The Bucolic Plague

by Josh Kilmer-Purcell

  If I didn’t know better, I’d almost buy into the fantasy we’ve created. But I don’t have the asking price.

  The winter storm has passed, and only the lightest of breezes blows through the stately maple trees lining the road. Their frozen branches clack against one another.

  “C’mon, Bubs,” I say, reaching down to throw him up on my shoulder. He must weigh a good five pounds more during the winter months. He nestles into my neck, both of us happy for the shared warmth. “What do you think, Bubster? Pretty, isn’t it?”

  He pushes his purring head against my jaw. I take a close-up picture of his beautiful gold eyes.

  “I’m gonna miss you, Bubby,” I say.

  Now it’s my turn to cry.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  It’s amazing how quickly the house reverts to complete emptiness.

  Immediately after the caterer hauls the last empty tray to her van, shortly after 2 A.M., Brent and I turn the heat back down to 40 degrees. By force of habit, we start cleaning and straightening. By 4 A.M. we’ve stacked all the borrowed chairs and folding tables on the porch for someone to pick up and return to Village Hall Gallery sometime in the next week or so. We’ve mopped the floors and trudged across the barnyard in the pitch dark with bag after bag of trash and empty bottles. We’ve washed, dried, and folded a load of dirty dish towels, and run the dishwasher three times.

  By the time we make it to bed, we only have two and a half hours before Farmer John arrives to take us to the train station. We’ll store our truck in the barn over the winter. That way, if we need to, we can sell it along with the house.

  I sleep fitfully. Between the hard apple cider and the harsh reality of our situation, I toss and turn often enough for Brent to scold me several times during the short night.

  John arrives in the morning immediately after finishing his morning chores. Brent enlists his help in baiting and setting dozens of mousetraps to scatter around the house. Without any activity in the place, the resident mice are likely to nest in the mattresses and couch cushions if left unchecked. I learned that from a Martha checklist.

  “You should probably check one last time to be sure the crypt door is closed,” Brent says. “Remember last spring when we found that the coyotes had been inside all winter and crapped all over the place?”

  I really hadn’t wanted to dress in full snow gear again. About the only thing that excited me about closing up the Beekman and leaving was that I would no longer have to stuff my feet into chunky boots and wear ski masks that froze over with snot vapor the minute I stepped outdoors.

  The trek across the backyard is the most exercise I’ve had in months. The drifts are the highest there, being wide open to the vast pasture and winds that blow without impediment all the way from Cherry Valley. In some places I sink in the snow up to mid-thigh.

  I’m completely out of breath by the time I make it around the slight berth to the entrance to the crypt. Because of the angle it was built, the stone walls lining the entry completely protect the doorway from the blowing snow, and the walkway is as clear as if someone had shoveled it. These are the little genius historical lessons that have been completely forgotten. In 1802, if half your family was wiped out by scarlet fever and the ground was too frozen to bury them, the last thing you needed to worry about was whether you could get the bodies somewhere safe until the spring thaw. So you angle your crypt away from the wind. I think of all the common sense that has been lost to history.

  The crypt door has blown open a bit, which is fine, since after the trudging I need to sit down and rest for a second before making my way back to the house. I swing open the heavy iron door and step inside. I wait for my eyes to adjust to the dark before taking the one step down to the slate floor.

  It’s warm inside. Well, maybe not warm, but the earthen insulation keeps the inside of the crypt at least a few degrees warmer than the frigid winter outside. And it’s completely quiet. Overall it’s not, I decide, a bad place to spend eternity if one has to. Brent and I once fantasized that we, ourselves, would have our cremated remains entombed beneath the crypt’s floor. Now it looks like we’d be even less than a footnote on the crypt’s engraved obelisk.

  I perch on the ledge that used to support the coffins—probably at one time William’s and Joanna’s. Maybe even Mary’s. If I hold my breath, there’s not even the smallest sound in the air.

