when a car came up the driveway and coasted to a stop. He turned off the water and shook his hands, walking forward to investigate.
A man in his forties was getting out of the car—clean-cut, pudgy. He reached back into the car for a briefcase, then straightened up. “I’m Ed Rickman!” he called. “How are you today?”
Tom nodded. A salesman, and he was trapped. He wiped his hands on his jeans.
“To get right to the point, there are only two roads in this whole part of the world I really love, and this is one of them,” Rickman said. “You’re one of the new people—hell, everybody who didn’t crash up against Plymouth Rock is new in New England, right? I tried to buy this acreage years ago, and the farmer who owned it wouldn’t sell. Made an offer way back then, when money meant something, and the man wouldn’t sell. You own all these acres now?”
“Two,” Tom said.
“Hell,” Ed Rickman said. “You’d be crazy not to be happy here, right?” He looked over Tom’s shoulder. “Have a garden?” Rickman said.
“Out back,” Tom said.
“You’d be crazy not to have a garden,” Rickman said.
Rickman walked past Tom and across the lawn. Tom wanted the visitor to be the one to back off, but Rickman took his time, squinting and slowly staring about the place. Tom was reminded of the way so many people perused box lots at the auction—the cartons they wouldn’t let you root around in because the good things thrown on top covered a boxful of junk.
“I never knew this place was up for grabs,” Rickman said. “I was given to understand the house and land were an eight-acre parcel, and not for sale.”
“I guess two of them were,” Tom said.
Rickman ran his tongue over his teeth a few times. One of his front teeth was discolored—almost black.
“Get this from the farmer himself ?” he said.
“Real-estate agent, three years ago. Advertised in the paper.”
Rickman looked surprised. He looked down at his Top-Siders. He sighed deeply and looked at the house. “I guess my timing was bad,” he said. “That or a question of style. These New Englanders are kind of like dogs. Slow to move. Sniff around before they decide what they think.” He held his briefcase in front of his body. He slapped it a couple of times. It reminded Tom of a beer drinker patting his belly.
“Everything changes,” Rickman said. “Not so hard to imagine that one day this’ll all be skyscrapers. Condominiums or what have you.” He looked at the sky. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not a developer. I don’t even have a card to leave with you in case you ever change your mind. In my experience, the only people who change their minds are women. There was a time when you could state that view without having somebody jump all over you, too.”
Rickman held out his hand. Tom shook it.
“Just a lovely place you got here,” Rickman said. “Thank you for your time.”
“Sure,” Tom said.
Rickman walked away, swinging the briefcase. His trousers were too big; they wrinkled across the seat like an opening accordion. When he got to the car, he looked back and smiled. Then he threw the briefcase onto the passenger seat—not a toss but a throw—got in, slammed the door, and drove away.
Tom walked around to the back of the house. On the porch, Jo was still reading. There was a pile of paperbacks on the small wicker stool beside her chair. It made him a little angry to think that she had been happily reading while he had wasted so much time with Ed Rickman.
“Some crazy guy pulled up and wanted to buy the house,” he said.
“Tell him we’d sell for a million?” she said.
“I wouldn’t,” he said.
Jo looked up. He turned and went into the kitchen. Byron had left the top off a jar, and a fly had died in the peanut butter. Tom opened the refrigerator and looked over the possibilities.
Later that same week, Tom discovered that Rickman had been talking to Byron. The boy said he had been walking down the road just then, returning from fishing, when a car rolled up alongside him and a man pointed to the house and asked him if he lived there.
Byron was in a bad mood. He hadn’t caught anything. He propped his rod beside the porch door and started into the house, but Tom stopped him. “Then what?” Tom said.
“He had this black tooth,” Byron said, tapping his own front tooth. “He said he had a house around here, and a kid my age who needed somebody to hang out with. He asked if he could bring this dumb kid over, and I said no, because I wouldn’t be around after today.”
Byron sounded so self-assured that Tom did a double take, wondering where Byron was going.
“I don’t want to meet some creepy kid,” Byron said. “If the guy comes and asks you, say no—O.K.?”
“Then what did he say?”
“Talked about some part of the river where it was good fishing. Where the river curved, or something. It’s no big deal. I’ve met a lot of guys like him.”
“What do you mean?” Tom said.
“Guys that talk just to talk,” Byron said. “Why are you making a big deal out of it?”
“Byron, the guy’s nuts,” Tom said. “I don’t want you to talk to him anymore. If you see him around here again, run and get me.”
