The Paul Di Filippo Megapack

by Pau Di Filippo

  Edward had just received tenure at an urban-campused Ivy League college in the Northeast, where he taught philosophy. He and Lucy had promptly bought an old farmhouse forty-five minutes south of the city, in a sparsely populated district where cows outnumbered humans. Their property included five acres, one of which was lawn, the other four being scrub growth.

  The time of the year was the first week of June.

  “I can’t see the sense of getting all greased up to lie mindlessly for hours in the sun.”

  “It feels good.”

  “I suppose.”

  “In fact, it feels so good that I’m taking off my suit. It’s silly to wear it, out here in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Lucy, I don’t know—”

  But it was too late. In a mere second, Lucy had skinned out of her bikini. The twin white premises of her breasts and the conclusion of her pale pubic delta formed a wordless syllogism whose validity was insusceptible to proof.

  Still, Edward felt professionally compelled to try.

  Later that afternoon, after a lunch of curried chicken-salad sandwiches and Chardonnay, Lucy said, “You know what? I think I’m going to start a garden. It’ll give me something to do.”

  “A garden? You’ve never grown anything before.”

  “That was when we lived in the city. Things are different now.”

  “What kind of garden? Flowers or vegetables?”

  “Both.”

  “How will you even know where to begin?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I’ll ask around. Maybe there’s one of those whatchamacallits around here.”

  “I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t be obtuse. You know what I mean.”

  “I do?”

  “The place where the farmers get together for their hoedowns or hootenannies or whatever.”

  “A Grange.”

  “Yes, that’s it. A Grange.”

  * * * *

  It was odd, this living in the country. Very strange and disturbing to the intellect. Nature had an effect. Yes, it must be admitted. The mind, much as it might like to think it was sovereign and independent, was hooked up to the body; and the body, in turn, was merely a quivering antenna receptive to a bewildering variety of sensory inputs. And out here, away from the city, amidst a wild profusion of growing things, of hidden, scurrying animals, of running water and blind stones migrating upward through the soil, the inputs were different. More persuasive in a subtle way—although perhaps less blatant—than car horns and advertisements, sirens and the smell of restaurants.

  But there was more to it than individual stimuli, or even the sum of the novel sensations. There were the underlying patterns to consider, the ancient cycles and the total ecology of nature. Take just the seasons, for instance. In the city, they passed almost unnoticed. Street trees donned and doffed their cloaks of leaves, and no one paid any attention. Pigeons did not fly south for the winter. Any river big enough to notice was too big to ice over. Flowers were something one bought already cut and bundled.

  Out here in the country, though, it was different. In just the couple of months that they had been living here, Edward had become attuned to the progress of the summer. In a way that was almost sly and sneaky, things changed. Plants that, a few weeks ago in May, had been tiny shoots were now monstrous weeds, bearing heavy, randy blossoms never bred by man. Where there had once been a clear line of sight from the front porch to the mailbox, there was now an impenetrable greenness. The sun now rose above that ancient oak, whereas formerly it had of a morning crowned that other. (Elm, sycamore, ash? How could one tell?)

  And the way the discrete elements of the environment related to each other.… When the trumpet vine that climbed the tumbled stone wall along the eastern edge of their land had blossomed, the hummingbirds had materialized from nowhere. How had they known to come? The ants that stripped the chewed carcass that might have been a possum—what had summoned them? The cloud of delicate dandelion parasol seeds—what fitted them to be carried by the wind?

  There was a kind of mindless fecundity behind it all, an inexhaustible and exuberant organic experimentation. What was it the writer Annie Dillard had said? That nature was “wasteful and extravagant of life.…” That seemed about right.

  Edward had noticed unmistakable changes in himself since their residency here. For one thing, his attention was more liable to drift from his work. He had fall-semester classes to prepare, scholarly papers to write, a book to outline. (It was to be a volume of philosophy for the layman, hopefully very popular, like what Sagan and Gould had done in their fields) Despite these demands, he found himsellf spending useless hours outdoors, wandering along the game trails that threaded the adjoining woods, his mind wandering likewise, unable to focus on the work at hand.

