NOW THAT I HAD WARDLAW OFF MY BACK, I COULD GET DOWN to work.
I found Jenny sitting in the backyard of her little cottage in the Lancaster suburb of East Petersburg, making a watercolor painting of a flower that was just beginning to bloom in her garden. Sunlight played across its brilliant anatomy. The subtle shadows it threw on its own interior formed a delicate composition of inwardly spiraling curves. “Hello, Em,” she said, obviously pleased but not particularly surprised to see me.
“Come meet my friend Faye. And her baby. They’re waiting in my car out on the street.”
“I’d love to. Just let me finish this blossom before the paint dries.”
I settled in to watch, and after a few moments asked, “How do you stay so relaxed? All day you deal with the encroachment of development and mediocrity on land that you love, and yet it doesn’t seem to get to you.”
Jenny shrugged her shoulders. “Sure it does. It just doesn’t stop me.”
“But how? I’m sorry, I sound just like Fred Petridge.”
She smiled. “Remember those chestnut trees Fred was talking about? Look at my house. It was built of chestnut logs two feet square hundreds of years ago. It’s been stuccoed over, but those logs are in there, just as good as new, because it does not rot. Like Fred said, chestnuts used to be the main tree around here, but they got the blight. You never see even those sprouts anymore unless you walk deep into the woods, but you know what? All the old stumps are still there, and they’re alive and impervious to rot. And the roots just keep on sprouting again.” She shrugged, then dipped her brush into a lovely shade of yellow paint and laid it lovingly
on the paper. “As soon as the sapling gets big enough to bloom, the blight kills it back again, and that’s very sad, but who knows? Maybe someday we’ll figure out a cure for all of this. Nothing lasts forever in this world, not even blight. So I think I’ll just honor my roots and keep on sending up my sprouts.”
I sat with her awhile, watching her paint. Jenny was not a Remington or a Charlie Russell, but her little painting was better than George Catlin’s landscapes, a nice integration of the tension between darkness and light, and vibrant in its portrayal of color. And she was happy, a woman at peace in the job of embracing the disharmonies of human nature. I wondered if I could ever be as comfortable with myself.
I said, “In all of your travels around this county, have you gotten to know anyone who drives an ambulance?”
“Sure. My cousin, in fact. He’s with the fire department. I am a Mennonite, you know, so I’m related to half the county, if not three-quarters of it.” She lifted her brush and nibbled at the end of the handle. “Why, what’s going on in that busy mind of yours?”
“I think Mrs. Krehbeil needs to get to a hospital where someone can take an X ray of her lungs. I’ll bet you doughnuts to Whoopie Pies that they’ll find the shadows of lead. Then she’d be kept in the hospital and properly treated, and might just survive long enough to get that easement you want her to have.”
“An ambulance to save the Krehbeil farm, you say? Now, there’s a metaphor.”
“Try tomorrow. If it’s a nice day, I wouldn’t be surprised if you wouldn’t find her out on the front porch in her wheelchair enjoying the air, and I’ll bet also that it wouldn’t be long before she falls out of that chair.”
Jenny nodded. “There’s no one who could keep the fire department from loading her into an ambulance and getting her to town, now, is there?”
“No one. Not even her doting children. Her doctor is named Abrams. Make sure she gets someone else.”
“Oh, that old sawbones? Heavens, I’d thought he’d retired. He still thinks babies come from storks.”
“I thought it was something to do with toadstools. But don’t wait any longer than tomorrow, okay? The old girl’s probably getting dosed again today.”
Jenny gave me a lovely smile. “It’s a pleasure knowing you, Em Hansen. Here, have some celery,” she said, lifting a dampened tea towel off of a very stubby bunch of that vegetable. “It’s grown right here in Lancaster County. I go to Root’s farm market every Tuesday and get some, not only because it’s the most delicious celery you can find anywhere, but because Lancaster County is still a place that has farm markets like Root’s. It’s only open Tuesdays. Staying open daily would be like trying to be a part of the rest of the world, and that’s not their point. But on Tuesdays, you can get any kind of pastry or confection made in this county, you can buy pigs, and horses, and arrowheads … . Everywhere you’ll see men wearing flat-topped straw hats and women in plain clothes and delicate white caps, and not a lick of makeup. Not a one of them has ever seen the inside of a beauty parlor. And they don’t even speak English if they can avoid it.”
“In this world, but not of it.”
I took a stalk and bit into it. Jenny was right. It was delicious. It had more flavor than I had ever imagined a stalk of celery could have.
