September Song (6 page)

He was not obliged to be present at the hearing. He wanted to be, to enjoy the hostility he had stirred up. He entered the hall feeling as unpopular as an out-of-town fighter about to enter the ring with the local champion. In the community where he was the fourth generation of his family he had become an outcast. What none of these people knew was that he had no intention of doing what he was there to get permission to do. On the contrary. Getting the permission was his way of keeping it from happening.

The concerns expressed by the citizens interested were civic-minded, concerns for the common good. They worried about the additional tax burden for schools and teachers and buses on the elderly, the pensionnaires, the young couples just starting out and having a hard enough time already making ends meet. They feared for the safety of children on the busier roads. Those roads would have to be patrolled more, perhaps widened as well, would certainly require more upkeep, and all that too would mean higher taxes for those least able to afford them. The county landfill was already full to overflowing. There was the threat to the purity of the aquifer with so many more septic systems. The added strain on the volunteer fire department, the rescue squad, the already overcrowded county hospital. Tourism would suffer from the reduction in the deer herd, still one of the area's attractions. Hotel keepers, restaurant owners, sporting goods stores, filling stations, all would feel the pinch if the trend represented by this application for a variance in the zoning code were allowed to continue unchecked. A line must be drawn somewhere.

One person present took these community concerns and alarms seriously. He. Those who mouthed them were concerned for one thing: their pocketbooks, the devaluation of their properties. He didn't blame them. He took it seriously too. If only they knew that he was their masked champion, fighting their fight! Let them raise every objection—the heavier the burden on Janet's conscience. The courtship of that latter-day John Alden, Pete Jeffers, was being won for him in a town meeting, not by a denial of his future father-in-law's petition to break up the family farm but by the granting of it. A weapon like a plastic pistol: harmless but scary-looking.

Throughout the meeting he sat silent. He could not take the floor and say, “I agree with everything you've said. Tell it to that daughter of mine.”

However, not all were against him that evening. There were two factions. Those against him, by far the more numerous of the two, were the ones who were there by virtue of other farmers' having done what he was asking permission to do, subdivide and develop his land. These were the city people. They
had been
city people and to the natives they always
would be
city people. A stranger could have distinguished one side from the other on sight. The city people dressed country casual, the country folks in their city best for the occasion. The city people had moved to the country to escape the city. Now they were like immigrants who passed anti-immigration laws to keep out more like themselves. These new locals would have erected, running about down the middle of Poughkeepsie, a Berlin Wall if they could.

Those for him were the few remaining holdout farmers. The newcomers wanted to legislate that they go on being farmers and thus preserve for them the charm and tranquillity of the countryside. The farmers didn't give a damn about the charm and tranquillity of the countryside. They wanted to go on being farmers, although it got harder all the time, and the reason it did was the steady invasion of these outsiders driving up the cost of everything, but be damned if they were going to be told what they could and could not do with their property by a bunch of Johnny-come-latelies from downstate.

After a period of delay sufficiently long to make it look as if consideration had been given to the opposition before a decision was reached, his application for a zoning variance was approved by the village planning board. Now Janet would come to her senses, marry Pete, and keep the farm in the family. It was not that he disbelieved in the power of love, or the power of the absence of it, it was rather that he could not understand how it could prevail over ten thousand apple trees and three hundred and twenty acres of land that had been her family's for four generations, she the fifth.

“All right,” said the real estate agent, humoring the old fellow. “If you insist we'll list it first as a farm. I can see how for sentimental reasons you might want to try to keep it intact. Been in the family for generations and all that. But it's a good thing you've got that zoning variance up your sleeve because you know as well as I do what's happening to farm acreage in this area.”

He winced, as he always did, at the expression “farm acreage.” It made land seem like something divisible into small parcels.

“And the young people don't want to farm anymore.”

“My boy Pete here does.”

“Then he's one of a kind.”

“You can say that again!”

“Has Pete got the wherewithal to buy you out? Like I say, we'll offer it for a while as a farm. But, believe me, a developer is the only buyer you're going to find—and you'll have no trouble finding one of those. They've all had their eye on this property for years. Even had aerial photographs taken of it. Prime building land. Highly desirable homesites. Got a view of the Catskills from any plot on the place, once it's cleared. I've had several ask me to approach you with an offer, and they've gone up with each and every one. You can cry all the way to the bank.”

It was just what he wanted to hear. Or wanted Janet to hear. Which was why he had invited the agent to stay for supper, unless his wife was expecting him. He was not married.

“And afterwards,” the man said, “you can move down to Florida and lie in the sun all day long. No more spraying bugs through the night. No more worries over the weather. You've earned your rest.”

“I don't speak Spanish,” he said. “Or Yiddish.”

Janet refilled their guest's plate. He had a bachelor's appreciation of good home cooking, and he had walked up a hearty appetite today. She had shown him over the property, at her father's request. The place had been surveyed, by link and chain, some 200 years ago. That had always been good enough, until now. Never in all that while had there been a dispute over the lines between the Bennetts and any of their adjoining neighbors. Having Janet pace off the boundaries would bring home to her as nothing else had the threat of losing it. Now the man attacked his second helpings no less enthusiastically than the first. But the elder Bennetts and Pete pushed away their unfinished plates.

Apples. First crop we had a record of. And that pioneer farm family lost heavily on it. They too were forced from their orchard. In apple farming you won a round now and then but you lost as many or more. Why do it then? Why play the game with the deck stacked against you? For the satisfaction of taking on a sure-fire winner, nothing less than nature herself, the elements. Brought out the grit in you. A contest worthy of a man. Coming off second best was not bad when your opponent was the unbeatable all-time champ. If they'd had it to do over again Adam and Eve would have done it. Apple farmers were like that. Born, not made. You inherited it. Maybe through a strain from that original couple. And because your forebears had endured its hardships for your sake you owed it to them to endure what they had endured. They expected that of you, no less. What was it that kept us from flying off into outer space? And how was that discovered? Ah, if only an apple would fall on Janet's head, teach her the law of gravity, and tie her down to her native soil!