  (But was it totally empty during these walks, or rather, working in a different way, examining different, wordless topics…?)

  And then, of course, there were the changes in Lucy. Back in the city, during his untenured years, she had done part-time librarian work to supplement his pay, and spent most of her free time as an expert shopper. Since the increase in his income and their subsequent relocation, she had quit her job and completely lost interest in the local stores or the more distant, inevitable mall. All it seemed she wanted to do was vegetate in the sun. That, or cook these intricate, peasant-type meals for them. Supper might be a big pot of thick stew and a crusty whole-grain loaf, still hot from the oven. Breakfast an omelet round and golden as the sun accompanied by cornbread made with white meal and cooked in a cast-iron skillet in the oven, emerging like a scorched harvest moon.

  Edward found himself putting on weight, like some country squire.

  And now there was this matter of a garden. It was the last thing Edward would have predicted Lucy would want. (Of course, when had he ever been able to guess what she would do next?) It was certainly a harmless enough hobby. Maybe she would find some local folks who might provide her with company on days when he was working.

  As for his own inability to concentrate—well, there was bound to be a period of adjustment connected with such major changes in their lives. Edward was certain that any day now he would be back to his old self.

  Meanwhile, though, perhaps he’d just go out for a stroll.…

  * * * *

  Car tires chewed noisily on the gravel in the drive. Edward looked up gratefully from the disorganized pile of papers on his desk. Splotchy sunlight, filtered by the leaves of the large oak just outside the window, carpeted the varnished floor of his study with a pattern of shadow. The house had seemed empty without Lucy. Maybe now that she was home, they could go for a walk together. It wasn’t as if he were accomplishing anything sitting here.…

  Stepping beyond the wooden screen door onto the wide porch that wrapped itself around three-quarters of the old house, Edward was met by Lucy bounding up the steps from the verdant lawn. She grabbed him and whirled him around in a crazy little dance.

  “I found it, I found it, I found it!”

  Stepping back dizzily when released, Edward said, “My God, it could only be Leibniz’s universal calculus—”

  “No, dummy, the Grange.”

  Edward took Lucy’s hand, and they went into the cool indoors.

  “I stopped in at the Blue Label feedstore and asked the man there. He said there was a Grange in town. It’s one of the oldest branches, in fact. They meet in that brick building with the waterwheel that we wondered about. It used to be a real flour mill hundreds of years ago, even before World War I.”

  “That old, huh?”

  “Yes. And tonight there’s going to be a meeting that the public can attend. At least the first part. The Grange is a society, you know. You have to be members before you can go to every meeting and function. But if we go tonight and show some interest, I think they’ll ask us to join. The feedstore man said that most of the members were pretty old, and that they were always looking for younger peopl
e to belong.”

  “I guess we qualify, then. Anyway, I know you make me feel pretty young.”

  Edward grabbed Lucy’s ass.

  “About sixteen years old I would estimate,” she said.

  “You should remember.”

  “Oh, I do.”

  Later Edward was motivated to pull down the proper volume of the Encyclopedia Americana and look up:

  “GRANGE, one of the general farm organizations in the United States, formerly known as the Patrons of Husbandry. It is a secret, ritualistic society. Established in 1867 in Washington, D.C., by Oliver Hudson Kelley and six associates, its officers bear the titles of Grange Master, Overseer, Chaplain, Secretary, Treasurer, Steward, and Gatekeeper.…”

  Neat, thought Edward. Each of the original seven founders got to be an officer. That’s my kind of club.…

  Evening filled the woods with twilight. The tall trees surrounding the farmhouse—where the porch light defined a small circle of artificial day—had become towering, shadowy masses, rustling in a light breeze, seeming to exhale waves of moist coolness. Crickets chirruped. A chorus of falsetto frogs peeped cheerfully in a distant swamp. Stars began to burn through the canopy of night. The scent of new-mown grass filled Edward’s nostrils as he and Lucy walked to the car. The crew of locals that maintained their property had been by that afternoon.

