So, another Vermont dairy farm down the drain. Four houses popping up on another rural road. Brassard will see them from his living room window. I might see them from some spots on my land, at least when the leaves fall.
But what’s the matter with that? Four families will have nice homes. They’ll plant little trees along their driveways and do that cute thing with circles of redwood bark around their shrubs. There’ll be more traffic on our road, maybe even school buses, I’ll probably hear their lawn mowers from my little patch of wilderness. But that’s modern times, right?
I’m ashamed to write this. As a “flatlander” myself, I have no right to criticize, no right to mourn the passing of the old ruggedness and honesty and ragged edges of the working landscape. I’ve spent so little time in it, have devoted too little of myself to it. I haven’t earned the right to mourn.
But I do mourn. I have been nurtured by this, strengthened by it. I’ve taken solace in the fact that there are still tranquil corners of America where people make do even if roads are muddy or cell phones don’t work. I’ve just started to get my feet under me and I know living this way is the reason. I can’t help but see the pending loss as another verification that my need to flee my prior life and “get away from it all” is doomed and pointless. There is no “away.”
Chapter 32
A lot can change in a few days. The lesson applies to despairing predictions just as much as to counting your chickens before they hatch.
About a week after that business meeting, I got an outlandish message from Cat on my voice mail. She’d left it the day before, but I didn’t hear it until I drove to town on errands and had both the time and the cell reception to get messages. She said she’d met a man, and she really wanted to, had to, bring him up to meet me ASAP, this can absolutely not wait another minute. The message went on with an inordinate number of superlatives. Of course, she’s always been irrepressible, her enthusiasms infectious and impossible to argue with, but after twenty-some years you learn to gauge a friend’s degrees of urgency. This is the real deal, Ann, this is huge, you know I’m not into premature and excessive enthusiasms. That was not entirely true, but something in her voice—an unfamiliar, lower note of earnestness, a sort of husky breathlessness—gave me pause.
She also said she wanted to come up Tuesday, the very day I got the message. It was not a good day for visitors. I had a rain cloud over my head, the farm was melancholy, and there was so much work to do. Going on mid-September, the last hay had to be got up, we had a bull coming to impregnate the next round of cows and some new heifers and still had some preparations to see to. Also, Brassard had asked Earnest and me to come to another business discussion that night, and it could only mean more bad news. Much as I wanted to meet Cat’s new guy, to indulge her as a good friend should, I had to tell her this wasn’t the best time to come.
I was sitting in Brassard’s truck, top of the ridge road, when I called her back. She was peeved that I was calling a day late, so I told her that it had been a very busy period and this was my first chance to get up the hill, in fact this wasn’t the best time for …
She swept aside everything I said, went on again about this guy, she was in heaven, I had to meet him and he was handsome as bejeesus, smart as hell, really intriguing past, had the requisite ironic attitude about the cosmos. Et cetera.
That much I could understand, but then she threw me for a loop. She lowered her voice conspiratorially and said something like, “In fact, it occurred to me, I mean I know this sounds strange, but maybe he’s someone, I mean, better for you than for me. I can see it, Ann. I can really see it.”
I was gobsmacked, bewildered. So the whole “I met the right man” thing was a clumsy ruse to connect this guy with Cat’s sad, lonely, out-of-touch friend? Next came anger at the condescension implicit—that I was so badly in need of matchmaking.
She was going on again, so I shouted to interrupt her: “Cat!”
“What?”
“This sounds all wrong. What’s really going on?”
“Trust me on this!” she hissed. It was a dodge, but she had got her back up, too, angry at me, and again I heard that husky tone in her voice.
“You’re pissing me off,” I told her. “First, it’s not a good time to have people coming. I’m depressed, we’ve got to get a bunch of cows impregnated, there’s a lot of stuff that has to happen when it has to happen. I don’t have time for fun and games. Second, I don’t need or want anybody’s fucking help with romance. Are you out of your mind? And right now I have to get back to work. Do not come now, are you hearing me? And don’t bring anybody up to see me. I’m not available.”
She made a sort of growl. “Tough luck, toots. We’re already on our way. At a gas station in White River and he’s filling up the tank even as we speak. What’s that—hour and a half, two hours out? So get your ass prettied up and give me the benefit of the doubt. For this guy, you are available, bet on it.”
She cut off the call before I could respond. I called back but she didn’t pick up.
I drove Brassard’s truck aggressively as I went about my errands. I parked it with
