Local news. Structures tumbled downstream by last year’s flooding said to be a blight on the region, though some appreciate “odd angles.” Fifteen pigs and eight cows burned alive last night in South Royalton, and barn-burning season not even begun. For sale: “Princess, floor length, white, sparkly, $15.” Sentenced: Debra Bristol, 49, mother of four, twenty months federal, for selling a fatal dose of heroin.

Prosecutor doubts the justice of the conviction. But, but, but, he says, tumbling back: to a mother’s addiction: to pain pills: to the prescription: to a surgery: to a car accident: “the seminal event,” he says.

E. who takes in cats, tells the story of a neighbor’s farm, recently burned: An old couple, in their 70s, mother and father to many children; unhappy souls. The old woman used to be a town clerk. Retired, now, and a drunk; so, too, the husband, of whom she is not fond. Comes a night not long ago when a state trooper, making rounds of Vermont’s little no-cop towns, spots the farm burning. In front, in his truck, the old man. Naked. Says he only had time to get out; not for clothes. “Anyone else in there?” asks the trooper. “Well, she probably is,” says the old man of his wife. “She was sleeping. Didn’t wake up.” He had not called 911.

The trooper peers. Through the flames, he spies her: Unconscious in a chair. What to do? Meantime, a son has arrived. E. says he hates his father but loves his mother so he takes a wooden ladder and props it against the burning family home. Up he goes. So, too, the ladder, in flames. But the trooper pulls the old woman out, chair and all. Saves her. And the son leaps to safety, and the father is naked, and unashamed.

No charges filed.

The old woman and her husband are living together again. A trailer, nearby. E. sees her from time to time in town. Says she wobbles.