The Bucolic Plague

  “Yes, but the name on the account won’t be mine.” I couldn’t help but think that I was making things worse for myself. “Look, I don’t know the address, but it’s the Beekman Mansion.”

  “Where are the Beekmans?” she asked, thoroughly confused.

  “No, no, the Beekmans are dead.”

  “Excuse me?”

  I quickly realized that this call was going from petty larceny to twenty-to-life.

  “Brent!” I shouted through the porch window. “What’s the address here?” He couldn’t hear me through the glass and over the piercing alarm. “Brent!” I yelled louder. “BRENT!”

  “Who’s ‘Brent’?” the alarm woman asked suspiciously.

  “He’s my partner,” I answered, immediately realizing that the woman now thought we were a team of cold-blooded killers on a cross-country breaking-and-entering spree.

  The alarm’s wailing was drilling into my head, and I couldn’t stop shivering in the chilly early evening air. My voice was beginning to quiver along with my shivering, and I was sure that the dispatcher was simply trying to keep me on the line while she summoned up the local sheriff. I figured I had nothing left to lose…

  “Look, we just bought this house together but no one gave us the alarm code—or at least we can’t find it anywhere—and I’m standing on the porch freezing my ass off hoping that you’ll turn the alarm off so that my boyfriend and I can walk around our house for the first time ever.”

  “Brent is your boyfriend?” she asked. Sweet Jesus. Now I was going to have to explain homosexuality to this woman.

  “Yes, Brent is my partner. My boyfriend.”

  The other end of the line was silent, except for some rustling of papers. Either she was relaying this new incriminating information to the sheriff or she was busy praying for our souls. I looked at Brent through the window, still frantically looking through the papers for the code.

  Suddenly the alarm was silenced.

  It echoed in my ears for a few seconds longer before it was completely replaced by the quiet of the country air. I could hear some early crickets or frogs peeping off in the distance.

  “Okay, Josh,” the woman cheerily returned to the line. “We’ve got that taken care of for you. But do me a favor, hon, and call me back in the morning to give us all the new information on the account. You’ll do that?”

  I was confused but relieved.

  “Um, yeah. Sure. I’ll call first thing. Promise.”

  “Just ask for Linda. You boys have fun in your new home now,” she said sweetly. “Good night.”

  “Good night, Linda…and thank you,” I said right before she hung up. I didn’t know what I’d said, but somehow I’d convinced her that we weren’t deranged, murdering thieves.

  I wasn’t used to being trusted. Living in the city for so many years had trained me to doubt everyone and bristle with defensiveness at the slightest hint of altercation. Also, after working in advertising, I found myself entering every conversation as if I needed to persuade the other person to either think or act as I wanted him or her to. I spent the vast majority of every day trying to come up with ideas that would convince people to spend money on the things I wanted them to. I had to sell them into buying what I was offering.

  But Linda just took my word that I was the new owner of this mansion. I told her the truth, and she bought it. Was everyone like this around here?

  This was going to take some getting used to.

  Chapter Five

  HERE COMES THE BRIDE!

  We’re woken up by what sounds like someone performing Wagner’s wedding march on Model T car horns.

  Brent and I had been told that we’d inherit several chickens, rabbits, and one barn cat with the farm. For the time being, we understood, they were still being taken care of by a neighbor.

  “Was that a rooster?” I asked Brent.

  “You’re the one who grew up in Wisconsin,” he said sleepily.

  “I think it was.” But rather than the old standard COCK-A-DOODLE-DO, the song stuck in this rooster’s head was the classic bridal entrance theme. A few seconds later, he was joined by another rooster greeting the day with “It Had to Be You.” They were quickly backed up with choruses of “Papa Don’t Preach” and “The Little Drummer Boy.” Our farm sounded like a bad cover band.

