ALONE
alan skeoch
Dec. 12,2018
“We are putting a new roof on the farm house.”
“Why?”
“”Some leakage here and there along the line of the old chimneys…Andy got
a crew of roofers together…professionals with nail guns and metal cutters.”
WHo put on the old roof?”
“Now there is a good story.”
“Who did it?”
“Ray…did it all himself… handled 8 x 3 foot sheets of corrugated aluminum
and put each sheet in place with a hammer and pile of lead head nails. And did
not slip off to rock gardens below.
“Three guys up on the roof today…how could Ray do it alone?”
“I don’t rightly know…”
“Who is Ray C.?”
“Died ten years ago…had a farm just above Ospringe…100 acres…pioneer farm
handed down from descendent to descendent I expect until Ray got it. Ray never married
and just sort of slipped into a lifestyle few of us would emulate.”
The Freeman farmhouse as it was about 1918, one hundred years ago with a cedar shingle roof. Look at the old fieldstone foundation…perfect doorways for snakes and mice and other
creatures seeking to escape the descent of winter on the land. Louisa and Edward freeman on left 1918 and centre 1948. Eric Skeoch Elsie Freeman Skeoch and the last Freeman family dog
Scottie. Sunny days, as they say.
Two Roofers…Ray is on the right in case you did not guess. Looking at Ray put me in mind the Robert Frost poem about an old man on a winter night.
AN OLD MAN’S WINTER NIGHT
poem by Robert Frost
All out of doors looked darkly in at him
Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars,
That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.
What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze
Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand.
What kept him from remembering what it was
That brought him to that creaking room was age.
He stood with barrels round him — at a loss.
And having scared the cellar under him
In clomping there, he scared it once again
In clomping off; — and scared the outer night,
Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar
Of trees and crack of branches, common things,
But nothing so like beating on a box.
A light he was to no one but himself
Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what,
A quiet light, and then not even that.
He consigned to the moon, such as she was,
So late-arising, to the broken moon
As better than the sun in any case
For such a charge, his snow upon the roof,
His icicles along the wall to keep;
And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt
Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted,
And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept.
One aged man — one man — can’t keep a house,
A farm, a countryside, or if he can,
It’s thus he does it of a winter night.
Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars,
That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.
What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze
Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand.
What kept him from remembering what it was
That brought him to that creaking room was age.
He stood with barrels round him — at a loss.
And having scared the cellar under him
In clomping there, he scared it once again
In clomping off; — and scared the outer night,
Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar
Of trees and crack of branches, common things,
But nothing so like beating on a box.
A light he was to no one but himself
Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what,
A quiet light, and then not even that.
He consigned to the moon, such as she was,
So late-arising, to the broken moon
As better than the sun in any case
For such a charge, his snow upon the roof,
His icicles along the wall to keep;
And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt
Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted,
And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept.
One aged man — one man — can’t keep a house,
A farm, a countryside, or if he can,
It’s thus he does it of a winter night.
ALONE
alan skeoch
Dec. 13, 2018
This was Ray Clough. Below is what imagination can do. My version of the Robert Frost
poem…my old man on a winter night is Raymond, farmer and roofer.
ALONE
Icicles on the window frames inside the house this night
as Ray lumbered in from the warmth of the cattle barn
through the woodshed redolent with the smells of
split pungent cedar and the candy sweet smell of maple
no time to tarry for the wind hammered crystalline
spikes of sleety snow against his battered face.
So bad was the night that
The back kitchen door seemed reticent to let
Ray enter, acting as if a monitor off who it would
accept and who reject.
Inside the wood stove’s beatng heart kept faith
with those who would expire without the
glowing embers. Ray was not entirely alone
on this winter night for small grey things
scampered back to their baseboard doorways
and larger blacker creatures arrogantly
paused to see Ray enter. Did Ray bring
food to expand relieve ehat near starvation
had shrunk. Ray kept his boots on for the floor
was cold as fingers of frost reached up
from the dirt floored cellar as if alive.
Ray was alone, had been most of his life.
Loneliness on his farm meant routines clipped
short…straight lines from here to there made
obvious from the tracks from stove
to easy chair. A track that stood in sharp contrast
to the blackened floor. The stove was black
with the spillage of a decade’s neglect.
Here and there were the bones of meals long
gone…bones picked clean by the mice and rats
living in the crawl space between the bricks and
plaster in Ray’s uninsulated domain.
And then Ray plopped his bony frame onto
his eaay greasy overstuffed chair. And Ray
sat there alone saying nothing but listening
to that winter wind as it ground the icy sleet
into the once tight and windproof shell of his house,
walls that time and neglect had made porous
enough for outside creatures to find their way inside.
