Categories
Uncategorized

The Pond

Now that he is no longer an aspiring academic, Michael Darling, forty-three, tall and good-looking, is letting his curly brown hair grow long for the first time in twenty years. And Michael’s cute and curvaceous wife Daisy, forty-one, hasn’t had her shoulder-length reddish brown hair cut since she gave birth a year and a month ago to their daughter Jenna.

For the last year and a half the Darlings have lived in their big modern house on three acres adjacent to Ziggurat Farm, two miles inland from the northern California coastal burg of Mercy, and they cannot imagine wanting to live anywhere else.

The three Ziggurat Farm kids and three kids from Mercy are homeschooling on the farm, and Michael, an ornithologist and wildlife biologist, and his sister Caroline, a botanist, are the homeschoolers’ science teachers.

*

In mid-April, on a cool cloudy Thursday morning, the six homeschoolers gather in the living room of the Ziggurat Farm farmhouse to await Michael and Caroline, a field trip in the offing. The three farm kids are Vivienne, Henri, and Arturo, the kids from town Irenia, Larry, and Alma.

Larry is thirteen and an only child. He and his parents, his father a physicist, his mother a psychotherapist, came to Mercy four years ago, their move from Berkeley precipitated by Larry’s poor health and his being a target of bullies at the public schools he attended. Skinny and extremely nearsighted, Larry was diagnosed with an eating disorder (he didn’t eat much) and depression (he had no friends and was reluctant to go outside), conditions his parents hoped would disappear with the move to Mercy.

However, public school in Mercy provided no respite for Larry from bullying and teasing, and when he began homeschooling at Ziggurat Farm eight months ago, Larry was still painfully thin, had a chronic cough, spoke in a nasal falsetto, fidgeted constantly, and was afraid to make eye contact with his teachers, schoolmates, and his parents.

This morning when Larry’s father Arthur brought Larry to Ziggurat Farm for the day, Larry gave his father a hug and a kiss, jumped out of the car, and ran to join Henri and Vivienne kicking the soccer ball around on the playing field near the barn. Arthur sat in the car watching his son and weeping grateful tears because Larry has grown six inches in the last eight months, gained fifteen pounds, his cough is gone, his voice has dropped an octave, he no longer fidgets, and he is happy all the time now.

Alma is twelve, also an only child, born in Portland, Oregon. When she was six-years-old and just starting First Grade with dear friends she had been in preschool and kindergarten with, her parents, on the spur of the moment, bought the only optometry practice in Mercy, and a few weeks later Alma found herself in an overcrowded school with kids she didn’t know and a First Grade teacher insensitive to how traumatized Alma was by being torn away from her beloved friends and all that was familiar to her.

A year after moving to Mercy, Alma was chronically depressed and diagnosed with ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder). She was given drugs to address her inability to concentrate at school, and drugs for her depression. Chubby and friendless, she was held back a year in Third Grade and grouped with kids with learning disabilities. Her parents were counseled that Alma was probably on the autism spectrum and might never be able to function on her own in the world.

After eight months of homeschooling with her five comrades and a delightful cast of teachers, Alma no longer takes drugs, has no trouble concentrating, reads voraciously, loves to sing and draw, and is the star of the sewing class taught by Irenia’s mother Maria. For her twelfth birthday, Alma asked for a sewing machine because she loves designing and making clothes for herself and others, and she and Vivienne are launching a line of clothing to sell on the Ziggurat Farm web site called Shirts & Skirts.

Irenia is fourteen, tall and beautiful, a superb athlete and a marvelous singer. Her parents are Russian and she speaks English with a slight Russian accent. She spends four nights a week at the farm and self-identifies as one of the farm kids. She makes her bed on a mattress on the floor in Vivienne’s bedroom, does more than her share of chores, and is learning to cook from Philip, Vivienne and Arturo’s father, a cookbook writer who used to be a professional chef. Irenia’s favorite subjects are music, gardening, and writing, though she recently started taking Jazz dance at the Mercy Rec Center with Delilah, the main homeschool teacher, and is now mad for dancing.

Arturo is thirteen and greatly resembles his French Italian father Philip. Somewhat vain of his good looks, Arturo wants to be an actor. He plays the guitar and sings beautifully and enjoys all the homeschool courses, but he especially loves reading plays, memorizing lines, and acting. He is the first of the farm kids to express a desire to go to college and live somewhere other than Mercy, either New York or London.

In response to her brother saying he plans to leave Mercy to pursue an acting career, Vivienne, eleven, who resembles her lovely olive-skinned mother Lisa, declared she never wants to leave the farm. She aspires to write books and plays, is a zealous gardener, and loves going on field trips with Michael and Caroline, especially when those field trips take them to the ocean.

Henri, twelve, son of Marcel, the farm vintner, and Andrea, the farm manager, lives in a cottage with his parents a stone’s throw from the farmhouse and avers that he, too, wants to live on the farm for the rest of his life, though until the recent return of the very British Richardsons he imagined living with them in England and exploring the British theatre world, never mind about college. Now that the Richardsons are building a house on land adjoining the farm, Henri can think of no reason to be anywhere but here.

*

The spectacular terraced vegetable and flower garden at the heart of Ziggurat Farm begins on level ground and covers an acre as it climbs eastward up a gently sloping hill to the edge of a vast redwood forest last clear-cut a hundred and thirty years ago. Within that forest there have been a few more recent clear-cuts, one of which occurred on the twelve-acre parcel just east of the farm, the parcel the Richardsons are building their house on.

