Sam I AM - A Probably Fictional Story

I was on deadline. Not anyone’s deadline, just my own self-imposed deadline. I piled paperwork on top of kitchen chores at the end of a long, physically strenuous day outdoors. Tack on an errand and not coincidentally, that too, an urgent midnight deadline.

Raking, cutting trees and stacking firewood was part of my busy routine. It filled my entire day. Not that anyone minded. Being out in the boonies in a big, empty cabin has its own unspeakable rewards. Thinking, doing, without distraction brings about results only I could be satisfied with.?

Back to deadlines. My reward for finishing a third job application before the posting expiration, cover letter and all, was a half-pint of hand packed ice cream. The store was closing in 30 minutes and I didn’t want to disturb the peace with my driving machine.?The trip takes exactly 17 minutes if you don’t push the car to its limits. I love to drive the back roads that connect the hamlets of the indomitable Mohawk Valley. I’ve stopped my reliving my days of competition racing long ago, but I still crave the sensation of driving hard through slip angles.? I had to have a long talk with myself following the authorship of two successive +90 speeding citations by the State's Finest.

My final lap designated when I launched the car completely off the ground on a sharp hilltop near Rosenberg. The Sheriff saw it for himself, lucky I wasn’t cuffed for that, so grateful it was only a sensible lecture. He was right; slowing down means enjoying more, it lasts longer... and as he so eloquently advised, "in the glory of the freedom you fought to protect." He handed me back my DMV license. "Makes sense, right?" Wise words to thrive by.

Add the whole “you’re not bulletproof, you’re not even getting any younger” tape that was inserted into my brain by my well-meaning friend the night before I left. It’s been almost a year; this is my first attempt at the entire deep winter here in plywood.

Todd is a well-known big-time tv producer. We used to work together at a national news network before I was lured away by Silicone Alley. He has a knack for knowing where the bodies are buried. When I told him at dinner a year ago that I intended to sequester with the essentials and decompress he just deadpanned. I described that hard physical work and basic living for a few months would transform me back to a better version my old self. He snorted and nodded stoically. I needed to do some soul searching in nature and clear my mind, I explained, noting his sympathetic support - and disapproval.

"Yeah, I'm behind you. I don't like it one bit. Me and the calvary are one phone call away. Know that. I also know that if the field were level up there it would be a walk for you, it's not... You're gonna land on your feet. Know that, too." He pushed the end of a very rare steak away, the waiter filled his wine glass.

Todd was fishing. He knew I was working hard on a theory, a hypothesis. I spent the first three months chopping wood, making bonfires and running numbers, charting and edging closer toward a clumsy idea that kept me riveted. Sadly, my books and notes were jacked. Missing. The following six months I placed small trades on my results from memory and with adjustments, finally had enough positive action to make a move.

When the day came and trading was well into its swing, my dots on paper were matching the trade price by the hour, then by minutes. Todd was the only person I called. As soon as he picked up I told him, "It's time to put up or shut up." Todd had been openly coveting my car, which I found both annoying and funny. It took me three months to collate and plot on graph paper five years of market data on one stock. Yes, primitive, but I need that visual-aid. I'm not going to say my wall didn't look like a crime investigation taped up with charts and articles, but after two close calls over six months, this was tracking. It took a lot of coaxing and a leap of faith with time running out, but Todd placed the trade at the exact time and price I specified. Of course, I did the same. He cursed me out when the order was confirmed, and again a few weeks later, double the profanities when the deposit cleared his account. He had a bit more than enough to buy the exact car, which was our deal, if I had to cover a big chunk of any loss.

"Don't f-ing tell me you can do this whenever you f-ing feel like it. Just don't!" Ok, truth is: I can't. I came close enough with other stocks using the same theory, but this was a bullseye. I called the bottom: within the half hour and under $0.47 price target error - three months prior. It turned north with a bullet that very hour and never really looked back for another twelve weeks.

I signaled the waiter. We were nearly the last ones out of Sparks. "Thanks for the car, thank you. This isn't the end of the story, right? I get it but, I still don't get it." He was searching my eyes for reasons and his own reassurance, sounding more parental than usual.

"Why don't you stay at the apartment, I got empty rooms - plural. What are you doing? What do you have to prove? It's the tall, thin red head, right? Or the squeeze with the teeny heart tat?" He was trying hang his hat of worry on any excuse he could accept. I knew Todd was listening to the doom reports on the incoming snow squall heading my way and I was going to drive straight back into it tonight.

I offered something brief and to the point, trying to think fast like Faber; "I'm still standing. I got this." I was concerned that if we didn't end the sidewalk chat, walking away from where I was parked, I was going to get a rash. I had get up to the cabin before the snow started or I'd have to look for a place for a few days or weeks and wait for a bulldozer. The overlay was the cold water system that I had to keep going. If water didn't flow periodically, this would be a quixotic adventure up the New York State Thruway.

Did the winter exercises in the mountains of the Gangwon prepare me? I thought about the brave men who fought their way to the Yalu and the Hurtgen forest, one of many battles that shaped one of my literary heroes. I laughed at myself. Right.

Ha. Funny now. The joke is over when the temperature drops below 40 in the valley. My cabin is about 2000 feet up, it gets colder and starts snowing up here way sooner. Last night it got so nippy I had to break out the thermals. I had gotten used to cold garden hose showers, it felt invigorating… in the summer. This is October and already talk of snow. That’s like talking about Christmas before Thanksgiving. Seasonal blasphemy. Tonight, the air had bite, a reminder about a coming visitor, staying awhile.

