by Amanda Cross
This seemed to Reed, who was absolutely non-athletic, like an invitation to commit suicide. But Bradford pointed to the rod connecting the tractor with the baler, expecting Reed to stand on that. Reed compiled.
When they started off, Reed’s attention was absorbed, first in holding on, and then in wondering how soon his teeth would be knocked out of his head. It was only after they had traversed the field several times that he managed to watch the baler: the hay had been previously cut and turned over to lie in rows. The baler scooped it up, bound it, tied it up, and spat it out. Amazing. The brown dog trotted alongside, appearing in imminent danger of being run over. But all these rural creatures had adapted to the machine as readily as they had adapted to the other changes in their environment. “Yet I,” Reed thought, “am not adapting. In fact, I’ll probably develop a permanent tremor.”
Bradford finally stopped the machine as it appeared to be about to penetrate a barbed-wire fence; Reed, shaken into indifference, rather hoped it would. But Bradford handled his machine as though it were a horse whose spirit he admired. As Reed stepped down he greeted the earth, cow dung and all, with a silent prayer of exaltation. He had received and met some challenge during his ride on the baler. Reed lit his pipe.
“What did they use for baling when you were a boy?” he asked.
“Horses, a pitchfork, and three men, I guess,” Bradford answered. “But I was a boy in Scarsdale and don’t really know.”
“Scarsdale!”
“Yes. My father was a lawyer. I like farming. My wife’s from around here—her family swam over in front of the Mayflower with the painter in their teeth. Beautiful here, isn’t it?” The last phrase bore no shade of sarcasm. Reed followed Bradford’s gaze. It was beautiful. “It’s most beautiful on a tractor, from the middle of the fields. Come for another ride someday.” Bradford waved his hand and started up the tractor. Reed walked back across the field, trying first one muscle and then another, in anticipation of the ache he knew to be inevitable.
When he had shut the gate behind him, he saw Kate, reading in a lounge chair under a tree. “Does the schedule permit of conversation now?” he asked.
“It had better. Mary Bradford is on her way to bring back the vinegar and partake of a cup of coffee.”
“I, too,” said Reed, collapsing into a chair, “have had an encounter. With Mary Bradford’s husband.”
“I know that already, you urban innocent. Mary Bradford saw you leap on the machinery, apparently waited to see if your intentions were homicidal, and determining that they weren’t, decided to find out what you had said to her husband before he got the chance to tell her himself.”
“You make her sound a most attractive lady. Has she no redeeming features—salt of the earth, perhaps, a natural bonhomie, a certain physical vigor?”
“Most of her physical vigor, as you shall soon hear, is in her voice. To hear her tell it, nobody works as hard as she, nobody contributes so much to society and receives so little from it, nobody has so much rectitude, propriety and good old-fashioned morality. Since her golden rule is ‘Do unto Mary Bradford as Mary Bradford would like you to do unto her,’ it is difficult to see whence her high moral tone. But don’t let me prejudice you. What did you talk about with Brad?”
“As it happens, I was so busy having my teeth shaken out of my head, and observing the wonders of mechanized farming, that we didn’t say very much. My shoes are covered with cow dung, and my spirit is oppressed.”
“Reed. Have we got you down with our noisy ways? As I hope you could see this morning, our household is not really as mad as it seemed yesterday. This is peaceful, isn’t it?”
“All events have conspired to rob me of my self-respect. I left New York yesterday feeling rested, vigorous and able, in my own way, to cope. Ever since I chugged up your beastly driveway I have been reminded of my ignorance, dipped in cow dung, made to appear effete next to some sunburned monster of masculinity on a tractor, and finally doomed, it seems, to listen to the chatter of the sunburned monster’s wife.”
“You don’t fool me for a minute,” Kate said. “Your masculinity and self-respect are no more in danger from today’s events than they have ever been. You may be suffering from a surplus of fresh air—I know the feeling. Reed, I think what I cherish most about you is that calm assurance that does not need to prove itself. As to the cow dung, although it may be ruining a good pair of shoes, its price is above rubies and the envy of all gardeners. Pasquale will scrape it off your shoes and put it around a flower.”