Michael and his sister Caroline, a pretty gal with short brown hair and nearly as tall as Michael, lead the six homeschoolers and a couple farm dogs up the wide path skirting the north side of the deer-fenced acre of vegetables and flowers. Beyond the garden, they ascend through a stand of enormous redwoods and transect a quarter-acre meadow to arrive at the site of today’s field trip—a small patch of level ground at the base of a steep slope, the Richardsons’ land beginning at the top of this slope—sounds of construction faint in the distance.

Standing on the level patch of ground—roughly fifty-feet-long and thirty-feet-wide—Caroline asks, “What do we make of this place?”

“By place,” says Larry, looking around, “do you mean this level area with these nine somewhat scraggly trees?”

“Yes,” says Caroline, smiling at Larry. “Tell us what you mean by scraggly?”

“Well,” says Larry, clearing his throat in imitation of his father preparing to give a lecture, “I mean these trees are much younger than the trees growing in the forest we came through to get here, and are apparently of a different age and less robust than the trees growing uphill from us that you told us are approximately thirty-years-old. I doubt very much these little trees are thirty-years-old, and the preponderance of yellow needles suggests an iron deficiency.”

“None of these nine trees is a redwood,” says Henri, frowning. “Seven pines and two hemlocks.”

“What does that suggest to you?” asks Michael, marveling at how bright and knowledgeable these kids are compared to most of the thousands of undergrads he taught for twenty years.

“Well since most redwoods come up from the roots of other redwoods and not from seeds,” says Henri, loving these kinds of inquiries, “maybe there’s something in the soil disallowing redwood roots. A nutrient deficiency as Larry suggests or some sort of barrier to their roots.”

“The ground here is so level,” says Alma, looking around. “If you took away these trees it would be perfect for croquet.”

“Perfectly level,” says Larry, standing up from placing a little level on the ground. “Bubble right in the middle.”

“Why do you think this patch of earth is so level?” asks Michael, who doesn’t know the answer. “Here on an otherwise sloping hill bringing us to the bottom of this steep incline?”

“How old are these nine trees?” asks Vivienne, looking at Caroline. “Maybe that will give us a clue.”

“They’re all between twelve and fifteen-years-old,” says Caroline, who also doesn’t know why this stretch of ground is so level.

“I suppose,” says Arturo, pursing his lips in his thoughtful way, “someone may have cleared this area for a home site fifteen years ago and then abandoned it, though there are no obvious signs of the necessary equipment having come here.”

“Or something else may have happened fifteen years ago to flatten it and clear away the trees,” says Vivienne, frowning. “Though I can’t imagine what.”

“No obvious signs of a fire,” says Arturo, shaking head. “No burn marks on any of the bigger trees nearby. A mystery, indeed.”

“So thirty years ago,” says Henri, looking up the steep slope, “they clear-cut the twelve acres that now belong to Joseph and Connie, as well as all the trees down to the bottom of this steep slope. Had this level ground we’re standing on also been clear-cut thirty years ago, some of these trees would be closer to thirty-years-old than fifteen-years-old. Yet it seems probable that whatever happened here fifteen years ago was related to the clear-cutting of this slope thirty years ago.”

“What might have happened here?” asks Michael, looking up the slope and seeing a few small gullies amidst the resurgent forest.

“Mudslides?” says Henri, noticing those same gullies.

“Yes,” says Irenia, who is kneeling on the ground apart from the others. “I know what was here before the mud and stones came down.”

“What was here?” asks Caroline, gazing curiously at Irenia.

Irenia places the palms of her hands on the ground and closes her eyes.

“She’s done this before,” says Vivienne, whispering to Caroline.

“There was a pond here,” says Irenia, seeing the place as it once was. “In a basin of stone. After they cut all the trees on the steep slope, heavy rain washed down dirt and rocks and branches and leaves that filled the pond.” She opens her eyes and looks around. “There was still some water here every year for several years until finally the pond was full of soil and the ground dried out and these trees began to grow.” She stands up. “This is what I saw.”

“So there’s a basin of stone here?” says Henri, excitedly. “We should dig this out and make a pond here again.”

“If her theory is correct,” says Michael, who sees no obvious flaw in Irenia’s reasoning.

“I am correct,” says Irenia, confidently. “There was a pond here. That’s why the ground is so level. Because water always seeks to be level.”

“Be worth a bit of excavation,” says Henri, looking at Michael. “Don’t you think?”

“I think so,” says Michael, grinning at Caroline. “In any case, there’s always lots to be learned from digging in the ground.”

*

After returning to the farmhouse for a mid-morning snack, tools are gathered in wheelbarrows, the Ziggurat Farm adults join the expedition, and the enlarged gang returns to the field trip site where the kids begin excavating what might have once been the edge of the pond.

A foot or so below the surface, solid granite is struck, the stone grayish white.

“So are you saying this entire level area was once a pond?” asks Marcel, his French accent always stronger when he gets excited. “Like a big swimming pool.”

Possibly was a pond,” says Michael, unwilling to believe Irenia saw what was previously here.

“We should bring it back,” says Marcel, unaware that Henri suggested the same thing. “We’ll cut up these little trees for firewood and hire someone with a backhoe to dig out most of the dirt and we’ll dig the rest by hand.”

“Huge job,” says Michael, giving Marcel an incredulous look. “And we’re only guessing there was a pond here.”

“I wasn’t guessing,” says Irenia, looking up from her shoveling. “I saw the pond. It was beautiful. There were lily pads and frogs and tall reeds growing in the shallows, and it was very deep over there.” She points to the south.

“Think of all the birds that would come here,” says Daisy, sitting in a lawn chair nursing Jenna and smiling at her husband.

“We could stock it with fish,” says Arturo, looking up from his zealous digging. “And Joseph could teach us to fly fish.”