Jenny said, “You can’t get celery like that from a factory farm. It takes
love
to grow it, not machinery. I bought this from a little old lady who lays out her produce on velvet.”
“Wow. Why try to keep up with the Joneses when the material world isn’t really making the Joneses all that happy? And I thought the Amish were simply quaint.”
“The lady at Root’s is a Mennonite, but close enough. No, they’ve got their troubles and their own brand of foolishness, but they also have something to teach us.”
Jenny saw me out to the street and met Faye and the baby. Jenny showed each of her colorful fingernails in turn to Sloane, who shrieked with amusement. Faye let Jenny hold the infant, and I saw that good, strong woman soften with pleasure.
When we were ready to leave, I said, “I have one last little favor to ask: When you and your cousin take Mrs. Krehbeil to the hospital, would you please relieve her of just a snippet of her hair?”
“Her hair? Why?”
“Because the main symptom people will treat will be pneumonia, but it’s probably lung cancer. But perhaps the dose was given only orally. If the lead isn’t in her lungs, it’ll show up in her hair and fingernails. It’s a
bit more of a chore for you, but get those samples and make sure you have a witness. Stick it in an envelope and seal it and get your cousin to sign across the seal. Then get it to Fred Petridge. He’ll know what to do with it.”
Jenny tipped her head, musing. “Van Gogh used to lick his brush,” she said. “How are we going to prove she didn’t do it to herself?”
Faye said, “Mrs. K doesn’t paint. She married into the family. Her son says she hasn’t a lick of talent, and no real interest in it.”
I said, “There are some paintings in that house—some truly bad paintings—”
Faye said, “The word is that Deirdre painted them. I just spent four days listening to Tert cuss about what Deirdre ‘presumes to call art.’”
We were all buckled up and ready to leave when Jenny tapped on my window. I lowered it.
“One thing,” she said. “I almost forgot. I phoned a friend at the Nature Conservancy and had him look up your mother’s ranch. Em, there’s something you need to know. Have you been back there recently?”
“No … . It’s been a couple years, actually.”
“Well, then, you need to know what’s happened, and why your mother chose to sell rather than leaving it to you. You ready to hear this?”
I took a deep breath. “Okay …”
“It’s because the ranches were being bought up by developers. It’s too close to Colorado, Em. He said that folks from Denver used to go up to Fort Collins to go fishing—”
“The Cache la Poudre River,” I said. “Great trout-fishing.”
“Yes, but then Fort Collins grew into a city, too. It’s huge now, my friend said. So everybody from there is looking for the next-farthest getaway, and guess where that is?”
“My part of Wyoming?” I asked.
“Yes, you’re just over an hour from Fort Collins, right? So the developers are buying up the ranches and selling off your creek bottoms in chunks as ranchettes. They’re fencing off the riparian corridor and calling the prairie on the benches ‘the Commons.’”
“Shit! That’ll ruin the place! The grasslands and the creek bottoms are one ecosystem! The animals need both to survive, and you’ve got to graze heavy, sharp-hoofed animals in order to break up the soils so the grasses reseed, or the grasses give over to brush!” I bent my head over the steering
wheel, embarrassed at my outburst. “That whole ecosystem grew up around the buffalo and the antelope; that’s why it was important to keep the cattle grazing!”
Jenny waited for me to calm down a bit, then she said, “So your mom had a choice: She could leave the land to you and watch you lose it to inheritance tax, or she could sell it now to a coalition that’s going to keep it a working ranch, and not subject to the turnover of families.”
I turned in my seat, still holding on to the steering wheel to orient myself in time and space. “But either way I can’t live there,” I said, my voice coming out like a tiny child’s.
Jenny put a hand on my shoulder. “I know it’s hard to let go of owning the land, Em. We need it so deeply. It’s part of our identity, our security. In loving it, we feel loved. That must be why your mother wrote in into the bill of sale that you’d always be allowed to stay in the ranch house,” Jenny said. “I think you’re a lucky woman. I think your mother took responsibility for what she wanted, and did the best she could for you, too.”
“WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO WHILE WE WAIT FOR TERT TO COME home so you can get your gear?” I asked Faye, as we headed into Philadelphia.
She grinned. “No need to wait,” she said, producing a key from her pocket.
“Does he know you have that?”
“He didn’t ask, and I didn’t tell him. I found it in a drawer in the kitchen. How else do you think I was able to take the baby for walks?”
“He wouldn’t even give you a key?”
