to Pennyluck after the financial meltdown of ‘08. She had opened a business consultancy, geared specifically towards small business but soon became distracted by the local real estate market. After running afoul of some archaic bylaws leftover from the Victorian period, Kate started moonlighting in the town council, becoming drawn into local politics.
It was around then that Jim and Kate had become friends, with Kate often having dinner at the Hawkshaw home or hosting them to a dinner in town. The autumn of last year, Kate decided to join the mayoral race when the incumbent mayor Talford McGivens refused to relinquish his nineteen year reign even after suffering his third stroke. Kate rolled up her sleeves and took the town by storm, ousting the old man in a sixty/forty split. Jim, who had never voted municipally in his entire life, volunteered in her campaign. He and Emma and Travis stuffed envelopes and helped organize fundraisers.
It had paid off with Kate’s win and, three weeks ago, Jim called in a favour. That was how politics worked, he figured, even small town politics. He asked Kate’s help in buying or leasing some of this deserted land known locally as the Corrigan farm. Just who the Corrigans were, no one remembered or even cared.
He and Emma both felt confident that with Kate (now mayor Farrell) advancing their cause, they would finally acquire the neglected farmland. However Mayor Farrell was still learning the ropes and ran smack into a stonewall of entrenched vagaries and inexplicable stubbornness of a very old and very small township. She was still reeling from the concussion.
“Can’t you overrule them?” Emma asked, trying to toggle back the ire in her tone. “I mean, you are the mayor now.”
“I can’t overrule the council,” Kate said. “I’m still only one vote among seven. The council has final say and those old fogeys will not budge.”
“Well…” said Jim, crushing the spiky timothy crowns in his hand. Watching the chaff sift between his fingers. “Shit.”
“Don’t sweat it.” Kate looked both of them in the eye. “That was our first try. Learn from it and we’ll try again later.”
“Later may be too late. We need to expand the farm now. This season. Or…” He didn’t bother finishing the thought.
“Is it that bad?”
“I’m afraid so,” Emma said. She felt her cheeks burning with shame, like a school kid explaining why her homework wasn’t done.
Whippoorwills trilled overhead and they listened to the sound without speaking for a few moments. Kate leaned against the old stone fence, pressing a palm to the cold surface. “What if this fence wasn’t here?”
Emma’s eyebrow shot up. “What do you mean?”
Kate’s hands found a loose stone and rolled it away. The stone fell down the far side and rolled into the long grass. “What if you knocked a hole in this and farmed the back acreage?”
“That would be illegal.”
“Who would know?” Kate brushed the grit from her palm. “Outside of us?”
It wasn’t a bad idea and they both knew it. Back here, well away from the road, no one would know the difference. Jim looked at his wife and knew by her eyes that she didn’t like the idea. Too risky or just plain wrong. “I dunno, Kate.”
Kate took a step sideways, her heels sinking into the ground. “You farm this back forty and boost your production, right? A year from now, maybe two, you’ve pared down your debt load and you buy the property fair and square.”
“It’s wrong.” Emma wouldn’t budge.
“It’s shrewd,” Kate offered. “When your back’s against the wall, you have to get creative. Bend the rules a little.”
A shadow passed over them. Jim looked up to see a turkey vulture drifting overhead, with three more further out. Riding the thermals without beating a wing, circling for something dead in the weeds.
They watched Kate climb back into her Explorer and wave as she pulled out of the driveway. Tentative plans made for dinner next week. Tentative because Kate’s schedule was far more crowded since moving into the mayor’s office of their little town. The dinner plans had run over the last month, with Kate always begging off at the last minute as more demands were placed on her time.
Emma watched the dust settle on the road. “You know it’s wrong.”
“Who would know? It’s a waste of perfectly good land.”
“That’s not the point, honey. It’s squatting on someone’s land. In the old days, people would kill you for such a thing.”
“Good thing we’re living in more civilized times.”
She turned back towards the house. “Travis will be home soon. We can talk about it over dinner.”
Raspberry thicket swayed against the stone fence, flowering under the high sun. Here at the southern end of the property, the fence thinned out as it neared the creek. Down here Jim couldn’t even see his house, let alone the road. He stood in the bunchgrass and listened to the Massey Ferguson idle and sputter behind him.
He climbed back up into the seat and lowered the bucket. The teeth of the front end loader sparkled like chrome, pumiced clean from digging. Jim geared low and inched the tractor forward until those gleaming teeth knocked against the fence. He gave it a little more gas until the stone cracked, flinting with pops. Dust spewed and the stones tumbled down. He backed the tractor up and hit another section, knocking it all down. Within twenty minutes, he had breeched twenty feet of wall. Knocked down, scooped up and piled into a neat berm under a beech tree.
He circled back and hooked up the plough to the hitch and drove it onto the fallow fields of the old property. Green shoots of new growth fingered up through the choked deadfall of last season, the earth still wet from the spring runoff. Jim lowered the business end of the plough and shifted into second gear. The tractor crawled forward and the metal blades bit into the earth, digging up weeds and churning up soil. Black earth boiled up in the blades, spitting up truncated roots. The Massey Ferguson sputtered along, popping and belching black smoke.
A bone spewed up in the tilled earth, left behind by the blades. Its porous surface stained dark with soil, now touched by the sun after its long internment in the ground. The remains of some slaughtered cow or a horse crippled from a gopher hole and put down where it fell. Or yet some other slaughtered thing.
Jim drove on at a snail’s pace, oblivious to what the blades were digging up.
The school bus rolled to a dusty stop where Clapton Road crossed the Roman Line, the dented stop sign swinging out from the side of the bus. Travis Hawkshaw stepped off and the bus trundled away. Travis swept away the road dust and walked the empty quarter mile home. The bus used to bring him all the way but not anymore, Travis being the only school age kid left on the Roman Line. The rest of them had grown up or moved away so the bus dropped him at the corner and went on. He didn’t mind walking the rest of the way and he hated the bus anyway. The thing stank of orange peel and wet socks and he was glad to get shed of it.
He wouldn’t have to put up with it much longer. A week left of school before the summer break and it couldn’t come soon enough. Summer was a double-edged thing for Travis. Eager to get out of school itself but he wouldn’t see his friends that much. The farm was isolated from town and most of his friends. And there was work. Not the usual chores but hard work that his dad needed him for.
He kicked at stones along the way, watching them bounce along the dirt road. This summer was going to be different though. He’d made his parents promise him that he could ride his bike into town to see his friends. Alone. No drop offs, no lame excuses from mom or dad about driving him over to his friend’s house for the afternoon. He had turned thirteen in April, old enough to ride into town on his own. It would probably take him an hour just to reach the bridge that served as gateway to town but that didn’t bother him. The wet spring weather had mostly passed and once the fields were drier, he could shortcut through the Meyerside’s fields and the McFarlane’s pastures, shaving twenty or thirty minutes off his time.
Halfway home, the old house peeked up over the foxtail stalks. A crumbling farmhouse of faded clapboard and tilted timbers. The windows broken and gaping like eyes. Eyes that Travis felt watched him every morning and afternoon on his way past. The Corrigan house as it was called by older people, his folks and their friends. It was