“Just get back in one piece!” were Todd's last words of caution as we set another iCal appointment for a dinner in a galaxy far, far in the future. The violet light of a rising full moon marked the end of our conversation, surprising the call didn't drop during the whole 20 minutes. There is no wi-fi here, cell service is intermittent and the electricity is shaky when the wind and trees scour my power lines.

I scoop my keys and walk soberly, as always, to the car. The shale gravel under my Corcoran jump boots crackle softly like marbles in a velvet bag. I am trying to ease down to the front gate. No lights on. I slip the car into neutral and roll down the steep, rocky hill with the engine off.

Nothing but quiet, crickets and moonlight.

Tonight, hidden from view, under the cover of thermal cumulonimbus is a perennial. Stewart’s Ice Cream Shop and Gas Station with its brand-new asphalt parking lot and fluorescent store lights that gleam in the night like my childhood memories of diners on TV. I shut the car door and felt a blanket of cool, misty fresh country air versus the weightlessness of auto a/c. I was surprised no one was inside the store but pleased. It made me feel like I was stepping into a Hopper painting.

I paused and took a deep breath as I swung the door open. Two young women were hard at work behind the counter. The floors had just been mopped.??A pretty, slim, tall blond with a ponytail greeted me, she moved about with cat-like efficiency.

The other was stacking items behind the counter. She had stunning, natural red hair, curls cascading around her shoulders like a rose bouquet on a derby winner.? They were both in the homestretch before closing and, dang it, I just had to be their very last customer.

Red was preparing for my request, stuffing her blazing coiffure back into a food service hairnet. Yellow was doing something loud with coffee. I was knocked off center. I only had 10 minutes to shop… at least I knew what kind of ice cream I wanted.

“Could you scoop me some Death---”?

“Death by Chocolate!” Red giggled as she raced to finished my sentence. “Its MY fav-o-rite too!”?She hopped and spun around like Tinker Bell doing a flying pirouette, scoop in hand - a wand anticipating my wish. She was fair and beautiful like a young Norma Jean. She wore no makeup, sported a black nose ring. I was trying not to stare.?

The 6ft. Viking blonde was staying industrious as a supervisor would be pouring the last of the coffee down the drain. She was three feet away and I detected a smirk on her face. I bet “Gisele” could spot the sweat starting to bead my forehead. The lights that lent a magical movie glow to the scene outside turned into an obnoxious interrogation lamp at the register.

As Norma Jean bent over the case and scooped, her curls spilled out of the hair net again, which fell to the floor. I thought to myself, ‘please don’t pick that up.’ But she did, of course.?I couldn’t help it; I sputtered something dumb like “don’t put that on” or “leave it there.”

“I must put it on, I’m packing your ice cream. The freezers open.” Norma took notes during her job orientation. “Gisele,” seeing right through the entire situation butted in, smoldering hot, empty coffee carafes in each hand.

?“You don’t have to wear it to ring him up, if that’s all he wants.”

I fought off a feeling that serving disoriented customers at midnight was nothing new for Norma Jean. I didn’t want to be so pathetically obvious. She totally cancelled my “midnight at the diner” cool with her full-on hay-ride bubbly.

“What’s your name?” she asked me as she slid the cool pint of heaven toward me. She shook her curls free. I probably swiped the terminal three or four times before I noticed I was using my library card. Forget it. No chatting her up. I better leave before something goes wrong. “Gisele” was still busy and smirking, purposely ignoring our tete a tete.

“That’s $5.75!” Norma Jean announced. I reached back into my wallet, this time actually finding my AmEx, thanks now to my big, fat Poindexter coke-bottle scientist glasses.

I was gobsmacked when I looked up and saw that Norma Jean had innocently unbuttoned her sweater to show me her name tag. It was pinned to her burgundy store apron underneath. I swear the floor fell out from under me.?

“I’m Sam!” she said brightly, flashing a toothy smile, proving she was a child of the local DairyLand hills.

“Samantha, is it? That’s a very lovely name.” A sincere compliment.

"It's Fan-cy." Samantha was demure.

I started to say, "It's Hebrew. It means..."

Just then "Gisele" came trucking through. "Hey! Watch your back!"

My face was hot like the carafe. Time to go.

Sam rang me up and I snatched the receipt like a first-class ticket to a graceful exit. Grabbing the bag without ceremony and walking out, I shouted "Goodnight!" to Sam and “Gisele” without looking back. I wasn’t trying to be rude but probably came off that way. I was only running from a Chernobyl moment and Samantha’s million-megawatt smile.

Walking out to my car I wondered for a minute, who will she wind up with? What will her life be like 20 years from now? What if… I dropped the keys. Reaching, the pint of ice cream fell out of the bag and rolled under the car. Trying to save it, I whacked my head on the running board. The Trifecta. A Karmic tweet. I flung everything onto the passenger seat and lit the dash.

“Many miles to go…” I thought. Got my horse full of premium and there’s an empty highway somewhere. Recently, I stopped to pit and watched a road crew rebuilding the surface on the highway nearby. The HMA on Interstate 88 is 100% perfect. I saw the women on the crew driving those monster airplane-sized vehicles. Awesome. They did a superb job rolling it and the car feels like it’s really flying on the track. Hard to resist when the cones are spaced one car width apart around sweeping turns - especially with no painted lanes. I toed the accelerator gently and rolled out of Stewart's parking lot to find my desolate rolling start, mile marker 106. The tach glowed and nodded yes, filling the rear view with smoke. I forgot about deadlines and midnight ice cream rewards.

Story and Photos by Dan Roca 2021-22 @ All rights reserved.