Kindred (13 page)

I cancel my follow-up appointment at Dr. Kreger’s.

But even assuming that Dr. Messa isn’t callous or a moron, it’s quite possible that whatever’s plaguing me, like all of ancient Egypt’s problems, has divine origins and is nothing any mortal doctor can fix.

I try to remember that warm feeling of love from the end of my dream. I try to hold on to those promises of safekeeping, that deep, impossible voice, those kind words. But a dream is a slippery thing, and I can’t remember the exact words. Did the voice promise to protect me or to save me? Was there any mention of help? Healing? Even a vague mention of favor? My memory of the words is that they were lovely and kind, but I cannot glean any comfort from that. Fading fast, I’m left only with burdens and crosses to bear.

T
HOUGH
H
AMILTON IS SMALL
, it has three locally owned coffee shops. My favorite is a small café tucked into an old factory built in the 1930s. The owners renovated the place but kept the original floor—thick-cut timber that darkened nearly to black from decades of wear. The café has high ceilings and sky-blue walls with chocolate-brown trim. Overstuffed chairs in faded velvet by large bay windows just beg for a body to curl up and tarry for a spell. Wi-Fi and lots of outlets mean I can get work done too.

I order a small tea and carry it to a chair by the window. The shop is unusually quiet for a Tuesday morning, and I’m more than pleased to snag such a prime spot. With my stomach a roiling mess, I’ve given up coffee. I keep hoping for something like the tea at Emmett’s.

I pull out my notepad to plan my questions for Trudy at
the farm, where I have an appointment later this morning, but my mind keeps wandering and the pages fill with doodles. The rich-looking oil paintings in heavy gilded frames and the stamped metal plates on the ceiling lend the shop an old-world charm. I once asked the barista about the building, but she didn’t know much except that it was “old.” I wonder if tracking down the histories of the various buildings downtown would make a good story. I write a note to ask Frank.

I barely pay attention when the bell tinkles and a skinny teenager in baggy pants shuffles inside, probably skipping class. A muffled whoosh from the steamer and a clank from the espresso machine and the whole café fills with the smell of ground coffee and hot milk. I breathe it in, sigh with pleasure and then bury my nose in the mild, fruity scent of my tea, a pale imitation of the lovely infusion that Emmett had served me.

I expect the boy to pay for his drink and go, but after he takes a single sip, I hear him arguing with the barista. Something about his tone pulls me out of my reverie, and I look up from my notebook.

“I ordered a triple shot. This is watered-down crap.”

“If you hate our coffee,” she snarls, “why do you keep coming here?” The barista, with her multiple facial piercings, doesn’t do customer service.

“I just want you to make it right. Okay? I’m paying four freakin’ bucks for a cup of coffee. The least you can do is make it right.”

“Fine.” She sounds like she’s grinding her teeth. “Hand it to me.”

“Huh?”

“Give me your cup and I’ll make you a new one.”

His shoulders slump a bit and he reluctantly hands back the drink. I realize then that he’d hoped to keep the old “ruined” drink and score a second one for free. While the barista is knocking out old grounds with uncalled-for violence, the boy catches me looking at him and sneers. It comes across like a reflexive gesture. Nothing personal.

Within seconds, she’s finished making his drink and hands it to him. He slurps a quick sip as she glares at him, daring him to complain again.

“It’s okay,” he mumbles. “It’s better.”

“Good.”

Head down, hood back up, he shuffles out.

The barista watches him suspiciously until he’s out the door and then glares at me too for good measure before disappearing through the curtain behind the bar.

I don’t know what my face shows, but the hair on my arms is standing straight up and my stomach is cramping with sudden fear. As the boy was stalking out, I caught a glimpse of the badge we give to the high school interns at the paper. He’s the new intern who started this week. But that’s not what alarms me. As he was leaving, the morning sun shone through the glass door and I finally caught a good look at his face.

In my dream of Jacob’s Ladder, I could make out three people being carried by angels. One was Tabitha, one was Mo and one was a complete stranger. I realize now that the sullen, surly ghostly image I saw was this intern’s face.

I’ve just met my new mission.

