by Jeff High
“So, any thoughts about what you would like to do with the rest of the day?”
Christine looked at me quizzically. “Gee, I don’t know. What did you have in mind?”
“Hey, my mission is to fulfill your every whim.”
“You sure? I can be pretty whimsical.”
“Duly noted.”
“Come on. Walk me to my car. I left my grandmother in it.”
“What? Your grandmother’s been sitting in the car this whole time?”
“Hey, it’s okay. I left a window cracked.”
Christine continued down the sidewalk, but I stopped, staring at her incredulously. She was grinning. She pivoted and began walking backward, facing me with an impish smile.
“I told you I could be whimsical.”
I smiled and resumed walking. “Okay, Chambers. You got me on that one.”
We leaned against her car and talked for several minutes, each of us awkwardly searching for a means to continue our time together. Nevertheless, our options on a cold December day in Watervalley seemed few.
“I have an idea, Luke. Why don’t you come out to the house? I can show you around. It’ll give you a chance to channel your inner farm boy.”
“Okay. Sure. Don’t know about the whole farm-boy-channeling thing, though. I’m not certain that frequency exists.”
Christine smiled, again shaking her head. “I’ll see you in a little while.”
She drove off and I walked briskly back to Fleming Street, took care of Rhett, had a shower, and within an hour was pulling the old Corolla down the short farm lane that served as Christine’s driveway. It seemed I had looked upon this place a thousand times, even memorized it, but always from afar. Now it was no longer a vision in the distant countryside. It was an inviting pathway opening grandly before me.
The broad yard was surrounded by a crisp, orderly picket fence. Decades-old boxwoods aproned the deep front porch. The white clapboard farmhouse was generous in scale, with massive brick chimneys bracketing either end. Toward the rear stood the garden, now fallow in the sleep of winter. Farther behind were several brightly painted red barns, a weathered gray silo, and neatly fenced-in lots. In the distance, Holsteins huddled tightly, standing on a thin veneer of frozen mud around a large round bale of hay.
The deep, sumptuous smell of woodsmoke hung in the air. As I shut the car door, Christine appeared on the front porch dressed in a flannel shirt and blue jeans. While her years in Atlanta had cultivated a well-scrubbed urbanity, below the surface was an earthy, sensuous woman who was at ease in the open fields, in the wooded hills, and with the work and rhythms of the farm. In my enchantment, she seemed to me to embody all that was resilient, strong, and good about rural life.
She leaned against one of the porch columns and waited for me with folded arms and a warm smile. I was sliding into my winter jacket as I approached the broad steps.
“Good. You wore your boots,” she said.
“Can’t very well see a farm in flip-flops.”
“Mmm, you are a quick study. There may be a farm boy in there yet.”
I climbed the steps and stood next to her, crowding slightly into her space, wanting to draw close to her. We were filled with subdued but spontaneous smiles for each other.
“Well, brown eyes . . . hello again.”
She tilted her head, communicating something of a low censure. But the radiance of her smile sent a different message.
“Come on inside. I’ll get my coat.”
The spacious and graceful entry hall was paneled in rich mahogany with a high ceiling and a well-seasoned and handsome wood floor. To the right was a large entry into the dining room mirrored by a similar large entrance on the left to a sizable living area. Farther down the broad hallway on the left was a wide and well-crafted staircase that rose to a shoulder-high landing before turning to the right and ascending to the second floor. Christine gently grabbed my arm.
“Come this way.”
We stepped into the large living room. With its immense fireplace and soaring ceiling the room had a stately feel to it. Yet it was also warmly filled with all the things of home . . . paintings and photos that covered the dark paneled walls, vases and lamps that were elegantly arrayed on small tables, and massive windows framed by thick, plush curtains. There were deep, leather sofas and side chairs in soft, colorful fabrics, baskets filled with magazines, and books stacked neatly on various ledges. The room had an understated formality yet felt graciously comfortable, rich with the fragrance of accumulated years and a whispered quality of enduring affluence.
