The Excellent Lombards

by Jane Hamilton

  So that of an evening when I sometimes saw the young man and the hermit walking together, or if they were down in front of the manor house, digging around in May Hill’s garden plot, it was clear that they were behaving like old friends. He’d kneel in a mulchy aisle nodding as she talked, as they picked beans, and they’d put their heads together to examine a bug of some kind, and then she might hand him a sweet little tomato, which he’d pop into his mouth. It was a tableau I’d spy on if I happened to be at a distance and yet it was a miserable sight that always made me feel as if somehow all along I had understood nothing.

  In our house, when Philip wasn’t around, there were conversations taking place that William and I were not a part of, our parents often talking long after we’d left the table. We’d come upon their discussions and they’d abruptly scoot their chairs back and again make bright little remarks that signified something but gave nothing away. Okay! So, ah, well, that’s that! My father was nearing sixty but everyone said he looked like a hale and hearty forty-nine. Sherwood had broken his arm the year before and it hung in a slightly crooked way from his shoulder, which didn’t mean that he had lost his strength or that he still wasn’t a superb apple picker. They were fine, the men, they were lean and magnificent.

  One Saturday morning in the first fall Philip was with us I came late to pick in the Jonathan row, late because I was playing Penelope Sycamore in You Can’t Take It with You. Philip was in charge of the weekend crew, two older women from town and a retired science teacher. I’d slipped on my picking bag and was up a ladder before he saw me. “Mary Frances!” he called out. “Welcome! Glad you’re here.”

  I had never flipped anyone the bird but right then I could completely understand the impulse. He then had the gall to say, “Great performance last night.”

  Philip had come to my play? As if he was an uncle or teacher or friend? My parents and William had seen it the previous weekend, no one saying the Seattle visitor would be in the audience.

  He said, “You played her with just the right edge of daffiness. Not crazy, not over the top, but sweetly daffy.” He apparently was an authority on everything. “Congrats.”

  How could I not say Thank you? I had to thank him. He’d forced me to.

  Even though I had a natural dislike for him, as I said, it was sometimes, however, hard to maintain an unequivocal feeling about him. It seemed that you could assume one thing about his character but two seconds later consider the exact opposite, and adding to the puzzlement, you might be correct on both counts. One time, for example, my father was trying to corral the lambs in order to castrate them. He went dashing toward a big fellow but missed his mark and was falling, falling, possibly going to smash his head on the shed wall if Philip wasn’t by his side, the annoying presence, who before my father cracked his brow somehow righted him and also at the same time scooped up the lamb.

  “Philip!” my father exclaimed. “Whew! Thanks!”

  The superhero said, “No problem, man!”

  And another instance. We were well into high school the night William and I attended a crucial town board meeting, where, to our surprise, the cousin turned up, too. At that point he’d been living in the stone cottage for about a year. We were along with my father because we had some idea what was at stake not only for him but for us, too. My mother had ironed his shirt and demanded he wash his hair. We were proud of Jim Lombard for being the chairman of the Farmland Preservation Committee, the chairman, which, when we’d been small, we’d thought of as a kind of king. For seven years he and the committee had been working on a draft of a land-use document that would restrict developers in order to preserve farmland in the township, a township that through the decades was becoming more and more suburbanized. My father, with a handful of faithfuls, wanted to prevent future piano key subdivisions, no more quarter-acre lots, the farm fields jammed with house after house, driveway aprons, basketball hoops, lawn mower sheds made to look like little barns. The plan was also to prevent the development of the highway corridor, presently corn and beans and woodland, into the usual one long stretch of Walmart/Home Depot/Walgreens/Taco Bell/Menards/Dollar Depot/Aldi/Ford Dealership/Mattress World/US Cellular/Wendy’s/Best Buy/Staples/Burger King/Dollar World/CVS/Long John Silver’s/Verizon.

