“What wasn’t?”
“The origins of my being such a great guy.”
“Oh?”
He got a little shy. “Around you, I was always on my best behavior. Seriously. I wanted to impress you.” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “‘Impress’ is probably not the right word. But you know what I mean.”
“What, back when you showed me how to seal the seams of my tent?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. Yeah.”
That pleased me enormously. I brushed chips out of his hair and off his shoulders.
“Why’d you want to impress me so much?” I asked, fishing.
He gave me a raised eyebrow and said, negligently, “I’ve always had a weakness for beautiful women. Putty in their hands. Sad, really.”
I’d take that, I decided; I didn’t mind that.
After a while I had my own clarification to make. “I wasn’t just winging it, that’s not all there is to it. If I seemed like a tolerable person, it was because whenever I was around you, I felt good. I just always felt … better. Happier. Always, Earnest. It’s very easy to be tolerable when you’re feeling good. To be an okay person.”
“That’ll do it, too,” he said, serious, meaning it. And then something like a vow: “I will make every effort to keep it that way.”
Chapter 61
There’s no happy ending to my story, because there is not yet an ending. That is, it ain’t over till it’s over, and it’s never over, as my father liked to say.
I didn’t really understand what he meant until now. It will unfold forever, through lifetimes, and they will always be calico, checkered lifetimes. I have now been here for seven years and I have changed in a thousand ways. Certainly, I am wiser and sounder and happier and stronger, but the ups and downs have never stopped rising and falling. We at Brassard’s farm continue to surf those waves with varying levels of confidence.
Erik: What’s to become of him? My worry grew by the tiniest of increments. It started innocently enough. I got my mail at a box at the local post office, because I’d rented it before I started working for Brassard. Erik preferred not to get his own box; any mail he did get—bills from hardware suppliers, for example—arrived to him care of me. Neither of us got much mail. Why pay rent on two boxes?
Same with banking. When he first came, he asked me if he could deposit the cashier’s check from Aunt Theresa’s estate into my bank account. It made sense—he had just arrived, wanted money fast to pay Brassard in advance and assure him he wasn’t a flake like his sister. But he never got around to opening his own account. After a while, it didn’t seem particularly necessary, because I ended up being the owner of Brass Valley Hops, Incorporated, and am the one who pays the bills.
It’s true. Erik didn’t register himself on the articles of incorporation. He decided that I should be president and CEO, and Earnest and Will and Brassard should be board members. He said he wanted to honor me, and anyway he figured I was more responsible than he was. He had the brewers make their checks out to me or the corporation, not to him personally.
He is a persuasive talker, an escape artist of sorts. We were all so hard-pressed for time, had such work-fogged brains, it all seemed somehow reasonable. And Earnest and I: We had entered a whirlpool of convergence that, whether we knew it or not, made all else seem a little vague. I agreed to everything Erik suggested.
His van: He never got Vermont tags, because apparently, it was still registered in the name of a friend out in California, who every two years sent him the new paperwork and plate stickers. It had taken me two years to switch over my Massachusetts plates, so at first I understood his lack of hurry. But eventually, I did mention it to him—sooner or later, some state trooper would notice that he’d seen that same van for too long, that it should get Vermont plates. He’d pull Erik over, kindly remind him to register in Vermont, and ticket him. Erik shrugged it off. But whenever I rode shotgun with him, I noticed his impeccable driving, something I wouldn’t have expected from my renegade brother. If the sign said thirty-five, he drove thirty-four miles per hour.
On the farm, he used Brassard’s landline, as we all did; in town, he used only disposable cell phones. He said he just didn’t want to bother with account statements and all the rest of it, or pay for an expensive phone he’d just lose or break in the hop yard. It was easier just to buy a new one every few weeks and always know where you stood with your remaining minutes. It was a choice that seemed consistent with his lifelong persona of the footloose desperado, contemptuous of anything as bourgeois as monthly bills, so I never gave it a thought until later.
There were a dozen other little clues that, one by one, slid past me at first but after four years could no longer be ignored.
I invited him up to my campsite; we cooked dinner together, and then I confronted him: “You are trying to be invisible. You’re working hard to leave no tracks.” Before he could deny it, I ticked off all the indications on my fingers.
“Why? Is it those guys with grudges from California? Do you think they’ll really work that hard to find you?”
He got a little cocky. “I doubt those shitbags have the attention span to stick with it. Anyway, given their … habits, they’ve no doubt picked up other more pressing grudges to settle in the last few years. Keep em busy!” He chuckled at that.
“Then what?”
He stood up off his log and came over to me, knelt, and put his hands on my knees. “You really want to know? You sure?”
“Yes.”
“I was released from Elk Ridge on parole. I skipped parole to come here, Annie. I am a fugitive. Interstate flight—there’s no doubt a federal warrant on me.”
