Ride With Me by Lucy Keating
IF YOU WERE TO ASK ME ABOUT MY HOME, CHESTER Falls, Massachusetts—though I’m honestly not sure why you would, because that would mean you somehow knew it existed in the first place—I would direct you, first, to the town paper. The back page of the Chester Falls Gazette gives a rundown of every crime that has happened in our tiny town that week, and has included the following incidents: On October 22, a geriatric sheepdog from a nearby farm wandered into a woman’s home and refused to leave. The police were unable to get the animal out, so it remained there on her love seat for the next three hours, watching daytime TV, until its owner came and lured it home with a piece of turkey bacon. On February 19, a prized alpaca got loose from its pen and went slipping and sliding out in the middle of frozen George’s Pond, and had to be rescued by a four-person team. On April 20, a frantic caller claimed that a dangerous person was breaking into her home with a weapon. Turned out it was her husband, who had misplaced his keys after one too many beers watching the Stanley Cup Finals with his club league and brought a hockey stick home with him. And, my personal favorite, May 5, when a travel advisory went out via SMS warning of slick road conditions after a truck carrying three thousand pounds of buttermilk overturned on Route 2.