Fifty Acres and a Poodle

by Jeanne Marie Laskas

  I often think about that statue, about that stone lady holding that baby, never shivering in the cold and never sweating in the heat. Season after season, standing there. I think about her when I read about all the ways in which the middle of nowhere has been the center of everywhere.

  I read about Marianna, a village less than three miles south of our farm, a town sharing our same telephone exchange. It was settled at the turn of the century. It used to be a famous coal-mining town, named after Mary Ann Feehan Jones, secretary and treasurer of the Pittsburgh-Buffalo Company. The company built the entire village in a matter of months, contracting the construction of 282 houses of matching yellow brick and a boardinghouse on the hillside behind three mine shafts: number one, “Rachel,” number two, “Agnes,” and number three, “Blanche.”

  Bricks, sewer pipes, everything arrived by rail. Advertisements for mine workers appeared in newspapers around the world. Prospective workers were assured living quarters, six dollars a month for a six-room house with a bathroom and a hot water tank. One tree was planted on each lawn. Each year the company would award prizes for the best-looking yard.

  Marianna attracted Russians and Italians in great numbers, as well as Scottish, English, and Slavs. They were not disappointed. It was a most inviting town. And to make it more wonderful, the company built the Arcade, a massive, stately structure that contained a drugstore, an ice cream parlor, bowling alleys, pool and billiard tables, a dance floor, a skating rink, a movie theater, a gymnasium, and a reading and lecture room. It opened with great fanfare on July 4, 1910.

  When President Theodore Roosevelt invited the big mucketymuck mining experts of Europe to inspect the coal industry of the United States, he culminated that tour with a visit to Marianna. Everybody applauded. The Marianna mines became known as the world’s largest and most complete commercial coal plant, and Marianna was hailed as a model mining town.

  I loved reading that. It made me feel like cheering. It filled me with pride about this area, my area. I loved hearing how these hills have drawn pioneers over and over again, that the middle of nowhere is no stranger to strangers. It made me feel at home.

  Then I read that, four months after the Arcade opened, it burned to the ground. I hated reading that. I hated that so much. It made me think of my friend Mark. It made me think of Bob.

  For a time, the wind was knocked out of Marianna. But the mines and the town of some two thousand people continued to prosper throughout the century, until Rachel, Agnes, and Blanche stopped producing as they once did, and a century of coal mining in America didn’t matter anymore.

  Fewer than six hundred people now live in Marianna. There isn’t much there. A post office, a bank, a few churches, and a hardware store that is about to close.

  • • •

  ONE CHILLY MORNING, THERE IS A KNOCK AT THE door. Someone else stopping by. Alex gets it. “Hey, Joe,” I hear him saying. It’s one of the Joe Crowleys. I go out to see that it’s the Joe Crowley with the limestone who doesn’t really know how much limestone we need but says his friend does.

  He has brought the friend. Mercifully, the man’s name is not Joe.

  “Billy,” he says, extending his hand. He has on dark glasses, so it’s hard to trust him immediately. He’s beanpole thin, except for his belly, a grand belly, a hard belly sticking out over his silver rodeo belt buckle. His left cheek also bulges forth, packed with some kind of impressive tobacco chaw.

  “I got sixty ton of number two limestone out here for you,” the man named Billy announces, his speech a bit slurred by the bulge, or the … He walks to the edge of the porch and spits a stream of brown juice into the boxwoods.

  “Sixty tons?” Alex says. He is still grappling with the scale of this farm. He is starting to get a lot of headaches.

  Billy takes Alex over to inspect the stone.

  “That’s great,” Alex says. “Yep.” You can tell Alex doesn’t know how to inspect sixty tons of number two limestone, but he is doing his best. He is trying to fit in. I can only hope he doesn’t ask for a pinch of tobacco.

  We all stand out here shivering, talking limestone. Talking red dog. Talking about how cold it is. Soon, and inevitably, we get into a conversation about the multiflora. Because this is what all the locals talk about when they stop by. Because this is the most obvious thing to talk about. Well, this and the fact that our barn is collapsing.

