The Hadley & Marsh office had set up along the Fenwick Farm fence like spectators at a golf tournament.
Nell sat in the middle in a folding camp chair, with the jar on her lap. She had wrapped it in a dish towel to keep the rain off the slips. Her tape measure sat on top of the towel, where everyone could see it.
On either side of her were eleven agents, two title officers, the appraiser and, inexplicably, the gas man from Brannock Meadows. Marcy Kahale from the second floor had binoculars. Somebody had brought donuts.
Vivian got out of the car. Her black heels touched the gravel. A small sound went down the row of lawn chairs, like a crowd at a fireworks show deciding whether the first one counted.
She walked straight past them.
“Good morning, everyone,” she said. “I hope you all have showings this afternoon.”
Nobody did. That was the problem with Saturdays.
Ida Fenwick was waiting at the barn with a walking stick and Mortgage the goose. She was wearing a pair of enormous old work boots, laced tight around thick wool socks.
“Arthur’s,” she said, when she saw me looking. “Three sizes too big. I walk the line in them every spring. It’s the closest I get to asking his opinion.”
Royce Danforth was there too. He sat on a muddy green ATV at the edge of the yard. He was a large man of sixty-six in a cowboy hat and a bolo tie. He wore the bolo tie as if a farm walk were a formal event, and to him, maybe it was.
“Royce,” said Ida.
“Ida.” He touched his hat. Then he looked at Vivian. “My granddaddy always said you can tell a town person by their shoes.”
“Your granddaddy said a lot of things,” said Ida, before Vivian could answer. “Most of them about my hay field.”
Boone arrived last, cheerful and enormous. He had his metal detector over one shoulder and a backpack on the other. Strapped to the outside of the backpack, swinging gently, was a small pair of brown hiking boots.
Women’s size six. He didn’t mention them. He didn’t have to. They swung with every step, like a pendulum counting down.
“Morning, Viv,” he said.
“Boone.”
“Big crowd.”
“They’re here for the donuts,” said Vivian.
We set off at nine sharp. Ida led with her stick, and Mortgage followed her. Boone walked behind Mortgage, sweeping his detector left and right.
Vivian walked behind Boone. I came last, carrying her clipboard, her thermos and the folding step stool with her initials on it.
Royce followed us on the ATV, at a distance he probably thought was respectful. It sounded like a lawnmower having opinions.
The first half mile ran along the east hay fields, where the ground was wet but firm. Vivian walked it exactly the way she had walked Lot 31: short steps, weight forward, never stop.
When Ida stopped to look at a fence post, Vivian kept moving. She took small steps in a tight circle beside the post, round and round, like a figure skater waiting for her music.
Ida watched her do three laps.
“What are you doing?”
“If I stop,” said Vivian, “the mud gets ideas.”
Ida thought about that. Then she nodded, as if it were the most reasonable thing she’d heard all spring.
Vivian pointed at the post with her pen. “Black locust,” she said, still circling. “Somebody set it before the war. It’ll outlast all of us.”
“Arthur’s father,” said Ida. “1946.”
“And the gate back there was rehung. Recently. The hinges are newer than the post.”
Ida stopped walking. She turned and looked at Vivian, circling in the mud with her clipboard.
“Arthur did that,” Ida said quietly. “The autumn before he died. He said the gate had been dragging for thirty years, and he wasn’t going to let it drag for thirty-one.”
Nobody said anything. Even Royce cut the engine on the ATV.
Then Ida said, “Well, come on,” and we kept walking. But I noticed she walked a little closer to Vivian after that.
Boone found horseshoe number twenty-four in the east corner. He held it up to Ida like a fisherman with a trout.
“Twenty-four,” he said.
“Put it with the others,” said Ida. “If I ever need a horse, I’m all set.”
He found twenty-five ten minutes later. He held that one up, too. He was undiscouraged in a way I have only seen in golden retrievers and Boone.
Behind us, faintly, I heard a cheer from the gate. Marcy had the binoculars on us.
Every time Boone raised a horseshoe, the office cheered. I don’t think they knew why. I think the donuts had made them generous.
The first crossing of Hollins Creek came at a mile and a quarter. Arthur had laid a log across it years ago, flattened on top with an adze. It was about a foot wide and slick with rain.
Boone walked straight through the creek beside it. The water came up past the tops of his boots, and he didn’t seem to notice.
Ida crossed the log with her stick, slowly and surely.
Then Vivian stepped onto the log.
I have mentioned the ship’s ladder in the firehouse and the flat roof. Those had been practice. Vivian crossed Arthur’s log the way some people cross a hotel lobby. Her heels were narrow, and the log was narrow, and for once, everything in the world was the right shape for her.
She stepped off the far end without a splash. On the other side, Boone stood in the creek up to his shins, holding his detector out of the water. He looked up at her with genuine delight.
“Well,” he said. “I’ll be.”
“Short steps,” said Vivian.
From the gate, a mile away, I heard the office cheer again. I don’t know how much Marcy could see. Enough.
The rain got serious after that. We walked the south pasture, where every step came up with a sound like someone opening a jar of pickles.
Vivian never slowed down. Boone found horseshoe twenty-six, and nobody cheered. We were too wet.
Royce drove alongside us for a while.
“That’s my six acres coming up,” he called to Ida over the engine. “Just so everybody knows.”
“It’s my six acres, Royce.”
“My granddaddy—”
“Your granddaddy also said the moon landing was filmed in Nebraska,” said Ida. Royce did not have an answer to that, so he revved the ATV and drove ahead.
The second crossing of Hollins Creek came at the start of the north line. There was no log this time. The creek was twelve feet wide, brown and running fast with six weeks of rain.
Boone looked at it. Then he looked at Vivian. The size six boots on his backpack swung slowly back and forth.
“Viv,” he said, gently. “No shame in it.”
“Caleb,” said Vivian. “Stool.”
I want it recorded that I understood immediately. I walked into Hollins Creek in my own sneakers, which I had already given up on. I set the folding step stool down in the middle of the current. I leaned on it hard until it settled into the gravel.
Vivian stepped down onto the stool, and then up onto the far bank. Two steps. Barely a splash.
Boone stared at the stool. He stared at Vivian. Then he started to laugh, a big helpless laugh that came all the way up from his boots.
“You brought a stool,” he said, “to a farm.”
“I bring it everywhere,” said Vivian. “For smoke detectors.”
The north line was where the fence had gone down years ago. It was a long, soft strip of old hay field, overgrown with brush at the far end. Royce’s ATV sat at the top of it with the engine idling. The rain ran down the brim of his hat.
“The pin’s somewhere up there,” Ida said, pointing with her stick at the brush. “Arthur said it was nine paces east of the old corner post. But the post is gone, so nine paces from what?”
Boone swept his detector over the ground. It beeped. He dug with his hands for a minute and came up with a rusted metal hinge.
“Not a horseshoe,” he said hopefully.
“Not a pin, either,” said Ida.
Vivian was walking the strip at her usual pace. She was nearly to the brush when the ground under her changed.
I saw it happen. Her right heel sank in, fast, much deeper than before.
And it stopped with a sound.
It wasn’t a squelch, or the sound of a cork. It was a clear, small, solid clink, like a spoon tapping a radiator.
Vivian stood very still.
For the first time all morning, she broke her third rule. She stopped moving.
“Boone,” she said, very calmly. “Bring your detector over here.”
Boone looked up from his hinge. Ida turned around. Up at the top of the field, Royce Danforth slowly took off his hat.
“And don’t anybody tell me it’s a horseshoe.”
Up next: Eye Level
Continue to Part 5 →