Earlier on this cold October night Raymond
had chosen to flee from Alan’s farm where he, alone,
had re-roofed the ancient house.
Why did the woman scream when he knocked
on the darkened front door? Was he that frightening
to others? Some gourmet party was in progress
and the smells were sweet yet foreign to Ray whose
taste in food had been reduced to oat meal and fried
chicken with a dash of hard liquor. Marjorie came to
rescue Ray from the fear he engendered.
“Ray, sorry Alan is away right now…love your roof,
Come in and meet the girls.”
Wordlessly Ray moved backwards, down the steps
to the security of his half ton truck. He had cattle to feed
and wood to chop. An escape to make.
Now he sat alone again on his threadbare chair while
the wood stove embers and wild things in the walls
warmed his spirits. He was alone on this cold night
with fear in his heart engendered by the fear of that woman
who answered Alan’s door with a scream and flight.
More fear in Ray than in the woman’s scream.
A tear dribbled down his face a dripped on his old torn coat
as it worked its way through his layered clothing to
the tartan shirt and the tip of his inner once white, now grey winter wear.
Clothes that were his costume to stave of the cold to come.
Ray stared affectionately at he dust clad framed family
on the kitchen wall beside the calendars nailed one atop the other.
His reminder of grandparents long gone but present still.
They would understand his tears and were they here this night
they would grasp his lean shoulders with a warm embrace
but that was not to be…never to be…for Ray was alone
and would remain so until his dying day
which he recognized was not that far away.
“Maybe,” he thought, “I’ll see Alan in the morning
And Ray fell asleep in the chair beside the stove
as he did often on these cold pre-winter nights.
His dream was a wish. A wish that the woman at the door
did not scream but Ray also wished he had the nerve
to join the
cluster of females as they supped on foods fantastic
and drank the wine of friendship. A nice dream.
A false dream. A sad dream.
The tear by then had been absorbed then evaporated
in his clothing and wafted as a puff of air through the kitchen.
The tear had risen from his shirt
and coursed through the rest of the
house in search of something…anything…
unseen the tear floated to the bedroom where Ray occasionally slept
beneath his grandmothers patchwork quilt.
The tear eventually cooled and attached itself
to the photograph of Ray’s parents hanging above his bed.
There was a time when Ray was not alone.
But that time was long gone.
And soon Ray felt so would he.
Asleep, asleep…
Ray’s time worn fedorah slipped from his head silently
No sound in the house for the embers were now ash
And the rat beneath the stove had curled up in comfort
As had the curled up garter snakes whose long bodies
slid easily through the chinks in the old fieldstone foundation
Also curled in comfort were two raccoons, one in each
abandoned chimney…asleep until mid January when
the urge to copulate would assert itself and the empty chimneys
would again become a family homes.
Mice scampered across the dirt engraved floor with its
resistent knots giving a rolling effect. Some knots polished
by Ray’s heavy boots, sometimes encrusted with manure, but
most of the floor was black … unswept.
“Needs a woman’s hand”, commented the odd visitor but
visitors were few and far between as Ray drifted deeper into loneliness.
His sleep was deep by now…body limp in the arms of that soft chair
now contoured to Ray’s body shape for he slept here often.
All things considered, Ray was content.
He lived as he liked to live
Did what he liked to do
Had only the cattle to worry about…
But he had been jolted that night.
Why did that woman scream?
Scared Ray. Worried him.
just one old man ALONE.
alan skeoch
Dec. 13, 2018
The story of Ray Clough was triggered by the three man crew ripping off Ray’s roof and putting on a roof less
prone to leakage. That was Dec. 12 and 13, 2018. Ray’s roof had lasted nearly 25 years and would last another 25 for sure but little bits of seepage
would bring wood rot and limit the life of the farm house. Be nice to see it survive the 21st century. Outlive me and
certainly out live Ray for he died just a couple of years after roofing the house. His visit to collect his pay, a visit that
triggered the woman’s scream was talked about by the gourmet women for some time. He appeared in the dark
dressed as in his picture. His clothes were always the same. “He was not the marrying kind’, they said not really
knowing Ray at all.
Below are the new roofers. Three young men from Poland whose English was limited. They came armed with power
nailing guns and motorized shears to shape the roofing panels. When Ray did the job he used a hammer, lead headed nails
and tin snipping shears. And he did it alone.
Marjorie did not scream that night. She asked Ray to come inside but by then he was backing up fast and reaching for the keys to his half ton truck. The Gourmet club now had a different
subject of conversation. Concerned that they had scared poor Ray. And they had.