  “You gotta doze it,” Billy says, and then he spits again.

  “Doze it?”

  “The multiflora,” he says. “You gotta go at it with the bulldozer. It’s your only hope.” He says he’s cleaned up a lot of farms with his John Deere 350. Multiflora doesn’t root very deeply, so you can scrape it off the face of the earth, leaving most of the topsoil intact. It would be something like giving the farm a shave, although he calls it “pushin’ briars.”

  He spits.

  He says, “Tom?”

  Tom, his teenage son, hops out of the truck. He’s a short, compact kid in a black cowboy hat, a ski jacket, and tight jeans. He spits, too. I’ve really never been around spitting, except for seeing baseball players do it on TV, so this is taking some getting used to.

  “Tom, get the hats,” Billy says. Tom goes back to the truck, leans in, and emerges with two hats.

  “Here,” he says to me. “Here,” he says to Alex. The hats are, yes, orange, and they feature the phone number of Nichols and Sons Excavation Company. “You give me a call if you want us to push any briars,” Billy says.

  “Thank you,” I say. “These are very nice hats.” I put mine on. I’m acquiring quite a nice orange hat collection.

  “You want this limestone?” he asks.

  “Sure,” we say.

  “Well, move these cars outa here, and we’ll get it down.”

  I go in for the keys. I put on another coat, the only coat I can find, Alex’s wretched old parka with grease all over it that he calls his “barn coat.” Phew. It stinks. It stinks of diesel fuel. But, oh good, there are gloves inside. Well, sort of gloves. They’re … rags. Doesn’t Alex ever throw anything out? I go into the basement and find some galoshes, then head out. We juggle the cars, and I end up in the pickup, halfway up Wilson Road. I think: Well, as long as I’m out here, why don’t I go get us all some lunch? I hop out of the truck, yell out, yell over the pond, over the barnyard, to Alex. “I’m going to go get some food!”

  “What!?”

  “Food!”

  “What?”

  Whatever. We need to get walkie-talkies or something. It’s hard to communicate over fifty acres.

  I head up to Tradesmen’s, the same place Alex and I went on moving day. I’ve grown to like the place, the homemade chili, the fresh-baked bread.

  I pull into the parking lot. I’m glad I’m in the pickup, now that I think about it, because now I fit in with all these other pickups. My pickup is empty just like all the other ones. I wonder if people drive pickups just because other people drive pickups.

  A woman pulls in behind me. She is in a sedan. A Subaru. She looks completely out of place. She looks like she should be at a Taco Bell. It’s weird the way I’ve so quickly become part of the pickup team, not that I am really part of the pickup team.

  The woman in the Subaru steps out of her Subaru. She has on a skirt, heels, and pantyhose. She looks like I used to look, only months ago, back when I was thirty-seven years old and lived in the city and worked in the Benedum Trees Building. Back when I was a normal person. I am still that person, even though I now look like, well, this person. She looks at me, looks at me up and down, as I climb out of my Elly May Clampett truck with the bullet holes in it.

  I peer ever so quickly up toward the sky to confirm that, yes, I am wearing an orange hat featuring the phone number of an excavation company. I am wearing a wretched old coat that smells of diesel fuel. My gloves are rags, and I have on a disgusting pair of galoshes.

  The woman stretches her lips back with a fake smile, like you do with people you would pre
fer to avoid.

  Okay, I need to talk to her.

  I really need to talk to her.

  I need to say, “Wait a second here. You don’t understand. This is not who I am! No, no, no, you’ve got it all wrong. This is not who I am.”

  I am still me. Aren’t I still me? Yes, I need to tell this stranger who looks like the old me that I am still me.

  Instead, and because I really have no choice, I hold the door for her and step inside.

  EIGHT

  THERE IS A LADYBUG IN THE KITCHEN SINK, THE tiniest creature. It’s an odd thing to see in February, the dead of winter. But in the months since I’ve been at the farm, amidst all the craziness and confusion, there has always been this bug.

