From midsummer: Brassard’s place, like every farm, has barn cats, which provide an essential service by controlling rodents. They’re feral, but if you approach them with the right noises and body language, some will warily let you pet them. The number varies depending on how many kittens get born and how many get eaten by owls or fisher cats, the giant murderous weasels that prowl Vermont’s hills like forest sharks. When I first came that spring, there were two (feline) cats, but one gave birth on an empty burlap bag in a corner of the hayloft: five kittens in a wild array of stripes and calico patches.
The strict policy, Diz had told me, was that they never fed the cats. Otherwise, the farm would be swarming with them, and they’d want to get into the house, and they’d get run over by tractors, and so on. Anyway, there was plenty of wild game—best keep them hungry for it.
But by July, when the kittens were big enough to roam around the whole barn, I spotted Brassard putting out a pie tin of dog kibble soaked in milk. The kittens came and set to it like lions on a fresh-killed zebra. He stayed bent and rubbed the back of their necks as they ravaged their prey.
He glanced over when I came into the room, and looked caught out. I said something like: “Mr. Brassard! I’m shocked!”
He grinned weakly as if he wasn’t sure I was kidding, and creaked back upright—his knees were almost kaput with arthritis, his lower back in continuous pain—and said seriously, “Just don’t tell Diz!”
We chuckled and went about our work. Later, I passed by the spot and noticed that the pie tin was gone. Brassard had hidden the evidence.
What made this so amusing is that a few days later, I came into one of the sheds to find Diz doing the same thing. Kibble, milk, Bob’s outdoor dog dish. She looked mortified, then angry, that I’d caught her. “For Chrissake, don’t mention this to Jim!” she warned me.
That litter got too tame. They had Bob figured for a softy, and they had no reservations about coming to the house door. We had to take out an ad in the weekly advertiser to find homes for them. I personally handed them away to the happy Volvo- and Subaru-driving families who found their way to the farm in response. As soon as they were gone, I missed their mischief around the place.
Another vignette: Brassard and Diz, early fall afternoon, the forested hills just barely starting to show splashes of yellow here and there. I spied on them through a window in the barn as I did some cleaning in the equipment room. A moment between chores, they came out of the house and sat on the porch swing, side by side. Brassard in his denim bib coveralls with a T-shirt underneath, Diz in an oversize flowery Walmart shirt and camo pants. Plastic mugs of coffee. Two aging people, catching their breath together. Bob the dog came and stuck his head onto Brassard’s lap, got a good working over, then moved on to Diz, who gave him an attentive scratching.
After a while, Brassard gave Bob a gentle shove with his knee and told him something like “Enough now,” and Bob obediently lay down. The man and the woman then chatted sparingly as they sipped coffee. Diz’s hand idly came up and massaged the base of Brassard’s red, bristly neck, and he gratefully leaned his head back, left, right, into the pressure of her fingers. When she stopped, his big hand moved to Diz’s knee, and they just sat, gazing out across the road at nothing much, the swing moving back and forth like a slow breath, in and out, in and out.
What’s in a moment like that? Is it any different from two draft horses in the same harness, standing wearily until their driver urges them on again? I can’t speak for horses, but in this case I saw it as two human people, being on the planet in a particular moment of their allotted time, which they have agreed to share until the end. This is what that only-ever time consisted of: this moment, this farm, each other. And, it seemed to me, at that moment they were aware that was what they were doing, and were cherishing it. Were grateful for it.
A few minutes later, Diz checked her watch, leaned over to Brassard, who by then was drowsing. She briefly put her forehead against his chin, then stood and half hoisted him to his feet. He followed her obediently back into the house, and a few moments later they emerged from the side door and went their separate ways back to the demands of the farm.
Chapter 21
Nov. 12
Haven’t seen Earnest in too long. Brassard told me he calls every now and then, mainly to say he’s been very busy, got a lot of jobs, isn’t sure when he’ll return. I’ve been thinking about how, or whether, to talk to him about his lending Brassard the money I defaulted on. So far, I haven’t decided. Would it be better for him to think I didn’t know? And what would I say—thank you? I still think there’s more to their relationship than Brassard saving Earnest’s bacon in a Saigon whorehouse.
Will comes by every few days but seldom stays long; still, I relish these brief contacts with a person other than Jim and Diz, someone my own age and with more connection to the world beyond Brassard’s valley.
Something happened today that in retrospect startles me. I know absolutely that I am a hired hand, not family, not a friend (except to Earnest). But I used the plural first-person pronoun. It just slipped out. I’d been doing an inventory in one of the supply rooms and told Diz, “We’re
