Bootstrapper

by Mardi Jo Link

  12

  June 2006

  DEVIL’S MOON

  The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.

  The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.

  The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,

  And the highwayman came riding—

  Riding—riding—

  The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

  —ALFRED NOYES, “The Highwayman”

  It’s the afternoon of the day my land is listed for sale, my realtor says her line is ringing steady, and although the sky is clear, I feel the buzzards kettling.

  Most of these scavengers just peck my realtor’s brain over the phone for information on the terms I’m offering (cash only) and any special selling points of the property (water view), but a particularly aggressive buyer has the gall to swoop in personally.

  I am alerted to his presence when I am inside to get a drink of water and hear large boots walking up my front steps. I can count on less than one hand the men who have a legitimate reason to frequent the Big Valley: Mr. Wonderful, here to pick up or drop off the boys; the mailman, if I’ve received a package of seeds, tubers, or rootstock too large to fit in my mailbox; or the well driller, here to nudge me for a payment.

  Occasionally Pete checks in to see if the remodel is back on (it’s not), and sometimes stays to talk awhile even though the snow is more than two months gone. I’m beginning to think he wants my company. And he does wear work boots, but I know the sound of them now, and the squeaky ones I just heard are not his.

  Sneaking a look out the window, I see that this visitor is tall and ravenlike, clad in biker gear from his do-rag to his leather pants, and is sporting a limp little mustache. He runs a gloved finger over the back of one of my lavender metal chairs, then bends down and sniffs a flowerpot full of pink and green coleus. This is a brightly variegated tropical plant grown for its decorative foliage and not its flowers, which are negligible and have no smell.

  So this is who I’m sacrificing my land to? Please, no.

  But the visitor continues to sniff away for a few more useless seconds, then stands up straight as a pitchfork, takes off his gloves with a couple of quick jerks, holds them with his right hand, and slaps them against the palm of his left. This is a man not used to being kept waiting.

  “When the devil is knocking on your door,” my grandma Link would say, “just yell, ‘Hey, Jesus, would you mind getting that for me?’ ”

  I wish she were here. I wish I didn’t have to sell my land. But Grandma Link is five years gone, wishes aren’t going to get me anywhere, and I’m going to have to handle this myself, which along with being necessary is also supremely annoying. I have another hour before the boys get home from school, prime work time, and I wanted to use it weeding the sweet corn, which is just starting to ear up, and re-outfitting the scarecrow, not to chasing off this joker.

  So go ahead and stop me then if you’ve heard this one: a perfectly good day, interrupted by an unwelcome man. And it occurs to me that there have been more than just a few of these types intruding on me over the past year, and always at the very worst time, like a record scratch just when the song was getting to my favorite part. Can’t life just leave me alone for a little while?

  “Helloooo?” my visitor calls through the screen door, right on cue. “I’m looking for the owner of that lovely lot for sale.”

  I pull my face back from my spying window, take a breath, grit my teeth, and approach my front door.

  “You’re lookin’ at her,” I say to him, with all the hospitality of a picker bush.

  I’ve accepted the fact that I have to sell the land to keep our farmhouse. Barely. The For Sale sign is up and the listing is published. But that doesn’t mean I have to get friendly with whichever vulture is going to be pecking the flesh from my bones. That’s the realtor’s job. That’s what I’ll be paying a commission for.

  “Oh, well! Hello, then!” he says, ignoring my vibe. “My mother is in assisted living around the corner and I’m looking to move somewhere’s around here. I love your purple chairs, by the way. This whole place, all your flowers, it’s just darling!”

  This place is just darling, I think. This place rocks the living daylights out of darling. And I try to keep my hackles up just like this, I really do, but I can feel my demeanor change, just a little. Compliment the farm the boys and I have worked so hard for and I’ll probably give you arterial blood, not to mention the time of day.

  “Why don’t we talk outside,” I say, resigned now to this interruption. “Grab a seat. Would you like a glass of ice tea?”

