Maggie's Farm

by Sherry, John;

  In my wildest dreams, it had not occurred to me that the real purpose of O’Hara’s visit to the farm was to case Wytheville and its environs with an eye towards moving Kate and her children there to settle. Even though I laugh rather hollowly now as I write these words, it seemed far too much to hope that our hill-billy social desert could attract the permanent presence of the family to whom, by both shared experience and mutual predilection, Dorothy and I were closer than any other in the world. Yet, as it turned out, this was precisely what was on O’Hara’s mind. I know now whence stemmed the motivation of O’Hara’s desire to settle in Wytheville. He was, for the moment, without an idea of his own and so it seemed to him the better part of wisdom to shelter behind that of someone else. A human and understandable position certainly but O’Hara had strong temptations and abilities to go beyond the human in pursuit of what he believed to be his own survival.

  During that first visit, O’Hara did not immediately declare his interest in settling his family in Wytheville. Like Dracula, he had some ingrained need to be invited into the sphere of his future operations. When he suggested that I take him around to see the real estate agent who had sold me my farm, it dawned on me that his interest might be more than idle curiosity. And, at that point, he was still waiting to be influenced by circumstance. Circumstance immediately played for him like a performing seal; the real estate agent just happened to have a genuinely charming house for rent for a nominal sum in an attractive part of Wytheville. Faced with the advent of genuine possibility, O’Hara asked me rather quizzically if Dorothy and I really wanted them to move into our bailiwick. The quizzical business passed me by; I was delighted and so was Dorothy, and we said so.

  I heard the far off warning bell once again, however, during his visit; and once again, I ignored it. A grotesque and gloomy incident took place. It seemed hilarious at the time. Alas, it contained much portent for the future.

  Earlier in this chapter, I commented briefly upon some of the sociological peculiarities of the region. Saving it until now, I purposely ignored making comment upon Virginian mores as they are concerned with drink. Like most things in Virginia, drinking is a pastime which is made as uncomfortable as possible for the lower classes. Not to say that by American standards drink is not plentiful and cheap. Because it is; it is, in fact, trustworthily axiomatic to say that the less evolved the government of a Christian community, the cheaper the booze and vice versa. To begin with, in Virginia, hard liquor is dispensed only from state-owned stores by clerks in clinical grey jackets. The entire transaction is a cross between a visit to a bank and a visit to the outpatient department of a hospital. Never, during my many visits to our local such establishment, did I encounter a single person who thought of himself as a member of the ruling classes. To such a person, standing in line in the state-owned liquor store would be considered demeaning beyond description—the houseboy or some town loafer is sent on such errands by proud tradition. The fine old Bourbon which these emissaries bring home to the gentry is soaked up constantly, heartily and in comfort. The poor devils in overalls, so déclassée as to be buying for themselves, do so with a woebegone air of guilt and the hangdog look of men compelled by tradition to drink up alleyways, behind barns, and in automobiles.

  The plight of him who seeks the solace and companionship of his neighborhood saloon is even grimmer. No hard liquor is served for consumption on the premises anywhere in the entire misbegotten State of Virginia except rich men’s clubs. Three point two beer can be obtained for on the spot consumption in the warmth of certain specified gas stations. In every town, there are one or two dank and gloomy establishments where unwashed louts and losers sit drinking beer in an atmosphere of despair. It goes without saying that the same “gentleman” who, embarrased, at least, at being caught in the line at the liquor store, would very nearly prefer death than be seen in such an establishment as I describe. The proprietor of such an establishment would be made just as nervous by the presence of the “gentleman.”

  One day during O’Hara’s visit, he and I went into such an establishment to while away an hour drinking beer. Up till that point, I had stuck pretty close to my farm and was largely unfamiliar with the modus operandi of Virginia custom. But it did not take much time or very sharp eyes that day to see that our presence in the saloon made both proprietor and customers extremely nervous. Our manner of speaking and our clothes were different from those of the other people in the bar, but it was not these things which eventually caused the contratemps. It was, purely and simply, the traditional situation of the officer’s presence causing unrest in the enlisted man’s saloon.

  After drinking beer and talking for approximately an hour, we fell into casual conversation with some men at a nearby table—the sort of talk which is common to saloons from Zanzibar to Nome, Alaska. I cannot now remember of what we spoke but certainly it was of trivial matters. The men were polite but mystified by our manner of speech and, I now realize, probably did not even understand our banter. As tends to happen when men of differing level of intelligence and experience drink together and hold concourse, puzzlement at us on the part of these men turned into discomfiture and discomfiture turned into a mild anger. One of them finally quit the saloon muttering something like, “I sware, I cain’t understand a thing you fellers are sayin.” The proprietor of the place watched this intercourse nervously throughout. He had been unhappy with our presence since we entered and I now know that this unhappiness stemmed from his sure and certain knowledge that the class barriers of Virginia were being contravened. Our presence was even worse for him than would have been, say, the presence of a local lawyer and doctor; even in the highly unlikely eventuality that such a thing could ever happen, the proprietor at least would have known who the doctor and lawyer were and would simply sit it out uncomfortably until they left. But we were an unknown quantity and he owed us no allegiance. When O’Hara motioned for our glasses to be refilled, the saloon proprietor did a stupid thing, but one which, in the light of my subsequent experience in Virginia, is understandable: he refused to serve us.