  “Well, hello there,” I say, as I do each morning when I’m putting the coffee on. “Dude, why do you insist on hanging out by the drain?” Drains are dangerous places for bugs. I pick the ladybug up and put it on the windowsill, where Bob is sitting. Bob loves this windowsill. And Bob never bothers the bug. Thank you, Bob.

  I have gotten good at picking the ladybug up, confident. At first I would put my finger out and wait for it to crawl. But now I grab it by the shell and gently squeeze. It never flails its legs or anything. I am even beginning to believe it likes the attention.

  I have decided, rather arbitrarily, that this ladybug needs a spider plant to live in. Maybe then it will stay away from the drain. The next time I go to the store, I’m going to buy a spider plant so the ladybug will have some entertainment. Maybe I can even find one with aphids.

  My mother said country living would be lonely. I have barely even begun to settle in here, and already she is right. Alex has moved himself down here, and by and large I have moved myself down here, and this is our home. Still, there are days that go by when Alex is in town working, and I’m here trying to work, and all I do is sit in my office and dial the phone, reaching out. But I have to believe, really believe, that the loneliness is just a stage. I believe loneliness is a door you have to go through—a passage leading you to solitude.

  Solitude is what I’m after. The kind of tranquillity that allows you access to your own imagination. Or at least, this is what I’m telling myself. I wanted to get away from those investment brokerage people staring at me like I was a zoo animal. I wanted to get away from the crazy neighbor brat with the lunatic eyes. I wanted to go to a place where I could think, really sink into my own imagination, or ride it, drift along with it, as in a balloon. The kind of place probably all writers crave. The kind of place where the outside world is still and quiet and you get a chance to listen, to peer, to go inward via something as tiny and seemingly insignificant as a ladybug, and witness divine glory.

  Divine glory. Really? That’s kind of a tall order. Am I here on this farm searching for God? I don’t think so. I really don’t think so. “Am I?” I ask, looking up. He doesn’t answer. He never answers. But okay, I’ve gotten used to that. And me and God, we’re doing fine. I mean, basically. I mean, we have our ups and downs like anybody else. But I can’t say this has been a particularly troublesome time in our relationship.

  “Divine glory”? What’s that? Why did I even think that? That’s borrowed lingo. That’s probably Thoreau lingo lingering in my head. It’s so easy to throw out words without worrying about what they mean.

  I miss solitude.

  I miss the kid in the shed.

  That’s what I said. That’s what I thought.

  But what am I really reaching for? That’s what I’m wondering now, standing here in the kitchen watching this ladybug. It’s running the length of the windowsill, back and forth, as if unhappy about this sill. I think it wants the sink. All right. I put it back in the sink. It seems happier here, although I cannot verify that.

  Mildly interested, Bob looks down at the bug, and then he shuts his eyes, as if meditating. Bob, you are so good at solitude.

  I think about that shed I went to when I was a kid, surrounded by those animals on the farm behind our house. What did I find there? Or what did I leave there?

  And why did I even feel the need to run there in the first place? Why did I reach for solitude when I was ten? I didn’t have the kind of home a person would need to escape from. There was laughter in our house on Lorraine Drive. There was laughter and kindness and love. And an awful lot of agreement. Everybody agreed with everybody else. On matters of food, God, presidents, baseball.

  Did I agree? It was hard to know. Hard to separate. Hard to become an individual when bouncing along inside the bubble of the family.

  At the farm, with those animals, and in that shed, I think I figured things out. I formed opinions, or at least the urge for some I could call my own. How can you know who you are, what you believe, where you are in relation to anything else in the world, when you are all knotted up with everybody else?

  I think the call of the inward life starts here. Solitude helps you differentiate, define the borders of the self. Solitude helps you figure out where everybody else stops and you begin.

  People figure this out in all different ways, of course. My friend Marie figured it out in her own way. She was my best friend all through college, one of the ones that got the Subaru and now has the minivan. Actually, she’s moved on to a Ford Expedition and a vacation home at the seashore. She hated being alone. We were opposites that way. I would quote Thoreau: “I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.” She would twist her lip and tell me I was nuts. She was an only child of older parents and couldn’t seem to get enough noise in her life. She needed the energy of peers to make her whole. I’d get tangled up in the peers, caught up in the culture, lost.

