Authors: Jane Smiley
“Uh, Gerhardt, the old guy, is moving to the old folks’ home on the first of the month. It’s gonna be interesting to get into there. He’s got newspapers back to the birth of Jesus in there. That stuff is valuable in some quarters. Well, maybe not to the birth of Jesus. But the First World War, anyway.” He handed me a Popsicle-sticky paper from the county.
I said, “You don’t seem worried about this.” It was a very official letter from an office I hadn’t ever dealt with in a building in Portsmouth I had never been to, the Commercial Land Use and Mineral Rights Inspection Board. Among other things, the letter declared that recipient
may be charged a penalty in addition to the normal permitting fee, and a fine for every cubic yard mined . . .which shall be assessed according to . . .please contact this office as soon as . . .ordered to desist.
Gordon shrugged. “We’ll go talk to them. So what? We’re recontouring is all.”
“Gordon, you’re taking down the whole hill.”
“There’s as much as we’ve already taken out still in there. The road-building guy said it was the best he’s ever seen. You know, I always thought the drainage on this farm was perfect. Those cows were never slogging through mud.”
The next morning we went to the Marlborough County Auxiliary Building, which was a former high school. The official we saw, named Sherwin Dorsett, turned out to be a young woman, maybe thirty years old. She took the letter in her hand, read it over, and then looked at me. She said, “You’re Mr. Baldwin?”
“This is Mr. Baldwin.”
“You his lawyer?”
“His Realtor, actually. I’m Joe Stratford, Salt Key Corporation.”
“I drove past that site on the way to work. I drive past that site every morning. Mr. Baldwin, you’ve got twenty trucks passing in and out of there on a steady basis. The mining regulations are very clear in this county. If you export more than the specified cubic yardage of ore or rock or soils, you have to have a mining permit.”
Gordon twinkled at her. “We’re not exporting anything. It’s staying right in the state.”
“This is a county agency, Mr. Baldwin. I work for the county.”
“If I didn’t supply the state highway commission with this gravel, they’d have to go another hundred miles to get it. That would be quite an expense, they told me.”
“I’m sure it would. County regulations are clear, though.”
“I’m recontouring that property. I’ve done it all over the county. If you’re going to build fifty houses somewhere, you’ve got to have level ground. The front section of that farm is level, right along the highway. The back section you couldn’t do a thing with. It was too steep. Now it isn’t, thanks to me.”
“Have you applied for a building permit?”
“Not yet, but—”
“May I say something?” I piped up.
She led us into her office. I thought about Marcus and said, “Maybe you could tell me precisely what it is you would like us to do?” I smiled and smiled.
“You should have applied for a mining permit six months before beginning the project. That’s how long it usually takes to consider the various documents that would inform the county about whether or not the proposed mining is in the county’s best interest.”
“I don’t think Mr. Baldwin knew in November or October that the state would be needing the gravel. He was really responding to an appeal by them, because, you know, they have to do the roadbuilding now, in the summer, when the soil is stable so they can lay a good roadbed.”
“There are no filings on this project at all, so, as I said in the letter, the project is ordered to desist and all monies received are to be put in escrow until the project is approved.”
I reached out my hand for the letter and looked it over. I said, but oh, so pleasantly, “I’m sorry. I don’t see anything here about putting money in escrow.”
“Well, that is the next step with a noncompliance of this kind. How much have you received so far?”
Gordon stared at her. It was as if she, a girl, a blond girl, a blond girl younger than his daughters, was asking him to show her his poker hand. I leaned forward, shook my head regretfully. I said, “You know, I do think we need to talk about this further between ourselves before we decide what to do.”
“Mr. Stratford, there is no deciding, really. The rules are the rules.” She coughed. “The mining has to cease as of this afternoon. You may begin the permitting process as soon as you put together your impact statements and your soil analysis statements. The company doing the roadbuilding will have to be contacted so they can submit documents about the relative value of material from this site.”
I took out a pen and a little notebook, and I said, “Why don’t you give me the list of documents that you need?”
She softened slightly, I thought with relief, which showed me right there that she was more nervous than she appeared. Her voice strengthened. She gave me the list. I numbered each one. The last one was number fourteen. Fourteen applications and statements and authorizations required to move some gravel, including the “precious metals statement,” which was a soil analysis to be done by some expert from somewhere stating that we were not mining for gold, silver, or platinum and therefore not seeking a “premium” mining permit. I said, “Has gold ever been discovered in Marlborough County?”
