Gone to the Forest A Novel

part two

The Forest





6



There were six barns on the farm. They were simple structures. A knocked together wood frame, covered in sheets of metal. Each barn had a plastic gutter along the roof to let off water when it rained. The six barns stood in the middle of fields and were spread across the property. Inside were bales of hay, tools and spools of wire fencing.

The spools of wire were taken first. Then the shelves were emptied of their tools. These items were lifted in the night and carried away. Their only trace being footprints in the grass and tracks from where the spools had been rolled. The barn door carefully closed behind them.

A week later the bolts were knocked out and the doors disappeared. The barns stood with their entrances gaping, six barns spread across the property without a door to lock or close. The barns circulated air. Nobody took notice. There was a hush. It was long and extended. It was exactly two weeks before the windows disappeared.

They were glass and therefore valuable. For these they came with gloves and dirty quilts, into which they packed the panes as they knocked them from the frames. They returned for the frames the next day, having realized that these were also necessary. They cut them out with saws and went away by daylight, carrying the wood tucked beneath their arms.

The gutters were next to go. The plastic pipes were pulled down from the roofs and carried away. Then sheets of corrugated metal were dismantled and vanished square by square. Holes appeared in the barn sides. Entire walls were lifted away. Eventually each of the six barns was reduced to a bare wood frame. Like skeletons with the flesh burned away.

Finally even the frames went. The wood—some of it rotten with age and damp—was taken, along with scraps that had been abandoned in the grass. Hinges and bits of metal hardware. After a brief pause, the nails were also stolen up, gathered in their palms. They were secreted away until all that stood in place of the barns were stacks of hay. These rotted in the rain.

That was the prelude, which took place in the month following the land reform announcement. Which was broadcast on the radio and published in the newspaper, the news of it spreading like water. The whites being expulsed from the land in so many inches of ink and paper. The land shifting alliance across radio waves.

Then came the thing itself. He saw them through the window. Coming with their single wagons and mules, a tide of rusty instruments. The first thing they did was mark out boundaries with the barbed wire and wood from the barns. Dozens of parcels, one not to be confused with the other. A hundred people colonizing their own land in a fever.

The land bent and buckled under the weight of the new men. They overturned the earth in a churn of activity, demonstrating how property was the thing most worshipped in the country. This being the first legacy of the white settlers. This being what the natives had learned.

He had dismissed most of the natives in the days following the announcement. There remained only a few dozen. These natives watched as pell-mell the farms went up on the hills around them. Each new farmer was given three cows and five sheep and a burlap sack of seed with which to start operations. The soil, now rich with ash, was plowed and the seed dumped into the ground. The livestock corralled into the corners of the plots and the houses hammered together with the weathered squares of corrugated metal.

In all the effect was—not what they were used to, and not especially felicitous. The natives shook their heads. They could leave the farm and put their names down for their acre and their three cows. Others had done so. But they decided against it. They were hedging their bets. They were waiting for something more, and did not believe this was the end of the matter.

THE OLD MAN returned six months later. Tom sits on the porch. It has been one month since the old man’s return and still Tom calls it the porch in his head, what was once referred to as the veranda. There have been many retractions in his life, the most important taking place in his head. It is now spring but there are shadows from inside the house and Tom is sitting on the edge of a pool of darkness.

There is nothing cheering to see in his face. Tom has been neutered by age and disillusion. His body is still young—he can run and jump with the best of them, he can move quickly when he has to, having always been good at running, in multiple senses of the word—but his face is like an old man already dead. His world has shrunk down to a fraction of its original size and he has already grown used to it.

After the land reform announcement, Tom was alone. The land was, for the time being, safe. The farm was his and he could do with it as he wished. But this farm was different from the farm he had envisioned, the farm he had filled his days imagining. He was forced to accept the reduced state of affairs, the missing father and the missing land being one and the same, both having gone at the same time, under the same circumstances.

The missing father being in two parts: the simple physical absence and the more difficult absence of the idea. The image of the father. Which was now gone, which had crumbled in front of him. The second being the greater loss. Having lost so much, Tom was obliged to divest himself further. He dismissed most of the servants and farm hands; others left of their own accord. He did not think to ask where they were going. He sold one thing and then he began selling all of it. He took whatever was offered, not knowing how to bargain.

He sold the motorboats. The tractors and the plows. (There was a lot of machinery. It took a lot of machinery to maintain all that land. The storehouses containing piles of hardware and tools, the ossuary of the farm as it once was.) It was not hard. His attachment was to the land, not the apparatus it came with, and the valley was crawling with new farmers. The carpetbaggers bought the equipment in bulk and sold it at premium. Everything went except the fish farm, which continued to sit in a shed adjacent to the river, covered by a sheet of tarpaulin.