  The meeting that night was the last in a series of informational sessions and was supposed to conclude in a vote. The board would decide to adopt the Plan or they’d reject the committee’s work and permanently shelve the idea of preservation. We’d long known that if my father didn’t get his way then by the time we were ready for the farm it might be an island, houses like the Plumlys’ surrounding us. The taxes through the roof. But even if we could pay up it would be difficult to spray and raise noisy, smelly livestock, the new neighbors thick upon us, no room for the foxes, the cranes, the field mice, no space, it sometimes seemed, for the stars. My father didn’t say that it was so, but we knew that without a Plan, without his vision, there might not be a place for us.

  The meeting room was a low dark hall with no windows, the hanging panel of fluorescent lights doing us no favors, the fifty metal chairs set up on the linoleum a respectable distance from the dais, chairs for fifty persons, the clerk’s generous estimation of attendance. Four of the town board members were men, their stubby fingers stained with oil, men who worked in machine shops or owned farms, men, my mother said, who would not have been orators in ancient Rome or in any other civilization. The fifth member, Pam Getchkey, was a woman with prickly short hair who bred Dobermans. My father didn’t usually imitate people but when he performed Pam snapping her gum we always suddenly realized that he was the funny one.

  We took our seats in the meeting room, our blood hot, our hearts pounding. Many of us already hated everyone on the wrong side. We put our heads down and studied the agenda. Sherwood and Dolly sat in front of us and, with five minutes to go before curtain, in comes Philip, washed and brushed, clattering into a seat next to Mr. and Mrs. Sherwood Lombard. What’s he doing here? I radiated to William, a beam he chose not to receive. There was a scattering of hobby farmers and the old-timers who had the habit of civic involvement, and the local developers were there, too, Marv and Susan Peterson. My father had praise and damnation for them, saying it was better to have residents doing the developing rather than gold diggers swooping in, men who didn’t have to live among the atrocities they’d built.

  First, again, as he’d done at many other meetings on the subject, Jim Lombard, who’d been given a place on the dais, rose to explain the Plan. His pants would have fallen to his knees without his suspenders, a man with no hips, no rear end, a man who was one thick knot across his shoulders, so muscle-bound he couldn’t fully extend his arms over his head. His tufty hair had been tamped down, tidy and strange, but probably land-usey and respectable. In the hall our notable specimen outlined for us the history of the committee. He had his hand-drawn charts and graphs, and he talked about the surveys taken—the proof that informed consideration had gone into the comprehensive Plan. Yes, there had been opposition, and the committee had responded. The goal, he reminded the assembly, was to provide a framework for responsible growth, growth that the township could afford and support, and growth that suited the character of the area and its people. He sounded a little bit like a social studies teacher but we were sure he wasn’t dull.

  In the middle of the presentation Mr. Reed, an old grouse, called out, “Sounds like socialism, Lombard. We can’t subdivide our farm how we want, is what you’re saying. By order of the law we got to have open space? A green corridor? Like the Chinks and the Russians do to their peoples? Commie-stuff, just like all your other presentations. How many times we have to hear this?”

  “It’s not your turn to speak,” Mrs. Bushberger cried.

  “How many times?” Mr. Reed asked again.

  William had brought along a book to read but he hadn’t cracked it yet.

  Mrs. Tillet, the tax accountant’s wife, was the first person in the citizens’ port
ion of the meeting to say her piece. She had to remind us how much she loved living in the country, and how, on their two hundred acres, they were fortunate enough to have orchids and trillium, gray foxes and great horned owls, the pileated woodpecker and other animals that should be respected.

  Philip was nodding, in firm agreement.

  No one, Mrs. Tillet said, wanted to live in suburbia—that’s why, after all, everyone in the room had moved out to our town, to get away from the subdivisions.

  “You move out here, lady, you become the subdivisions.” A truth-speaking grumbler.

  “You want the gates to close but only after you’ve moved in,” Susan Peterson heckled.

  Don Tribby, the chairman of the board, pounded the table with his gavel, his big fun in any meeting.

  Mrs. Tillet with her silky layered blond hair that she drove to Chicago to have styled, and her toned arms, and her diamond rings up to her knuckles, was not good for the cause. My father, we knew, in a perfect world, would have had her muzzled.