“That settles it,” says Philip, clapping Marcel on the back. “Who do we know with a backhoe?”

*

Two mornings later, a crystal clear Saturday, the elderly couple Celia and Nathan and their beautiful housemate Delilah make their way up the hill from the farmhouse to join the homeschoolers and their parents and the Darlings and the Richardsons who have all come to watch the renowned backhoe artist Gabriel Fernandez remove the soil from what everyone hopes was once a pond.

Arriving at the pond site, Nathan says, “So this is what happened to the spring. No wonder your creek dried up.”

“Our creek?” says Andrea, her German accent barely noticeable. “Where was it?”

“The creek bed on the south side of your garden,” says Nathan, walking to the south end of the level area. “You still get a little flow in the winter, but the creek used to run year round because this pool overflowed and fed the creek.”

“You saw this pond?” asks Michael, excitedly.

“We did,” says Nathan, taking Celia’s hand. “We came here in the fall every year for three years after we got married. Fifty-five years ago. We’d pick apples from your orchard and then come up here for a picnic and a swim. I first saw the pond fifty-six years ago when I came to prune your apple trees for the first time. The trees were about ten-years-old. It was in December. Jose Alvaro brought me up here. He was the farm manager way back when before the Rostens sold the place to the crazy rich people who put in the vineyard that is no more. They didn’t want me on their land because I was one of the more vocal opponents of their clear-cutting, so we stopped coming here until Philip and Lisa and Andrea and Marcel bought the place.”

“It was such a beautiful pond,” says Celia, who is eighty. “There were cattails at that end.” She points to the north. “And a deep pool at the other end where it overflowed.” She gives Nathan the sweetest smile. “The water was so clear.”

“Spring-fed,” says Nathan, smiling as he remembers skinny-dipping with Celia. “Mallards here every time we came.”

“Was it as big as this whole area?” asks Marcel, thrilled at the prospect of having a pond.

“Pretty much,” says Nathan, nodding.

“We’ve determined this level area is fifty-two-feet-long north to south,” says Larry, referring to his notes. “And roughly thirty-four-feet-wide east to west.”

“Seems right to me,” says Nathan, grinning at Larry. “If memory serves.”

At which moment the rumbling of powerful engines presages the coming of Gabriel Fernandez and his big rainbow-colored tractor outfitted with backhoe and front loader, and Rodrigo Fernandez, Gabriel’s uncle, driving a smaller tractor with a front loader. Gabriel is in his early thirties, handsome and muscular and gregarious, known locally as the backhoe magician. Rodrigo is in his sixties, heavyset and soft-spoken. They park their machines on the edge of the site, turn off their engines, and Gabriel jumps down to find out what’s going on.

“Buenos dias,” says Gabriel, addressing the assembly. “Qué pasa?”

“Good to see you, Gabriel,” says Marcel, shaking Gabriel’s hand. “There was a pond here that got filled in after the forest up there was clear-cut and we want to get the soil out and bring the pond back to life.”

“Bueno,” says Gabriel, nodding as he surveys the site. “Can you cut down these little trees before we start digging?”

“Yes,” says Philip, getting a chainsaw out of one of the wheelbarrows. “Whenever you say.”

“Gracias Philip,” says Gabrielle, continuing to assess the site. “So… does anyone know what the pond looked like? Where it was shallow, where it was deep?”

“Nathan and Celia know,” says Lisa, gesturing to them.

“Ah Nathan,” says Gabrielle, going to shake Nathan’s hand. “Hola Celia.”

“Hola Gabriel,” she says, having known him since the minute he was born because she assisted the doctor who delivered him.

Now Gabriel gives Delilah a loving smile and says, “Maestra.”

“Hola Gabriel,” she says, blushing at his name for her and finding him exceedingly attractive.

“So tell me about this pond,” says Gabriel, returning his attention to Nathan and Celia.

They describe what they remember, Gabriel listens carefully, and when they finish, Gabriel asks, “Where do you want us to put the soil? There will be lots.”

“Well we don’t want to block the outflow,” says Nathan, looking at Andrea and Marcel to make sure they’re okay with him helping in the decision-making. “And we don’t want to crowd the pond with piles of dirt, so… to the north on the open slope I think.”

Rodrigo climbs down from his tractor and walks north with Gabriel and Marcel and Andrea and Nathan until they come to a large open area on the sloping hill a hundred feet north of the site.

“Aqui,” says Rodrigo, nodding. “Es bueno.”

“Yes,” says Marcel, nodding. “Perfecto.”

“Okay then,” says Gabriel, returning to his backhoe. “Three days. We don’t work on Sunday, so we finish Tuesday. Three thousand dollars a day for me, my uncle, and our beautiful machines. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” says Andrea, who handles the farm’s finances.

“Bueno,” says Gabriel, shaking Andrea’s hand. “I will begin at the deep end while you cut down those trees so Rodrigo can get in there and take away whatever I dig up.”

Now Gabriel dons his sound-blocking earphones, mounts his tractor, starts the engine, and drives slowly to a starting point at the south end of what once upon a time was a pond.

*

At noon, great progress made, many of the spectators gone home, Gabriel and Rodrigo drive their tractors down to the farmhouse to refuel and have lunch before resuming the excavation. The six homeschoolers and Marcel and Philip and Michael and Caroline lunch with Gabriel and Rodrigo at the picnic tables under the oak tree near the farmhouse, the delicious lunch provided by Andrea and Lisa.

At an opportune moment, Vivienne asks Gabriel, “We were wondering why you called Delilah maestra. Do you take piano lessons from her?”

