Republic of Dirt (18 page)

S
eth would tell you that optimism like mine is hubris. Only Seth would not use the word
hubris
because he did not complete high school and I doubt it’s a word used often in the heavy metal blogosphere.

I am beginning to think the word
farm
actually means “land upon which things go wrong in surprising and unexpected ways” or perhaps “place where it’s impossible to get good help.”

Oh dear, thanks to my illness, my defenses are down and Seth’s negativity is rubbing off on me. I really must get back to Dr. Bachmeier for another assessment.

I was so thrilled at Mr. Spratt’s progress with Lucky that I decided to try to catch the mule myself. Specifically, I wanted to show the members of the Mighty Pens, my writing group, that Woefield is a safe place for livestock. Some of them are inveterate gossips, and I thought word of our prowess with mules might get back to the social work office. An absurd notion, I realize, and one based in bruised pride and our desperation to at least get visiting rights with Sara.

Her father has not yet broached the subject of her coming for visits and I’m slightly afraid to ask. He seems to think if he reverses his decision to keep Sara off the farm for her own good, he’ll be letting his ex-wife win the argument. And it’s clear that he’d remove one of his own molars with a penknife rather than do that. I remain hopeful that exposure to us and the farm will convince him to do the right thing and let Sara see us. I also wonder if Sara knows he’s spending his afternoons here, but haven’t had the courage to ask that, either, even though it seems grossly unfair.

Back to the writing group. Seth calls them the Untalented Pens. I have some sympathy for a lack of talent in the writing department, thanks to my experience of publishing one of the least successful young adult novels ever. The less said about it, the better. But somehow, my lone novel convinced the local writers that I’m qualified to help them. I’m too broke to disabuse them of their mistake.

As noted, some of the Pens are under the mistaken impression that the animals of Woefield Farm are lucky to be alive from moment to moment thanks to the shocking incompetence of me and my staff. More than once in free-writing exercises, they’ve written about the things they’ve seen here. I’ve stopped giving them nature-based writing prompts because one of them inevitably writes about the time they saw Bertie’s feet covered with maxi pads and duct tape (from when we tried to trim her hooves ourselves) or that time one of the hens turned blue when Seth added too much bluing to her pre-show bath. It seems there’s nothing quite like a Smurf-colored frizzle hen to capture the novice writer’s imagination. They never write about the leaves turning color or the heady scent of turned earth. Not that we do much earth-turning on Woefield, except in the raised beds, as there is almost no topsoil on the farm. But that’s another story.

I headed into the pasture to catch Lucky a few minutes before the Mighty Pens were due to arrive. I thought they’d be impressed and even creatively inspired to see me working with our spotted mule.

As I approached Lucky in his field, I tried to copy Dean Spratt’s posture and attitude. Mr. Spratt exuded a calm confidence, so I put a half-smile on my face that I hoped conveyed that same feeling. Lucky and Bertie were grazing at the far end of the pasture near Earl’s cabin, and at first both ignored me.

I waded through the damp, ankle-high scrub grass until I was about ten feet away. Lucky lifted his head and stared right at me. Bertie also raised her head to watch. I waved at the two of them, feeling like an uninvited kid showing up at a sleepover. I’m not sure why. Perhaps because I’m not a farm animal and Bertie and Lucky are.

Lucky’s head rose higher, making him appear impossibly tall and imposing, and a stiff breeze of doubt swept through me. I’d read that horses, dogs and, presumably, mules have an uncanny ability to sense fear and uncertainty.

The key was to fight the negative feelings.

I smiled wider and kept moving. My gaze slid over to Bertie. Her normally vacant face seemed to register concern and I felt a wave of missing Sara. She’d had a way with our depressive sheep.

I raised the halter in a friendly gesture at Lucky, hoping that he’d interpret it as a signal to lower his head so I could slide it on. In the driveway, a vehicle pulled up to the house. One of the writers was in time to see me in action.

“Hello!” I said brightly to Lucky, who pinned his ears back and, more swiftly than I would have thought possible, pirouetted his body around so his hind end faced me. He was in the perfect position to deliver a coup de grâce.

When Mr. Spratt visited, Lucky had begun to walk or even trot over to greet him at the gate. But here he was, giving me the old ass-end routine again.

“Very funny,” I said. “I’m just going to put this halter on you.”

I tried to walk around his substantial spotted hindquarters to reach his head. As I moved toward his front end, he pivoted away.

“Lucky,” I said sternly. “Stop that!”