I didn’t believe him at first. Then I told him he was an idiot and he should never have done this and should think about maybe growing up some year. I stamped and picked up sticks and threw them at him. We got into a childish sibling shouting match for which there could be only one outcome. It was too late, he’d made the choice, the chips had fallen, I could be as mad at him as I liked and it wouldn’t change the facts. It pissed me off and broke my heart and scared me. Here everything was rolling along so well, the hops in high demand among some very successful brewers who were paying top dollar. The farm had been in a reasonably stable economic state and a very agreeable emotional state.
Erik, who had turned it around, might also be its undoing: Is that ironic, or is it inevitable?
So there’s that sword hanging over Erik, and the suspense sometimes becomes difficult for all of us. Except for Brassard—he knows nothing about it. He’s seventy-two now and has earned some respite from such things.
But what happens if the sheriff pulls Erik over to let him know his turn signal isn’t working, and does the obligatory record check? It can keep me awake at night—at four a.m., it’s almost unbearable.
The best solution I could come up with was that Erik could petition the governor of Oregon for clemency, on whatever improbable grounds we could dream up. If his taking up farming was any indication, he could maybe plead temporary insanity.
Earnest didn’t seem particularly surprised when I told him. He thought about it for a while, stroking a nonexistent beard. “That girl Erik’s been seeing—how long do you think that’ll last?” He wound an invisible egg timer.
“Well, it’s been about six months. Seems to be about his average run, so I’d guess not much longer. Why?”
“Larry Hoskie’s daughters are gorgeous,” he said offhandedly. “The younger one isn’t married yet—Larry says it can be hard to meet the right guy out there. Navajos can’t marry inside their clan, even if they’re not related. Plus, she’s too smart and she intimidates the local guys. She’d be in her early thirties now.”
“So … Erik should try to date someone he’s never met and who’s never heard of him and who lives two thousand miles from here? Good plan. But what does it have to d
o with his parole violation?”
Earnest shrugged. “Just thinking out loud. The Hoskies are great people. I’ve met the extended family. Marry into the family, you marry into the tribe. The Navajos don’t like to extradite, remember?”
Later, he added: “And your brother could use someone to steady him out a bit. I’m given to understand that the Native American makes an excellent spouse.”
I had indeed given him that understanding.
At the time, we laughed at this absurd plan B. But Earnest has been corresponding more frequently with Larry and they’ve been talking about Earnest visiting him on the Big Rez. Earnest even proposed a brotherly adventure to Erik—why not go out and meet some more taciturn Native Americans? On the way, you can tell me all of your sister’s secrets. Erik, sick to death of hops, said he wouldn’t mind. They’d take the bus so they could see the scenic USA on the way. Also, avoid identity checks at airports.
If they do go, I hope some good magic happens—who knows when or how it will come into our lives?—but it still doesn’t strike me as all that likely. And I would miss my brother terribly.
I know it is not fashionable to be romantic, idealistic, or sentimental, but, truly, before Earnest I didn’t know what love was. I had garnered no idea whatever from the Matts and Daniels and whoevers from before.
But even this has not been an easy process. Our first child miscarried. I was devastated, and for a while I feared that the dream of raising a family of my own had crashed and was dead along with the child, and that maybe another time of crashing dreams had come upon me. My mother and father lost their first, too, and I had to wonder whether I carried some inherited deficiency in my DNA, my woman’s apparatus, or my karma.
But we didn’t wait six more years, the way my parents did. We conceived again within a year and now have twin daughters, exquisitely fascinating and beautifully formed and smart and utterly courageous about entering our uncertain world. When Earnest first held them, they looked like little squirrels against his broad chest. It was the first time I’ve ever seen him scared. No, terrified—I have the photos to prove it. But by the time they started walking he felt safer around them, and now when he lies down they pile onto him and give him great joy. They’re only three years old, but it’s good to have some other women in this household.
And yes, Robin was indeed effulgent in that drear February and not long afterward got together with a man she’d met back in college on an exchange visit to Ireland. They live on Lynn and Theo’s land in a converted shed hardly bigger than my old chicken-coop apartment, and they seem ecstatic when they visit us with their daughter. In fact, Robin remains as effulgent as all get-out, and I suspect this child is only the first of what will become a big family.
I have continued to spend time on my hill, which has changed very little. I don’t “improve” it or civilize it, because it is just as it should be. I still sleep alone in my tent sometimes so I can immerse myself in the mysteries of the forest and of solitude. From those mysteries, even from the Great Fear, I always gain strength. The woods enfold me as I hike up; my family embraces me when I come back down, renewed.
Will has been getting more commissions from out of state, so we see much less of him. The summer after that first hops harvest, he got together with a woman from Rutland, lived with her for a couple of years. He broke it off, but he has a new girlfriend now, and we all agree she has potential.
Brassard planted six acres of hops, then six more, and though we had a disastrous third year due to powdery mildew, now they pull in good money through the connections Erik established. Together, we invested in a small commercial cone separator with, as Erik calls it, “better throughput capacity” that can process the yards’ harvests fairly quickly. We’ve set up the whole upstairs of the old barn to dry the cones, now on racks of big screens vented by fans. The “as yet immature but primed” East Coast artisanal brewing industry matured explosively; Erik and Brassard have more demand for hops than they can supply. If you are a beer aficionado, I can almost guarantee you have drunk beer made from our hops.