“No,” says Gabriel, smiling at the thought of Delilah. “I play guitar. I call her maestra because she is my healer.”

“How did she heal you?” asks Alma, who also feels she’s been healed by having Delilah as a teacher and friend.

“It’s a long story,” says Gabriel, looking at Philip and Marcel. “Con permiso.”  

“Por favor,” says Marcel, nodding.

“My father who was Rodrigo’s older brother died when I was fifteen,” says Gabriel, looking at each of the homeschoolers. “My mother was very sick and couldn’t work. Since we needed money and I was the oldest of the four kids, I quit school and went to work for a landscaping company. When I was eighteen, my mother was well enough to go back to work and I joined the Army because they paid me a big bonus for joining and my family needed that money. A couple weeks later I was in North Carolina for basic training and I told them I had some experience with heavy equipment because I drove a big truck and a tractor when I was landscaping, so they trained me to operate heavy equipment, bulldozers and backhoes, and four months later I was sent to Afghanistan.”

“Why did they send you to Afghanistan?” asks Irenia, who finds geopolitics baffling.

“We’d been fighting a war there for many years,” says Gabriel, nodding as he remembers. “They told us it was to protect democracy, but I don’t think so.”

“Why don’t you think so?” asks Henri, frowning.

“Because they don’t have a democracy in Afghanistan,” says Gabriel, shaking his head. “But I can’t talk about that because I don’t know enough. All I wanted to do was survive, and somehow I did, though there were many days when I didn’t think I would. We were in some terrible battles. I was driving a bulldozer and doing backhoe work, but the fighting came to me, you know, so… I saw many terrible things and some of my friends were wounded and some were killed. And when I had served my three years and expected to come home, they extended me for another six months. I couldn’t believe it. I went to my commanding officer and said I signed up for three years. Why wasn’t I going home? He said there was a clause in my contract allowing them to extend me in emergencies and they were short on heavy equipment operators. After that I woke up every day feeling sure I was going to die. Then I stopped sleeping because when I fell asleep I had nightmares. Without sleep I couldn’t concentrate and I started making mistakes in my work. One day my bulldozer hit one of our jeeps. I thought it was twenty feet away, but I hit it. Nobody was hurt, but the jeep was destroyed. So they had me evaluated by a psychologist and he said I was suffering from PTSD and ordered me sent home. A month later I was back in Mercy.”

“What is PTSD?” asks Irenia, aching in sympathy with him.

“Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It means even though the trauma is over, my body and my brain still thought I was in Afghanistan, still in the Army, still fearing for my life every minute.”

“So what did you do?” asks Arturo, horrified by what befell Gabriel.

“I hid in my mother’s house for three months. I was afraid to go out and kept thinking I was having a heart attack. So Rodrigo drove me to the VA hospital in Oakland and I stayed there for three weeks and they gave me some treatments and put me on medicine for anxiety and I came home. But I was still afraid to go out and couldn’t sleep so I was tired all the time and the drugs made me numb and I started to think maybe I didn’t want to keep living. And then one day my good friend Ricardo, a fantastic musician, he can play anything, he gave me a guitar and gave me lessons every day and I started to feel better. Playing guitar calmed me down and gave me something to focus on. So I decided to take less of the anxiety medicine so I wouldn’t feel so numb, and I started to feel even better, but then the nightmares came back and I began to feel hopeless again.”

“Did you go back to taking more anxiety medicine?” asks Alma, who used to take drugs for her ADD and depression and hated how the drugs made her feel.

“I was going to,” says Gabriel, smiling at Alma, “but right before I did, Ricardo said he wanted to take me to a concert in town at the art gallery, a piano concert. I said I was afraid to go. I could barely go out of the house, barely walk around the block without freaking out. How could I go to a concert and be with all those people? He said he would stay beside me and never leave me alone. His wife Lisa would be with us and they would take care of me. He begged me to go with him. He said he knew it would help me. So I said okay and they took me to the gallery, and I started to freak out. I said, ‘Ricardo take me home,’ and he said, ‘Just one more minute, Gabriel. Please.’ And then Delilah, your teacher, she was only fifteen, she came out and sat down at the grand piano and played a nocturne she composed, and I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Her music was more beautiful to me than anything I have ever known in my life. I closed my eyes and her music came into me, into my body and into my brain, and I could feel my fear leaving me. There was no room for the fear with her music in me, no room for my sorrow and my guilt for what I did in the war. There was only her music, and her music was love. And it healed me. Not all the way, but enough so I knew I would be well again one day. That is why I call her maestra, because she is the master of my healing.”

“Did you ever hear her play again?” asks Vivienne, her eyes full of tears.

“Oh yes, many times,” says Gabriel, his eyes full of tears, too. “Ricardo’s wife Lisa is good friends with Delilah, so we got to hear her play at the Richardsons many times, and seven more times at the gallery. And every time I hear her play, she heals me more.”

fin

The Magician   

Categories
Uncategorized

The Brits Return

For their first breakfast since getting back from England to the northern California coastal town of Mercy after a two-year absence, Constance and Joseph Richardson dine in the Ziggurat Farm farmhouse with all the farm folks joining them for pancakes and raspberries.

Quintessential Brits, Constance is a short plump pretty redhead and a hugely successful author of twenty-seven murder mysteries, her pen name Margaret Orland, Joseph a big strong gray-haired painter of landscapes and portraits. Having spent the night at the farm in their enormous Mercedes van, a luxury suite on wheels, Constance and Joseph are having a delightful time bringing everyone up to date on their immediate past and their plans for the future.

