On Blackstone Mountain: Chapter 4
So much seemed to ride on the outcome of the conversation he was about to have, and for the first time in a long time, Ben actually cared.
Amelie burst into the house like a tornado, “Guess who I saw today!”
Pausing long enough to ditch her shoes, she threw herself into a chair at the dining room table. Week-night dinners in the Danforth house were not quite so boisterous as Sunday suppers, since Jonah and Jeremiah had wives and families now, and Christopher was away to the city with work. But even with just Amelie, his parents and Pap, they tended to be lively events.
This is a type of romance novel which I call “farm-smut” and features sex and love on the homestead, farm, or off-grid Maine location. To follow along with the story, receiving new chapters directly to your inbox, please subscribe.
Previously on Blackstone Mountain…
When we left off, Josie had finally made her way down off the mountain and into town. Assailed by Aunt Rosemary, along with her best friend, Amelie, Josie was subjected to an intervention. Her aunt proclaimed Josie a recluse, guilty of burying her head in the sand rather than dealing with the problem at hand, while Amelie gave her the gift of a cell-phone. Now with just 6-months remaining in which to meet the requirements of her inheritance, Josie at least has some support in the matter.
Chapter 4: Ben's Proposition
“Who?” Asked their father, Jeb, a twinkle in his eye as he spooned rice onto his plate. He loved his sons dearly, but it was Amelie who'd had him wrapped around her little finger since the day she was born.
“Josie!” Amelie beamed with elation.
Both their father and mother looked surprised and concerned. Noting his grandfather looked unaffected by the news, almost as though he’d been expecting it, Ben remembered he had a bone to pick with the senior-most Danforth.
“How come no one told me about Gramp’s passing?”
There was a long drawn out pause as the table suddenly fell uncomfortably quiet.
“I guess it just didn’t come up─” his father said finally.
Gaze trained on his grandfather, he continued, “Would have been nice to know before I made a total ass of myself asking Josie how he was!”
Amelie gasped, “When was this?”
“I dunno-Monday?” Ben shrugged, “I went to do some fishing out on Trout Pond and ran into her there.”
“So, how is she?” their mother asked, her brow furrowed with worry. Lucie Danforth was the glue that held their family together, with a soft spot for strays. Their friends had always been welcome at the ranch, but little Josie had been a special case. Not just because she was the granddaughter of Pap’s best friend, but, Ben suspected, because Josie had been particularly forlorn when she was younger.
None of them had ever forgotten how Josie hobbled in on crutches the first time Gramp brought her to Sunday supper. She’d been thin and malnourished on top of broken, bruised and stitched, with a broken leg and a broken arm. Whatever traumas had beset the girl before she came to stay at Blackstone Farm, she never spoke of them.
Though Josie’s physical injuries healed with time and care, they’d all known the girl continued to suffer inwardly from her childhood ordeals. Always quiet and painfully shy, Josie rarely spoke to anyone except Amelie in those days. Certainly she’d never spoken more than two words to Ben, but he’d had different priorities back then.
“You saw Josie three days ago and didn’t think to mention it?” Amelie asked, ignoring her mother’s question for the moment.
“It didn’t come up,” Ben repeated his father’s lame excuse, spooning a generous amount of stir-fried vegetables with chicken over the rice on his plate. He’d eaten well enough during his time in the military, but nothing compared to his mom’s home-cooking. “Why does it matter?”
“No one has seen Josie Greene since November.” His father told him soberly, “After Joe’s funeral she shut and locked the gate to the access road. She hasn’t come down off the mountain since.”
“Until today,” Amelie corrected.
“I hadn’t realized…” Ben murmured, recalling how tired and worn Josie had looked.
“You were almost the first person to have seen her in six months! We’ve been worried sick about her!”
“Almost?” Pap prompted.
Wrinkling her nose, Amelie explained, “Josie said Gregor was up there a few days ago harassing her about the condition of the farm. Apparently, he made an offer to buy the house, the land─everything.”
“I’ll just bet he did!” bit out Ben’s father, slamming down his fork and knife. “That guy really burns my boat!”
“So how is she?” their mother asked again, more insistently this time.
“She’s─okay, I think,” Amelie said. “Rosemary and I did an intervention. Remind me never to get on that lady’s bad-side!”
Pap chuckled, “Rosemary’s always been like that. I’ve seen her unload on poor old Joe before, too…”
At the mention of his late friend, Pap’s words faultered and Ben knew then why no one had mentioned Joe’s death. It was still too painful for Pap. He couldn’t imagine how difficult it must be for Josie.
“I bought her a cell-phone,” Amelie said, matter of factly.
“It’s about time!” Lucie exclaimed. “That’s good, Amie.”
“Be sure to invite her to Sunday supper,” their father said, somewhat gruffly. “Girl needs to know she still has people who care about her.”