Perhaps it was an extension of Christine’s easygoing nature, but this home exuded a loving, breathing presence, a sublime, embracing warmth. Within these strong walls a relaxed and inviting welcome poured over me. I had been in Watervalley for nearly half a year, and yet at this moment, I felt I had finally arrived. After so many months of knowing Christine only from a distance, to now be so delightfully in her presence, to be so intimately brought into her private world, was nothing short of pure enchantment.
That was, until Christine’s grandmother entered the room.
CHAPTER 16
Life on the Farm
In her midseventies, Mattie Laura Chambers was a small, rugged woman with a tight-lipped toughness about her. She was standing in the kitchen doorway with her hands on her hips and wearing a heavy farm coat, brown dungarees, and rubber boots. Despite a face that held the weathered lines of many seasons, she was staring at Christine with an absorbed adoration. The same look, I imagined, she had when she first saw the newborn Christine twenty-eight years ago.
But when she glimpsed me standing across the room, all that glowing adulation vanished. Instantly her expression turned to loathing, the kind of look you give someone who’s about to testify against you in court. A moment earlier I had been in a trance, absorbing the captivating air of the living room, blissfully drifting in rural dreamland. Her glaring regard brought me back to reality. I wanted to speak, but her withering stare calcified the words in my throat.
“Oh, Grandmamma! There you are!”
Turning toward Christine, Mattie’s hard face transformed again to ardent devotion. Christine put her arm around her grandmother and ushered her toward me.
“Grandmamma, this is Luke Bradford. He’s the new town doctor. Luke, this is Mattie Laura Chambers, my grandmother on my dad’s side.”
“Good to meet you, Mrs. Chambers.” I mustered all the courtesy I could but had the odd sense I was exchanging cordialities with a bobcat, an unhappy one.
Christine’s grandmother looked at her, confused. “Isn’t this that Jasper Smoot fellow?”
“No, Grandmamma. This is Luke. He’s new to town.”
Mrs. Chambers studied me again. Her neck stiffened and her mouth puckered, as if I were emanating a bad smell. “Humph, you sure? Could have fooled me.”
Christine and I exchanged glances, but she seemed oblivious to the lethal flashes of dislike that her grandmother was shooting at me. I broke the silence.
“Well, again, it’s good to meet you, Mrs. Chambers.”
After a sullied stare, she finally spoke with a perfunctory nod. “Yeah, same here.” She struck me as a woman of few words, someone you half expected to spit decidedly and with enthusiasm after each pronouncement. Given the way she was dressed, she looked like she’d just come in from the barn, where I could easily imagine she had been smacking the bulls around, for practice, just to remind them who was boss.
“Luke, I need to run upstairs and get my coat. I’ll be right back.” Before I could think of any plausible reason to follow her, Christine was gone. I smiled at her grandmother, who once again stared at me as if she wanted to debone me.
“So, I understand you’re visiting from Florida?” I said.
Behind her thin lips she began to roll her tongue around in her mouth, co
ntorting her face into a series of sharp, pinched grimaces. She ignored my question.
“Just what have you two got planned, Jasper?”
I disregarded the name. “Oh, I think we’re just going to walk around the farm. Seems like a nice way to spend an afternoon. Um, by the way, the house is really lovely.”
She folded her arms and continued the silent twisting gnarls of her mouth and tongue, chewing her cud, sizing me up.
“Mmm-hmm, well, just watch yourself.”
“Excuse me?”
“Eh, you heard me. Just because you’ve become a doctor now, Jasper, don’t try any funny business.”
I opened my mouth to speak, then closed it, uncertain how to respond. “Mrs. Chambers, I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”
She stepped toward me and assumed a conspiratorial tone. “Listen up, Jasper. I’ve got a rifle, a shovel, and a hundred acres out back. I’ll drop you like a deer. Now do you get what I mean?”