“Kate, the truth of the matter is, I had rather hoped . . .” But the sudden entrance of a car into the driveway dashed the hope or left it unexpressed. “Do you mean she drove up from just down the road?” Reed asked in amazement.
“No one ever walks in the country, except city folk. Hardworking farmers have no time for such foolishness. Hello, Mary,” Kate called, getting to her feet. “May I introduce Mr. Amhearst. Mrs. Bradford.”
“I guessed it was you in the guest room this morning when I came to get the cows. You can always tell when there’s someone in the guest room because the windows are open then, and the blinds down, which of course they aren’t when the room’s empty. Ah, I thought, Kate Fansler has another guest. I bet it’s a young man, she prefers men guests. I prefer women, who make their beds and don’t expect to be waited on hand and foot, but then Kate has all those servants, so that probably isn’t a consideration with her—I do envy people with help, but of course they all want to be paid a fortune and not do a thing—that dreadful Mrs. Pasquale down the road came in to help me once, talking, talking all day long, and I ended up doing all the work myself. No point to that.”
Reed, who had risen, scarcely knew which part of this diatribe to respond to, if, indeed, any response was necessary.
“I hear you’re a district attorney,” Mary Bradford said.
Reed now stared at her in total amazement. He caught Kate’s eye and saw her shrug, a shrug which said, “I didn’t tell her.”
“Shall we go in the house and have a cup of coffee?” said Kate, moving firmly toward the door.
“I really shouldn’t,” Mary Bradford said, following her. “I’ve baskets of raspberries to make into jam, and these days, of course, I’m my own hired man; then, if I don’t get to clean the upstairs soon, we’ll simply have to move out of it, and Brad, of course, is worse than the children, throwing his clothes around—I always get a sock right up in the vacuum cleaner, ‘Look,’ I say, ‘I’m not the only person around here capable of picking things up . . .’ ” Reed paused on the back porch to remove his shoes and socks and entered the house with bare feet. His normal impulse would have been to go to his room for another pair of shoes and socks, but the thought of allowing his naked feet to become grist to Mary Bradford’s mill was too strong. He began to understand the effect Mary Bradford had on people. The woman positively tempted one to behave in an improper manner in order to provide her with material. This was an effect of undue propriety, shading off into prurience, which Reed had not personally observed before, and it fascinated him.
They settled themselves around the dining room table: everyone soon had a cup of coffee. Reed had the strange sensation of taking part in some aboriginal ritual. He wiggled his toes quite happily, and wondered what on earth Mary Bradford would find to say next.
“I call it shocking and improper behavior,” she said, accepting one of Kate’s cigarettes. “I’ve given up smoking,” she added, lighting it. “Naturally, it’s nobody’s business what a man does in his own house, I suppose, but he rides up the road with them in a convertible, bold as you please, and what goes on in a big house like that on a weekend, all those girls. An orgy. I wouldn’t be surprised,” she added with a significant look, “if there were drugs. Drink of course goes without saying. One morning all those people are going to get up to do something, and find they can’t stagger further than the nearest bott
le.”
“Are we discussing someone I know?” Reed asked in a voice straining so hard for innocence it sounded simpering to his own ears.
“The district attorney’s office of Berkshire County ought to know about him,” Mary Bradford said with emphasis. “But of course they haven’t even got time to pick up these people who speed down the road, going fifty miles an hour right past a sign saying ‘Children. Go Slow.’ I have to lock my children in the house when the summer people come, I don’t mind telling you.”
“The boy I saw rocketing by this morning didn’t look like ‘summer people’ to me,” Reed said.
“That white trash,” Mary Bradford snorted, identifying the car in question with no difficulty. “A new baby every year, and not enough sense or money to care for the ones they have. Who wouldn’t have eighteen children if it weren’t a question of buying them shoes?”