  “Well, William,” I say. “Can I call you Bill?” There’s no answer save for a clump of snow falling from a bough outside.

  “This is it. We’re outta here.”

  The emptiness of the moment hits me harder than ever. Harder than when I learned that Brent lost his job. Harder than when I lost mine. Harder than when the collapsing global economy made it clear that neither of us was going to find new jobs anytime soon.

  Had this all been one big folly? There was so much that was left undone at the Beekman. So many of our plans that were now on hold, probably permanently. Sitting in the crypt, it’s impossible not to be crushed by the huge weight of the unanswerable void that faces all of us eventually. Only my uncertain future is beginning right now. I have no idea what I’ll do when I wake up back in the city tomorrow. For the first time in a long time, I don’t know who I am supposed to be.

  There is only one thing I was sure of, and that hurts me most of all.

  I am sure that I loved my life here.

  I am sure that I loved every thing we created. I loved growing my food. I loved the history. I loved the ghosts. I loved the goats. I loved Bubby. I loved learning from Farmer John. I loved being a part of a ghost town that long ago gave up any pretense of, well, pretense.

  I loved the Beekman.

  I hope it will find someone new that will love it as much as I did.

  It deserves to.

  The trip back to the train station goes far quicker than it did two days ago with the reporter. The thruway is completely clear of ice and slush as Brent, John, and I barrel toward the 12:05 train.

  John is completely unaware that unless Brent and I find significant income in the next couple of months, we’ll have to keep the Beekman closed to save money. And, eventually, we’ll have to sell it. If we even can, given the real estate collapse. The next time we return to the Beekman will likely be in a moving truck.

  With John’s natural quietness, and Brent and I pondering our fates, the ride is mostly silent, with the occasional short exchange about weather, goat health, and American Idol. I keep searching for conversation topics—any topic—to distract myself from larger, darker thoughts.

  Looking down, I spot a zombie fly stuck in a fold of my shirt.

  “Hey, John,” I ask, suddenly remembering. “Did you clean the house before we arrived for Christmas?”

  John looks confused, as if it’s a trick question.

  “No, why?”

  “Well, you know how there’s all the flies in there all the time, right?” It feels like a relief, finally revealing our shameful fly problem to an outsider.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, when we first got up here last month, there wasn’t a single one. Not one. And then all of the sudden they showed up again.”

  “So?”

  “Well, isn’t that weird?” I ask.

  “Why?” John says, honestly puzzled.

  “Well, why the hell would there be millions of zombie flies in the house every week for two years, and then all of the sudden there aren’t any? And then,” I continue, “they show up again the minute the New York Times reporter comes.”

  John takes his eyes off the road to look at me with the same weary, pitying look I’ve grown used to. His patience may be boundless, but his countenance can never find a place to hide.

  “Because,” he says, obviously holding back a sigh, “you had the heat turned down. Cluster flies only hatch when it’s warm enough.”

  “Cluster flies?” I ask.

  “Cluster flies,” John confirms. “Every old house up here has ’em. They blow in off the fi
elds and take up in the house. Probably first settled in the year the house was built. Once you got ’em, you can’t get rid of ’em. You just have to get used to them.”

  “Cluster flies, huh?” I repeat.

  “Yep,” John says.

  “Can’t get rid of them?”

  “Nope,” John says.

  It’s particularly heartbreaking that flies can hang on to the Beekman for over two hundred years while we couldn’t even hold on to it for two.

  Epilogue

  Atlanta, Georgia, 2009.

  “We noticed that when you enter the canned goods aisle, you head straight toward the product without browsing any of the cans marked ‘New Homestyle Recipe.’ Why do you think that is?”

  After asking the question, the no-nonsense focus group moderator peers down at her clipboard, waiting to record every word, gesture, and nuance of the answer.