The conversation shifted to other topics then, though Ben’s mind continued to linger on Josie long after…
The dense wilderness crowded the Toyota Tacoma as Ben made his way up the mountain towards Blackstone Farm. Engulfed by the forest, the dirt road was narrow, rutted and rocky. At a crawl, he steered the truck over great boulders, while jagged rocks threatened the underside of the vehicle. Twice he passed over ancient wooden-plank bridges spanning a rushing and rocky stream on it’s way down the mountain, holding his breath lest they give out beneath him.
When he was growing up, Ben recalled how Pap went every week to visit his dear friend, Joe, up at the farm on Blackstone Mountain. It had been a rare occasion when he would invite anyone to accompany him. Trying to remember the last time he’d visited the Greene’s farmstead, he could vaguely recollect an instance when he was about nineteen. When Josie had first arrived, Ben had gone with Amelia and Pap to meet the girl Grampa Joe (that’s what the Danforth kids had always called their grandfather’s best friend) had brought back from New Jersey.
Thinking on it now, he recalled how scrawny and frail-looking Josie had been─even in her wannabe goth attire with her hair jet black. She’d put on a tough act, angry at the world and rightfully so. But there was no hiding the the nasty bruises and scrapes, or the stitches along her temple.
Amelia had befriended the girl that day, and—in time—that angry goth-chick had disappeared. The two girls became as inseparable as their grandfathers before them. Ben had still been living at home back then. He’d seen Josie grow into a gangly, freckle-faced teenager with wild copper-colored hair that he and his brothers all liked to tease her about. Josie Greene was as good as a sister to him.
Seeing her the other day on the pond had changed all that, though.
At length, the truck emerged from the dark forest into the sun, and he was blinded for a moment. As his eyes adjusted, Ben took in the sprawling meadow laid out in the mountain cirque. An ancient glacier had carved the broad stone basin out of the south-facing slope of Blackstone Mountain, leaving behind rich sediment that allowed a high elevation oasis to flourish. Long ago, the Greene family had staked their claim there.
Following the twin ruts up through the meadow toward the farmhouse, he pulled the truck to a stop in the gravel yard between house and barn and stepped out of the cab with some relief. Inhaling deeply of the crisp, clean air Ben looked about him. The gain in elevation and the slope of the mountain offered a panoramic view of the mountain range, splayed out on the horizon to the south.
Gaping at the scene for a long moment, he wondered how he could’ve forgotten a view like that. At length he turned and found Josie standing in the open maw of the barn, watching him.
Wearing overalls and a sports bra, she was dirty and grimy, covered in a sheen of sweat. Her wild red hair disheveled, slipping from it’s confines. His body responded but he tamped it down. He had the feeling he was going to have to take things slow with Josie.
“Hey there, Josie!” he smiled, crossing the yard toward her. “I can’t believe I’d forgotten what a view you guys have up here!”
His reaction made her smile and Ben’s stomach flipped and flopped in response. “Hi, Ben.”
“I hope you don’t mind my just dropping in,” he said. “But there’s something I’d like to discuss with you─if you have a few minutes?”
She hesitated visibly and he added, “You look like you could use a break.”
Ben thrilled to see her smile again, taking in the curve of her lips and the vivid green of her eyes.
“Sure,” she said ruefully, laying the spading fork aside. “Would you like something cold to drink? We could sit on the porch?”
“That sounds great,” he said. “And maybe I can convince you to give me a tour? It’s been a long time since I visited Blackstone Farm. Even then I think it was only once or twice that I had the chance to come up here with Pap.”
“How is Pap?” she asked, glancing at him as they crossed the yard to the house.
“Onery as ever,” Ben muttered in mock disgust.
Laughing as she skipped up the steps, Josie admonished, “They always are at that age.”
He hadn’t told anyone where he was going that day. Not wanting to share his plans until he was sure. And, if he was being honest, he knew his mother was going to have a conniption when she found out. She’d been overly protective of Ben since his return. It had been nice at first—to be doted on and looked after. Now, though, Ben was feeling a bit smothered.
“Go ahead and have a seat,” Josie gestured to the table and chairs set out on the broad front porch. “I’ll just be a minute.”
Nervous as a schoolboy, Ben couldn’t bring himself to sit. Certainly there were other camps—other cabins he could renovate. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t afford to buy a place of his own.
But the cabin on Trout Pond had been so special to their family when he was growing up. Something inside him burned to make it so once more. And maybe it could be the stepping stone that allowed him to get closer to Josie, too. So much seemed to ride on the outcome of the conversation he was about to have, and for the first time in a long time, Ben actually cared.
While he waited for Josie to reappear, his gaze took in the farm as it lay upon the gently sloping alpine meadow, surrounded on three sides by towering walls of rock, with the mountain peak behind the house and high above them. The garden stretched out just below the house, Ben judged it to be the equivalent of an acre in vegetable production and he marveled at how orderly and lush it looked.