“Not so far.” She spoke gravely.
I gave her a friendly look. I stood up. I said, “Thanks for your time.” I patted her on the shoulder. Marcus couldn’t have done a better job. Gordon was coughing and clearing his throat as we went out, as if he were choking to death. I poked him in the ribs and pushed him toward the exit. Out in the parking lot, he said, “It’s my property. I’ve had that piece for twenty years. It just sits there for twenty years, and finally they come to me, and I make a little something off it! Nathan knows a guy, a lawyer.”
I said, “Gordon, you’ve got a better idea than a lawyer.”
“What’s that?”
“Think about it. Think about that time six or seven years ago when they weren’t going to let you put those houses at Rookwood Crossing on quarter-acre lots.”
“I went to the township board of supervisors and asked where they were going to put in the mandated low-income housing. Oh, they approved those quarter-acre lots so fast! That’s a nice neighborhood now, you know. I went past there last week. It’s a regular town. Let’s go see Ivan Kruger.”
We got into his BMW.
“How much money have you made on that gravel?”
Gordon shrugged.
“Do you not know, or are you not telling?”
“I loaned some to Norton. He’s got a guest house he wants to buy. Betty’s putting down new carpets at the shop. You know, it comes in. I gave some to Marcus, but you know, Joe, you’ve got to hold something back with him. I’m not saying I’m not committed to the farm and all, but there’s a difference between paying top dollar when you have to and paying top dollar because that’s what you are in the habit of doing. Marcus doesn’t know the difference, you ask me, but he’s persuasive. That’s why I stay out of the office. Limited contact.”
“Well, yeah,” I said.
Gordon said, “Let’s go for a drive.”
The drive took us east of Portsmouth, to an area I didn’t often visit, a flat, not very pretty area where the farms still prospered—cattle, corn, tomatoes in the summer, onions, a few hogs, you name it. We turned down a dirt road and ended up at the Krugers’. Ivan Kruger had been a county supervisor since before the county had supervisors. He generally ran unopposed. He farmed about two hundred acres or so. When we pulled up next to his barn, he was standing there, holding a baby pig nose-down, his fist around one of its back feet.
Gordon brought the car to a halt beside him; we got out of the car; we came around the car. He did not greet us; Gordon did not greet him. I guessed they had known each other for almost forty years. The pig squealed and arched itself, then hung there for a moment, its ear twitching. Ivan was wearing greasy old overalls, a long-sleeved shirt with an elbow out, and an old fedora, against the sun, but it was a mistake to think he never got off the farm, because he said, “You got all those folks out there up in arms, Gordon. Those trucks are going in and out day and night.”
“That shouldn’t last much longer. A few weeks, maybe.”
The pig tried to stretch down and put its front feet on the ground. It squealed again.
Gordon said, “It was about time that place was recontoured. If old Gerhardt had done that years ago, he might have had a farm.” He nodded toward the barn.
“Might have.” Ivan tightened his grip on the pig but didn’t look at it. He cleared his throat, then said, “You’re making some money on that gravel.”
“One-time deal. Once the land is recontoured, it’s done. It’s not like it’s going to be a gravel pit out there.”
“I suppose,” allowed Ivan. With the hand not holding the pig, he hitched up his pants.
“Would have had to do it anyway, to put a neighborhood in. It’s just opportune that the state needed the gravel at the same time. You know there was four high school kids killed at that intersection up there last Christmas.”
“Folks drive too fast, that’s for sure.” The pig swung back and forth. “But they do. You know, we used to think, well, if there was part of the road that was interstate, then there was part of the road that wasn’t, well, people would notice that, but they don’t. It’s like those three-lane highways we used to have. Seemed like a good idea at the time, but it was the worst idea in the world.” I stared at the pig’s face, and I thought it caught my eye. Ivan said, “This is going to come up at the next supervisors’ meeting. You know it is.”
“Well, sure,” said Gordan.
“But if you do something for the county, I don’t see any reason to go through all the rigamarole they want.”
“If I shut down the project now, it’s going to look like hell,” said Gordon, “and the state isn’t going to hold off on that overpass till next year.”
“Nope.”
“Well, I got men who aren’t doing anything right now for a while. You know we’re getting ready to do a big project in Plymouth Township.”