  We jumped out of our temporary sleeping bags gleefully, if not still a little groggy. Having moved into a grand total of eighteen different houses and apartments during the first half of my life, there was still no thrill like waking up the first morning in a new one. I silently hoped that this would be a home I’d wake up in for the rest of my life. While there would always be bigger castles, and more temperate locations, and more expensive addresses, I couldn’t imagine a single place more serendipitously perfect for Brent and me to grow old in. The sturdy 205-year-old farmhouse, standing high on a windy hill, represented the sense of permanence and stoicism I’ve always admired in people. I was waking up in the same exact spot as at least ten generations of people who came before me. In fact, the first morning someone woke up in this spot, America was still composed of only seventeen states, and had only purchased the Louisiana Territory a month earlier. Napoléon was belching his way across France. President Thomas Jefferson was having sex with a slave at Monticello. In fact, someone might have been having sex with a slave right here where I lay.

  As we’d learned from our online research, the Beekman Mansion was home to many slaves, and decades later was also a stop on the Underground Railroad to freedom. As a writer, I was thrilled to discover that a young James Fenimore Cooper probably dropped by to play with the Honorable William Beekman’s children. We’d also read that a century or so later, during the mansion’s descent into abandonment, the Beekman Mansion was a popular squatting place for transients.

  Slaves, freed slaves, senators, judges, novelists, and hobos had all passed through the room I’d just woken up in. Though Brent and I had had doubts about whether it made sense for us to buy the Beekman, at least its history proved that we didn’t make any less sense than someone else.

  Since we’d yet to discover any thermostats, the house was extremely chilly. We walked around the house in our underwear with our sleeping bags wrapped tightly around us, trailing the long ends behind us like the lucky kings we felt we were. When we reached the kitchen we discovered that someone—probably the previous caretaker whom we could no longer afford—had arranged all the makings for a fire in the kitchen fireplace.

  Even though I’d never officially had one to begin with, I realized that I was going to really miss having a caretaker.

  Brent found matches next to the hearth, and in seconds a fire was blazing away, with us huddled in front of it.

  “Should we get dressed and drive into town for breakfast?” I asked.

  “Don’t you want to walk around the property first?” he replied.

  “I do, but I’m starving,” I answered, realizing that between the train ride, the search for a truck, returning to the station to pick up Brent, and the alarm fiasco, I hadn’t eaten a bite since yesterday’s breakfast.

  “Maybe there’s something in the pantry,” Brent said.

  We rooted around the kitchen, but came up with nothing but a box of Lipton Tea tucked on a back shelf and two well-used, dented saucepans.

  “We can go to the Stewart’s for a doughnut,” Brent offered, referring to the lone convenience store we’d seen on our way in.

  “I want something hot, though,” I said. “But I can wait. I’ll be okay.”

  Brent knew this wasn’t true. He’d been the victim of my hypoglycemia many times. My protestations were merely hallucinatory—like Julia Roberts in Steel Magnolias politely declining orange juice while descending into a diabetic coma.

  “I have an idea. Come with me,” he said.

  “Where?”

  “Just go get dressed,” he answered.

  A minute later we were traipsing across the backyard—our backyard. I’d never
personally owned a backyard. The closest I’d ever gotten was an apartment with a doublewide fire escape. Brent was heading toward the barn—our barn. The morning was chilly, but not as cold as the previous night had been. The grass beneath our feet was trampled and brown, having borne the weight of the region’s legendarily deep snowfall for the last seven months. The ground itself was solid, still deeply frozen, but when we came upon the part of the yard that had been reached by the morning sun, I could smell it.

  Mud.

  Dirt + Water. I’m not sure I’d smelled true springtime mud in over a decade. We didn’t have real mud in New York City. We had close approximations like Filth + Water. And Grime + Pee.

  So this is spring, I thought. I’d nearly forgotten what it felt like. It felt good. The direct sunlight felt warm on the skin, unlike the sunlight reflected off skyscrapers and diffused by thick air. The ground beneath my feet reminded me that the earth’s naked surface was porous, not sloped toward the nearest sewer grate. Hearing a robin chirp as it hopped along the driveway reminded me that birds make noises, not just piles of poo on top of window air-conditioning units.