The other sheds went with the land. Tom did not know who owned them. The redistribution process had been fast and loose. It had seemed chaotic. Tom did not know if the result was what they wanted, if they have been satisfied by their gains. He did not even know who they were—communists, he heard, who did not believe in individual property. But then he heard that they were not communists after all but revolutionary capitalists. Nihilist rebels. None of these words meant anything to him.

Tom sat on the land that was still his. He had retained just enough natives to make the farm run. He had a little bit of money. But mostly he had erased himself from the land with his usual ease of retreat. And it was a good thing he had moved so fast. One week before the men arrived he sold most of the cattle. Then he saw them striding in from the distance—the same men, the three from before. Who had walked away and now came back. He was waiting for them when they arrived. They came on foot, their trousers coated in dust and their hands clutching stones in their pockets.

He didn’t ask them in. He saw no reason to. They arrived and told him what he already knew. They took out the papers and presented them to him—he could tell, from the manner of presentation, that they expected no resistance from him. The old man’s signature was incontestable. He acknowledged the papers. He told them he understood. He only wanted them to go away. Still they insisted on explaining the matter to him:

The violence had been spreading across the country for months. Then, a sudden escalation. It appeared the unrest had a leader. Someone capable of organizing the unrest into a movement. There was rumor of an illegal shipment of weapons—steps had to be taken to prevent chaos from claiming the country. Demands were made and agreed to. The Land Reform Bill was hurried through by the Government in a matter of days.

The men had been aware of the sea change for some time. For months they had been telling the old man that expropriation was looking more and more inevitable. However, there were opportunities in the chaos. The old days were gone and the Government was now fighting to maintain power. The whites were. That was a reality like the rest of it. But there were things to be gained, even in a time of attrition.

For example. They themselves had played their cards carefully and were subsequently appointed Special Commissioners to the Land Reform Process. They had told his father there were opportunities, even for men like them. As for a man like his father—well. It had been an awkward conversation. The old man had not taken it very well. He had not believed in their authority, even when they showed him the stamped and authorized papers. He had not wanted to believe in the changing times.

Granted, they hadn’t known very much about how it would shake down. They didn’t know very much now! They were still working out the details, it was a complicated thing, they had told the old man he would have some time before they seized the land. Of course, Tom would know all this already. His father would have told him. They had not realized Tom was due to inherit so soon—if they had, they would have included him in the conversations.

As it was, they were impressed by how quickly Tom had retrenched. They had not expected it. But here he was. Already off his land and one week before the deadline. He was as quick as his father, in his own way. It had been clever of him to sell the livestock. Unfortunately they were obliged to seize assets such as livestock and machinery along with the land—but here they were and there was nothing to take.

It had been chaos across the valley. They could tell him a story or two. As for Tom—they supposed he would find the adjustment quite easy. It was only land in the end. They had hardly been using it. Their herd having been so much reduced in recent years. Yes, he told them. That much was true. They had used the river. The river was how they had lived. They asked him what he planned to do now and he shrugged.

He thanked the men for coming. They were grinning, they clearly thought he was a fool. The idiot son tricked by the cunning father. Tom knew that was how they saw him. The men took out a pen and told him to sign some documents. Acknowledging the transfer of land. Exactly what his father had already agreed to, nothing more. He signed the papers without looking and then asked if they would excuse him, he had not been feeling well, not since his father had left.

The men told him they understood and left without another word. They went backward down the track and he watched them go from inside the house. Having locked the door behind them. The men left a copy of the papers inside with one of the servants. Nobody ever looked at the papers. Tom went to his bedroom, now in the servants’ quarters (they had shut down whole wings of the house). He lay down in bed with an ice pack on his forehead.

He lay in bed and around him the business of the last forty years fell apart. The history of the farm dissolving. The mythology of the father crumbling at the knees. It was like picking a loose thread, it was like leaning back. He rocked onto his heels, he balanced on the back legs of his chair. He tilted and it came apart. The land and the old man, the first settler’s claim across the sea. Then his mother, next came his mother, before the neighboring farmer and the fish, the churn of the river and the nets spread thick in the water.

In the dark room, he lay on his back, clutching the threads to his chest. He gripped them like a stuffed toy. When he was a child he spent days alone in the sickbed. The servants tended to his physical needs and nothing more. His mother was absent. His father also absent. The room was stuffy and dusty and the indifference gathered around him like a cloud. He would wish for the illness to prolong itself. To be left alone where he could not be seen.

And now it had happened. The old wish had been granted. It was like the sickness had taken over the world and so he lay, abandoned and forgotten. He dreamed—of a life that would not happen. The riding lodge he would set up, the wife he would marry, the tourists that would return to the farm. His dreams unfolded into the still air and overlapped. He had fever and the sheets grew musty and he broke into frequent and profuse sweats.