  Defining the edges of the self isn’t something that happens once in your life, of course. It’s not like you figure it out and then get on with things. It’s a process. For me it’s inward, outward, inward, outward. The turtle act. The turtle who needs to pull her head in when the light gets too bright.

  But the problem with solitude, I am finding, is that it’s really not an easy place to get to. Solitude is quite different from being alone. Solitude is the state of being alone without losing your mind. There’s a fine line there somewhere. Or maybe a thick line. Because the only way to get to solitude is to step through the door of loneliness.

  This is what I’m having a hard time doing here at the farm. I am lonely. Alex is in town all day, day after day, and I am here alone, working, writing. It’s where I said I wanted to be. But I am lonely.

  Maybe I’m no good at solitude. I don’t know. Maybe I’m too weak. Or too needy. Or too frightened. Or too something.

  “I never said, ‘I want to be alone,’” Greta Garbo once commented. “I only said, ‘I want to be left alone.’ There is all the difference.”

  I love that.

  I should exit my Thoreau stage once and for all and enter my Greta Garbo stage.

  I should start wearing dark eyeliner.

  Like Greta Garbo.

  And Betty.

  I should say to hell with solitude and start having some fun like Betty.

  Okay, when you are jealous of your dog’s life, you know you have a problem.

  But look at her out there in that yard. Rolling on a dead thing. Look at the joy in her beautiful eyes. Look at that black goo all over her neck. She seems so happy about it. She appears so completely uninterested in understanding the essence of her inner dog. She’s just … dog. And now here comes Marley. Betty prances over to him, leans in to him as if wanting to show off her new perfume. Marley sniffs. Marley leaps. Marley looks like a mechanical dog the way he can spring from a standing position up into the air. Soon the two dogs are wrestling, doing dog somersaults in the leaves.

  Fun. They are having so much fun.

  I look at the ladybug. I am starting to identify with this ladybug. I am sympathetic with the urge to go down that drain. Because intuitively I know that going down the drain is a lot easier than sitting here in solitary confinement.

  To hell with solit
ary confinement. This is not natural. Maybe I am at the farm to find solitude, but on some level I am also at the farm to embrace the natural world, and this is not natural. Humans are pack animals, we crave each other, we grow and mature and flourish because of each other. We learn to swim, to ride bikes, by watching each other. We learn our values, our principles, by debating each other. We discover who we want to be in the eyes of God by singing praise with each other.

  We need each other. Just like this ladybug needs more ladybugs, or at least some aphids to keep life interesting. I will bring it the spider plant tomorrow. There is nothing that can be done about it today.

  Or is there? I mean, I could run errands. Yes, I am sure I have some errands to run. I could run errands and pick up a spider plant along the way.

  “Okay, ladybug,” I say. “You talked me into it.”

  I give Bob a scratch behind the ears, then grab my coat and keys. I get in the car and head to the stores. One thing I love about Scenery Hill is that it’s far from the stores, but close at the same time. Far, in that you go for ten minutes over the hills and through the farms, past the sheep and the beautiful barns that make up this valley, and suddenly when the hills relax and become flat, there is a highway. Ten minutes down the highway, you have exited the past and entered the present. And in the present, all the shopping centers are contained, in one intersection of two highways. The present doesn’t spill out into the past, at least not yet. Past and present are separated by a perfect twenty minutes of driving, about enough time for you to become emotionally prepared for either.

  Okay, there’s the Wal-Mart. It’s a huge, low, flat, boring building with a blue top. I’ve never been in a Wal-Mart before. I’ve been in a few Kmarts, though. I didn’t feel like I belonged.

  The sign says that Wal-Mart is open twenty-four hours a day. This comforts me. I love knowing that anytime, day or night, when I need to see people, Wal-Mart will be here.

  In the store, a lady in a blue apron greets me. “Welcome to Wal-Mart!” she says, rolling a cart toward me. I love her instantly. I love her because she is here.