  While I stood soaking in the spring all around me, Brent walked ahead and opened the side door on the barn—our barn.

  “C’mon,” he called to me. “Check this out.”

  By the time I reached the doorway, he was deeper inside. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I listened to the sounds around me. Cooing. And clucking. And then, suddenly: HERE COMES THE BRIDE!

  I jumped back toward the door.

  “Look!” Brent yelled, startling me even more. In the dim light of the barn, through the swirling haze of floating hay particles, I spotted him. He stood just inside what looked to be a makeshift terrorist holding cell framed into the corner of the barn. He was holding up a small gray ball.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “An egg!” he answered. “For breakfast!”

  “That’s an egg?” I questioned dubiously. “Lemme see that.”

  “I just figured that where there were roosters, there’d be eggs,” he continued. He was so excited that I decided not to point out the obvious flaw in his knowledge of poultry reproduction. He proudly and gently handed over his find. It was more spherical than ovoid. And the surface seemed to give a little in my grasp. Rather than a shell, it appeared to have more of a thick skin. Up close I realized that I’d originally thought it was gray in color not because of the dim light, but because it was semitranslucent.

  “Are you sure this is a chicken egg?” I asked.

  “Of course it is,” Brent answered. “It’s in the chicken coop.”

  It was hard to fault his logic.

  Much to the agitation of the chickens and roosters, Brent dug around in the straw-filled cubbyholes mounted to the wall. The longer we stood in the coop, the braver the poultry grew. Within thirty seconds I had four birds pecking at my shins.

  “C’mon. Let’s get out of here,” I said nervously. “Once they get the taste of human blood there’s no stopping them.”

  “There are dozens of eggs,” Brent said, continuing to root around in the nests.

  “Just grab three,” I said. “That’s all we need for breakfast. We’ll get the rest later.”

  As we crossed back over the muddy earth toward the house, I turned the eggs over and over in my palms. Our first meal. Entirely provided from our very own farm. This was what it’s all about, I thought. Even though I hadn’t so much as tossed a handful of grain at these chickens, I had an overwhelming sense of accomplishment. I was feeding myself. I was convinced that soon I’d be creating feasts that were entirely grown and raised on our land—feasts that would be the envy of the greatest New York restaurateurs.

  Back in our kitchen, I took down one of the old saucepans, filled it with water, and placed it on the stove. There was no butter or oil, so I decided to poach the eggs. We stood around the saucepan waiting for the water to boil.

  “What will we eat the eggs on?” Brent asked. “There are no plates.”

  “We’ll just use our fingers. Like in the olden days.”

  “They had forks in the olden days.” Brent sighed.

  As soon as the water began bubbling, I cracked one of the eggs against the side of the pot. Well, crack might be too strong a word for it. With its leathery skin, I just sort of pressed it down against the lip of the pot until it began to tear. The first egg slipped easily into the water. It swirled around perfectly, clinging together as if it were giving itself a hug.

  “Look at how orange that yoke is,” Brent observed as I tore apart the “shell” of the next egg with my fingernails.

  “It’s orange because the chickens get to eat in the yard,” I explained. I remember my mother teaching me this when we used to buy our eggs from our Wisconsin neighbor—an ancient woman who also happened to be the town dogcatcher. When we’d drop by the woman’s house, my mother would push me out of the passenger-side car door and watch me hopscotch over a checkerboard of dog droppings that dotted the patchy front lawn leading to her kitchen door, and then hopscotch back. I think I developed my talent for dancing in seven-inch heels without spilling my drink by hopscotching over those dog piles while carrying two dozen eggs.

  The two eggs swirled lazily in the bubbly water, their whites turning slowly opaque. I reached for the third and final egg. This egg was the smallest of the three, and probably the least likely to win an egg beauty pageant. Its shell was on the soft side like the others, but it was also sort of pockmarked. It seemed less like an egg and more like what a Hollywood special effects department might have crafted to portray an alien egg sac.

  The skin was a little tougher than the others. I repeatedly poked at it with my thumbnails.