*  *  *

A few hours later, my body weak, my composure in tatters, I keep my appointment with Trudy. I drive Frank’s loaner to Sweetwater Farm. The countryside stretches out on either side of the road like a child’s country play set: cows pastured on rolling green hills, horses that lazily look up as I pass. Occasionally I catch a glimpse of some impossibly huge estate tucked away at the end of a long, winding driveway, which reminds me that this is the home of country music and that this county, as Frank has told me more than once, is one of the richest in the nation.

I pull up to a small white clapboard house, and a dog comes running toward me, barking madly before I even turn off the ignition. The dog, a dirty, shaggy collie, barks and snarls outside the driver’s side door, jumping up and scratching the paint. I stay in place.

“Samson! Stop it! Down, Samson!! Come here!”

Samson settles down a bit and looks mildly abashed. With one last halfhearted yip, he sinks back on all four feet, but doesn’t budge from my door. I stay put.

The voice slowly grows closer and I make out Trudy in overalls and a baseball cap.

“Hey, beautiful,” she says. “Glad you came. Hope Samson didn’t scare you. He’s a sweetheart.” She reaches down and gives him an affectionate scratch behind the ears and a smack on the flank. “He just gets so excited when we have company.”

With her there I feel brave enough to slowly open my door, my hand ready to pull it shut should Samson, the sweetheart, feel less than welcoming. But he sits there panting, tail
whipping back and forth on the ground in a distinctly friendly wag that kicks up a small cloud of dust.

Once I’m out of the car, I stand still as Samson sniffs my hand and then jams a nose in my crotch.

“That’s enough,” says Trudy, pushing him away from me. “Come on inside. Let me get you something to drink and we can chat.”

In town, the late spring heat is near stifling, but out here there’s a nice breeze and something’s blooming. I can’t identify it, but as I follow Trudy into the house, memo pad and pen in hand, the scent relaxes a knot between my shoulder blades I wasn’t even aware of.

It’s much darker inside the house, and it takes my eyes a moment to adjust. I’ve dawdled so long at the door that Trudy’s out of sight and I have to follow the sound of clinking glasses to find her in the kitchen.

She pours a couple of iced teas, and then I follow her to the back porch, a charming spot with pale blue paint peeling and cracking, wicker chairs with faded cushions and several wind chimes tinkling softly.

I open my notebook and scan my list of questions. “Are you ready to start?” I ask.

“Do your worst.”

“Okay, um, so what inspired you to be a farmer?”

“Now, that’s an interesting question,” she says. I try not to wince. Good, intriguing questions are the cornerstone of a good, intriguing article. “Interesting,” as my father explained once, is not a positive adjective. It’s neutral at best, and probably simply means “bad.” It means the person can’t think of
anything else to say. A great way to start things off. “I guess I’ve always been fascinated by growing things. Even as a child I had a little pizza garden: I grew tomatoes, basil, oregano and onions.”

“That’s so cute,” I say, scrambling to write down her comments.

“I never really thought about farming professionally, though. I went to college, worked for the CIA.”

I stop writing and stare at her in surprise.

She laughs at my expression. “Now, why does that always seem to shock folks?”

“What did you do for the CIA?” I ask. I’m going off the list, but this tangent is worth following.

“Nothing too exciting. I was a data analyst. Spent a lot of time in Washington, got to see a bit of the world.”

I make a face at her vagueness.

“Sorry, beautiful,” she says. “There really aren’t any skeletons in the closet.” She makes a face. “At least no
interesting
ones.”

“So, what makes a CIA spook decide to be a crunchy-granola, tree-hugging farmer?”

She laughs, liking my sarcastic tone better than the oh-so-serious proper journalistic one. “I got sick of bureaucrats—the constant power struggles, the petty rivalries; the stress, the smog. Everything got to me. I took a leave of absence to put my head back on straight. I knew I couldn’t keep working for the government, but I sure didn’t know what I could do.

“I was traveling around, visiting old friends I’d barely kept in touch with over the years, when I came here, met Hank.”
She takes a pause to drink her tea. I’m too busy writing to do the same. But she waits in silence until I finish and then says, “Go on, drink a bit before we continue.”

