An Excerpt from the Novel At the Lake

It was a late Friday afternoon in early January, 1967, almost closing time at the factory. Freezing winds made coifs look like rats' nests and comb-overs stood up like rooster's crests. No amount of clothing kept the cold from penetrating to the bone. This was a typical northern New Jersey winter. The weatherman, that bastion of accuracy, had predicted six degrees for that night, a virtual heat wave. It had been six below the night before.

The parking lot around the drab factory building was filthy with two-day-old snow and was jammed with rusting cars. Nothing looked new enough to bother keeping clean. The old munitions factory had been belching smoke since before most of the people in the town of Pumpkin Pond had been born. And most of them worked there now.

Inside the factory, the din of machinery made it hard to hear your thoughts. It smelled of machine oil and hot metal, the kind of smells that stayed in your hair and clothes after work, and even a hot shower didn't take the memory of it out of your nostrils.

Three generations of Pumpkinians (someone on the city council had once suggested Pumpkinites but old man Peevey said it sounded like a skin condition), male and female, hunched over large and small work stations, putting tiny pieces of glittering brass together with fingers that knew every notch and crevasse in the metal. Most of them could have done their jobs blindfolded.

The foreman, Joe Burke, was in his 50s. He was a quiet man with a crew cut, acting very much in charge. He strolled from station to station with his trusty clipboard. He had worked these machines himself when he was a kid and even after ten years as foreman, he could still work any machine in the place. He strolled past a double workstation where two women intently manipulated the tiny brass cylinders and springs.

Nineteen-year-old Ginny McNally worked one of those machines. She was frowning in concentration as her nimble fingers moved quickly over the familiar pieces. She still wore her shoulder-length auburn hair in pigtails that bounced against her ears. A tribute to her childhood or an attempt to avoid growing up; she didn't know and she didn't care. It was easier than fussing with curlers and hair spray. Her make-up was sparse: a little mascara and shadow on her green eyes, a touch of pale lipstick. Her late father's old white shirt hung to the thighs of her faded dungarees. Wearing his shirts was how she kept his memory alive in her heart.

She had been working at the factory for a year and a half, since a disastrous attempt to work in the Pumpkin Diner after high school graduation. The boss had liked her, a little too much, and she had found herself dodging his groping hands while balancing breakfast trays and refilling coffee cups. After three weeks of scooting her hips to the side to avoid his unwanted pats on her posterior, she had finally had enough. Ten minutes after she'd started work one warm summer day, he had connected with her backside, startling her into dropping three plates of scrambled eggs with sausage and toast, three OJs and three coffees. The crashing crockery had echoed off the walls and was still echoing long after she had yelled, "I quit," and bolted out the door.

She had spent the rest of that day driving around, afraid to go home and tell her mother that she had quit. Her mother would have a conniption fit if she knew. Ginny had tried to make a mental list of all the places in town where she might quickly gain employment, but nothing had come to mind. There just wasn't any place in this tiny burg where she wanted to work.

Pumpkin Pond was a small town of 7,000 situated in the narrowest part of Pumpkin County, New Jersey. People who left and came back were surprised to find what a small town they had actually come from. Downtown was barely two blocks long with no buildings more than two stories tall. Across from the Colonial Theater, there was the diner Ginny had briefly worked in, a little place with half a dozen red vinyl booths. You could still get a ten cent cup of coffee there. Chrome edged stools lined the counter and the smell of bacon grease permeated the place all day and into the night.

The drug store stood on the corner not far from the high school. Next to the drug store was the tiny First National Bank, where three tellers were usually two tellers too many. The town's only dentist was upstairs from the realtor, who didn't get out much because the real estate market wasn't exactly hopping around here.

The houses were old and often needed a good paint job. Once, they were charming, with porches on their fronts where neighbors sat and sipped lemonades in summer while watching the goings-on with not-so-subtle interest. Now, most of the homes had cracked and peeling paint and at least a few rails missing from the gray picket fences.

Everyone knew everyone's name, and their kids and their friends and their second cousins from down the shore. You could spend all day at a friend's house and her Mom would feed you and let you use their bathroom and smack your bottom if you said a naughty word, then call your Mom to tell on you so you got smacked again when you got home.

And milk was delivered, and bread, and your drycleaning picked up and delivered. And you knew your mailman by name and said hello to him every day. And you all worked at the factory at the end of town because unlike the diner, or the gas station or the grocery store, it was full time and it had at least some union benefits for you and your family if you needed them.

Ginny had wished she had her guitar with her that summer day. It often calmed and inspired her. But her mind kept racing back to "Where will I get a job" No other jobs had been available so she found herself here at the factory, like everyone else, doing the same repetitive work day after day for low wages and a few benefits.