  Just where the lawn met the gravel of the driveway, Lucy stopped. “Edward, look at this.”

  Edward saw an irregular ring of beautiful white mushrooms, each about three inches high, phallus-capped, rearing proudly above the mower-shortened blades of grass. They limned a hollow moon.

  “The men must have missed it,” he said, knowing even as he said it, as he stared unbelievingly at the cut grass beneath the ring, that he was not speaking the truth.

  “No,” Lucy said, “these things can sprout up fast. I’ve heard about them.”

  “In a couple of hours?”

  “There it is.”

  “Well,” said Edward, “Maybe they’re good to eat.”

  “Oh no, we can’t pick them—”

  Edward decided not to mention that the landscapers would decapitate them next week.

  Lucy drove them into town. She liked driving; Edward didn’t. He tried to restrain his foot from pressing an imaginary brake pedal each time she took a curve.

  The car radio played softly, a pop song sung by a nasal Australian voice:

  I have the moon in my bed,

  I have the sun in my heart,

  I have the stars at my feet.…

  There was a sizable parking lot attached to the old mill. Normally vacant those few times Edward had driven by, it was nearly full tonight. Lucy found an empty slot. The cars were those models Edward associated with his parents’ generation: conservative Buicks, Oldsmobiles, Chevys.

  Edward could read the bumper sticker on one, in the illumination of a streetlight:

  HOWDY,STRANGER!

  I’M A GRANGER!

  “Corny.”

  “Be nice. These aren’t academics. They’re a different kind of people from any we know.”

  At the door to the mill, they were not far from the grassy banks of the stream that had once spun the wheel that had turned the grindstones in their immemorial embrace. The water flowed with a serene chuckling over weed-draped rocks and between reeds and rushes, its clean odor lying lightly on the night air.

  The interior of the mill had long ago been subdivided into offices and meeting rooms. Here and there, portions of the original pegged beams showed through, like the skeleton of an old, old story poking its elbows through its modern dress. Everything was freshly painted and well-lit with modern fixtures. Edward and Lucy made their way down a corridor—corkboard hung with notices of farm equipment for sale, a table holding ag-school bulletins and a box full of food coupons for exchange, a forgotten pair of galoshes under the empty coat hooks—toward a room from which voices drifted.

  The hall held fifty wood-slatted folding chairs, nearly all occupied. Edward and Lucy slid into a pair of empty seats at the back in what they hoped was an inconspicuous way.

  Looking toward the front of the room, Edward saw a wooden dais bearing a table and seven chairs. The chairs were occupied by four old women and three old men. Each wore a yellow-and-white satin sash across their elderly chest. Their average age seemed about seventy. The woman in the middle, although remarkably unwrinkled, had to be in her nineties.…

  The backdrop behind the Grange leaders was a green cloth on which was stitched a golden stalk of grain.

  The meeting was already under way. One of the officers was detailing the status of the treasury in exquisitely tedious detail. Edward settled back into his chair, quite prepared to be very bored.

  The next forty-five minutes didn’t disappoint him. Accounts of planned fund-raising activities, the success of a recent dance, news of crop prices, the formation of a committee to do political work for the Grange-backed candidate in the upcoming presidential election.…

  Edward was just drifting off to sleep, when he was reprieved.

  “This concludes the first half of tonight’s Grange meeting,” said one of the officers. “We will break for ten minutes. I must remind the general public that the second half of the meeting is closed to them.”

  Chairs scraped as people got to their feet. Edward stood. One leg had gone to sleep and now prickled painfully.

  “Can we go now?”

  “In a minute. We want to introduce ourselves first.”

  “We do?” Looking to his wife for an answer, Edward was taken aback.

  Lucy’s eyes were shining, as if the boring meeting had been some kind of rapturous experience for her. She seemed drawn to the people on the stage.