“I did hear about that. Say, there’s a lot of kids in Rookwood now. The school bus won’t go in there. They have to come out and wait by the side of the road. I get complaints about that, too.”
“The school bus ought to be able to pull right off the road there.”
“I’ve always thought so.”
“Let me go look at that on my way back to Portsmouth.”
“You should.”
Suddenly, the pig began screaming and squealing, and behind Ivan some other pigs, it seemed like, began squealing in response. It writhed and jerked its foot. Ivan grabbed the other foot. Now he had the pig hanging down in front of him. He tossed his head at us, then turned away. We got into Gordon’s car. As we drove away, I said, “So what was he going to do with that pig?”
“Believe me, you don’t want to know. The thing about farm animals is, when one gets sick, they just put it down before it infects the whole herd. You don’t even have time to get the vet out, because all he’s going to do is tell you what you already know.”
“I guess you’re going to put in a school-bus stop.”
“My bet is, we won’t hear from Miss Sherwin whatever-her-name-is anymore.”
“I doubt it,” I said.
“But I’ll tell you another thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Ivan isn’t going to run for election again, so she’s the future, not him.”
“Her and Marcus.”
“You got it.”
CHAPTER
20
A
FEW DAYS AFTER
our visit to Ivan Kruger, I saw some papers on Jane’s desk, and since no one was in the office I glanced through them. They were Bobby’s financial papers, such as they were. Things noted here, slips there, old pay stubs from me. The only thing that prevented them from being a disaster was that the sums were so small. I kept my eyes open, and not long after I saw a folder labeled
R. BALDWIN, 1981–82
. I opened it when I had the chance. I only looked at the top page. There, in Marcus’s neat and extremely legible handwriting, was a spreadsheet detailing Bobby’s financial condition, and underneath that was his amended tax return, also in Marcus’s writing. It was twenty-six pages long and earned Bobby a refund of $236. One schedule after another detailed this write-off and that. I was impressed that he would take the time, and also at how neat it all was—chaos reduced to order.
When I got home, I took out my own books and opened them up. I was not as disorganized as Bobby—I did have everything entered into an actual set of books, and I brought it all up to date every month, but I usually did so in a hurried way and didn’t often look at the big picture. Some months I paid my rent and my condo mortgage and my utility bills and not much else. Like Gordon, if I knew there was enough—more than enough—I often let it go at that for months at a time. Once a year I took everything to my tax accountant and then sent in a check for what he told me I owed. I had a couple of savings accounts. I was single and had few expenses. Now, under the influence of Marcus Burns, I suddenly got interested in my net worth. I took out the box I had brought from my office (which Gordon was renting to some crony of his month by month on the understanding that Bobby could keep his space and I might need to return, so we didn’t have to move the furniture or clean out the closets) and opened it up. Pretty soon I had spread it all out on my kitchen table. It was interesting reading. For example, as of my divorce from Sherry, a little over two years previously, I had owned my condo ($10,000 equity with a $35,000 mortgage); my car, worth about $9,000 or $10,000; my savings account (about $17,000); and the two pieces of ground, one worth maybe $40,000 and the other worth maybe $38,000. After two years selling real estate, one of them bad and one of them good, I had $20,000 equity in a condo worth $65,000 on the market; a new $20,000 car; and savings of $51,000. The pieces of property I had sold for $100,000 altogether, which I had put into the corporation along with my share of the Phase Four commission. In other words, without my even really noticing, I had gotten to be a third of a millionaire.
I can’t say that I had ever felt the presence of that kind of money so close to home. Certainly, the word
millionaire
had never, could have never, occurred in connection with my parents. In the first place, their financial life was entirely bounded by a little display on the kitchen table that I had seen every Saturday night as a child—ones, fives, tens, twenties, so much to the store rent and inventory, so much to the mortgage, so much to the church, and then small amounts to the tangible needs of clothing, food, and transportation for the family. There was another stack—the funeral account—right there on the table with everything else, sometimes getting more and sometimes getting less, depending on the requirements of the other stacks. If there was a surplus, it was divided between
savings
and
church,
and if there had been a real surplus, no doubt most of it would have gone to the church, since the church’s state of repair and sightliness was as important to my mother as that of her own house. Nor, for all I knew of Gordon’s way of life—much more lavish than my parents’—had I ever viewed him as a man with money. He was more a man who made use of money as it flowed past, as if he had been born lucky enough to live right beside a sweet and brimming stream. Out of that natural bounty he had made a comfortable life that also was bountiful, but the bounty ebbed and flowed—there was no cistern, only activity and good luck. And then there was Marcus. I had seen his tax returns. By the evidence of those as well as of what he said, he was living on the come more than anything else. Billions there well could be, but he hadn’t actually made contact with them yet. I had more money than he did, and he probably knew it.