  We, of course, demanded, why. Muttering something about our having used bad language (with which the air in the place was blue), he backed away shiftily and demanded that we vacate the premises. We refused and asked again that we be served. Again, he refused and said that, if we did not leave, he would call a cop. We advised him to call the cop, he did so, and a few moments later, a policeman entered the place; in colloquy with the proprietor, the cop glanced nervously at our table a time or two. Clearly, he found our presence in the bar as inexplicable as did the proprietor. Finally, the cop hitched up his gun belt with a sigh and approached our table. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you gentlemen to leave,” he said. He was polite and unsure of himself. By that time, we were not entirely sober but still far from drunk. We were, in fact, puzzled and angered by the entire situation.

  Explaining that in our view, absolutely nothing had happened to warrant the presence of the constabulary, we told him that we were not prepared to leave and, indeed, wanted more beer to drink. Resistance toughened the policeman; he was adamant: we must leave. I am firmly convinced to this day that his position, like that of the proprietor, stemmed from a lifelong exposure to the good old Virginian principle that a mixing of social classes can only result in trouble for all.

  As his resistance toughened so did ours; we refused to leave. He allowed as how, if we did not leave, he would have to put us under arrest. We said go ahead, and he did so. With all three of us feeling rather foolish, we left the bar and climbed into his police car. The strangest thing of all was that the entire occurrence took place in an atmosphere of the most extreme southern courtesy. We chattered together in friendly fashion on the way to the police station.

  There was never any question of being thrown into a cell. We would achieve that distinction in time, but today we were “gentlemen” and, accordingly, were treated with that mixture of suspicion and respect which such a chimerical po
sition receives in the Old Dominion.

  In truth, it was rather funny. The police clearly did not want us there any more than we wanted to be there. This became even more apparent when they questioned us and found out that I owned a farm to the west of town and that O’Hara was my guest. The combination of being a “gentleman” and owning land is, in Virginia, a potent one; Virginian social values take all that is bad from the English and leave all that is good behind. Having ascertained these fundamental facts about us, the police withdrew worriedly to another room. O’Hara remarked that it was very nearly an incredible situation and, indeed, it was so incredible that we both began to laugh. This caused an even more worried penetration of heads whose eyes examined us with sadness and lack of comprehension. It suddenly dawned on me how I could get us out of the situation gracefully. I explained this to O’Hara and he said, for God’s sake go ahead. The joke was wearing thin.

  About two weeks before the president of the bank where we did our business had introduced me to a young lawyer named Bean. He was a likeable young fellow about my own age. More important to our present predicament, I had also had no trouble in spotting him for a pre-eminent product of the local squirearchy. We had chatted together for about fifteen minutes that day at the bank and Lawyer Bean made it plain during our chat that he tended to consider me as an entirely logical, if eccentric, recruit to local upper-class circles. I didn’t much care about that but I had liked Lawyer Bean immediately, and I would like to say here and now that throughout my years in Wytheville, he was an unfailingly loyal, courteous and helpful friend to me even though, in time, he must have come to regard me and my friends as some sort of terrible time bomb waiting to go off in the local body politic. At any rate, I was fairly certain that a telephone call to Lawyer Bean would get us out of our present predicament with alacrity and I was right.

  The degree of alacrity and the change of attitude on the part of the police towards their two unclassifiable prisoners took both O’Hara and me by surprise. I called one of the cops in and asked him if I could make a telephone call. He was perfectly amenable and wanted to know whom I intended to call. When I mentioned Lawyer Bean’s name, the cop’s face relaxed in relief; his interior warning system had been right; we were well connected. Then the look of relief changed to one of worry; perhaps we were too well-connected. To make a long story short, I telephoned Lawyer Bean and explained that we had run afoul of the Neanderthal local social structure and asked for succor. He was greatly amused by the whole thing, spoke a few words to the police, and we were released immediately with many smiles and handshakes all around.

  The incident was closed but a small nagging sense of worry persisted. The fact was that the social customs were Neanderthal. They had been born in meanness and persisted through poverty of spirit. It seemed logical to suppose that I might run afoul of them again.

  A few days later, O’Hara completed the formalities attendant upon renting the house he had chosen and took the train back east to collect Kate and the children. I viewed their arrival with nothing but a feeling of soaring happiness about the future. For, not daring to allow the light to fall upon a dream so romantic, the truth is that I harbored in my heart a hope that my farm could be for me and my friends a nucleus and a gathering point from which we could go forward. And, even now, I cannot apologize for this; it was an honorable dream.

