The Bucolic Plague: How Two Manhattanites Became Gentlemen Farmers: An Unconventional Memoir (6 page)

I was beginning to debate whether the bed of the pickup truck or the shelf in the crypt would be a more comfortable place to pass the night when the key finally caught and the door swung open.

“It’s ours!” I shouted, stepping inside. My cry echoed through the bare rooms for a millisecond before it was joined by a shrieking, high-pitched alarm.

“What’s that?”
Brent shouted over the ear-shattering noise.

“It must be the burglar alarm.”

“What burglar alarm?”
Brent yelled.

“Exactly,”
I replied, searching the dark walls near the door for either the light switch or alarm panel. I found both, and flipped on the library light. The digital alarm control, however, wasn’t as simple to figure out.

“Looks like we need a code,”
I shouted.
“What’s the code?”

“How would I know?”
Brent shrugged.

“Didn’t they give you anything at the closing?”

Brent dug through his briefcase and handed me a two-inch-thick sheaf of official-looking papers. The alarm was deafening. I prayed it wasn’t hooked up to the local police precinct. What a fine impression that would make. “Those two new city boys—you know, the girly ones—couldn’t figure out how to break into their own house.”

A minute later and both Brent and I were on the floor with the hundred sheets of official closing documents fanned out in front of us. We had to find the damn code. The alarm continued its wail. Compounding our difficulty were the damn dead flies that covered the wood floors in a dark carpet of carcasses. Everywhere we stepped, or knelt, hundreds of exoskeletons crunched underneath us. If we weren’t so panicked about the alarm, it would’ve been nauseating.

“Check this one,”
Brent yelled, handing me a stapled packet of invoices and Beekman budget figures. I flipped through the pages, looking at the numbers associated with running the Beekman Mansion on a monthly basis. Holy shit. When figuring out how to afford the Beekman, we’d come up with guesstimates for heating, electric, maintenance, etc. But even quintupling the amounts on utility bills we pay on our Manhattan apartment didn’t come close to the numbers I was looking at:

G
ARDENER: $4,500/YR

P
OOL: $480/MO

C
ARETAKER: $24,000/YR

E
LECTRICITY: $850/MO

H
EATING OIL WINTER AVG: $1,200/MO

N
ATURAL GAS WINTER AVG: $900/MO

T
RASH PICKUP: $400/MO

The list went on for two pages. School taxes. Property taxes. Painter. I mentally began crossing off list items that I knew we’d never be able to afford, starting with “Gardener.” Then “Housekeeper.” Basically everything a boy from Wisconsin would be too embarrassed to have in his life anyway.

Finally I got to the line item I was looking for: “Security.” I scanned the address and phone number of the company listed below.

“Give me your cell phone,”
I shouted to Brent. He tossed it to me and I went back out onto the freezing porch to escape the noise. Shivering, I punched in the numbers.

“Hello, Northeastern Security,” the woman’s voice answered wearily on the other end of the phone. She sounded tired. Of what, though? I can’t imagine that the Schoharie County private security dispatch was generally swamped with emergency calls.

“Um, hello,” I began. “I, uh, I mean my partner and I, um, just bought a house here in Sharon Springs, and well, we just arrived for the first time and weren’t aware that the alarm had been set.”

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Kilmer. Well, it’s two names, actually—Kilmer-Purcell. But it won’t be in your system. We haven’t switched over the billing information.”

“So the previous resident would be ‘Purcell’?” the unalarmed alarm operator asked.

“No, that’s
my
name. Kilmer-hyphen-Purcell. My first name is Josh.” I didn’t know why I felt compelled to be on a first-name basis with the alarm dispatcher. But people were friendly up here, I assumed. Maybe some neighborly familiarity would speed things along some.

“What’s the address?” she asked.

“It’s…uh, hang on a sec…I don’t really know…” I realized that I was sounding less and less like the homeowner and more and more like a very ill-prepared cat burglar. “We just pulled in, and the key was under the mat…”

“But it’s your house?”

“Yes, but the name on the account won’t be mine.” I couldn’t help but think that I was making things worse for myself. “Look, I don’t know the address, but it’s the Beekman Mansion.”

“Where are the Beekmans?” she asked, thoroughly confused.

“No, no, the Beekmans are dead.”

“Excuse me?”

I quickly realized that this call was going from petty larceny to twenty-to-life.

“Brent!”
I shouted through the porch window.
“What’s the address here?”
He couldn’t hear me through the glass and over the piercing alarm.
“Brent!”
I yelled louder.
“BRENT!”

“Who’s ‘Brent’?” the alarm woman asked suspiciously.

“He’s my partner,” I answered, immediately realizing that the woman now thought we were a team of cold-blooded killers on a cross-country breaking-and-entering spree.

The alarm’s wailing was drilling into my head, and I couldn’t stop shivering in the chilly early evening air. My voice was beginning to quiver along with my shivering, and I was sure that the dispatcher was simply trying to keep me on the line while she summoned up the local sheriff. I figured I had nothing left to lose…

“Look, we just bought this house together but no one gave us the alarm code—or at least we can’t find it anywhere—and I’m standing on the porch freezing my ass off hoping that you’ll turn the alarm off so that my boyfriend and I can walk around our house for the first time ever.”

“Brent is your boyfriend?” she asked. Sweet Jesus. Now I was going to have to explain homosexuality to this woman.

