Months ago, Ben couldn’t have seen himself chopping up frozen diseased cattle with a chain saw. But he needed to feel what it was like to be a part of this place, to be a member of this raw and austere world that the Swanns had lived in. In this valley, he’d learned, your hands sometimes got dirty. Sometimes they got bloody.
The chief or Armfield might throw the boys a twenty or two at the end of the day, but the cleanup crews practically worked for free. Ben had heard his share of clichés about rural living, and every one of them had rung in his head in the months he’d spent here, but there was something about watching a small, isolated community like Swannhaven pitch together in a crisis that made him feel as if this was how things were meant to be.
Arms thrumming from the machine, face and clothes splattered with crystallized blood, Ben cut and the boys hauled. Somewhere nearby, milk was bottled and eggs were cleaned, grain was ground and bread baked. Even in the frozen stillness of December, the little valley hummed onward.
It was inspiring, but it sometimes filled Ben with envy. If only his own household ran with such elegance. Free of acrimony and stripped of cross-purposes.
Ben sliced into the bowels of one cow, and the air shimmered with fumes. This one hadn’t frozen all the way through. The smell was as horrific as the scene itself, but Ben was careful to keep his face as expressionless as those of the other men. There would be no eye rolls at the unpleasantness of the task. Here, Ben had learned that all work was stoic’s work.
Ben felt his phone buzz in his pocket but ignored it. He was covered with blood, and he was pretty sure there was no provision for abattoir damages in his service contract.
With the additional help, the work sped by, and in no time the beds of the two vehicles were filled. The bodies were gone but the patch of blood would remain, and Ben wondered if it would poison the ground or fertilize it. Sometimes death begat more death; sometimes it made new life possible.
When he was finished, Ben stripped off the long raincoat he’d worn for the occasion. He did his best to knock the gore from his boots. Jake did the same before getting into the Escape.
“Might finish the roof today,” Jake said as Ben pulled away from the field. The fire had totally destroyed their old shed, and Jake had been building them a new one. Except for the shingles, he was nearly finished, and just before the full brunt of winter came crashing upon them.
“You’ve done a great job on it,” Ben said.
“Incoming call from Cee,” the car announced.
“Ignore,” Ben said. He’d be at the Crofts in five minutes, anyway.
The Robards’ farm was on the south edge of the valley, but already Ben could see the Crofts between the mountains. When November passed, it took the fall’s blazing forests with it, but what color the forests had lost, the rooms of the Crofts had gained. Cracked plaster and faded wallpaper had been replaced by drywall and paint in empire blues, deep sea greens, noontime yellows, and day-end reds. The floors had been sanded, stained, and waxed to a brilliant depth.
When Ben turned from the country road onto the gravel path, he accelerated into the slope.
“Why is that the only tree out there?” Ben asked Jake. He jutted his head toward the great elm on the lip. It was a beautiful tree. It reminded him of the giants that flanked the Literary Walk in Central Park. When he stared out of his windows, he often found himself wondering about it.
“The elder tree,” Jake said. “They say that when Aldrich Swann first cleared the woods from the Drop, he kept that one tree there to remind everyone of how great the forest once was.”
Ben nodded. From what he’d gathered, the Swanns had been an eccentric bunch.
When the Escape was parked, Jake headed for the shed, while Ben made for the kitchen. Bub toddled up to him in lurching steps when he entered the kitchen. The baby had started walking a few months ago and now careened around the house with all the grace of a clubfooted drunk. Ben swept him up and kissed him on his forehead.
“I called you,” Caroline said. She was chopping leeks on the island. “More than once.” She wore khakis and one of Ben’s old oxford shirts. Back in the city, this wouldn’t have qualified even as weekend wear, but now every day was the same for them. The chores demanded of him were the only things that changed.
“Had my hands full,” Ben said.
“Too bad dead cows take precedence over your own son.”
“What are you—” Then Ben noticed the clock on the microwave. “Oh.”
“What is this? The third time this week you’ve forgotten him?” She made a sound with her tongue.
“Don’t. Please.” Ben closed an open drawer with more force than was necessary.
In his father’s arms, Bub began to fuss.
“If only you could get out of your head for long enough to—”
“The last time I checked, I wasn’t the only one in this house with a driver’s license,” Ben said.
“Good. I’d been trying to figure out how this was actually my fault.” She slammed the chef’s knife into the cutting board.
Bub began to squall, his lungs now as strong as his little legs.
“Hush,” Ben said as he bounced him. The baby wasn’t as easy to wrangle as he’d once been. Ben could tell from the quality of his cries that Bub was ramping himself up to an inconsolable level. “Where’s Hudson? Hudson?” he bellowed into the house.
“Forget the dog!” Caroline told him.
“Bye-bye,” he told Bub, trying to pry him from his arms. The boy, now hopelessly distraught, shrieked for him. He arched his back in that way that made everything impossible. But Ben forced the baby to the floor, near where a Fisher-Price airport had collided with a parking garage.
He jumped into the Escape and took the gravel drive at a reckless speed. Fallen leaves from the forest danced in his rearview mirror.
Ben punched up the volume on the stereo. He was playing another one of the albums that Ted had sent his way. The vocals were angry, but they fit him fine.
—