And she'd found that her fingers were more nimble than she'd ever imagined. She had learned the job quickly and was one of the fastest workers on the floor. It had surprised her but not pleased her. What good was it, after all It wasn't creative, she knew, but it was a pay check.

She had another outlet for creativity that also required nimble fingers. After work each day, she'd spend all her evenings practicing her guitar. Classical guitar. She played rock and folk, too, but the classical music filled her with such beauty that it was all she really ever wanted to do.

She thought of her guitar now, of spending the evening practicing, and it made her think of her father. It had been a half a dozen years since Jack McNally's death. He had been rushing to get home for his wife's birthday when he had lost control of his car in the rain. It had spun out and slammed head-on into a bridge abutment. They said he had been killed instantly. Her mother, Rachel, had never fully recovered from the shock. She blamed herself for her husband's death. She had been angry with him on the phone earlier. He had called to explain that he'd be home a little late and she had berated him and whined about it being her birthday.

He was going twenty miles over the speed limit when the accident happened. They found a dozen red roses and a small, heart-shaped, diamond necklace in the car. She never wore it. She hid it for years, then sent it to his sister, Judith, in Wyoming.

She had tried to find solace in drink, and then in the arms of other men, usually strangers that she picked up in the local gin joint. Ginny had never understood that kind of grief. She had tried to deal with her own grief by immersing herself in playing her guitar, mostly classical like Bach and Mozart, and all self-taught. Her mother hated it. She wanted honky tonk and rock and roll. And she wanted it loud.

"Mom, could you turn down the radio Please"

"Why So you can play that boring, slow clap trap" It had become just one more thing for them to argue about. And they had argued a lot since Jack's death - so much that Ginny's girlfriends stopped coming over to visit; their mothers disapproved of Rachel's lifestyle and thought that their daughters were safer as far away from the bad influences in that house as possible. Ginny found herself virtually friendless at a time when she needed companionship most.

Aside from her natural musical talents, Ginny had no other skills or talents. So she worked at the factory, like everyone else in town.

She could think of a dozen places she'd rather be right now.

Her hands worked on sense-memory, putting the tiny pieces together. Next to her, at an identical work station, sat Rosie Bednart, a woman in her 40s. She was meticulous and fast. She twisted her wrist to look at her watch without losing a beat in the work she was doing. "Hell of a life when all you live and breathe for is the quitting bell every Friday, huh, honey" she whispered.

Ginny shrugged. "Yeah. And a gold watch when you retire."

Rosie laughed. "Hey, anything that's gold is good, kiddo. When I retire, I'll melt that sucker down and fashion me a gold ring to wear."

Burke approached the two women just as the quitting bell rung out loudly. The roaring of the machinery got quieter and finally faded to near silence, replaced by the voices of tired workers getting ready to leave for home and a weekend of shoveling snow and doing laundry.

Rosie quickly and happily closed her station. She grabbed her coat from the back of her chair and pulled it on.

"Yeehaw, I'm heading over to the diner to meet my sister and her two brats. You want to join us, Gin"

Ginny smiled. "No thanks, Rosie. I told Mom I'd come right home after work tonight." A lie, but better than listening to a pair of squalling pre-schoolers and avoiding leering glances from her former boss.

"See you ladies bright and early Monday morning," said Burke.

Rosie laughed. "Oh, come on, Burke! Let us have our Friday and Saturday before you start reminding us about Monday, Monday."

"Sounds like you could put that to music," he joked.

She buttoned up her heavy black coat and sang the beginning of the Mama's and Papa's song. "Monday, Monday... Bye, Ginny. Have a good weekend."

Burke grinned as Rosie hurried toward the exit with all the other workers. He liked her. He knew she wasn't married anymore and hoped that some day he'd gather up the courage to ask her out. On the other hand, romances at work can be complicating, so he had hesitated to take the plunge. More fun to anticipate, he had told himself. He nodded to Ginny as he walked away.

She slowly closed her station, deep in thought. She picked up her big black leather purse then took a step to follow Rosie, but suddenly she stopped. She turned back and picked up the tiny part she had just made. She looked at it closely.

So small, its shiny brass surface reflected the cold fluorescent light just right, like she'd caught a sparkling little star in her hand.

She frowned, unhappy, then felt disgusted. What am I doing here Why am I making parts for machines I don't know or understand She'd heard rumors that she was assembling firing pins for bombs that would be shipped off to Viet Nam.

She had avoided news of Nam. Had avoided forming an opinion pro or con about the war. In her mind, ignorance had been bliss. But her ambivalence didn't really sit well with her at the moment and a vague dissatisfaction with her job and with her life was suddenly turning into a gnawing ache in her gut.

She dropped the object back on the table and walked purposefully in the opposite direction from everyone else, toward a door marked "Office.