Tom retreated into his bedroom, into his inertia, and the farm—what was left of it, ten thousand acres and almost no river front—ran itself. The small herd of cattle rounded in and out. The garden tended. He lay in bed and his dreams multiplied as he watched the hill crawl with new life. Hardly knowing if it was hallucination or not. He sank into the land. The separation from the earth always less distinct for Tom than for his father. The separation giving way even now, although the land no longer wanted him.

Tom’s respite was temporary. There was no real comfort in it and soon he was spat back into the world. His solitude had not lasted any more than a matter of months. The world—as it was and as it had been, both came crowding back in. The country returning. Linear time alongside it. The earth shuddering and the world outside raging with change. The old structures of power returned but in altered form. And now his life is both the same and entirely different.

Tom stands up. He goes into the kitchen to find Celeste. She is at the stove. Always she is at the stove. For six months she had walked the land (the farm was diminished but it was still big enough for walking). As if she were looking for Jose and the old man. As if she thought she might find them, somewhere on the land. Now she is back at the stove and Tom thinks she is both relieved and reassured. Despite the changes that have taken place, that are still taking place.

She nods to him as he comes in. She is making soup for the old man. A one-dish meal. Before she cooked for the extended household. Lavish meals for a full table. It goes without saying that the menu has changed, but this is not just because of their reduced circumstances.

“Is it almost ready?”

She grunts. She shields the stove from him with the broad surface of her back.

Fine, he thinks. That is fine. She can make the soup but the soup can go nowhere without him. That is his job. Not that it is a job he especially enjoys.

He has a series of disconnected thoughts. They do not represent the best aspects of the man. He feels wary. He feels hard done by. He knows this is a petty feeling. He is tired. He is surprised that in most ways it is still life as he knows it. He eats the same food. Sleeps in the same bed. Shits the same shit. Yes. All of this being true and also not true.

He watches Celeste crouching over the pot. Stirring with her long-handled wood spoon. She is not used to this kind of cooking. It is not her strength or what she likes. Her strength is something else. Rich sauces. Charred meats (crisp and smoky on the outside, meltingly tender inside). Butter and cream and wine.

Not this. Vegetable broth thinned with water. No salt but mixed with one part chicken stock because she cannot resist—she does not work with a stock made solely of carrots and onions, what is the point of it. Nothing good ever came of bad food. Who ever got better off bad food? Who was ever cured?

He ignores her. (She does not actually say this aloud, she says all this to him with her back, which remains hunched over the pot. She has slipped in a little cream, although he has said not to. Although he has told her this only makes matters worse. He understands that she cannot help it. She does not know how else to tend to the old man.) Tom walks around so that he can see the pot. And the soup inside, which looks cooked.

“The soup is ready. And Celeste. No butter on the toast this time.”

She glares at him and shakes in salt and pepper. With a wave of open palm. She adds more cream, as he watches. He shakes his head. He wonders if this will continue. If she will persist in seeing battles where they aren’t. She is still glaring at him when she reaches for the loaf of bread. She seizes a bread knife and saws off two slices. These she slips into the wire grill and props over the open fire.

He checks the tray while they wait for the bread to toast. The soup does not smell especially fragrant but he is hungry and it reminds him of this fact. He slices a piece of bread and eats it absent-mindedly. It is a little stale. Celeste looks at him disapprovingly.

“I would have toasted it for you.”

He waves the statement away. Mouth too full for talking. He checks the tray and is careful not to spray any bread crumbs. Can’t be careful enough. He checks: the spoon and knife and fork. Resting on the cloth napkin lining the tray. Everything looks fine. He rests his hands on the tray and then is overwhelmed. To think of picking up the tray and carrying it away. He removes his hands from the tray and sits down, suddenly in need of rest. Celeste looks up.

She pulls the grill from the fire and pries it open. She flips the pieces of toast onto the cutting board and severs them in two. Then she wraps them in a cloth and sets them on the tray. She eyes him as she reaches for the butter.

“No butter, Celeste.”

She ignores him as she cuts a square.

“No butter, Celeste.”

She thrusts the butter dish back and wipes her hands on her apron. Reaches for a bowl and serves a single ladle. Places it carefully on the tray. She looks at him.

“I can take it in.”

“That isn’t necessary.”

She looks at him cunningly.

“You look tired. Stay here. This time I will take it in. For once I can take it in.”

“No.”

“You will become exhausted. I am telling you.”

“It’s okay.”

He rises and looks at her. She is right. He is tired. He will become exhausted. Everything she is saying is right. But she cannot take the tray in. They both know this. He picks up the tray. She makes a noise of protest but does nothing to stop him. He checks for the saucer with the pill. Yes. It is there. Tucked in beside the napkin. Now he lifts the tray carefully so that the soup, the glass of water, will not spill. He picks it up, exits the kitchen, and disappears down the hall.