I was frozen, unsure whether to agree, argue, or wrestle her to the floor. Fortunately, Christine’s footfalls sounded on the stairsteps and in an instant she was in the room, smiling and glowing. We departed through the entry, but I remained visibly rattled. My exchange with Mattie Chambers had taken only a few minutes, including a couple to get over the shakes, but it left me subdued. As we began crossing the field toward a large barn, Christine took notice.
“You’re awfully quiet all of a sudden. Are you okay?”
“Oh. Sure. Sorry.” I walked a few more steps. “Your grandmother, she’s, um, she’s pretty interesting.”
“Yeah, she’s great, isn’t she?”
This was a dicey moment. I was certain that the words “clueless” and “Christine” would not be a welcomed combination, but it was clear we were living in two distinctly different realities. In months past, I had accidentally insulted Christine’s mother . . . an innocent but stupid mistake. I sure wasn’t about to disparage her grandmother, whom she so clearly adored. I avoided the question.
“You’re certainly the apple of her eye. She did seem a little confused, though. Who is or was Jasper Smoot?”
Christine glanced over to read my face. At that moment, jealousy was the last thing on my mind. But something in her look telegraphed that she might be wondering if that was behind my subdued mood.
“He was a friend back in elementary school. He had a little crush on me and rode his bike out here a few times when we were about twelve. I think he lives in Memphis now and has three kids. Anyway, Grandmamma never cared much for him.”
“Yeah, I picked up on that.”
This time it was Christine who filled in the silence. “You’re right, though. She has a small touch of dementia and does seem to get confused easily. Mom’s a little concerned about her going back to Florida alone.”
“Speaking of which, where is your mom?”
“She ran into town to get a few things. She’s doing so much better, thanks to you.”
A month earlier, through a chance meeting at the local grocery, I had diagnosed Christine’s mother, Madeline Chambers, with a vitamin B12 deficiency, something that her physician in Nashville had missed. After several months of poor health, she had made a remarkable recovery. She was a petite, handsome woman with the gracious refinement of a banker’s daughter. I had never met Christine’s deceased father, but given the grit and independence of her grandmother, I could easily discern the parental influences that had endowed Christine with the curious mix of graceful poise and farm girl toughness.
“Well, I’m glad. I like your mom.” My answer was not motivated by some inclination to ingratiate myself, but from genuine experience. I had met Madeline Chambers only once, but she had engaged me with the reserved charm and delight that seemed imbued in Southern women of her generation. She had that rare gift of meeting you with authentic interest and you couldn’t help but feel warmed by her presence.
“Well, she certainly likes you,” Christine replied. “She’ll hate that she missed you.”
I didn’t respond because I was still thinking about Grandmother Chambers and her gun, hoping she would miss me as well.
Soon, however, we had distanced ourselves from the house, out of range for even a crack shot. My mood lightened. “So, tell me about this place, farm girl. So far I’ve seen horses and cows. I know you ride one and milk the other, but I get confused which is which.”
Christine smiled and stepped carefully through the dewy field grass. “It’s a dairy farm, though not as big a production since Daddy died. The farm foreman, Mr. Pilkington, and his wife pretty much run the place now. They’ve been here as far back as I can remember. There’s a white frame house on the back of the property where they live. He must be in his sixties by now, but spry as ever and tough as nails. We’re not related, but he’s always been like family.”
We entered a large barn with a wide central hallway.
Towering thirty feet high to the ceiling were neatly stacked bales of hay, round ones on the left and square ones on the right. The frail warmth of the barn was thick with pungent aromas. Dank earth, manure, farm feed, salt blocks, old fertilizer, and diesel fuel permeated the air and mingled with the rich, honest aroma of hay. It was wonderful, sensuous, intoxicating. It enveloped me with a sense of drowsy calm.