“There we were in our lovely house in Devon,” says Joseph in his actorly way, “January especially dreary this year, and as my first cup of coffee, not nearly so good as yours, Philip, brought a modicum of clarity to my clouded senses, it dawned on me that out of obeisance to a way of thinking we’d fostered for thirty years, we had enslaved ourselves to a lie.”

“A misconception,” Constance clarifies. “Un idée fixe.”

 “This idea, this obsessive misconception, was this. By now in the arc of our lives we would be old and decrepit. Yet quite the opposite is true. Indeed, I am only seventy-one, Connie still a year shy of seventy, and we are both wonderfully fit and healthy. Nor were we the cause of our twice-daily walks being so brief and in apparent slow motion. It was our short-legged Dachshunds Aristotle and Venus who were responsible for the slow down, and we’d chosen them instead of larger dogs because we’d imagined ourselves to be entering our dotage.”

“And it dawned on me,” says Constance, not to be outdone by Joseph when it comes to dramatics, “that I was not done writing as I, for some bizarre reason, imagined I would be by now, and I was thunderstruck by a stirring vision of my next book about a retired—ha!—detective and his pastry chef wife set in a fictitious version of Mercy, which meant…”

“We might come back here for a time,” says Joseph quietly.

Silence falls, the collective breath held.

Vivienne, who is eleven, ventures, “For how long will you be staying?”

Joseph and Constance exchange long looks

“Some years,” says Constance smiling at Vivienne. “So goes our current thinking.”

“Hurray!” shouts Henri, who is twelve and great pals with Joseph. “My dream come true.”

“Will you rent or buy?” asks Andrea, Henri’s mother and by far the most pragmatic member of the farm collective.

“Dear Andrea,” says Joseph, who has made several paintings of Andrea in her magnificent terraced vegetable garden, “in order to do our story justice we must beg your indulgence for a few moments so we may properly tell the tale.”

“Take as many moments as you wish,” says Philip, head chef of the collective. “We hang on your every word.”

“Thank you, Philip,” says Joseph, clearing his throat. “So there we were in Devon dreaming of Mercy and being with all of you again and getting to know the new members of the consortium we’d heard so much about in Henri’s letters, and we took ourselves to our computers to search for a house to rent hereabouts.”

“As will happen,” says Constance, taking up the narrative, “when one ventures into cyber space, rental listings comingle with houses for sale, and both of us, quite unknowing of the other’s progress, came upon the same property, twelve acres not far inland from town with a driveway cut through the woods from highway to home site, a good well dug, the large foundation poured, and then… did the previous owners run out of money? The listing did not say.”

“The price was good,” Joseph goes on, winking at Henri, “the location ideal, and Connie and I have always wanted to build our own house at least once in our lives.”

“Ere long the land was ours,” says Constance, her eyes wide with excitement. “We hired a clever architect to concretize our vision, and a month ago we called those marvelous carpenter artisans who built your cottage and so gorgeously remade this farmhouse, and now…”

“A week from Monday,” says Joseph, raising his arms to the heavens, “the Ramirez brothers and their crew of crack carpenters will begin work on the house of our dreams, a large bonus awaiting them for swift completion.”

“Where is your land?” asks Michael, he and his wife Daisy and their baby Jenna the newest members of the Ziggurat Farm collective.

Joseph and Constance exchange glances again

“As your land, Michael,” proclaims Joseph, “is contiguous with the farm to the south, our land is contiguous to the east.

“Mon dieu,” says Marcel, Henri’s handsome French father. “Those twelve acres? We wondered who bought them.”

“We’ve just completed a bird and botanical survey of your land,” says Michael, an ornithologist. “My sister Caroline and I and the homeschoolers. We’ve convened on your foundation several times in the last few weeks. Spectacular site.”

“Good God,” says Arturo, who is thirteen and from age six to eleven modeled his way of speaking in large part on Joseph’s. “You mean to tell us we’ll be neighbors?”

“Just up the hill past the vegetable garden,” says Joseph, pointing in that direction.

“It’s a miracle,” says Henri, leaping up from the table and dancing around the living room with Vivienne and Arturo. “We’ll see you every day.”

“We’ll have art lessons with you again,” says Vivienne, twirling around. “And marvelous tea parties with Connie. I must call Irenia and tell her.”

“You’ll dine with us, of course,” says Philip, bowing to Constance. “As often as you like.”

“Which, to be quite honest,” says Constance, giving Philip a blushing smile, “was a large motivating factor in our decision to return, your meals and Celia’s and, of course, our weekly pilgrimage to Ocelot.”

“What about dogs?” asks Lisa, who knows Constance and Joseph always have dogs. “Did you bring your Dachshunds with you?”

“No, we gave the little sweeties to an old friend in Devon who coveted them,” says Joseph, glad to be free of the waddlers. “We intend to find two larger mutts to abide with us here and lead us on many a merry chase.”

“We’re getting two new dogs, too,” says Vivienne, returning to the table. “Jung and Goliath died, you know, and Nathan and Celia’s neighbors have an enormous Black Lab who just had seven puppies with a variety of fathers and we’ve reserved two of those.”

“We shall hope to pick two more of the seven for ours,” says Joseph, overjoyed to be back among people he loves so dearly.

*

After breakfast, a light rain falling, Joseph and Constance drive their van into town to spend some time with Delilah and Nathan and Celia, their closest friends in Mercy. Nathan is eighty-six, Celia is eighty, and Delilah, Nathan and Celia’s house mate for the last thirteen years, is twenty-six.

Nathan and Celia and Delilah were in the farmhouse yesterday afternoon when Constance and Joseph arrived during the homeschool drama and music performances, but they did not learn of Joseph and Constance coming to live in Mercy again until today, and they are thrilled by the news.

