Go With Me by Castle Freeman Jr. of Newfane; published in 2008 by Steerforth Press in New York, New York; softcover; $12.99; 160 pages.

Reviewed by Jennifer Hersey Cleveland

Every small town has one.  He’s always a big guy, mean as a snake, and willing to do just about anything to maintain control.  He’s put sugar in gas tanks, slashed tires, and even stolen equipment.  But he doesn’t stop there.  Sometimes braver townspeople think they can fight him, take away his power.  That’s when he gets violent.

But sometimes the townspeople win.  Sometimes.

In Castle Freeman Jr.’s novel Go With Me, his name is Blackway.  His most recent victim is a woman who’s recently moved to this tiny, insular town and isn’t about to take Blackway’s abuse.

Go With Me opens with the sheriff coming in to work one morning to find the young woman, Lillian, in her car, the window smashed, a paring knife on the seat beside her.  She is frightened because, she tells the sheriff, Blackway has been stalking her.  She has no way to prove it, but she knows it was he who broke her window, is watching her frequently, and most recently, killed her cat.

Lillian had been dating a local boy, someone who really got her, but he had been run out of town by Blackway.  The sheriff ponders aloud, why doesn’t she leave town and head back whence she came.  But she didn’t do anything wrong; why should she leave?

Lillian knows that Blackway isn’t done with her, but the sheriff tells her he can’t do anything based on her belief that Blackway is her stalker, on her belief that he will do something worse than he’s already done.

The sheriff sends her to the old sawmill, where she is to find a local man who might be able to help her.  The roughneck she seeks is not available, but young Nate the Great and the old man with whom he works, Lester, are indeed available.

The unlikely threesome sets out in search of Lillian’s attacker, this interloper in her life, but Lillian has little confidence in her would-be saviors.  They are, after all, but a boy and an old man, albeit a very large, strong boy and a very clever old man.

Meanwhile, back at the old sawmill, a coven of fellows is discussing what might be happening, what the outcome will be.

In their dialogue, Mr. Freeman shines.  Their talk is sparse, sometimes uninterpretable by those who haven’t spent enough time in this little village at the southern end of the Green Mountains to know what’s what.

Their conversations are a staccato repetition of bits of local lore and criticisms of this woman with an awful mouth on her, spoken with the cadence of old men who’ve spent a lifetime having this, or a similar, conversation over a case of beer.

Interspersed throughout the narrative are histories of the older men, tales about one’s first season at a logging camp when he was just a young boy, about the sawmill back in its heyday, about the reasons Blackway hates Lillian as he does.  Mr. Freeman talks about the drug subculture of a small town and the ways rural people react to that which frightens their sense of well-being and safety.

Mr. Freeman is a prolific writer of short stories, essays, news stories, opinion pieces, and novels.  Since 1982 he has written the “Farmer’s Calendar” essays for The Old Farmer’s Almanac.

As with any tale well told, Go With Me lingers in the mind; the characters become living and breathing parts of the reader’s memory.

In Go With Me, Mr. Freeman has lovingly and carefully produced one of the finest examples of Vermont fiction this reviewer has ever had the pleasure of reading.