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By Root 788 0

She’d seen the banner across the windows, advertising the event. I wouldn’t let her. She went to her room and slammed the door like a teenager. Without Theresa we were back to eating cornflakes for every meal. I had dreams that the old man and I were standing out on the road, both of us with our signs held high. I didn’t let myself sit still to think. I didn’t breathe a word of my plan out loud, even when I was alone in the presence of the barn walls. During the day the girls put on their dress-up sun bonnets and together we hauled stones. They didn’t like it much, but they didn’t have a choice. They’d get tired and play under the wagon. I cleared about forty acres of stones last summer. One day, in Alice’s stead, I made sauce from the early apples. I had to cut around the bad spots in every single wormy apple. There wasn’t any sugar in the house and when the girls tried a spoonful of the hot sauce they acted as if I’d poisoned them.

Right after the sign went up Mrs. Reesman came to look at the farm. Sandy, Mrs. Reesman, and Arnold Reesman III arrived in a silver Volvo on a Wednesday morning. The sight of that car almost brought me to my knees. I have never really had a hankering for cars, but that silver automobile, so sturdily made, accident-proof, with the soft black leather seats, was a thing of incomparable beauty. Sandy got out first. She had not learned during the first round that high heels are unnecessary and also perilous when showing country property. Mrs. Reesman followed. She was a small woman, fine boned, with short white hair and a lip that I guess was naturally swollen. It was an enormous upper lip. She was the same vintage as my mother. But she was rich and as a result she seemed less concerned with appearance. She was wearing an embroidered shirt that had come from a poor Latin American country and ordinary white Keds, yellowed with age. She had the deportment of a queen.

I learned that her late husband, Arnold L. Reesman II, had been the Scout master for thirty-five years of Troop Nineteen. She was looking for a plot of land to donate to the Boy Scouts of America—the Arnold L. Reesman II Scout Camp. Reesman, the boys would call it. We stood by the barn, getting our bearings. I handed the county topographical maps to Arnold III and I held out the aerial view photograph for Mrs. Reesman. As I watched mother and son pore over the documents, I felt that I was beginning to see the world through Alice’s eyes. She prided herself on her snap judgments. She had always seemed to think that sizing up people was a special talent. It didn’t seem difficult to know strangers that morning. It didn’t seem like much of a skill, judging character. Mrs. Reesman was old enough to know that rain would fall again. She was talking to her son, asking him to picture with her the place in spring, when the grass is blindingly green. She could imagine the tulips, the first chitter of robins, the leaves unfolding. The spring-fed pond violently appealed to her imagination. When we took the short walk down the lane and stood before the water she grinned, that upper lip enlarging to grotesque proportions as it spread across her face. She could see the naked Scouts running the length of the wooden pier and jumping, arms outstretched, into the clear water. “It is a shame,” she said with her patrician, sharp diction, “that inner-city youth have to grow up surrounded by cement and broken glass. They don’t know that they, themselves, are of the earth.” The boys would study birds as well as microscopic organisms. They’d want to recycle and save the rain forests. The old farmhouse would be torn down, of course, and the barn could be turned into a lodge. They became slightly animated, thinking of the potential. Arnold nodded. Mrs. Reesman raised her eyebrows. He suggested they rent some of the fields to the neighboring farmers. There won’t be any for long, I might have said. Mrs. Reesman put her hand to her heart at the idea of the Scouts earning merit badges for detasseling corn.

Although suburban encroachment was fast upon us, to Sandy,