  He would. I don’t have any instant, and I’ll have to make it from scratch out of tea bags, boiling water, and ice cubes, but it’s hot and humid outside, and this man’s odd, squeaky voice and chipper manner have gotten the best of me, even if I suspect both traits might be fake.

  I watch the water boil on the stove and think, Really? This is the guy? This is my new neighbor? I actually hadn’t given any thought to who it was going to be until now. None.

  When a person loses a limb, I’m pretty sure they don’t try to imagine it living an active new life attached to someone else’s body. Which is why I hadn’t given any thought to who would be buying my land, I just considered it about to be amputated. Even if I had taken the time to think about it, this is definitely not who I would have conjured.

  But when you are desperate, you don’t get to choose your patron. Nope, when you are as desperate for money as I am, you pretty much just get what you get.

  In fifteen minutes over sweaty glasses of weak tea this potential buyer knows a tiny bit of my story and I know a lot of his. This high-voiced biker with the little mustache is newly single and the only one of his four siblings who lives close enough to their frail mother to look after her affairs. He has a double-wide (a trailer?) and can afford to finance (finance?) the land purchase because he has income from an unnamed source. Buried gold bullion? Military pension? I don’t ask—not because it’s impolite but because it isn’t going to matter.

  He rambles on, but the iron gate in my brain that swung open a crack at the words “just darling” locks shut now. I am going to have to accept that there is still a good life for the boys and me here on the Big Valley after our woods and pasture are cut off and owned by someone else. But it isn’t going to be this someone else. He’s dropped two words into the conversation that just aren’t going to fly—“finance” and “double-wide”—and now I know why he came to see me directly instead of calling my realtor like any reputable buyer would do. He’s here for the hornswoggle.

  My listing specifically states no land contracts and no mobile homes, and I know even with those restrictions there’s been a lot of interest in the listing already. Meaning, I am desperate, but I still don’t have to take the first offer that comes along.

  This guy doesn’t want to build a house, he wants to move a trailer here, then trickle a little money my way every month for the privilege. After the well and the mortgage debacles, I know everything I want to know about financing. Being on the other end of debt, the collection end, might not be anything I’m accustomed to, but it’s not anything I can afford, either.

  This visit, then, is just what I thought it was before the tea and hospitality—another day interrupted by another unwelcome man. I ponder this and a full cast of his ilk saunters through my mind. This man in black who has shown up uninvited might as well be Edgar, the koi-killing bird; Shark, the Goodwill inmate; SAVED, the carnival thief; Count Olaf, the real-estate appraiser; Beard, the court’s social worker; or, yes, even Mr. Wonderful, the ex-husband.

  “The deal is for cash only,” I tell him. “And no trailers.”

  At my bluntness, his hand goes straight to his Adam’s apple.

  “I do not have a trailer,” he says, aghast. “I live in a 1998 manufactured home that meets or exceeds all your township’s zoning regulations. I already checked.”

 
“Well, the answer’s still no,” I say. “I’m not selling to you. I’m sorry.”

  My visitor puts down his glass of tea and quickly stands. He pulls out his wallet, takes out a business card, and snaps it down on the table.

  “In case you change your mind,” he says.

  Then he smooths his vest, strides toward the porch steps, starts down, changes his mind, and spins around to face me one last time.

  “See that!” he says, pointing at a big rock that Will hand-painted to look like a ladybug, complete with glued-on wiggly eyes. “It’s tacky!”

  I acknowledge his exit with a cheerful wave.

  June is actually one of the prettiest months on the Big Valley. The lawn is a new green, the early-summer flowers are starting to bloom, and the garden is alive with all the colors and textures of vegetables just beginning to grow. The cherry trees still have a few blossoms left, and the poppies in the perennial border are just past their peak. So at the slightest breeze, giant orange petals float through the air. The waterfall in the koi pond sparkles, and my wraparound porch is decorated with hanging baskets of purple petunias, blooming planters of coleus, and vintage knickknacks.