“Yes, Brent is my partner. My boyfriend.”

The other end of the line was silent, except for some rustling of papers. Either she was relaying this new incriminating information to the sheriff or she was busy praying for our souls. I looked at Brent through the window, still frantically looking through the papers for the code.

Suddenly the alarm was silenced.

It echoed in my ears for a few seconds longer before it was completely replaced by the quiet of the country air. I could hear some early crickets or frogs peeping off in the distance.

“Okay, Josh,” the woman cheerily returned to the line. “We’ve got that taken care of for you. But do me a favor, hon, and call me back in the morning to give us all the new information on the account. You’ll do that?”

I was confused but relieved.

“Um, yeah. Sure. I’ll call first thing. Promise.”

“Just ask for Linda. You boys have fun in your new home now,” she said sweetly. “Good night.”

“Good night, Linda…and thank you,” I said right before she hung up. I didn’t know what I’d said, but somehow I’d convinced her that we weren’t deranged, murdering thieves.

I wasn’t used to being trusted. Living in the city for so many years had trained me to doubt everyone and bristle with defensiveness at the slightest hint of altercation. Also, after working in advertising, I found myself entering every conversation as if I needed to persuade the other person to either think or act as I wanted him or her to. I spent the vast majority of every day trying to come up with ideas that would convince people to spend money on the things I wanted them to. I had to sell them into buying what I was offering.

But Linda just took my word that I was the new owner of this mansion. I told her the truth, and she bought it. Was everyone like this around here?

This was going to take some getting used to.

Chapter Five

HERE COMES THE BRIDE!

We’re woken up by what sounds like someone performing Wagner’s wedding march on Model T car horns.

Brent and I had been told that we’d inherit several chickens, rabbits, and one barn cat with the farm. For the time being, we understood, they were still being taken care of by a neighbor.

“Was that a rooster?” I asked Brent.

“You’re the one who grew up in Wisconsin,” he said sleepily.

“I think it was.” But rather than the old standard
COCK-A-DOODLE-DO
, the song stuck in this rooster’s head was the classic bridal entrance theme. A few seconds later, he was joined by another rooster greeting the day with “It Had to Be You.” They were quickly backed up with choruses of “Papa Don’t Preach” and “The Little Drummer Boy.” Our farm sounded like a bad cover band.

We jumped out of our temporary sleeping bags gleefully, if not still a little groggy. Having moved into a grand total of eighteen different houses and apartments during the first half of my life, there was still no thrill like waking up the first morning in a new one. I silently hoped that this would be a home I’d wake up in for the rest of my life. While there would always be bigger castles, and more temperate locations, and more expensive addresses, I couldn’t imagine a single place more serendipitously perfect for Brent and me to grow old in. The sturdy 205-year-old farmhouse, standing high on a windy hill, represented the sense of permanence and stoicism I’ve always admired in people. I was waking up in the same exact spot as at least ten generations of people who came before me. In fact, the first morning someone woke up in this spot, America was still composed of only seventeen states, and had only purchased the Louisiana Territory a month earlier. Napoléon was belching his way across France. President Thomas Jefferson was having sex with a slave at Monticello. In fact, someone might have been having sex with a slave right here where I lay.

As we’d learned from our online research, the Beekman Mansion was home to many slaves, and decades later was also a stop on the Underground Railroad to freedom. As a writer, I was thrilled to discover that a young James Fenimore Cooper probably dropped by to play with the Honorable William Beekman’s children. We’d also read that a century or so later, during the mansion’s descent into abandonment, the Beekman Mansion was a popular squatting place for transients.

Slaves, freed slaves, senators, judges, novelists, and hobos had all passed through the room I’d just woken up in. Though Brent and I had had doubts about whether it made sense for us to buy the Beekman, at least its history proved that we didn’t make any
less
sense than someone else.

Since we’d yet to discover any thermostats, the house was extremely chilly. We walked around the house in our underwear with our sleeping bags wrapped tightly around us, trailing the long ends behind us like the lucky kings we felt we were. When we reached the kitchen we discovered that someone—probably the previous caretaker whom we could no longer afford—had arranged all the makings for a fire in the kitchen fireplace.

Even though I’d never officially had one to begin with, I realized that I was going to really miss having a caretaker.

Brent found matches next to the hearth, and in seconds a fire was blazing away, with us huddled in front of it.

“Should we get dressed and drive into town for breakfast?” I asked.

“Don’t you want to walk around the property first?” he replied.

“I do, but I’m starving,” I answered, realizing that between the train ride, the search for a truck, returning to the station to pick up Brent, and the alarm fiasco, I hadn’t eaten a bite since yesterday’s breakfast.

“Maybe there’s something in the pantry,” Brent said.

We rooted around the kitchen, but came up with nothing but a box of Lipton Tea tucked on a back shelf and two well-used, dented saucepans.

“We can go to the Stewart’s for a doughnut,” Brent offered, referring to the lone convenience store we’d seen on our way in.

“I want something hot, though,” I said. “But I can wait. I’ll be okay.”

Brent knew this wasn’t true. He’d been the victim of my hypoglycemia many times. My protestations were merely hallucinatory—like Julia Roberts in
Steel Magnolias
politely declining orange juice while descending into a diabetic coma.

“I have an idea. Come with me,” he said.