A Year on Ladybug Farm #1 (21 page)

“About the snake?” prompted Cici, when she said nothing further.

“No . . . I don’t think so.”

“The sheep?”

“Oh,” said Bridget, still looking a little unfocused. “The dog. That was it. The dog. How does he like his chicken livers?”

Farley looked at her with absolutely no expression. “Raw,” he answered.

Bridget blinked. “Oh,” she said. “Of course. I should have thought of that. I’ll get your money.”

 

 

As it turned out, the excitement was not over for the day. No sooner had Farley bounced down the drive in his truck than Deke’s cousin arrived with two other men, a pulley ladder, and a chain saw in a pickup with a magnetic sign on its door that read, Tree Cutting. Within the hour the air was filled with the sound of thundering chain saws, cracking limbs, and shouting men, all orchestrated to the background of manic barking and the drone of the lawn mower. They had to close all the windows even to be heard over the din, but fortunately the day remained so cool it was no hardship.

“It’s times like this,” Bridget said, chopping herbs for a pasta sauce, “that I really miss my library job.”

Cici was washing off the last of the overripe tomatoes they had been able to salvage from the ruins of the garden. “Somehow this is not what I pictured when I decided to move to the country either,” she agreed. “The guy said they have to trim back the poplar tree by the porch,” she added. “Otherwise the whole thing would come down when they felled the hickory tree.”

“I hate to see the hickory tree go. I was going to make a hickory nut cake.”

“It was already dead.”

She sighed. “I know. It’s just a shame.”

Lindsay opened the refrigerator and took out a bag of store-bought lettuce, which she began to shred for a salad. “At least Noah will have plenty of work cutting and stacking all that firewood.”

“Not to mention cutting back the wisteria and cleaning out the dairy barn.”

“You’re damn right,” said Lindsay darkly. “I’m not setting one foot back in there until all the creatures have been cleared out—and that includes dust mites.”

Cici chuckled and scooped a handful of chopped tomatoes into the pan Bridget had prepared. They sizzled softly and released a tangy fragrance as they struck the garlic-infused olive oil. “That should be fun,” she said. “Sanitizing a barn.”

Bridget used her knife to scrape the chopped herbs off the cutting board and into the pot. “What are you going to do about the holes in the wall?”

“Not a problem,” Cici said, “a couple of one-by-sixes and you’ll never know what happened.”

“Oh yes I will,” replied Lindsay morosely. “I’ll never forget it. What I’d like to know,” she added with a touch of weary indignation, “is why all the wildlife is picking on
me
. First the yellow jackets, then the snake . . . I hate wildlife. I don’t even like the dog.”

“Nobody likes the dog,” Cici pointed out.

To which Bridget replied defensively, “I do.” She poured a measure of red wine atop the tomato and herb mixture and set a pot of water on the back burner to boil. Then she said, “Maybe they’re trying to tell you something. I read a book one time about totems and animal medicine. Every animal has a different message.”

“Great,” said Lindsay. “Now I not only have to worry about being stalked by them, I have to figure out what they’re trying to say.”

“I don’t think bees officially qualify as animals,” Cici said, “so you’re off the hook there. Wait a minute.” She turned toward the window. “The noise has stopped. Do you think they’re finished?”

Bridget turned the heat down under the tomato mixture and all three of them went out onto the porch to survey the results of the afternoon’s work. For the longest time all they could do was stare.

Where once the sprawling hickory tree had framed the meadow, there was now only blue sky and rolling fenced pasture beyond. The newly clipped lawn was littered with leaves and branches and massive chunks of chain-sawed trunk, as far as the eye could see. The air was filled with the bitter smell of stripped hickory leaves and green bark.

Slowly, almost as one, they walked around the porch to the front of the house. The majestic poplar tree, whose shade had once stretched over the entire west side of the house and halfway across the lawn, had been shorn off at roof level. Bare stubs of branches were all that were left of what once had been as much a part of the house as the columned porch or the mansard roof. The porch was carpeted with its green leaves, and its broken branches lay like fallen bodies from the steps to the flower beds.