  But when I steel my unflinching eye there are a few landmarks beyond rock art that just might, in someone else’s world, be considered “tacky.” But so what? So what if there is a dead chest freezer sitting at the edge of my driveway, waiting to be hauled to the dump. So what if there is a tent the boys set up in the yard for a sleepover last month. So what if the grass is long and there sits my broken lawn mower.

  In a perfect world, the freezer would be gone, the lawn would be mowed, and the tent would be packed away. But in a perfect world, I wouldn’t be selling my land.

  I’ve still got a half hour to finish the tasks at hand, the sweet-corn weeding and the scarecrow outfitting, and I’m thankful that the boys aren’t home from school yet. That at least Will didn’t have to hear the insult that man leveled down upon his rock art. And on a whim, I take a look at the business card he left behind, read the name, and grin. If the man who comes to buy your land is named Foxworthy, you might be a redneck.

  I hum while I weed the sweet corn, then rummage through the back of my closet for some new clothes for the scarecrow. The crows have gotten wise to his straw-stuffed jeans and faded flannel shirt, and he’s way overdue for a new look. I find a long flowered skirt that I’ll never wear again and a Hawaiian shirt Mr. Wonderful left behind. A light breeze blows, poppy petals float by, the scarecrow’s skirt ripples, and it’s time for the boys to get home from school.

  I hear them pound up the front steps then, and I call hello and wave to them from the garden before they run into the house for an after-school snack. They wave back, then bang through the screen door.

  All is right with our world, again. We’ve been interrupted before, and we’ll no doubt be interrupted again. We’ve dealt with thieves, predators, judges, and drillers, and there will probably be other adversaries in our future. And I know we are going to have to sell part of our land, and soon, too, but just look at everything we’ve held on to.

  The boys inside, I throw the prospective buyer’s calling card in the trash.

  A week later I have a purchase agreement for my land, and it’s not with Mr. Foxworthy.

  The new buyer has a blueprint for a two-story house back in my woods of Christmas trees with a long driveway stretching straight through Major’s pasture and out to the road. As I consider the plan on paper, my empty barn looks like a big red hand I can keep over my eyes so that after the buyer’s new house is built, I won’t even have to see it. A blessing, I suppose, if there is one to be found in this transaction, and I sign on the dotted line.

  I get on the phone to my creditors and give them the good news. I owe property taxes, soccer fees for Will, I haven’t paid the gas bill since the end of winter and there’s an impending shutoff. Owen and Luke both won partial scholarships to music camp, and the remainder of their tuition is looming. The tires on the silver minivan were solid when my parents gave it to me, but with our hard use are now bald as Kojak. There’s credit-card debt, the well-repair bill, and I still owe my parents the money they loaned me almost a year ago for my divorce attorney.

  I add up all these trespasses. They are significant, but as soon as I close on the land sale, I’ll be back to even with enough left over to make up a respectable savings account. And on June 28, just two days before my first payment is due on the new mortgage, I walk out of Mid-American Title Company with a big check. I sit in my minivan and put the check on the dashboard and just stare at it for a few minutes.

  I just sold land that, as far as I know, has never been built on before. Not in the whole history of time. Land that was wild, land that was carved by glaciers, then inhabited by the ancients, then cultivated, then grazed by dairy cows, then grazed by Major and Pepper, then produced prizewinning zucchini, then was sacrificed.

  By me.

  I am, in this long ownership chain, quite literally the weakest Link. And yet, when it comes to giving my sons a home, I am tough enough.

  Breaking my land apart and selling part of it off will save us. I’m sacrificing the dream of a real farm, the dream of horses, a pasture, and a big pine woods, for the reality of what my family of four really is now: solvent. My rural heart is broken, but for once my bank account is not. And my sons’ college accounts are safe.

  I blow my nose on a dried-up wet nap I find in my new used minivan’s glove box, make out a deposit ticket, and say, Thank you.