I do. The tea is oversteeped, a very sweet, classic southern iced tea, perfect on this unusually hot day. The breeze has died down, and even in the shade, I feel moisture bead on my forehead and upper lip. I rest the cold, sweating glass on my face briefly before setting it down.

“Here I am, all pale and flabby from fifteen years of cubicle life, and there’s Hank, seven years my senior, tanned and strong, with so much pride about what he’s doing in this world. All the good he’s doing. He was farming organically way before it became the new yuppie crusade. It’s a beautiful thing to see the land thrive, to see birds and butterflies returning with the seasons, to get to know your customers. Knowing that you’re helping them.

“So one thing leads to another, and instead of keeping on with my road trip, I decided to stay here for a while to see what I thought of it.” She spreads her arms out to encompass herself, the porch, the fields. “I’m still here. But by now I’ve discovered that besides all the poetic sunshine I just fed you, farming is also backbreaking work, it’s something you can’t really take a vacation from, because the farm always needs tending and the weeds and the deer don’t really care about your calluses or that shopping trip to the store you’ve been putting off or that little getaway to Italy you’ve been dreaming about. It also hardly pays enough to keep the roof over our heads. But as the old cliché goes, my worst day at the farm beats the hell out of my best day in Washington.

“When I lived in Tibet—”

I break a cardinal rule of interviewing and interrupt her. “You lived in Tibet?”

She ignores me.

“—what impressed me was their closeness to the land. The seasons passing, the harsh weather: they didn’t shelter themselves from it, they embraced it. That’s kind of what I’m trying to do. Embrace what it means to feed people. To tend to the land. It feels downright biblical sometimes.”

“Especially the part about the ten plagues,” a deep voice rumbles to my right.

I turn to see Hank coming out, mopping his face with an old, faded bandanna and holding his own glass of dark sun-brewed tea.

“You’re feeding this girl more hippie dogma than folks at a macramé convention.”

“Can I quote you on that?” I ask with a laugh.

He doesn’t mind, but Trudy says no.

With a poorly suppressed groan, he sits down next to Trudy on the musty, worn velvet settee. The porch furniture is a mishmash of outdoor wicker furniture, only slightly peeling and dusty, and several old-fashioned indoor pieces in odd fabrics like purple velvet. It’s what shabby chic looked like before it was chic.

We chat for a while, the conversation flowing nicely as Hank and Trudy walk me though a typical farm day. It sounds impossibly difficult, but from their easy banter and lighthearted manner, it’s obvious that they love it. As they talk, it becomes clear they both came to agriculture by accident.
Neither was a farm-bred kid. The closest Hank ever got to a farm was a fifth-grade trip to a dairy farm.

Hank had been a college professor for years at a small liberal arts school in Vermont, teaching philosophy and religion. He still teaches an occasional class at the local community college.

“You know my students go online to find out the weather? ‘It’s gonna rain,’ they tell me when it’s already raining outside.” He’s trying to be funny, but his voice grows agitated, losing some of its calm cadences. “A big part of the reason we’re in the sorry shape we’re in is because most people are so insulated from what happens to growing things when it rains too much, or not at all.”

Trudy glances over at him and eventually puts her hand over his. As if that’s his cue, he takes a deep breath, then shrugs ruefully.

“You’ve found my hot spot,” he says to me.

“I think you’ve scared her off,” Trudy scolds him. “Come on, beautiful, let’s take a break from all this jabbering and give you a quick tour of the place, all right?”

The farm is not as large as I imagined. For it to produce the amount of crop sold at the market, I’d pictured rolling hills with rows and rows of seedlings, beans, herbs. But instead, they tell me that the farm is only fifteen acres, of which only ten are actively producing crops. Ten acres would be a very large backyard. But it makes for a rather small farm. Though when they explain how much weeding, watering, fertilizing and harvesting there is to do, the farm begins to loom large again.

Volunteers who want to learn about organic farming come and go. They stay for a couple of months, sleeping on the porch or in tents, eating their meals with Hank and Trudy. I meet two of them. Nearly androgynous, with the same creamy white skin and thick, grimy dreadlocks, they smile peacefully at me, reminding me of statues of the Buddha, though they are thin to the point of gauntness. I try to coax a few quotes from them, but they don’t say anything that will look good on paper.