My new status at first only intrigued me. I left the books and papers out on the table for a few days, though neatly stacked, to remind myself that there was something about me—I had made it. I was forty-one now and, by any measure, several of those American words you heard all the time—successful, comfortable, well-off—applied to me. And respected. Marcus had mentioned that one himself. When people heard he was my partner, they breathed a sigh of relief. I was to be trusted. Of course, I was no longer married and I didn’t have any children. I had no family sitting solidly on some square of ground like a pyramid, the way most men my age seemed to have, but I didn’t mind about that really. So many families were odd and suffocating in reality that I wasn’t impressed by either the ideal or my own capacity to realize it. For a couple of days, I wondered whether I should forgo Marcus’s offer to pay my bills—I had already had them all addressed to that office—but upon reflection I decided that there really was no telling when Salt Key Farm would get off the ground, and after all I had put my equity in. The commissions, for one thing, but also those farms I had bought for under fifty and sold for a hundred, those farms I had been making payments on of a couple hundred dollars a month and could never decide what to do with, had been turned into something more elegant and profitable. My other funds, I thought, ought to be held in reserve until we really saw what was in store. And while I wasn’t using them, they would appreciate. So I drove about on my appointed rounds with a greater sense of self-confidence. I was a successful Realtor and small-time developer. That I should build on this solid base wasn’t surprising, it was natural, the almost automatic effect of normal ambition. I had lived, without understanding it, the proper American trajectory, rising and rising, dropping off the first-stage rocket, then the second stage, then shooting into space, destined to orbit the earth for some uncounted number of times before splashing into the ocean off Florida, retired in the far-off twenty-first century.
A month later, when I went into our conference room, I saw a Xerox machine. It was large—you couldn’t miss it—and it looked brand-new. It didn’t quite fit in with the décor. I hadn’t had one in my real estate office, and it seemed like a luxury. I went out into Jane’s office. I said, “You’ll never guess what’s in the conference room.”
She grinned. “I haven’t felt this good since I bought my first washer and dryer.”
“We bought it? They’re awfully expensive, aren’t they?”
“No. Leased it. Actually, I took over Mary’s lease because she wanted something smaller.”
“Mary King?”
“Well, sure.”
“Are you friends with her?”
“Sisters in free enterprise. There’s a number of us. We have a lunch group. Every couple of weeks.”
“What do you talk about?”
“Xerox machines. IBM typewriters. Whether, if you have daughters, you should let them learn to type.”
“Is this group based on shared feelings of resentment?”
“Shared ambition.”
“Hunh. Whose job do you want?”
“That’s one of the things we talk about. What to aim for.”
“Did Marcus tell you about the billion dollars?”
She laughed happily.
A few days later, I was making use of the Xerox machine to copy a letter I had written to the Plymouth Township Planning Commission. When I lifted the top lid, I saw that someone had left a sheet of paper facedown underneath it. It was a property description of a thousand-acre ranch in western Kansas. It belonged to Jane. I looked at it for a long moment. I thought she must have gotten it in her divorce settlement and was now selling it. I took the description and put it on her desk. A week or so after that, I got a letter from Bart telling me that the appraisers in Kansas had put the value of the ranch at a million dollars and advising me that my application for an 80 percent loan on the property was approved. I looked again at the top of the letter. It was addressed to Marcus but put into an envelope to me by mistake. I put the letter on Jane’s desk too. Funds were good. I was happy to see funds, and I was happy to see that Jane, who must have been holding off from really committing herself to our project, was committed now.
An 80 percent loan on collateral of a million dollars was eight hundred thousand dollars. I knew the merger hadn’t gone through yet, so I was especially impressed that Bart and Crosbie were working other options. Whatever their source of income, they seemed to want to throw money at us.
I ran into the Davids. They were standing next to the weathervane display at the lumberyard and saw me immediately. David John exclaimed, “Ask Joe. I told you he would show up eventually.”