  It comes out like a prayer, but a prayer to whom, I’m still not sure.

  We’ve stopped going to church, and instead I’ve made it a point every day, sometimes several times a day, to slow down. To think. To be present. And I’ve even tried to pass on this reverence for our lives, in small ways at least, to my sons.

  Sitting here in my minivan, losing something I’m so very attached to, I know all my spiritual questions remain, but instead of being rankled by this I have a sudden but comforting thought: Maybe this spiritual questioning isn’t really confusion, after all. Maybe it’s inquiry. Maybe it’s curiosity. And maybe it’s not even a problem to solve, but just a permanent part of my character.

  “Do we need to make a special effort to enjoy the beauty of the blue sky?” asks Thich Nhat Hanh. “No, we just enjoy it.”

  I can live with that.

  My thank-you prayer echoes, and I feel my world fill up with gratitude. I am aware of my surroundings, and my immediate blessings are enormous. All this time I’ve been so busy asking for things, I haven’t even considered what you’re supposed to do when you receive them.

  Please let the boys sleep through Major’s ugly death. Please help me survive this flu. Please let me go on a date with Pete. Please let us keep the Big Valley. Please.

  All of those prayers have been answered. And even though I have to let part of my land go, I’ve been able to keep so much more, and it’s finally occurring to me to say thank you for the privilege of our rural lives.

  Faith, whether it’s in Jesus, or a church, or the power of the human mind to connect, isn’t ever going to be a meaningful force in my life if it’s always one-sided. Faith, connection, spirituality—none of it means very much if it’s always with the please, please, please, but never a single thank-you.

  “What are you doing here?” Will asked when I picked him up from school the day our baby chicks arrived. Answering that question will take more than a month, more than a year, more than twelve full moons, it will take a lifetime. And it will start with “Thank you.”

  · · ·

  It’s the weekend some time in the future; the boys are at their father’s again and I am home alone. I’ve tuned the television to our public-access station, hoping to catch the broadcast of a township meeting. Municipal water lines are about to be installed along my road and I want to know the details, especially since I finally own this place. But instead of talking heads around a conference table, there on the TV is my gr
een minivan. The one Mr. Wonderful scored in our divorce. And it is on fire.

  Smoke funnels out of the side door and flames lick the undercarriage. An off-camera narrator is explaining that firefighters train in controlled burns like this one for several hours each year in order to retain their certification. Sometimes they gut old house trailers and light them on fire; sometimes they ignite wooden burn towers built specifically for the purpose, and sometimes they light junk cars like this one.

  Wait just a flaming minute, I think. Junk?

  I crouch close to my TV, stare at the screen, and tell myself that this green Ford Windstar with the jagged line of rust along the driver’s door, the American flag suction-cupped to an inside window, and the “I’d Rather Be Reading Jane Austen” bumper sticker couldn’t possibly belong to any other family.

  I can accept losing the van to Mr. Wonderful if he really needs it to transport our sons to their school activities and orchestra concerts and drive them back and forth to friends’ houses on the weekends when they are with him. I can face losing this comfortable vehicle and accepting the newer one from my parents with relief and gratitude if it means that my sons won’t have to ride in his work van.

  But I’m going to have a hard time with losing it if he took it away from me just so that he could burn it down.

  “Because each divorce is unique,” the SMILE handbook advises, “divorcing couples should consult psychological services, support groups, conflict and mediation agencies, and books or articles relating to divorce.”

  My divorce must be really unique, because it has involved a work-release inmate, a social worker, lawyers, judges, bill collectors, bankers, preachers, real-estate agents, a Christian well driller, and a tower of library books about Buddhism. I can add firefighters-in-training to that list now, too, I guess.

  The firefighters unroll a huge wheel of hose, but this is not the kind of water line I turned on the TV to see, and there isn’t enough of it in the whole world to cool me off right now. Whatever small glow of compassion and acceptance I’ve fanned in my heart hardens again like charcoal.