  The poor shopping victim, a slight woman in her sixties, pulls her pastel hand-knit cardigan more tightly around her. While the two-hundred-dollar focus group payment probably seemed like easy money to her a few days ago, I wonder how many thousands she’d pay at this moment to be rid of the three marketers, two ad agency Creatives, and the professional moderator who’d been pestering her about her shopping habits for the last hour and a half.

  “I don’t know,” she stammers, as if looking for a correct answer. “Because I don’t have my reading glasses on?”

  The marketers nod at one another knowingly. I knew what that meant. The words “New Homestyle Recipe” on the label would soon read “NEW HOMESTYLE RECIPE!” in bold, italicized twenty-four-point type, most likely surrounded by some sort of starburst.

  Five hundred miles away, the goats at the Beekman are contributing the final few inches of manure to their winter bedding. In just a few weeks, the weather will be warm enough to begin mucking out the stalls again. Back in my hotel room this morning, I checked online and the forecast reported that Sharon Springs would reach 42 degrees today. There are probably only a few patches of snow left unmelted on the very top of Lookout Point—the highest spot on the Beekman property. In the flower garden the first green shoots of daffodils are probably poking through last year’s fallen leaves. And even with the heat shut off in the mansion, soon the windowsills will grow warm enough in the spring sun to hatch the spring’s first generation of cluster flies.

  These last two months away from the Beekman have been, surprisingly, quite pleasant. The tidy 850 square feet of our city apartment was a welcome change from the 60 acres of never-ending chores of the farm. With no offices to escape to, we were initially worried about spending so much time together in such a small space, but we soon found that we actually liked each other’s company. Again. We both spent our mornings writing our various projects, and then ate tuna fish lunches together at our kitchen table before returning to our respective chairs for the rest of the afternoons. We celebrated our tenth anniversary huddled under the bedcovers, listening to a howling snowstorm blanket the city, watching made-for-television movies, and eating the final roasted winter squash from last year’s garden.

  And then the New York Times article was published.

  New York Times

  February 26, 2009

  …“We love our Internet friends,” said Dr. Ridge, who on a recent day was watching a late-afternoon snowstorm from the kitchen. White drifts whipped over the frozen pond and the goat meadow in the distance; already knee-high in places, the snow had transformed the landscape into a study in silver-blue.

  Newly dug parsnips and celeriac were roasting for supper in one of the twin vintage-style stoves, and a pie made from Beekman cherries was cooling under a frost-rimed window. A soft cheese from Beekman goats was laid out with crackers and red wine…

  There was no mention of marimbraphones and migraines. The reporter’s pastoral tableau of country living made me envious of my own life.

  Within minutes of the article going online the night before it was published and on the street, we started getting soap orders from all over the world. And within days, we’d closed on several large wholesale orders that dwarfed our combined sales from the entire previous year.

  We’d also gotten a call from a network about producing another reality show about the farm. This time the series wouldn’t be about “having it all,” but two city guys “risking it all” to try to make it as farmers. We’d share the business struggles and the relationship challenges of trying to create an entirely new life for ourselves. This time it would be a reality show about, well, reality.

  Our winter hibernation had come to an end.

  Brent and I nervously called Farmer John to inquire when the new baby goats were due to be birthed. We needed more milk than ever. John reassured us that we’d be okay, and we solidified plans for launching a line of cheese and goat milk caramel later in the season. I started designing labels and a catalog. We expanded Beekman1802.com to include more how-to videos and guest blogs from Sharon Springs locals. Brent busied himself with spreadsheets and PR pitches. Heidi, the manager of the American, agreed to help send out orders while we were stuck in the city. Deb began manufacturing batch after batch of new bars.

  But although the article and the resulting publicity were a massive second wind for the Beekman, the farm still wasn’t going to be able to save itself. It takes more than a New York Times article and a truckload of soap sales to pay for a mansion.