  My generation had not then taken power; they waited in the wings, gathering their resources. It was then 1955 and that generation would begin to assume the reins of power around 1960. My faith was total that my hands and those of my friends would be among those which would hold those reins. I ponder now frequently the reasons this has not turned out to be true. In New York—as I scribbled furiously away at my novel on the farm, the stars of my generation which would make up the final galaxy were gathering and circling, growling and biting and snapping at the prizes which still lay on the toastmaster’s table. My friends and I published our books, and our plays were produced, but the sheen of stardom did not settle upon us. There is little self pity in the words I write; one should not argue with what happens but spend the same energy in trying to understand it. In truth, I know only one thing about all of this: the stars of my generation were never ambivalent about their desire for that stardom. They studied the priorities attendant upon their quest for preeminence and they obeyed them. As one of the most famous of the galaxy said: “A boy has got to hustle”. And that fine collection of murderous assailants, jet-set pederasts, silver-spoon-born politicians, and lyrical talents who rule the roost have, in the words of the old-time St. Louis prostitutes, hustled their fats with a vengeance. The pursuit of success in a society of bewilderingly compounded complexity is a matter of rigid adherence to properly constituted priorities. It seems almost comic to me, now, that I did not understand this, that I did not understand that seven years on a Virginia hill farm constitute no priority to any but a deluded mind. Yet delusions are a variable constant. They determine your choice of the life you get—and the life you get is the life you must lead. It seems poignant to me now; poignant, and perhaps a little stupid, that I could have ever dreamed of a little Athens in the hills of Virginia to which people would come and from which people would go refreshed to make their contributions. But it does not seem wrong.

  CHAPTER VIII

  Throughout the following months, the manuscript of my novel grew and I had much hope of it. More and more, in fact, did I come to view the project as the heaviest artillery available in the family arsenal of survival. Generally speaking, it is of course a serious mistake to assign excessive hope to any creative project. Humanly speaking, it is very nearly impossible to refrain from doing so. Even now, as I write this and bear the psychic scars of several duckings in the quicksand of public fancy, I doubt that I shall ever be able to control the vibrant hope which grows before a publication date, the opening of a play or the release of a film upon which I have worked. No stern self administered lecture about childishness and lack of professionalism seems to mitigate against this tendency. The moral, I suppose, is that everyone who attempts to contrive a work of the imagination is at bottom some kind of actor who not only wants a damned good supper in return for his song but a pat on the head for his performance as well.

  1955 was, in fact—until some rather gloomy events which would mark its closing—a happy year. The remodelling of our house continued steadily. Slowly, the downstairs was finished and the upstairs taken in hand. We changed the layout of the upstairs, framing in new partitions to allow for a bathroom and extra closets. I continued to marvel at the quantity of mouse guano which we had removed from the walls of the house. It was my neighbor, Fred Cline, who finally gave me the bad news about my mouse guano. Idly chatting with him one day as we stood near a wheelbarrow load of this substance, I said that it struck me as remarkable that a few mice could manufacture that many calling cards even with decades to work on the job. Fred began to laugh and then notified me of the truth succinctly. “Mister Cherry,” he said, “that ain’t mouse shit, that’s bat shit.”

  I blanched, hoping against hope that he was wrong and knowing that he wasn’t. Fred asked for a flashlight and we went upstairs to have a look. Most of the ceilings had not yet been replaced on the upstairs rooms and Fred had no trouble in proving his point. We climbed up a stepladder and Fred shined the light up into the darkness of the attic rafters. Hanging in clusters, and so well-camouflaged that I had not until then noticed them, were more bats than I would have believed existed in the world. It is impossible to know how many there were but without question, the number could not have been less than a thousand. Deep in the grip of panic, I asked Fred what we were going to do. He counseled calm, saying, “Hell, Mister Cherry, them bats ain’t gonna bother you none; they been livin’ in that attic for twenty or thirty years and they ain’t bothered nobody yet.”

  I could not share his equanimity. As far as I was concerned, a bat was too far behind the evolutionary game for tolerance. A proud member of a race whic
h had fought its way up from primeval ooze, I considered a bat a miniature pterodactyl which had about as much right to be alive in my house as a dinosaur. Furthermore, I reacted according to the instructions of every old wives’ tale concerning bats; the fact that I am bald, for example, failed completely to still the birth of immediate fear that one would get in my hair.

  Dorothy was of course as discouraged as I by the discovery of our resident hoard of bats. However, Fred Cline’s counsel concerning them turned out to be essentially accurate. For the moment, at any rate, the bats showed as little inclination to have anything to do with us as we did to have anything to do with them. The weather was still cold and bats are hibernatory mammals who do not venture forth on their nocturnal expeditions when the temperature is below a certain point. We decided to bide our time. On my part, it was a wholly ostrich-like decision; I was terrified of the things.