“He’s definitely going to be in favor of the cock,” said David Pollock.
“Where are you putting a weathervane?” I said. Their roofline was simple and straight, a gable at each end. “With the pitch you’ve got, it’s hardly worth—”
“Have you not seen our cupola? It’s the talk of Deacon.”
“I hate to ask.”
“It’s got a widow in it,” said David John. “Gazing forlornly out to sea.”
“Sea is a hundred miles from here.”
“Oh, God! No wonder she’s so upset!” David John turned to David Pollock. “You never told me that.”
“Who’s the widow?”
David Pollock looked right at me. He said, “Well, of course we’ve named her Felicity. But really she’s a mannequin from a Woolworth’s they were tearing down in the city. We found her abandoned on the street, naked as a jaybird. She’s happy, though.” He lifted his arms in a pose of exaggerated delight. “Come over. You can see her carmine lips from the sidewalk. She needs a cock swinging around above her.”
“I prefer the trotting horse,” said David John.
“We have this argument every weekend. But do come over and we’ll tell you everything.”
“About the widow,” said David John.
“I want to hear. But I have a better idea.”
“Oh, God, what’s that?”
“I have to go out to the farm we’re developing, and I think you guys should see it. It’s not something you would pass in the normal course of things. You might want to invest.”
“We might?”
“Or you might have friends who would.”
“We have friends with scads of dough,” said David John.
“So you’ve said.”
We went out to the parking lot without buying anything, and I opened the passenger door to my car. David Pollock said, “Should we drive with you? What about Marlin and Doris?”
“Bring them along.”
We piled into my Lincoln and headed out of Deacon. As soon as we were in the country, David Pollock said, “Joey, you notice you haven’t asked us why we named our widow
Felicity
.”
“Yes, I noticed that. I suppose you had better tell me.”
“You’ve been very naughty, we’re told.”
“I have?”
“Dropping her like a hot potato and all.”
Even though I was heading down the road at sixty-five miles an hour, I turned and stared.
“I think he’s genuinely surprised,” said David John.
“I tend to agree,” said David Pollock. “Maybe we should hear your side of the story after all. But only if you promise to stay on the road.”
“We’ve got plenty of time,” said David John.
My mind had been full of the farm—I had stopped into the hardware store to buy ant traps for my condo, but what I was really doing was wondering what my share of the payment would be when our first payment was due, on the first of October, more than two months away, but still worrying, as I estimated we were a year away from selling off the first lots and getting some income. That was why I had brought up taking them out there—these real estate investment trusts of Jane’s seemed to have appeal for a surprising number of people, but they had to be people with excess tax liability, according to Marcus. Anyway, shifting the farm out of my mind all of a sudden and bringing Felicity in seemed disorienting. I had not asked about the “widow” not because I was afraid to, but because I hadn’t gotten the point of the name.
I tried to think of something to say about myself, not precisely an excuse or a reason, but something true, something that would originate a way of talking about Felicity, but not only was my mind a blank on that, I was a blank. I had no way of talking about Felicity other than saying I loved her, and I could not say that. I don’t know if I couldn’t say it to them or if I couldn’t say it at all. We kept driving.
“He’s not answering,” said David John.
“I was surprised. I guess I don’t have an answer except that. I mean, are you telling me the truth, that Felicity thinks I dropped her like a hot potato? The last time I saw her I had the distinct feeling I had fatally trespassed. And she never called me again or came by.”
“I told you on the phone that night that there was stepped-up surveillance.”
“I took that to mean I should be careful.”
“I meant
she
was being careful. You were supposed to become assertive, I believe it was.”
“I guess I didn’t get the hint.”
“No,” said David Pollock. A silence settled over the car, as of a subject that was closed—only of historical interest now. After a moment, I said, “So, what is she doing lately?”
“We haven’t seen her in over a month. Hank likes us, you know. He approves of everything we do, because we scavenge and improve and add value, and we are exotic all at the same time. He stares at us. He calls me
Dave
and him
David
.” David John, who was speaking, sighed. He said, “Once we got approval, she stopped coming over. Now
he
comes over.”
“He’s a very well-meaning person,” said David Pollock.
“Probably a saint,” said David John.
We arrived at the gate of the farm. “She’ll never leave him,” said David Pollock.