It mystified him how, his blood fueling her, she could tramp over the property with the real estate dealer and every prospective buyer he brought out and not comprehend what a prize she was letting go. By now the agent could have shown the place himself, so many times had they gone together over it, but she insisted on accompanying every party. Offers were made but on the agent's advice, or so he pretended, he was accepting none because they kept going up all the time. Yet even this did not increase the worth of her property to Janet. It did to him. It made it all the harder to sell.

“You realize, Pete,” he said across the breakfast table one morning during this period, “that with the disappearance of orchards hereabouts, combined with the increase in population, which is to say the market, the price of locally grown apples is sure to soar. Instead of succumbing to offers to sell, now is the time for farmers to hold on. I know it's what I would do if only I were younger, or had somebody to carry on after me. This place is going to be a gold mine, with somebody in charge who knows the business. The day will come when apples are individually wrapped in foil like chocolates. I may not live to see it, but it can't be far off.

“So now, what are we going to be doing today? You're the manager.”

“More of the same. Planting trees.”

“Planting trees!” said Molly to Janet. “If those two don't take the cake. The place is up for sale, and they're still planting trees.”

“This building boom we're in is a bubble that could go bust overnight. Overnight. Then what's left? Farmland. Got you a place with no mortgage to foreclose—and this has never had one since the dawn of Creation—you won't be selling apples on streetcorners. You'll be supplying them.”

“Planting trees. At your age.”

“We orchardmen take the long view. Eh, Pete? Father to son. Or son-in-law, as the case may be. As long as this remains an orchard it's going to be treated as one. That means replacing trees. Maybe one of my grandchildren will want to farm it.”

“You haven't got any grandchildren. And if you were to have one tomorrow it would come of working age about the time these trees you're planting bear their first fruit. You expect to live to see that?”

“I expect to be feeding people long after I'm dead. When you think, Pete, of the work that goes into an orchard! The work and the faith. Your grandfather planted that tree, your father that one. They did it for their children, we do it for ours. Can you just imagine the heartbreak of seeing them all torn up by the roots?”

“I don't have to imagine it. I have seen it done.”

“I'm sorry I mentioned it, son. That was thoughtless of me.”

An offer was made by a developer which the agent advised him to accept. He did. He accepted it with no intention of living up to the agreement but in order to impress Janet with his determination, with the worth of her patrimony and her duty to preserve it. For the announcement of his acceptance the agent was invited to supper. He felt not one twinge of conscience over using and misleading the fellow. He did not like him, nor any of his breed. Merchants of misery, of broken homes, deaths, ruination, old age, spoliation. Besides, he had practically boarded him.

“Looks like I've got no choice but to take it,” he sighed.

Never was so much money accepted so ungratefully. It was an awesome sum. It made him realize as never before what he would be sacrificing. The amount shocked him, shamed him, made him feel a bigger culprit, contemptible in the eyes of all the living and of all his ancestors now turning over in their graves out behind the house. He listened with one ear to the offer while listening with the other one for Janet's voice relenting at the eleventh hour.

She was calling his bluff, forcing him to show every card in his hand. He had now played all but the last one: the closing. Meanwhile, nothing had been signed, all was still pending. Backing out of the deal even after a binder had been put down was a common occurrence. He would gladly refund a buyer's binder.

He could no longer rely upon that telepathy he had believed to exist between him and her. She was younger than he realized, childish, less sensitive, less dutiful. Truth was, her mother and her sisters had spoiled her. People used to do the things expected of them out of a sense of obligation, but today's youth—irresponsible, selfish. It was time for a showdown. He would be tactful, fatherly—all that; but he would be firm, and he would have his way.

“Listen here, Janet,” he said. “It's time you and I had a talk.”

She agreed, for she had something to say to him.

“
You've
got something to say to
me?
What is it?”

“I'm engaged. Engaged to be married. You've got all your daughters off your hands now. Well, aren't you going to congratulate me?”

“Who is he?” he demanded.

“Rod.”

“Rod? Rod who?”

“Why, Rodney Evans, of course. What other Rod do we know?”

He did not know any Rodney Evans. Who the hell was Rodney Evans? There could be no Rodney Evans, for none figured in his plans. Then he knew who Rodney Evans was. He had been a part of his plans but this was not the part he was cast for. Rodney Evans was not a person, he was the real estate agent—him with hair like a meringue—meant to scare her with. Rodney Evans was the serpent he himself had invited into his garden. Pete Jeffers had lived under the same roof with her for nine months and never gotten to first base; this Rodney Evans had begun his successful suit on their initial walk together over the property.

“It was love at first sight,” she said.

“Shame on you, Father! Trying to make your daughter marry a man she does not love.”

“But you
will
love him. You will. In time. Pete will make you the best of husbands. You've seen him up close. You know how he lives. Hard-working. Easygoing. Good-natured. Home-loving. Thrifty. Dependable. Has no bad habits. Doesn't drink—or only a drop now and then. Doesn't go out to bars. Doesn't go out
anywhere
. Doesn't gamble. Doesn't chase after women. Why, I've never even heard him curse! And there's another thing. (This is just between you and me.) There's a lot to be said for being brighter than your husband. You're not just better educated but a lot brighter than Pete, and he knows it. He would look up to you. You can twist him around your little finger. And I know you. You're like me. You like having your own way in everything. Eh? And why not! Well, with him you would.”