“How many do you have?” Reed asked. He was curious to discover if Mary Bradford ever stopped talking long enough to answer a question. Kate merely sat back, smiling. Clearly she had been through all this several times before.
“Two,” Mary Bradford said. “And they’re properly dressed and not allowed to run around picking up whatever they take a fancy to. Of course, once that camp opens and all those lazy parents who send their children to the day camp come rushing up the road, it’s impossible to cross over to our barn safely. But then, we’re just farmers, and no one worries about farmers. You have to learn how to go on welfare, or get some union to support you, to succeed these days. Well, I must get bade and make Brad’s lunch. He’ll just have to have peanut butter sandwiches. With all those raspberries to do there isn’t time to prepare anything,” She talked her way out of the house and into her car, pausing to make statements and then to digress from them at extraordinary length until, when she had finally backed the car out, Reed felt that he had survived an air raid, and that someone ought to sound the all clear.
“What sort of meal,” Reed asked, “is lunch around here? If you think you catch a note of trepidation in my voice, it is definitely there. Kate, my sweet, I long for you to return to civilization, and I shall hope to commandeer hours of your time when you do, but I am afraid that I’m too frail a being altogether to withstand the rigors of the rural life. I don’t know which is more horrifying, really, being bounced about on a tractor, wallowing in manure, or listening to the conversation of that angel of light from down the road. Not only is she malicious and suffering from logorrhea, she doesn’t even conclude a thought. Who is that sybaritic chap down the road with the girls and the orgies?”
Kate laughed, “A very amusing character, as it happens, who’s coming to dinner tonight. He’s stopped in several times with invitations, and I finally proffered one. Just as you insist on trotting around in your bare feet, giving Mary Bradford loads to say when next she shares a cup of coffee with a neighbor, so Mr. Mulligan goes out of his way to act like an inebriated playboy. As a matter of fact, I’ve talked with him long enough to gather that he’s a full professor of English and has published a good many books of literary criticism. Please don’t go, Reed. Stay at least until tomorrow, meet Mr. Mulligan, and let us try to restore your faith in the countryside. It has its charms, you know. Open fires, silence, long lonely walks, beauty that sometimes takes one’s breath away.”
“I noticed the beauty on my tractor ride. Would you care to take one of those lonely walks? As a matter of fact, I set one foot on the road this morning and was nearly run down by the industrial revolution.”
“Let’s take some sandwiches, which I promise will not be peanut butter, and have lunch at the top of that hill. The brown dog will probably accompany us, but otherwise it should be quite peaceful. Of course, Mary Bradford will undoubtedly see us go, and conclude The Worst.”
“I shall look on it as a moral obligation to render one of Mary Bradford’s suspicions correct. I feel quite inspired. All right, all right, I’m going to get on some shoes.”
“And I shall get the sandwiches.”
“Well,” said Reed, “I am prepared to stay until tomorrow morning, reconsidering the possibilities of the rural life. I suppose Leo will join us for dinner?”
“And Emmet and William, but without the rest of the Araby Boys’ Camp. Leo will report on The World, as passed by Mr. Artifoni, who runs the A.B.C., but otherwise, it won’t be too absolutely terrible. Wait and see. Mr. Mulligan is nice, and Emmet really quite interesting in his effete, and William in his bluff, way.”
“What I look forward to is spending the afternoon on the hills in my way. You don’t suppose we’ll meet herds of cows do you, or,” he added, “a bull?”
“No bulls around here.”
“Then whence the calves? Have they developed parthenogenesis?”
“They have developed artificial insemination.”
“There is no doubt about it, country living is decadent, immoral and soul-annihilating. Does the brown dog have a name? We appear to have become friends.”
“Brownie.”
“And what is the name of the red cat?”
“Cassandra. She belongs to Emmet. But she is usually called Pussens.”
“What was that?” Reed stopped with one foot on the porch.
“Someone shooting woodchucks.”
“Do you think they are likely to shoot us by mistake?”
“Well, they have telescopic sights on the guns, and presumably they can tell us from a woodchuck.”