Delilah painted with Joseph for ten of the eleven years the Richardsons previously resided in Mercy, studied French and mythology with Constance, and gave many a stirring concert on the Richardsons’ magnificent Steinway grand, which she is thrilled to learn will be coming back from England as soon as the new house is built. Constance and Joseph partook of countless suppers at Nathan and Celia’s, Nathan pruned their fruit trees, the quintet frequently walked their dogs together on the beach at the mouth of the Mercy River, and Delilah and Joseph showed together at the Fletcher Gallery in Mercy.

When their rejoicing subsides, Celia calls their neighbors, Elvis and Lena Quisenberry, and arranges for a puppy viewing.

*

Elvis is fifty-five, a burly auto mechanic at Mercy Garage. Lena is a zaftig fifty-three and owns Perfect Fit, a women’s clothing store in town. Their son Jerry works in a cannabis dispensary in Los Angeles while pursuing an acting career. Elvis and Lena are religious devotees of The Grateful Dead, prodigious pot smokers, and are forever promising to spay and neuter their dogs and cats, though they rarely do.

Sheba, a large Black Lab, is the mother of the litter Constance and Joseph and Nathan and Celia and Delilah come to visit, the Quisenberry kitchen a riot of seven little cuties not yet old enough to leave their mother, but old enough to totter around and tumble adorably for the visiting humans.

There are two black and white pups in the litter, one of them making a beeline for Joseph, the other tottering across the linoleum to Constance, and not three minutes into the visit Constance says, “We’d like to have these two black and whites if they are not yet spoken for.”

“That’s easy to remember,” says Elvis, off for the weekend and profoundly stoned. “They should be ready to leave mama a few weeks from now.”

“We’re asking fifty dollars each,” says Lena, smiling at Constance. “That seem fair to you?”

“More than fair,” says Joseph, picking up one of the black and white pups and nuzzling her.

“We will pay you seven hundred each,” says Constance, picking up the other black and white pup, “if you will keep ours for another three months until our new house is finished.”

“Zounds,” says Elvis, grinning at his wife. “No problema.”

“The Ziggurat Farm kids have dibs on these two,” says Lena, picking up two of the pups. “And Raul… you know Raul? Chef at Ocelot? He’s getting the big black one. And Boris who works at the garage with Elvis? You know Boris? His daughter Irenia homeschools up at Ziggurat. He’s getting the biggest one for Irenia. We’re guessing a Great Dane daddy for that one. So now we’ve got the litter sold but one and I’m guessing the Ziggurat kids will take three if nobody else wants the last one.”

“Any guesses about the progenitor of our two?” asks Constance, standing beside Joseph and holding her pup next to his.

“Far as we know only one black and white dude made the scene,” says Elvis, his grin expanding. “Maggie Fetherston’s cocker spaniel. Came all the way across town to do the deed. Don’t know why Sheba let the little guy get on, but she did.”

“Love is blind,” says Joseph, reluctant to let his pup go. “Would you happen to know the sexes of our two?”

“Boy and a girl,” says Lena, nodding.

“Perfect,” says Constance, setting her pup down. “Given their father’s diminutive size they should not be too enormous. We’ve done enormity and needn’t again.”

*

Returning to Nathan and Celia’s for a spot of tea, Joseph brings forth one of Henri’s letters sent not long ago to Devon and reads, “‘Delilah is a superlative teacher and we especially appreciate how easy it is to convince her to switch from Math to Music or Drawing, which all of us prefer to Math save for Larry who is most comfortable midst the abstraction of numbers, though he’s a fine baritone and adds a gratifying depth to our harmonizing. Now and then Delilah will drift into a trance and we’ll know she’s thinking of Thomas in faraway Ithaca and counting the hours until June when the handsome authority on foxes makes his way west to be with her again.’”

“Such a marvelous writer is Henri,” says Constance, beaming at Nathan. “Thanks to you.”

“All those kids are good writers,” says Nathan, thinking of the six homeschoolers he writes with a few times a week. “I am ever amazed by them.”

“Do tell us about Thomas,” says Joseph, taking off his reading glasses and gazing fondly at Delilah. “Your first real flame, yes?”

Delilah smiles and the room brightens.

“You’ve met his brother Michael,” she says, sighing. “Thom is a little taller, his features not so chiseled, his voice somewhat higher. I think he’s gorgeous, but then I’m in love with him, so… He’s thoughtful and kind and he does worry a lot about the biosphere and global warming and overpopulation. He’s a wildlife biologist, so he’s steeped in bad news about the environment, and I haven’t seen him in nearly three months so he’s become somewhat surreal to me, and I think I’ll be fine if our relationship doesn’t work out, though I hope it will.”

“Have you slept with him?” asks Constance, cutting to the chase.

Delilah nods. “And it was good.”

Everyone laughs.

“You talk on the phone?” asks Joseph, assuming they do.

“We did for the first few weeks after he went back to Ithaca,” says Delilah, getting up from the dining table to put another log on the fire, “but we found it more frustrating than satisfying, so now we just write. I send him gushy love letters and he answers with emails.” She watches the log catch fire. “He’s insanely busy.”

“What do you think of the lad?” asks Joseph of Nathan and Celia.

“I like him,” says Nathan, seeing Thomas with furrowed brow, the weight of the world upon him. “I don’t really know him yet. But I like him.”

“He’s very nice,” says Celia, nodding. “He was shy around us and mostly wanted to be alone with Delilah, so we didn’t spend much time with him when he was here.”

“He’s a wonderful artist,” says Delilah, wishing she knew Thomas better than she does, some large part of him withheld from her. “Raul bought his drawing of Henri. You’ll see it when you go to dine at Ocelot.”

