eyes and pulled up a wooden chair beside Doug’s.

  “I’m Garth,” he said. “How was your meal?”

  Garth seemed very gentle and sincere. It had been a long time since I actually believed that someone truly cared how my meal was.

  I quickly pieced together that they were the owners of the American Hotel, and that they were, in fact, “together,” as my mother euphemistically says. The four of us chatted the evening away. They told us how they’d fled the city in 1996 and wound up first opening a café and bakery up the street. Garth had been a Broadway musician, and Doug had been an actor. We told them about ourselves, that I worked in advertising and wrote on the side, and how Brent had quit being a doctor to work with Martha Stewart. By the time there was a lull in the conversation the giant grandfather clock in the bar was chiming midnight. I looked around only to notice that there were no other customers left. I cast a wary glance at Brent, and then to the clock. Doug picked up on my signaling.

  “You two heading out?”

  “I suppose we should,” I said. Ugh. The Red Roof Inn awaits. “We’re going to try to make it to Albany tonight and get a room.”

  “Why—and I would ask this of any living being—why would you want to stay in Albany?” Doug asked.

  I’d been eyeing the keys in the cubbyholes by the front desk all night. Each time I’d gotten up to use the restroom, more and more of them were missing. There was no way this place would have an extra room in the middle of peak leaf-peeping season, would it? But even as of fifteen minutes ago when I went to the bar for yet another Riesling, cubbyhole number eleven still had its very own shiny key in it. I’d always desperately wanted to stay in the type of place that kept its keys in cubbyholes. It makes me think of movies like Holiday Inn and Same Time, Next Year. If an establishment cared enough to keep its keys cozy, just imagine how its guests felt. But I’d promised myself I wouldn’t inquire about vacancies. The deal between Brent and I was that the day’s driver always gets to pick the hotel. And I knew he’d choose the Red Roof Inn.

  “You don’t have a room here, do you?” Brent asked of Doug.

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Brent was willing to give up noisy ice machines, fuzzy HBO, and fiberglass shower stalls for cubbyhole number eleven? Brent must have been under the spell of this place too.

  Doug shouted at Garth, who was cashing out the dinner receipts at the front desk.

  “Did the Schmitters ever show?”

  Garth looked into number eleven.

  “Nope.”

  Doug turned back to us.

  “Good news, bad news,” Doug said. “Good news is that we have a room.”
He paused for dramatic effect. “Bad news is that there’s only one double bed.” His face turned serious for the first time in the evening. “And we don’t go for homosexualists in these parts.”

  His tone was so sober that I almost believed him. But an instant later he broke out in his heartiest laugh of the evening as he rose to bring us the treasure of cubbyhole number eleven.

  Chapter Two

  “They were nice,” Brent said once we’d settled into the car the next morning.

  “Yep,” I said curtly.

  “What’s wrong?” Brent asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing big, or nothing small?”

  “Nothing-nothing.”

  “Well, I had a good time,” he said.

  “Me too.”

  “Then what’s bothering you?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It just seems like the weekend flew by so quickly. I’m not ready to go back into the city.”

  It’s been said that whenever New Yorkers leave the city, they can’t fathom how they live there. But as soon as they return, they get caught right back up in the pace of it all and egotistically proclaim that they could never live anywhere else.

  Doug and Garth were kind enough to show us exactly where we were on the map and to trace out the most picturesque route back to the city. It seemed to be pretty much a straight line down Route 10 into a town called Cobleskill and then another forty-five minutes or so until we would hit the New York State Thruway. Then it was a straight two-and-a-half-hour ride right back into the hectic hustle and hassles of the greatest city in the world.

  I wasn’t ready to go back. I never was after our apple-picking weekends. They gave me just the slightest familiar taste of the slow rural life I enjoyed growing up in a small farm town in Wisconsin. Our five bushels of McIntoshes in the backseat may as well have been from the Garden of Eden. Each bite reminded me of how good it used to be, but how doomed we were to our stressful urban careers and lifestyle.