  Mr. Carter stood next, the old farmer with a fat lower lip and squinty eyes, and he had maybe three hairs right at his crown, and everywhere else moles, large, medium, small, an array, an assortment. Connect the dots. He was big enough to bellow. “I’ve given my life to my farm, see,” he said, with surprising quietness. “Don’t tell me I don’t love it the way I’m supposed to. Don’t tell me I can’t give my wife her dream. She’s been a good wife, my Betty. She don’t want to be cold in the winter anymore. Don’t tell me I got to put half my land in some kind of plan. I need to take her to Florida. She’s a good wife.”

  My father pulled out statistics about how farmers should be able to sell at market value with the proposed Plan but everyone probably suspected this was not absolute. We were suddenly not sure about the Plan, either, curiously sad for Betty and old Mr. Carter.

  There followed a stretch of talkers on both sides, people either praising the rural character of the town and supporting thoughtful growth, or protesting that the Plan was government yet again limiting the freedoms of its citizens. We weren’t paying close attention until Philip himself stood up, stating his name and the address of the stone cottage.

  “You don’t know me,” he said, “but I’d like to introduce myself. I’m a Lombard relation. I’ve been here for a year or so and my hope is to be involved with the orchard, the Lombard operation, long-term—” He smiled at my father, and turned to Dolly and Sherwood to acknowledge their potential goodwill.

  Long-term? I turned to William. Is that what he wants?

  Philip had shaved, no sign of any farmhand scruffiness, and his clean hair was loose and golden. He’d even tucked in his chambray shirt, a shirt that brought out the notable blueness of his eyes. “So, I don’t know,” he said. “I get that it’s difficult to try to legislate morality, that one person’s moral views shouldn’t be imposed on the community. I mean, I agree with that, and yet I think we need to recognize that laws most always have moral aims? Moral aims, and that in many circumstances those aims concern justice.”

  It’s possible I had never felt so embarrassed. I wanted to scream, He’s not from here!

  He scratched his cheek, his lips screwed to one side of his face, a gesture an actor would make on stage, a further mortification. “I guess,” he said, “I think that in this situation tonight the committee has tried to be both moral, you know? In terms of stewardship of the land and future generations, and also practical, serving the needs of the citizens in the here and now. I mean, it goes back as far as Plato, right? Philosophers making a close connection between true justice and human well-being. When companies pollute the air and the river, this is unjust because it disturbs every person’s well-being. It prevents individuals from flourishing. So then the Environmental Protection Agency is born.”

  “My achin’ back,” someone behind us said.

  My father was nodding, as if he was not at all ashamed of our relative. My mother was smiling encouragingly. William was paying close attention. Dolly, however, had been rummaging around in a bag and was pulling out her knitting.

  “It seems like, from what I’ve heard and read, that the committee through the years has grappled with issues of justice at every governmental level—”

  “Is there any Lombard that isn’t full of it?” Marv Johnson called out. Marv was a monumental man, his power in his brisket, that barrel in a red shirt, and there was no ignoring his drooping face with the pitted nose, his skin tending to purple.

  Philip turned to him. “Excuse me, sir? I—”

  My father said, “You don’t have the floor, Marv.”

  Tribby banged his gavel—“Since when are you the chairman, Lombard? You don’t have the authority! That’s your whole problem, you people, as far as I’m concerned. You come in here with your college degrees, your whatever elite documents, and you think you can tell us, the real working farmers, the real citizens, how to run the government. You think if you just explain it for us one more time, we’ll let you snow us. No one wants this Plan. Hardly anyone at all. I’m in touch with the community. I’m telling you, the people, the real farmers, hate this Plan.”

  “Actually, my father is a real farmer!” That cry was a hot streak through my mind but also it seemed to have come from my mouth. William grabbed my arm and Tribby banged his gavel; he banged his gavel at me, Mary Frances Lombard. My own words in the air were burning my ears, the clue, besides William’s grip, that I had spoken out loud.