A classic New England farmhouse with an attached barn. Then, at some point in the last 200 years, the Greenes had built a second barn just across the yard. Livestock fencing ranged out from there, sweeping out across the meadow to contain and protect the dozen or so sheep and an old Belgian workhorse.
To the south-east corner of the basin lay a gnarly orchard and above that a thin stream of water came cascading down the wall of rock that sheltered the meadow and the farm within. The stream flowed through the orchard on it’s way out of the basin and down the mountain. In the valley below, it would join the Carrabassett River on it’s way south. Merging later with the Kennebec before eventually reaching the Atlantic Ocean.
“Here we are,” Josie emerged from the house with two frosty amber-colored bottles. She’d washed up a bit. He was disappointed to see she’d put a t-shirt on to cover the sports-bra under the overalls. Her wild red hair had been tamed into a fresh braid that came down over her shoulder and Ben resisted the urge to take the thick plait in his hand to pull her close.
Their fingers grazed as she passed him a bottle, sending frissions of current charging up his arm and Ben noted the surge of color to her freckled cheeks.
“So─what brings you all the way up here, Ben?” she avoided his gaze, settling herself in one of the chairs at the square little table on the porch.
Taking a fortifying haul, he was surprised to find─not beer in the bottle─but hard cider. He’d never much cared for cider, but this one was different and he decided he really liked it.
“Is this your own recipe?” he asked, lifting the bottle in appreciation.
Josie shook her head, “Gramp’s.”
“It’s very good.”
“It should be. I can’t recall the number of test batches he and Pap tried before they settled on this recipe.”
“Pap helped with this?”
“Oh yeah!” Josie grinned. “They’d sit right here─playing chess or checkers, cribbage or whatever─testing each batch and hashing it out.”
“Really!?” Ben exclaimed. Now he knew why Pap rarely invited anyone to accompany him on his visits to Blackstone Farm. The old codger was up here getting hammered with his best-buddy and didn’t need anyone upsetting that. “Well, they sure got it right.”
Josie nodded, chuckling, though there was a sadness in her eyes. “Yeah, they were definitely passionate about their hobby.”
She fell silent, her gaze lost out over the meadow and Ben sensed that deep sadness in her once again.
“How are you doing, Josie?” he asked gently.
Not meeting his gaze, she said with a shrug, “Doin’ okay, I guess.”
She did not elaborate and hoping to coax her into opening up to him, Ben admitted, “When I told Amie I’d seen you on the pond, she told me I was probably the first person to see you in six months. Said you disappeared after Gramp’s funeral. Locked the gate and got yourself snow-in up here.”
He waited a long moment, but she said nothing, gazing unseeingly out over the farm and the mountains beyond.
“People are worried about you, Josie.”
She sighed, speaking at last, “I know.”
“Come to Sunday supper,” he suggested. “I know the family would love to see you.”
She hesitated, her hand toying anxiously with the talisman she wore round her neck, “Maybe…”
“Just think about it,” he told her, before she could say no. Then, changing the subject abruptly, he continued, “Anyway, that’s not why I’m here.”
“Why are you here, Ben?” she asked, a note of irritation in her voice. He’d obviously touched a raw nerve.
Ben smiled patiently at her agitation, then came right out with it, “I wondered if you’d consider renting the fishing cabin to me.”
“The fishing cabin? Ben─a big pine tree fell on it. No one has been able to use it in over a decade.” She told him. “The place is uninhabitable.”
“Actually, structurally speaking, the cabin is still solid. I took a look at it when I was on the pond the other day.” He told her. “Sections of the roof and floor will need to be replaced, a few windows and some other minor issues. But, it won’t cost you a dime─I’ll pay for all of the materials myself.”
He paused to give Josie a chance to respond, but she seemed confused and conflicted. He watched as she took a long haul of cider, and he was sure she was avoiding his gaze.
Heaving a sigh and shifting in his seat, Ben said quietly, “I’ve been away from home for a long time, Josie. Being a civilian is a big change, and I just need somewhere I can get my life together─figure out my next step─yknow?”
Josie hesitated just a moment more, her eyes darting to meet his only briefly before she finally acquiesced, “Okay, Ben. We’ll give it a go.”
Scarcely able to believe it, Ben asked, “Really?”
“Yes, really,” she said, smiling at him then.
“That’s awesome, Josie─thank you so much! You won’t regret this.” He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. Elated then, he clinked his bottle against hers and said, “To Gramp.”
As he drove away, back down the mountain a short while later, Ben had the feeling that this was the start of something good. For the first time in a long time he was excited about his life and the direction it was heading.
Thank you for reading and following along with my debut novel: On Blackstone Mountain. Please feel free to leave your questions and feedback in the comments. Much love to you and yours, my friends!