We ambled to the far end of the barn, where there were several horse stalls and some open bays filled with tools, dusty stacks of wood, old sawhorses, and a large tangle of baling twine. A light was emanating through the chalky glass of a closed door toward the end of the hall. As we approached, I noticed a small sign plate that read TACK ROOM. Inside, someone was humming. Upon opening the door, we found a small man sitting on an overturned five-gallon bucket, meticulously working on a leather bridle. He rose and took off his cap, a vestige of old manners.
“Mr. Pilkington, hello. How are you this afternoon?” Christine asked.
“Fine, fine, Christine. And who’s your gentleman friend?”
“This is Luke Bradford.”
“Yes, yes, the doctor, no less.” He greeted me with a toothy grin, vigorously pumping my extended hand. His delighted voice had a raspy, nasal quality.
“Good to meet you, Mr. Pilkington.”
“Heavens, young man, call me Angus. Christine’s never changed the habit from when she was a little girl.”
I nodded. “Christine is showing me the farm. We didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“Not at all. Not at all. Just piddling with this bridle. One of the straps is coming undone. Needs some stitching. Anyway, just as well you found me. I’ve got to be getting the cows gathered for milking here directly.”
The tack room wall was filled with tools for working harnesses and leather. Several saddles rested on neatly built railings and in the corner was a small wooden desk with various catalogs and medicine bottles lined up across the back. Above it, a long shelf was crammed with ribbons and trophies.
We talked for another few minutes. Angus was a clean, tidy little man with an alert, intelligent face. Like so many of the small-scale farmers I had come to know in the area, he seemed to desire little beyond his isolated fields and barns, living an orderly, well-scrubbed, and simple life. I would come to learn that Amelia, his wife of nearly forty years, sometimes worked alongside him in the milk parlor. They had no children, save for their “adopted” Christine, but seemed content to enjoy the animals, the gardens, and the ebb and flow of the farming seasons.
We were interrupted by a high-pitched whinny.
Angus grinned. “Sounds like Aragon knows you’re here.”
I looked at Christine. “Aragon?”
“My horse. He was given to me when I was thirteen, during my Tolkien phase.”
“Okay. Good to know.”
The three of us stepped down the hallway to the adjacent stall, where Christine opened the half door and walked fearlessly up to the mass
ive animal. Her family had raised quarter horses for years and the sight of her delicate hands firmly holding the harness of this huge creature showed a different side of her. The soft, confident tone of her voice revealed an unabashed understanding and connection between the two of them. In that moment, as in so many others, she was unspeakably beautiful, an enchanting mix of reserve and refinement coupled with the bounding healthiness and open hardiness of the farm girl.
“I think he’d still give you a gallop around the farm if you wanted it,” Angus remarked.
Christine continued to rub Aragon’s long neck. “He probably would, the old dear.” She looked affectionately into the horse’s large, brooding eyes. “Those days are past, though, aren’t they, big fellow?”
“Albert taught her to ride,” Angus explained. “She was a natural. Won all them blue ribbons on the wall in there.”
“Albert?”
“Albert, her father.”
Angus stood admiring the two of them for a moment. He reached out and put his hand on my shoulder. “Young fellow, looks like you may be getting upstaged. Why don’t you come and help me with the milking? That’ll give you a real taste of life on the farm.”
Christine peered around Aragon’s head with a face of innocent inquiry, one that asked if I was interested in this offer. I was not a stranger to the outdoors, and being on the farm was delightful, but milking would push my comfort zone.
“I, um. I think I may have to pass on that. I don’t really speak cow.”
Angus laughed heartily, slapped me on the back again, and departed. I walked over and rubbed Aragon’s neck, lightly patting him on his shoulder. He was a beautiful animal despite the slight protrusion of bones that revealed his advanced years. He turned and looked at me from the great depth of his brown eyes, assessing me. It seemed something I had grown accustomed to on this day.
“He’s not near as rambunctious as he used to be,” Christine offered.
“I’d say that’s a good thing.”
“It is. He almost trampled one of my previous boyfriends. But not to worry. It was years ago when I was in high school. He’s calmed down a lot since then.”