“Good God,” said Cici, when she could speak.

“It looks like a bomb went off,” Lindsay said, her voice subdued with horror.

“It will take weeks to get all this cleaned up.”

“I guess . . . nobody said anything about debris removal.”

Bridget’s hand was at her throat, her eyes stricken. “The birds. What will happen to the birds?”

At the bottom of the steps was Deke’s cousin, proudly coming toward them with the bill.

 

 

That evening they wandered with peculiar reluctance out onto the porch for their ritual glass of wine, uneasy in a place that no longer felt familiar to them. Cici had spent a long time sweeping the leaves off the porch, but the smell of them still hung heavy in the air. And they all knew what lay beyond the railing. It was like a graveyard.

For a time even their conversation was stilted. Nothing felt the same. They sat in their chairs, but did not rock, and even the wine tasted too much of green and broken things.

And suddenly Lindsay summed it up for them. “I feel exposed,” she said. “The tree was like—a shelter. Now”—she gestured—“the whole world is out there.”

Unwillingly, they turned their eyes toward the place the tree once had been. In the distance was a magnificent vista of the mountains they had never noticed before. They could see the rise and fall of their own drive almost to the highway, and the whole of the pasture. Had the poplar tree not been there, they surely would have noticed sooner that the sheep they did not realize they owned were grazing in a pasture that they did. Yet Lindsay was right. The tree, with its towering limbs and green canopy, had been a kind of barrier between themselves and all that lay beyond. Without it they felt uncomfortable, defenseless.

“The guy said it would come back bigger than ever next spring,” Cici offered. “You’re supposed to trim back poplars. They’re lightning rods, and during an ice storm the branches can go right through the roof.”

“I wonder how old it was,” Lindsay mused.

“Not as old as the hickory tree,” Cici pointed out.

“I know, but . . . I hardly even noticed the hickory tree. The poplar was like a friend.”

“Well, you know the old saying.” Cici sipped her wine, but the cheerful note she was trying for fell flat. “God never closes a door but that he opens a window. We got someone to do our yard work only hours before we need more yard work done than we ever thought we would.”

“What if he quits?”

“Then we’re screwed.”

“He doesn’t seem all that reliable.”

“Maybe we should pay him more.”

Lindsay glared at her. “Don’t even think it.”

Bridget said, “All that stuff you were telling him about how much people made in this county—how did you know that?”

Lindsay shrugged. “I made it up.” And at Bridget’s reproving glance she insisted indignantly, “When I started teaching I made twenty-four thousand dollars a year. The education of an entire generation—the future of this country—was entrusted to me, and I earned less than a sanitation worker. Now I’ve got some punk high school kid on a lawn mower holding me up for the same kind of money it took me four years of college and a teaching certification to earn? I don’t think so.”

Cici lifted her glass to her. “You go, girl.”

“Well, I feel sorry for him,” Bridget said. “No mother, an alcoholic father, and he’s so skinny.”

“Bridget, you can’t be responsible for every stray in the country. First the sheep, then the dog . . .”

“Besides,” Cici added, “do you really feel sorry enough for him to pay him ten dollars an hour?”

Bridget thought about that for only a moment. “No.”

They were silent for a while, sipping their wine. Then Bridget smiled a little, reminiscently. “Remember the first meal we had on this porch?”

“The day we moved in.” She chuckled. “Cici opened a bottle of wine with a power drill. I’d never been so tired in my life. Gosh, I can’t believe it’s been six months.”

“A lot of things have changed.”

“A lot of things haven’t,” Cici pointed out. “I thought we would have gotten a lot more done on the place by now.”

“We keep getting distracted,” Lindsay said. “What we need is a better list.”

“Six months to paint the porch.” Cici said with a short, incredulous shake of her head.

“And one bedroom,” added Lindsay, “and the whole living room. That was huge.”

“And to start restoring the garden walkway and build most of a rock wall,” Bridget pointed out, “and refinish the stairs and paint all the trim and repair the molding and the doorknobs and the roof and the siding and the fence. Besides, it’s a gorgeous porch.”