“Nope. A real piece of work, that boy. He’s so tight I could hear his asshole squeak. When I saw you standing by the road, I all but tore the steering wheel from his hands to get him to stop.”
“Sorry you had such a lousy visit.”
Faye sighed. “I thought it would be good because he had so many things in common with Tom,” she said longingly. “The problem is he has all of the
wrong things
in common with him!”
That was good enough for me. Somewhere in Chester County, after I had phoned Fritz to say that we’d see him in Baltimore by five, and he’d said he’d go one better and pick us up at the General Aviation terminal in Philadelphia at four, and when Faye had finally finished venting her spleen, I told her that I was sure there was a man out there who was worth her time and attentions. From there I segued into the plans I had, now that the baby was more or less sleeping through the night (as she put it, “‘Sleeping like a baby’ means in fits and starts”), I would be looking for a
job that would make it possible for me to afford my own place while I worked on my thesis at night. Faye allowed as how she’d miss me, but trusted that I would not move very far away.
About five miles farther down the road, she asked, “Are you mad at me?” “For what, Faye?”
“For not figuring out how to tell you more gently.”
I sighed. “I probably wouldn’t have listened.”
“I thought if I found you a job …”
I couldn’t help smiling. “Thanks, Faye. But next time you find me hiding under my bed, why not just say, ‘Em, you’re hiding under your bed.’”
“Em, you were hiding under your bed.”
“No shit I was hiding under my bed. Can we talk about Tom now?”
She took in a breath and let it out. “Do I have to?”
“No, not really. Not until you’re ready. But it’s okay to love me and hate me at the same time.”
“I didn’t say I blamed you for Tom’s death.”
“You didn’t have to.”
She looked out the opposite window for some time. The baby slept.
As we crossed the Schuylkill River into Philadelphia, I said, “If it’s worth anything to you, I feel guilty as hell about Tom’s death, and so does Jack. I have to believe that’s a big part of why Jack went away to play soldier again, and why I’ve been hiding under my bed.”
“Let it go, Em. We all have to let it go. Let
Tom
go.” She reached out and patted me on the shoulder.
“Thanks,” I said. “I love you, Faye. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had.”
“I love you, too, Em.”
WHILE FAYE PACKED her bags, I took a stroll through Tert’s house and out into the garden, where a large forsythia bush was in full, screaming bloom, a shower of … well, Baltimore yellow. Sloane Renee rode on my hip, giggling and smiling as if we’d never been apart.
Tert had a pretty classy place, all right; all polished brass doorplates and eighteenth-century brick, with slate pathways leading into the fenced privacy of the yard. Amazing what you can buy with ill-gotten gains.
Within this tightly manicured splendor, my interest quickly settled upon the toolshed. It was just a hair too rickety for the rest of the show. As fastidious as Tert was, I couldn’t imagine he would leave it like that. And sure enough, Faye’s key got me into the shed, and I found the weatherproofed and sealed room inside. I was careful not to leave any fingerprints as I peeked inside to make sure it was filled with paintings. I borrowed Faye’s digital camera and took a couple of artistic snaps.
Then I let myself into his office (the lock to the office door was appallingly easy to pick; I did it with a credit card, for heaven’s sake) and dug until I found those notes he’d had with him in Utah. I duplicated several pages. Feeling pretty chipper, I “borrowed” an envelope with KREHBEIL GALLERIES letterhead and mailed the copies to Agent Wardlaw at the address printed on his business card. The artistry of the digital photographs I pumped through Faye’s laptop on an Internet connection, figuring that dear old Brucie would enjoy having them to greet him upon his return to the ugliest building in Washington. I copied a few of the file entries into the e-mail just for spice:
Hey Brucie:
Your boy is fond of making notes. His handwriting is tiny and cryptic, so I can’t make out every word, or should I say, every term of his code, but maybe you can do better with the copies I’ve sent you. Putting asterisks for each letter or number I can’t make out, and trying to get the spacings between the bits of information accurately, they look like this for the past year:
May 3rd
Rem to H*
Wyo/UPS (spec.)—SAC/will call
O/*—ridge/hoc
Pd./ck+cash
June 8th
orange—no. 26
223,000 profit
split/50.50
Aug 12th
Big One—10% to [ ]
new frame—Rocetti/Boston
Denver—van/cash
Split w/GRR/London a/*
I imagine you’ll have fun comparing these with something like, say, a tax audit for the gallery. Keep your nose clean and I’ll bet you were a real pain in the butt in Kansas City,
Em H.
P.S. You’re right, I’m one of the best.