  One of us was still going to have to find work, somewhere, somehow. I began calling the contacts I’d made over my many years in advertising. Many of them were out of work themselves, but luckily, I was able to reconnect with the HR woman who first brought me to New York fifteen years ago. She was working at an agency that handled a large national brand of inexpensive prepared food products, and luckily, in a time of recession, inexpensive prepared food products were flying off the shelves.

  Was I interested in a long-term freelance advertising assignment?

  Was I?

  I was.

  I really am. In fact, I really want to. I know now that if I’m going to keep the Beekman sparkling—at least for the time it would be mine—I was going to have to dig in the dirt of corporate branding, planting seeds of television commercials and outdoor billboards and online banner ads, all for other companies. Companies like this prepared food brand. Each new headline that I write for some corporate giant helps pay to keep the Beekman standing and operating as a working farm for yet another day. And who knows? Maybe I’ll someday even be able to convince giant prepared food brands that they should source more of their ingredients from local organic farmers. Or airline companies that they should do more to offset their carbon pollution. Or banks that they should make more loans to small businesses in small villages that are in danger of disappearing off the map forever.

  Last year at this time I was counting the days until I could leave advertising. My only dream was to live the rest of my life at the farm, pickling, weeding, and mucking. It’s what Oprah told me I should do, and what Martha inspired me to achieve.

  But they were wrong. Actually, they weren’t wrong. I just heard them wrong.

  Martha isn’t about achieving perfection—God knows she hasn’t. It’s about going back time after time trying to get there. It’s about graciously, meticulously, fabulously hosting that last-chance New York Times reporter houseguest even when all you want to do is lie on a zombie fly–littered bed, read gossip magazines, and die.

  And Oprah’s call to live your Best Life isn’t as simple as it seems. Your Best Life isn’t necessarily your favorite life or the one you selfishly want. It’s simply the life you’re best at.

  I happen to be best at making things sparkle. I always have been. And because of it, the Beekman is still here. I don’t know for how long, but for now, it’s here. And maybe someday soon you’ll drop by, pick up a shovel, and muck some goat manure with us. Or weed the garden. Or pick some apples. Whatever you do best is what it needs most.

  Will our hard work be able to sa
ve the Beekman? I don’t know. But I just ordered seeds for the spring garden—lots of ’em. And just about the biggest sign of faith I can imagine is ordering seeds for a garden I don’t know whether I’ll be around to harvest. Maybe that’s not faith. Maybe that’s just farming. Or maybe that’s just being middle-aged.

  And Brent and I are still together. He’s trying his best to create Good Things while I’m getting good at Living My Best Life.

  And we never forget to say “I love you” before walking out the door. Because if you start forgetting to say “I love you” before you walk out a door, it’s too easy to forget that you do.

  With all your heart.

  With love from the Beekman,

  Josh, Brent, Farmer John, William and Joanna Beekman, little Mary, Bubby, the goats, the rooster choir, the zombie flies, and everyone in Sharon Springs

  MICHELLE’S PINK STUFF

  2 QTS HAND-PACKED (VERY IMPORTANT) STRAWBERRY ICE CREAM

  4 SMALL PACKAGES OF JELL-O

  4 CUPS BOILING WATER

  1 CUP CHOPPED WALNUTS

  2 BANANAS, SLICED

  1 CUP RED GLOBE GRAPES, HALVED

  2 CUPS MINIATURE MARSHMALLOWS

  Dissolve Jell-O in boiling water. Add ice cream and stir until melted. Place in refrigerator for 1/2 hour. Stir in nuts, bananas, grapes, and marshmallows. Return to refrigerator. Stir every 15 minutes for about 2 hours to keep marshmallows from floating to top and everything else from sinking as it sets. Once firm-ish, refrigerate 24 hours.

  * * *

  SERVES INNUMERABLE “HORRIFIED” GUESTS

  * * *

  GARTH’S MOM’S CHRISTMAS EVE MARGARITAS

  1 PT GRAND MARNIER

  1 PT LIME JUICE

  1 PT CRANBERRY JUICE

  21/2 PTS SOUR MIX