“And a fabulous bedroom,” added Cici. “Of course, we still have to refinish all the floors in the living room. And all the windows in the sunroom are rotted out. I think I can make a deal with one of the guys at the lumber store to buy some used ones cheap, but it’s going to take time to replace them all.”

“We should talk to someone about repairing the barn roof before winter.”

“I can do that,” Cici said. “All it will take is a piece of plywood.”

Lindsay gave her a reproachful look. “You don’t have to do
everything
, Cici.”

Cici shrugged. “I don’t mind.”

Bridget smiled. “Remember all the plans we had when we decided to buy this place?”

“You were going to bring back the Blackwell Farms jams and restore the vineyard,” Lindsay said. “Not to mention open a restaurant.”

“And you were going to open an art studio and bring in students from around the country.”

“And if it hadn’t been for one little rattlesnake . . .”

“Besides,” said Bridget, “it wasn’t exactly a restaurant I wanted to open. I just wanted to cook. And who knew there would be sheep to take care of?”

“I guess it’s all been a little bit more than any of us expected,” Cici said. “But still, it’s only been six months.”

“Seems like longer,” Lindsay sighed.

“Seems like only yesterday,” Bridget said.

The very faintest trace of a frown creased Bridget’s brow as she studied her wineglass. “Can I ask you both something? Seriously?”

They looked at her.

“If it hadn’t been for me,” Bridget said, “I mean, losing Jim and all, and being at loose ends the way I was . . . would you ever have done this?”

Lindsay laughed. “Are you kidding? Not in a million years. I wouldn’t even have thought about it!”

And Cici agreed. “How could we have done it without you, Bridge? It never would have crossed my mind.” Then she looked at her, a little puzzled. “Why do you ask?”

“Nothing.” Bridget’s smile seemed a little strained. “It’s silly. Just some stupid thing Kevin said.”

Lindsay said thoughtfully, “You know what it’s like? The end of a vacation. Everything was so much fun when we started out. Now it’s . . . well, a lot of responsibility.”

They nodded agreement, and no one had anything to say for a while.

Then Bridget said softy, “It’s so quiet out here.”

They listened for a moment, trying to decide what was missing. And then they knew. It was the sound of birdsong.

Lindsay shivered and slipped her arms into the sleeves of a cotton sweater she had tossed about her shoulders. “It’s cool tonight.”

“Summer’s almost over,” observed Cici.

“I hear hickory makes good firewood,” Lindsay said.

Cici gave a small, disbelieving shake of her head. “Firewood. Where did the time go? I can’t even start to think about everything we have to get done before winter.”

Bridget stood. “I’m cold, too. I think I’ll go inside.”

And then she stopped. “Oh, my.” Her tone was reverent. “Would you look at that sunset?”

Lindsay stood, too, and then Cici. “Wow,” she said softly. “I never noticed before.”

“Me, either.”

“I guess,” said Bridget reluctantly, after a moment, “the tree was in the way.”

They stood together, their faces painted with the pink glow of the fading sun, and watched the rich pastel colors streak across the sky until the day was done.

On the morning that Lindsay discovered she was fat, Bridget found a handful of canning jar labels tucked inside Emily Blackwell’s recipe book, and Cici discovered a bushel basket of persimmons on the front steps.

At first they had been deeply touched by the gifts from the gardens of their well-meaning neighbors. Soon after the disaster with the lawn mower, Sam brought over a large brown grocery sack filled with green beans—from his wife, he said, who had more than she could put up. They thanked him profusely, but assured him it wasn’t his fault their garden had been destroyed and that it wasn’t necessary to bring them produce.

But the next afternoon, Farley brought over a basket of tomatoes and three dozen bell peppers, and Maggie sent an additional dozen eggplants. Someone from church asked if they had any corn, and when Cici answered in the negative, transferred two bushels of fresh-picked corn from the back of his truck to the back of her SUV. Their ruined garden, they quickly came to realize, had become the excuse for every woman in the county who couldn’t face canning another tomato or pickling another cucumber to dispose of the excess bounty from their own gardens—and to feel good about herself while she did it.