I laughed. “Right. And you don’t even have your scorecard.”
When I first started introducing Kidd to my family, he had such a hard time keeping everybody straight that I made him a chart. He has most of my brothers and a lot of their wives down pat, especially those that live around the homeplace, but my nieces and nephews still blur together.
“You sure you don’t want to come meet them all on Saturday? We’re having our Thanksgiving get-together out at Daddy’s.”
“You sure you don’t want to come backpacking around Mattamuskeet?” he countered.
“Swamp water and mud in my boots? Mice stealing my food at night? A million ducks and geese squawking in my ear?”
“No worse than a million Knotts.”
I grabbed up some pine cones and pelted him, then turned and fled when he lunged at me. His legs are longer, though, and we went down in a tangle of dead grasses and fallen leaves. The dogs thought it was a game and joined in, tails wagging, to lick our faces and jump on our backs.
That evening, we drove down to Cherry Point for a Thanksgiving steak at one of the lounges with a bluesy piano. Not only does Kidd kiss good, he listens good, too. All through dinner, he listened to the developments in Mr. Jap’s death since we had last talked; and on the drive back to his cabin, I curled up next to him on the van seat and told him my fears that some of my family might be involved.
“Reese must have seen something he’s not telling me.”
“Or somebody.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, you and your family do use those back lanes like turnpikes, don’t you?”
“They started out as real shortcuts, but these days my brothers shuttle equipment back and forth that way every time they can—combines and tractor rigs—even when it might be quicker to go by the public road. They get a little tired of honking cars, and getting the finger from impatient commuters. Urban people move to the country and it’s like, ‘Gee, you mean
I sighed and Kidd put his arm around me.
Maybe it was Dallas getting killed because he wouldn’t sell and move Cherry Lou back to Florida or maybe it was because of Adam’s mercenary assessment, but since Mr. Jap died, I’d given a lot of thought to the varying attitudes about land.
Robert, Andrew, Haywood, Seth, and Zach will continue to farm as long as they can sit a tractor or spread manure, and each has at least one child who shares that love of farming. But Frank is in San Diego and none of his children will ever come east to live. Even if Herman weren’t wheelchair-bound, he’s already cast his lot in town. His older son has a white-collar job out in Charlotte. Reese enjoys hunting and fishing, he may even put a trailer out there on Herman’s part, but he’ll never work the land himself. Haywood’s Stevie is studying liberal arts and thinking about journalism.
It’s that way right on down the line with Ben, Jack and Will and their children. They rent their land to the ones that still farm, but they themselves will never be true stewards. Adam was a generation ahead of his time when he told Haywood he wanted a job where he didn’t freeze in winter and broil in summer. Maybe he really was the smartest one of us, to take the money and run. Designing computers has got to be a lot less stressful than praying for rain before the crops burn up or praying the rain will stop before the crops drown and rot in the field.
Most of my brothers’ children don’t want to live like that. Nor do their neighbors’ children. The next generation will be easier pickings for the Dick Sutterlys.
Not that there aren’t a lot of the current holders with the same attitude. No sooner did Jap Stancil have the prospect of regaining his land but that
For Allen, the land would be a cash windfall; if Merrilee had inherited, it would have been validation of her worth. With no children to provide for, the land would have quickly converted to the clothes and jewelry Pete loved to buy for her. Maybe they’d have taken annual Caribbean cruises instead of every other winter.
And there’s poor Billy Wall, hungry to farm and seeing no way he’ll ever be able to buy land. Is that why he gambled so recklessly with Curtis Thornton, hoping to win enough to make a down payment on a farm?
Dick Sutterly’s never lived on a farm and never wanted to, so far as I could see. Land is merely a commodity, something to buy and sell and turn a profit.
And as for G. Hooks Talbert, this particular bit of land might mean a chance to exact a little revenge on Daddy for being made to eat humble pie with a governor he disdained.
And what about Daddy?
Adam thinks I’m romantically obsessed, but I’m only a pale shadow of Daddy’s fierce attachment to the land he and the boys have acquired over the years. It goes to the core of his being and I’ve seen how he reacts when things of lesser importance have been threatened.
There was no way to judge the situation that was building, especially when no one would give me facts.
I don’t know how long we’d been sitting still in front of the cabin before I realized that we were back. I looked up into Kidd’s eyes.
“Oh, good,” he said. “You did come home with me. I was beginning to wonder.”
As he kissed me, I gladly quit thinking and gave myself up wholly to feeling.
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