  “Go get a pen out of my bag,” I said. “Let me see if I can get a hole started…” The egg sac tore suddenly and the contents plopped into the pot.

  Brent, who had been peering down into the pot just beneath me, reared up quickly, knocking me in the chin with the back of his head.

  “What is that?!” he yelled.

  Before we could react to the sight of the viscous moss-green blob that had dropped into the pot, the stench hit us. It was completely overwhelming. I retched and backed away from the stove.

  Brent, with a stomach trained by years as a doctor, was the first to peer back into the pot, where a swirl of gray-green goo was enveloping the other two perfect eggs.

  “What is it?!” I echoed.

  “I think it’s spoiled,” Brent answered, poking at the bits that floated to the surface with his finger.

  “Don’t touch it,” I said, horrified.

  It hadn’t occurred to us that simply because it was our first day at the farm, it may not have been that particular egg’s first morning. Or second morning. It could just as likely have been its fortieth morning. I wasn’t poaching eggs; I was performing a partial birth abortion.

  “Scoop it out of there,” I said, still not quite able to look.

  “With what? There are no spoons. Besides, it’s all spread out now.”

  “Are the other eggs done?” I asked.

  “I think so, but they’re coated in the green stuff.”

  “We’ll just wash the good ones off,” I said.

  “No way. There’s no way I’m eating those other eggs.”

  I did see his point. As far as contaminants go, that third egg was toxic enough to shut down a Chinese baby formula factory. But that was part of country life, I thought: unpredictable. Food wasn’t sorted, and radiated, and sterilized into conformity as it was in the supermarket food chains. These were our very own eggs, and by God, we were going to eat them.

  I moved the pot to the sink and used my fingers to pull out the largest bits of green goo. After a quick rinse under the faucet, the two good eggs floated to the top, with their glistening orange yokes. I gently put one in the palm of my hand and offered it to Brent.

  “Uh uh,” he said. “You first.”

  I tipped my head back and drop
ped the blob into my mouth. I rolled it around a bit with my tongue before I bit down on the orange yolk. In an instant my mouth filled with the most vibrant flavors. It was richer and smoother and thicker than any egg I’d ever tasted. It tasted exactly like a newly mowed lawn smelled, and coated my tongue like slowly melting Swiss chocolate.

  Brent stared at my face, looking for any signs of a toxic reaction. I smiled and held out the pot with the remaining egg.

  “These eggs,” I mumbled through the liquid gold in my mouth, “are worth a jumbo mortgage.”

  Chapter Six

  The rest of our first weekend in our new country house was spent exploring the sixty acres surrounding the Beekman, greeting neighbors who stopped by to tell us their stories of the mansion, and sweeping up dead flies. It seemed that the minute we swept a room clean, flies began dropping to the floor again like, well, flies. It was impossible to tell where they were coming from. They just appeared at the windows, carpeting the sills and floor with their slow-motion death throes. We had yet to see a fly that was actually flying. They just kept coming and coming, like a buzzing Night of the Living Dead.

  Doug, Garth, and Michelle seemed to have prepared the town for our arrival. Nearly everyone who came by to visit already knew that Brent worked for Martha Stewart, and that I had written a couple of books, though no one seemed particularly interested in my literary career. Everyone, however, wanted to talk to Brent about Martha.

  I was used to listening to the same old questions and answers about Martha. Ever since Brent began working at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, all of our friends and family wanted to know what Martha was really like. It was understandable. I remembered how excited I was the first time I’d met her. Brent had been invited to her East Hampton home to discuss some business details regarding a new geriatric center they were creating together at Mount Sinai Hospital. Since it was the Fourth of July weekend, I was invited along to share lunch on her patio.

  Martha was only a few months out of prison at the time and was still under house arrest. She was allowed to travel short distances for business reasons, and somehow this weekend luncheon at her beach house qualified. Under her capri pants, her ankle monitoring device, which looked something like a buckled seat belt, was clearly visible. It looked uncomfortable and hot, but she neither drew attention to it nor tried to hide it.