Part I: The Bench and the Cosmic Joke
There is a polished granite bench on a hill in Buckland Cemetery overlooking the Deerfield River valley. I cut it myself. The Garfield Wright family — a local Jewish family — asked me to move large stones from their property and shape a permanent memorial for Susan after she died. They wanted it solid enough to last centuries, with space for a bronze plaque telling her story. I gave them exactly that.
The stone is dense, cool to the touch even in summer sun, with tight grain that takes a mirror polish. Run your hand across it and you feel the hours I spent — the rasp of the diamond pads, the wet slurry, the final buff that makes it shine like dark water. When I finished bolting it down that day, the church chimes across the valley started playing Amazing Grace. I stopped working, stood up straight, and just listened. The notes drifted over the river, through the maples, and landed right on that bench like some divine punchline. A Jewish family trusted me — a metalworker, sculptor, and landscape guy — with their dead. And here I was, thirty-five years into building things people actually use: benches, fountains, memorials, ironwork that holds up bridges and lives.
And down in the valley, a network of women had spent six straight years trying to erase me from existence.