“Tomorrow,” says Constance, looking forward to Raul’s incomparable cuisine. “We are told that Thomas and Michael’s sister Caroline, of whom we only caught the merest glimpse yesterday at the farmhouse, is now the Ocelot hostess and Raul’s paramour. Quite the conquest of Mercy by these Darlings. Such a marvelous last name.” She laughs. “Who wouldn’t want to be a Darling?”

*

When the sun scatters the rain clouds, Joseph and Constance bid Nathan and Celia and Delilah adieu, pick up sandwiches at the Happy Day Café & Bakery, and go have a picnic at their new home site.

In the one-acre clearing in a forest of thirty-year-old trees, they walk around on the large square cement foundation and imagine the house they’ll soon be living in here.

Overcome by jet lag, Constance seeks a hug from Joseph.

“Tell me we did the right thing coming back here,” she says, clinging to her mate. “I’m feeling overwhelmed.”

“We did the right thing,” he says, holding her. “If we change our minds a year from now and want to go back to Devon, we will. We’ll have had an adventure and a reunion with our dear friends, built a house, and gotten some good dogs. Nothing will be lost. We followed our hearts and here we are.”

“I worry our Delilah has fallen in love because she was ready to fall in love,” says Constance, sighing. “He sounds dreadfully serious. End of the world and all that. She needs a man with a sense of humor.”

“He knows too much,” says Joseph, who keeps his own doomsday thoughts to himself knowing they upset Constance.

“I think of her as my daughter,” says Constance, who never wanted children and didn’t really like children until she fell in love with fourteen-year-old Delilah and shortly thereafter became a favorite of the Ziggurat Farm kids. “I know that’s silly, but I do.”

“Not silly at all,” says Joseph, his eyes full of tears. “I feel the same.”

*

On Sunday, as billowy white clouds over Mercy Bay turn golden at dusk, Constance and Joseph dress in their finest—Joseph in a beautiful blue suit with teal shirt and crimson tie, Constance in a pretty peach dress—and take themselves to the incomparable Ocelot, the restaurant of Raul Neves on the headlands in Mercy.

Lovely Caroline Darling, long-limbed and graceful with curly brown hair, greets Constance and Joseph at the entrance of the beautiful old Victorian wherein Ocelot occupies the ground floor—Caroline regally sexy in white dress shirt, black bow tie, dangly turquoise earrings, black pants, and red sandals.

She seats them at a table with a view of Mercy Bay to the south, the largest wall in the room adorned with Joseph’s gorgeous painting of the beach at the mouth of the Mercy River as seen from the headlands, huge waves breaking on the shore.

Settling into her comfortable chair, Constance gives Caroline a wide-eyed look and asks, “How long have you been Raul’s hostess?”

“Two months now,” says Caroline, her deep voice thrilling to Joseph. “Though every night so far feels like the first.”

“Enjoying the job?” asks Joseph, nodding his thanks as she hands him the day’s menu. “You seem to.”

“I do,” she says, laughing. “Very much.”

“And you teach the children science,” says Constance, sounding amazed. “How marvelous.”

“I’m a professor of Botany,” says Caroline, feeling funny saying so. “On sabbatical from the University of New Hampshire, though I am so enthralled with the restaurant I may never go back.”

“We must speak more of everything another time,” says Constance, nodding brightly. “When you’re free of these shackles we’ll have tea.”

“Oh and before you leave us,” says Joseph, who has always wondered what it would be like to be with a tall woman, “can you tell us where the drawing your brother did of Henri is hanging?”

“I’ll show you,” she says, beckoning to them. “No one is seated in that room yet, so now’s the perfect time.” 

*

Joseph startles when he enters the room where Thomas’s large pen and ink sketch framed in gold adorns the wall—Henri wearing a feather headdress and holding his accordion, a tender smile on his face, a few touches of color adding an ineffable potency to the exquisite rendering.

After closely perusing the picture, Joseph turns to Constance and Caroline and says, “This drawing is worthy of Rembrandt. It is that fine and made of the same genius.”

“It is rather good, isn’t it?” says Constance, coming close to inspect the drawing. “I wonder if he’d like to draw me for the author picture of my next book.” She turns to Caroline. “Set in a fictitious version of Mercy. Wife of retired—ha—detective a pastry chef in a fine restaurant. Dining scenes abound. Tall beautiful hostess entangled with handsome Portuguese chef. That sort of thing.”

“I’m sure Thom would love to draw you,” says Caroline, understanding now why Raul said of Constance and Joseph, “They are comic savants who have no idea they are funny.”

fin

On the Way Home piano cello duet

Categories
Uncategorized

Being Here On Earth

Henri is twelve, exactly twelve, as twelve as he can be. Five months ago he was four-foot-nine and now he’s five-foot-three. A beautiful muscular lad with curly brown hair, his mother German, his father French, Henri plays accordion, piano, and guitar, all of them quite well, and he sings beautifully, too. He loves to draw and write and work in the garden, his reading of late Geology and Irish short stories.

An outstanding soccer player and brilliant with a Frisbee, Henri thinks it would be wonderful to be a wildlife biologist like their neighbor and teacher Michael, though he often feels destined to be a playwright actor musician. Still other times there’s nothing he would rather be than a farmer who gives accordion lessons and has the occasional show of drawings at the Fletcher Gallery in town. And then there is his keen interest in cooking and architecture.

He is standing some fifty feet from the farmhouse at Ziggurat Farm, two miles inland from the remote northern California coastal burg of Mercy. His five fellow homeschoolers await him in the farmhouse along with various parents and teachers and friends enjoying a brief intermission from monologues and scenes and music the homeschoolers (and sometimes teachers and parents and friends) perform every third Friday of the month, this being March 22, the afternoon cool and cloudy.