  I put my head down. What had just happened? Philip had maybe said something important; I wasn’t sure. My father had thought so but bringing up Plato? You did not bring up Plato at a town meeting. That was a rule anyone should instantly apprehend, crossing the threshold of the room. And yet Philip must have been right if people like the chairman and Marv Johnson were lambasting him. Think, think: I couldn’t very well be on Tribby’s side. He had practically beaten me with that mallet. I had shouted without even realizing it, which might mean I was out of my mind. Or very ill. I was hot and shivering, both. Trying to keep my body still, afraid the chair would start rattling. I could feel William not paying the slightest attention to me.

  After some time I became aware that Sherwood was standing. Then I had to look up and take note; I had to abandon my own suffering. We held our breath since you could never quite know what Sherwood was going to say. His craggy face, that block of a forehead, was imposing, his curls were still red and made a fanciful halo, his best feature, and even though he wasn’t on the dais he had a pressed shirt and his good shoes. There was no need for him to be shy but he was hesitating. For what seemed like a few minutes he looked up at the ceiling, trying to collect his ideas, everyone, even the Lombard-haters, pulling for him. You just had to, no matter what, that man with visible effort intending to speak thoughtfully.

  Finally he began. “Consider how much arable land was here twenty years ago, ten years ago, and now.” He spoke softly, dreamily.

  Philip was nodding at Sherwood, nodding without pause, as if he were saying, That’s right, man, again and again.

  “There are four or five farmers who among them work about twenty-three hundred acres,” Sherwood went on. There was a small cry, an uhhhh from Mrs. Tillet. All the good land gone, a fresh sorrow to her. “We can say that the shrinkage is due to an individual’s right, and his choice to sell, but what if we had a land-use plan that rewards stewardship, rather than cashing in, a land-use plan that has built into it conservation easements and tax policy, so that we are not only assisting the individual but working for the communal good?” There was spittle on his lips, his hands making larger circles, Sherwood revving up. Philip was still nodding, as if he alone understood the points being made. He had no right to think he knew anything and yet he continued his outrageous agreement while Sherwood gently educated us about the Dust Bowl, about the possibility of hunger, about the richness of our land resource, about our obligation to preserve it. Sherwood was spirited and tender, quiet in his knowledge, proving Tribby wr
ong, proving to the assembly that the Lombards’ intelligence was mannerly, that it was not unseemly or puffed up in any way.

  “Those of you,” Sherwood was saying, “who want out can sell your property for a good price. There’s no reason to fear you wouldn’t get a good price. Those of us who want to continue farming will feel secure that we’re still in a community that values us, that supports us. We are together in this, more than we realize. If we understand that we’re together so much of this Plan makes sense.”

  We almost clapped. Being together was after all what the Lombard Orchard was about, too, and he knew it, he believed in it; he no longer thought he alone should run the farm. This was how we’d always loved Sherwood, suddenly, the joyousness knocking us over the head. It would fade away, the feeling, we’d forget about it, we wouldn’t see him for a time, we’d be in earshot of our parents’ complaints but then, then he’d appear before us again, unusual and pure.

  When he was done he sat down. Even so Philip continued nodding. “Why is he nodding?” I whispered to William.

  “Shush,” he said.

  At last the citizens’ portion was concluded. Tribby informed the audience that the board would vote on the Plan at their next meeting.

  It was Mrs. Tillet who yelled, “You can’t do that! TONIGHT. It said in the paper you’d vote tonight.”

  A rumble rose from the crowd. “You’ve made up your minds so just do the vote.” Someone on the other side shouted, “Vote when you feel like it, fellas!” Another call, “You vote now, when we’re here to watch you.”

  Tribby turned to his board. He said, “You boys ready?”

  “That’s what this meeting is for! You’re supposed to vote—”

  Tribby banged his gavel. “What do you say, boys—and Pam?”

  One by one each member indicated that he was prepared.

  “I’m going to say what I’ve said before.” Tribby raised his papers in a stack, tapping them together on the table, doing his tidying. “You all know I don’t believe in this Plan. Why would we want to approve even more government, bigger government? We’ve got government oversight in every arena of our life. Uncle Sam telling us when to turn around—”