“Kate.”
“Yes.”
“Hurry up and make those damn sandwiches. If we’re going to be shot, let us die in one another’s arms.”
“We are going,” Kate said, “for a walk.”
“I wonder,” Reed mused, “what Mary Bradford thinks goes on in a rural orgy. Well, at least I know that if you’re drowning and bleeding to death all at once, I shall apply a tourniquet immediately and wait for the proper moment to begin artificial respiration. I must remember to ask Leo at dinner how long Mr. Artifoni says it takes to die of a bullet wound.”
Chapter Three
Counterparts
Reed and Kate sat at opposite ends of the dinner table; from time to time their eyes met, but for the most part they listened to the exchange between those on either side. It had been a good walk, a good afternoon. The cocktail hour had been, if not shattered, at least cracked by the return of Leo, but Reed did not feel inclined to complain. Kate seemed to treat the whole matter of Leo in the light of a fascinating experience, like a safari, or an exploration of one of the poles: difficult, physically exhausting, but educational and replete with possibilities for future anecdotes, should one survive.
Mr. Mulligan had joined them at the cocktail hour. He proved to be a pleasant, if slightly pompous man around forty. “So you’ve met our Mary Bradford,” Mr. Mulligan had said, accepting a martini and settling down, with evident satisfaction, before the fire. “In that case I shan’t have to describe her. I’m supposed to be a literary critic, and I have tried to describe Mary Bradford to my friends, but they always suspect I’m what the Scots call ‘havering.’ Do allow me to assure you that while the last man to claim rectitude for himself, warranted or otherwise, I do not partake of orgies, alcoholic or sexual.”
“I didn’t know you were a writer,” Kate said. “I thought you were a dreary academic, like me.”
“Dreamy academics write, haven’t you heard? In my case, I write far too many books entitled ‘The Future of the Novel,’ ‘The Novel and Modern Chaos,’ ‘Form and Function in Modern Fiction’—to be properly alliterative that should have been in French Fiction, but alas, I don’t read French. All my books talk about the decline of the old values and the emptiness of modern life—you get the picture. I suspect that none of them is any good, really, but I’ve published so many it was bound to be impressive after a while, and I have achieved not only tenure and a full professorship, but invitations
to speak at women’s clubs and even the possibility of running a sunrise semester on television next fall. What more can any man ask?”
“Who publishes your books?” Kate asked. “The University of Southern Montana Press?”
“No, oddly enough. The Calypso Press.”
“Then you must be underestimating the books. If Sam Lingerwell’s firm publishes them, they are no doubt first-rate.”
“Do me a favor, kind lady, and rest content with that supposition. We may have to publish or perish, but I see no reason for perishing with boredom while we read what one another has published. The irrationalities of the academic world need not, after all, be pushed quite to their logical conclusions. Thank you, I should love another drink.”
That had been at cocktails. Now, at dinner, Leo announced: “I got Mary Bradford right between the eyes this morning, I’m certain of it. Well, on the side of the head anyway, didn’t I, William?”
“Very likely,” William said, his major attention being on the chicken divan.
“It is really extraordinary,” Emmet observed, “how we can’t stop talking about that beastly woman. What did you ‘get’ her with, Leo? Something sufficiently deadly, I trust.”
“Mary Bradford,” Kate said, “is like a threat of war, or a strong suspicion that one is pregnant: it is literally impossible to think of anything else. But with sufficient control, one can at least attempt to converse on other topics. All the same, the woman does fascinate. She is so absolutely certain of her own rightness, and so absolutely, offensively wrong on every possible count. There I go again, you see. Leo, I’m not sure I altogether approve of your rifle practice, if that’s what you are supposed to have gotten Mary Bradford with. Certainly I don’t think you should talk about it.”
“I haven’t told anybody,” Leo grumbled. “Nobody that counts.”
“Just all the boys at the Araby Boys’ Camp,” Emmet said.
“They don’t matter,” Leo insisted.