Henri is scheduled to open the second act with an original accordion tune and a monologue of his own creation, a speech he work-shopped extensively with his Drama teacher Lisa, his writing teachers Nathan and Daisy, and his schoolmates Arturo, Vivienne, Larry, Alma, and Irenia, as well as his parents Andrea and Marcel. Thus many of the people in the audience have already heard some version of the speech, though no one save Henri has heard exactly the version he is about to recite.

The monologue sprang from an assignment to create a speech based on something from Shakespeare, and Henri decided to use the famous To be or not to be soliloquy from Hamlet as his spark.

“To not die or to not not die,” says Henri, reciting the opening of his speech, his use of not not a sure laugh getter. “That is a tangle of knots. If no one stays when supper’s over, who will scrub the pots?”

He’s waiting for someone to come out of the farmhouse and tell him intermission is at end, and as he waits he thinks of Joseph Richardson who moved back to England with his wife Constance two years ago, and how Joseph would have loved these third Friday shows and no doubt would have performed at them, too, had he not moved away. Joseph was an inspired reciter of Shakespeare as well as being the children’s art teacher before he passed the baton to Delilah, who also teaches them music and math. Oh how I miss Joseph! thinks Henri, who always felt profoundly appreciated by Joseph, and vice-versa.

“And what of girls becoming women, and boys becoming men?” says Henri, continuing his monologue. “Where went the child I used to be? I’m else than I was then.”

Which lines make him think of Irenia who is fourteen and the eldest of the Ziggurat Farm homeschoolers, a gorgeous five-foot-nine and the premiere object of Henri’s desire, sexual arousal a new and disconcerting sensation for him.

Arturo, Henri’s best friend, is madly in love with Irenia, too, and speaks to Henri of his love for her almost every day. Arturo is thirteen and five-foot-eight, and lives in the farmhouse with his younger sister Vivienne and their parents Lisa and Philip.

Henri wouldn’t think of competing with Arturo for Irenia’s affection, and is therefore resigned to Arturo and Irenia becoming sweethearts, though they are not yet so entwined; and to complicate matters further, just yesterday Henri felt Irenia gazing at him and when he met her gaze it was clear as day she loves him.

“Those tiny seeds my mother planted now are sprawling vines,” says Henri, going on with his speech. “The grapes we trod a year ago are now my father’s wines.”

Now Irenia comes out of the farmhouse, her face more beautiful to Henri than anything in the world, her long black hair in a braid, her lovely white blouse given shape by her budding breasts, her long gray skirt revealing hips she had not a year ago, this her costume for a scene with Arturo to follow Henri’s soliloquy; Irenia playing Kate to Arturo’s Petruchio in the famous “I say it is the moon” scene from The Taming of the Shrew.

Assuming Irenia’s emergence means intermission is over, Henri starts for the farmhouse as Irenia runs to meet him.

“I want to give you a good luck kiss,” she says quietly with her subtle Russian accent.

And before Henri can reply, she kisses him, their lips slightly parted—a blissful communion ended too soon by an extra-large Mercedes van rumbling down the drive and parking near the barn.

“Who could this be?” asks Irenia, taking Henri’s hand.

“I would guess Raul,” says Henri, worried Arturo might come out and see them holding hands. “Only he’s already here and his van is not so big.”

Now a short woman with auburn hair and a tall man with longish gray hair get out of the van—the very British Richardsons returned from jolly olde England.

“Joseph!” shouts Henri, letting go of Irenia’s hand and rushing to greet his beloved friends. “Constance.”

“Oh call me Connie, dear boy,” says Constance, hugging Henri.

“Henri!” says Joseph, opening his arms. “Look at you a young man now.”

*

Following the joyful hullabaloo of everyone in the farmhouse greeting the Richardsons—their arrival wholly unexpected—Joseph and Constance take seats in the audience and Henri opens Act Two by playing a melancholy barcarole as preface to his soliloquy.

Setting his accordion aside, he tells his poem—words freighted with new meaning now that he and Irenia have kissed.

To not die or to not not die, that is a tangle of knots.

If no one stays when supper’s over, who will scrub the pots?

And what of girls becoming women, and boys becoming men?

Where went the child I used to be? I’m else than I was then.

Those tiny seeds my mother planted now are sprawling vines.

Those grapes we trod a year ago are now my father’s wines.

Time speeds on despite my wish to linger in my youth.

Some grand design beyond my wit propounds another truth.

I dread the day I have to choose the thing I mostly do.

I’d rather stay a clever boy and linger here with you.

The choice, I fear, is hardly mine, the die was cast at birth.

The only thing I’m certain of is being here on earth.

So let us not concern ourselves with whether we should be,

but rather love each minute as a precious entity.

fin

Lounge Act In Heaven

Categories
Uncategorized

fawns

doe and fawn dormitory

A circle of large redwoods stands on the northern edge of our two acres and is made into a dense thicket by several smaller trees growing in and around the circle—an ideal dormitory for does and their fawns.

which way did she go?

Some years we have as many as three sets of resident fawns, but this year, July halfway gone, we have but one duo of fawns, a male and a female judging by their brows.

male fawn with nectarine pit in his mouth

These two are unique in my experience of fawns for their almost constant togetherness. Most fawns their age (4-5 months?) still closely follow Mom, but rarely display such ongoing affinity for each other.

Thus photos of these two fawns together continue to be easier come by than in years past.

growing fast

fin

sugar mornings

Categories
Uncategorized

July flowers

rose parade
just opening daisy
more to come