  Edward shrugged and accompanied her up front.

  From old-fashioned wall-mounted Seeburg speakers issued barely discernible music. Edward thought he recognized the old English ballad “John Barleycorn Must Die”.

  The officers had descended from the stage and now stood among the respectful crowd, softly conferring among themselves. Lucy approached the nearest, one of the men.

  “Hello,”she said, extending her hand. “My name’s Lucy Pastorious, and this is my husband, Edward.”

  The white-haired man shook first Lucy’s hand, then Edward’s, and introduced himself. “Calvin Culver. I’m the Grange’s Sower.”

  Had that been one of the Grange titles? Edward couldn’t be sure, but he didn’t think so.

  “We’re new residents of the town,” continued Lucy, “and we’re interested in joining the Grange.”

  Edward had an impression that he and Lucy were being instantly appraised, and found not too alien. Culver seemed honestly pleased at their interest. “We’re always glad to see some young faces round here. The Grange can’t go on without new blood. I don’t think there’d be any problem about you two joining. Let me just introduce you to the rest of the sashes.”

  Culver turned toward his fellow officers and named them one by one.

  “This is Betty Rhinebeck, our Attendant.”

  “Roger Swain, our Presbyter.”

  “Alice Cotten, our Thresher.”

  “Edwin Landseer, our Plowman.”

  “Nancy Rook, our Sluicekeeper.”

  When Edward had finished shaking the fifth papery, dry old hand and making his fifth polite hello, he was certain of one thing. None of these titles were the same as the ones he had earlier found in the encyclopedia. Was this Grange a chapter of the Patrons of Husbandry, or was it a branch of some different organization? Had the titles changed with time? Or were false ones given to the public? If the latter, it seemed a needlessly mysterious practice.…

  Edward suddenly realized that there remained one officer left to be introduced: the most senior woman, who had sat in the middle of the others. It occurred to Edward now that she had been the only one to remain unspeaking throughout the meeting.

  Culver shepherded Lucy with evidence of great respect up to th
e small, trim woman. “This is Sally Lunn, The Grain Mistress.”

  Grain Mistress…? What had happened to Grange Master?

  Edward watched Lucy extend her hand. The woman took it, her simultaneously old and young face broadening into a smile showcasing perfect teeth. “So pleased to meet you at last, Mrs. Pastorious,” said Sally Lunn.

  Lucy’s lips were slightly parted, as if she had started to speak but had her thought processes short-circuited. Sally Lunn released Lucy’s hand, which continued to hang for a moment in midair.

  Before he knew what was happening, Lucy had staggered back, and Edward had been invited forward.

  “Edward,” said Sally Lunn, “my pleasure.” Then she took his hand.

  His mind was somewhere deep under the earth. The rich smell of soil filled his nose, and cool clods sealed his eyes. He could blindly sense a twinned presence high above his head, calling him up. He struggled upward through the clinging loam, grew taller, taller, until he burst forth, into the ecstatic light, mingled gold and opal—

  His hand and self were his own again. Somehow they were at the exit to the mill, having been escorted there by Calvin Culver.

  “Sorry you folks have to leave now. But something tells me there won’t be any problem about you joining. No siree, none at all.”

  * * * *

  Edward contemplated his breakfast. Lucy had cooked a pot of Wheatena with raisins. She had mounded a hill of the gritty golden cereal into a bowl, deposited a dollop of honey into the center of it, and splashed a moat of milk into the bowl.

  The golden hill and white ring around it had Edward mesmerized, as if it were an intricate mandala containing infinite depths of meaning.

  Reluctantly, he jerked his attention away from the absolutely mundane image. Picking up his spoon, he broke through the dike containing the honey, let it runnel away into the milk, a golden thread. He stirred the whole mixture up into an amorphous mess and began to eat.

  The cereal tasted especially sweet this morning, the day after they had attended the Grange.

  Lucy sat down at the table, picked up her spoon, and dipped it into her own cereal. “Well, what about it?”