My pregnancies made it hard to keep up with the milking. Brassard hired on another couple of hands, and they’re all right if properly supervised—which I found I could manage even with a couple of babies on my hips.
Milk prices recovered and, as Brassard says, almost allow a man to make a living.
When you are a farmer, you tend to pay close attention primarily to what’s right there, the next task, the next seasonal change, the next problem. You have to deal with the wolf at the door, not the pack coming down the hill, even though you know you’ll have to face them soon.
But, of course, the rest of the world rolls along, oblivious to you. Since I came to Brassard’s farm, things have changed. Our country is going through what feels like an upheaval, one that’s not entirely comprehensible to us here in the valley. It’s not just here; it seems as if it’s in every nation, even the dear planet itself and all its living creatures. We hear the news; sometimes we are frightened for the future.
But I console myself. I remind myself that tyrants have risen, reigned, wrought havoc, fallen. Some we remember; most we have long forgotten or have learned about only from their tombs. Nations, cruel or kind, wise or foolish, have reared up and believed themselves grand and eternal; we know of the most recent of these, of course, but the vast majority we discover in archaeological digs, their time-worn traces buried by the years and cryptic to us.
Throughout history, wars have raged, engulfing lands and people, but inevitably, green has returned to the ravaged and bloodied ground. That’s because there is a through line, an unsevered strand. We—I am now we—we who work the land are still here. We never went away. Our way of life endures and we are anything but fragile. Here in Brassard’s valley, on all the farms, the spirit of Diz resides, strong, indomitable. Cross her at your peril.
And capable men like Brassard, good men like Earnest, wise women like Lynn—they’re here, their spirits and backbones are here and they are not just worthy but durable as well. We fall in love as people have always done, and have children as people have always done, and we toil alongside each other as people have always done. We even enjoy each other’s company, mostly. Other things come and go, but these good things endure, and when you work among them, you know with certainty they always will.
We’re farmers. We know about uncertainties and bad weather and pests. They do give us great concern, but we have seen them come and seen them go. We’re used to sticking it out and seeing the other side.
Then there is love. This is a love story, after all. I came to love so much, in so many ways, in large part because I, believing myself to be falling helplessly, to have no choices, was compelled to accept what came to me from even the most unexpected quarter. I would never have guessed that I’d learn to love a scraggly forest, a hard-pressed farm, or the man who loves me as I do him.
I know many people find themselves to be similarly falling. Of course I cannot speak for your fate, only wish upon you understanding of the most important thing I learned from my stumbling, flailing, falling arrival at Brassard’s farm: All those years I was falling and so frightened, I was always falling home.
THE END
Acknowledgments
On Brassard’s Farm wouldn’t exist without Rick Bleiweiss of Blackstone Publishing, who tracked me down and urged me to write the kind of book I’d always wanted to. His encouragement and enthusiasm made all the difference. I’m very grateful to him and to the others at Blackstone who read the book and truly saw what it was and what it could be.
Thanks are due to Michael Carr, whose marvelous editing gave the book some class and whose conversation, not just about this book but about style and mechanics in general, made it an enjoyable process.
I owe sincere thanks to all Vermont farmers, the women and men who put food on our tables every day and who are too seldom acknowledged fo
r doing so. President Eisenhower got it right when he said, “Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you’re a thousand miles away from the cornfield.”
In particular, I owe special thanks to dairy farmers Jerry Kill and Mark Rodgers, who helped me understand the daily realities of farming. Any misrepresentation of dairy farm practices in this book results from fictional license or the thickness of my skull, not from any want of expertise or effort on their part. I am also indebted to Diane Bothfeld and Dan Scruton of the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, who first introduced me to the challenges of dairy farming in the Green Mountains. Thanks also to Dick Waybright of Mason Dixon Farm for giving me so much of his time and knowledge.
I thank my brother Nicholas Hecht, artist and wizard, who opened my mind and heart to the mysteries of the deep woods and the magic that can find you in unfamiliar forest at night. Nick guided and accompanied me on many vision quests, including that night when we lay on the ground, far up in a Vermont hill pasture, to be surrounded by fifty uneasy cows. It was thanks to Nick’s calm and charm that we befriended them.
I could not have portrayed the character Earnest without the examples of four men. Elmer (Menominee) was the tree surgeon for whom I served as rope man and who really did jam ice cubes into his canteen with one finger. My brother-in-law Ken Schuyler (Oneida) remained my dear friend despite my messing up his trucks and tractors when I lived in the Schuylers’ chicken coop. Bob Kirk and his brother Ernest Kirk (Diné) are wise, strong, talented men who introduced me to Navajo culture, let me live in the goat barn while I wrote Land of Echoes, and showed me firsthand the grace and trust that comes from not talking so damn much.
Ultimately, this book must be dedicated to my wife Stella, without whom I couldn’t do much of anything and who, along with Jean, Willow, and Amie, helped me understand a bit about women, love, and life.