Lucky did not “stop that.” Instead, he bunny-hopped forward a few steps, like a … well, like a mule. I leaped backward. Lucky hunched his back and gave a small buck. This was followed by another, more exuberant buck. When he was out of range, he lashed out with both hind legs and took off at a gallop across the pasture. He raced up and down the fence line a few times, slowing only to buck and release explosive farts, loud as a backfiring car. By this time, two of my writers had arrived and were watching, spellbound and delighted. There were oohs and aahs when Lucky went into another spasm of fart-bucking in the middle of the pasture, like a bronco that’d just been given a can of beans and a jolt with a high-powered cattle prod.

I let the halter and lead rope, which I’d been holding in front of me as though to ward off attack, drop to my side.

Ego has no place on a farm and especially not in one’s work with farm animals, but that doesn’t stop it from coming to the party. I tried not to feel like a failure when I walked over to my writers. Brady and Portia clapped and looked pleased beyond all measure. Brady is a plumber, given to wearing garish Hawaiian shirts, even in winter. He is writing what he refers to as “a novel of the erotic.” He says it’s “like
Fifty Shades of Grey
, only it’s about a plumber and a female electrician and there’s no bondage.” Fortunately for me and his fellow Pens, he’s a three-sentences-a-week man, so there’s only so much dampness and
plunging and heaving and thrusting between the trades that we have to listen to at each workshop.

Portia’s memoir is 750 pages long, and she adds to it every time she has a fight with her ex-husband. We’ve talked about the need to trim the account of her failed marriage to a more manageable size, but then she and the man referred to in the text as “Little Shit Face” have another encounter in the parking lot of the Country Grocer or similar and the book grows by another two thousand words.

We used to have a mother-daughter team, Laureen and Verna, but they dropped out when Laureen, who is sixteen, stopped smoking a duffle bag of weed every day. Verna, the mother, was under the mistaken impression that Woefield was a treatment center, which is how they came to join the writing group in the first place. Long story and I’m too tired to get into it. Suffice it to say that Laureen and Verna have been replaced by a father-son team. Winston Phelps, fourteen, is the only son of Orson Phelps. Orson is laboring under the delusion that Winston is a genius. Maybe even a super genius. Among helicopter parents, Orson Phelps is the Apache model, loaded with warheads and ready to raze the village of anyone who dares to impede the progress of his son, who truly is awful. Orson works “in government” as he puts it, which means that he issues parking tickets at the Departure Bay ferry terminal.

All anyone is likely to take away from a meeting with Orson Phelps is that he’s a blurry white man in his fifties. That impression lasts until he opens his mouth and begins to talk about Winston’s accomplishments. Winston is an OUTSTANDING (the capitals are Orson’s) student, achieving “almost all As.” Winston is in eighth grade and he plays badminton AND fences AND is on the chess team AND has a flute and a drum set. Winston has his own blog.
Winston once foiled a crime in progress (he tattled on a more popular and attractive kid who was trying to shoplift a package of condoms from the gas bar). Winston started a charity for “the orphans” and got himself written up in the
Cedar Town Crier
.

Winston himself is round, dour and makes Augustus from
A Confederacy of Dunces
look socially skilled. He has a face like a cottage cheese–filled pierogi and writes derivative fantasy stories that are, I suspect, torn straight from online games.

“
We’re
applying to U of T,” says Orson, if you let him. “Or
we
might go the American route. Yale, maybe.”

Orson and Winston are often late for writing group because of Winston’s many extracurricular commitments, or because Orson is at Winston’s school, threatening to sue various teachers or administrators for interfering with Winston’s “path to success.”

“We should have put him in Upper Canada College,” said Orson, after one of these meetings made them late for the Mighty Pens workshop. “That Mickey Mouse school doesn’t know what to do with him.”

At the last group meeting, Orson handed me a towering stack of pages. “Winston’s novel,” he said. “We want you to read it and pass along your comments. Then we’d like you to put us in touch with an agent.” Orson’s voice became stern. “But please, only give us comments if they’re
actually
helpful. Not like what we got from that asinine English teacher up at his school. She seems fixated on interfering with Winston’s path to success. Well, I ‘fixated’ her. Lodged a complaint with the principal and the school board when she tried to give him a C+. She said his work wasn’t original just because there are orcs and wizards in it. Well, you find me the fantasy story that doesn’t have those things. I dare you.”

I took the pages away and read the first few. The novel was a cross between
Lord of the Rings
, World of Warcraft and something downloaded off PornHub. It was a miracle Winston hadn’t been kicked out of school for handing that in to his English teacher. She was probably off on stress leave due to having to deal with Winston and Orson.

For this evening’s workshop, I’d already prepared my comments on Winston’s manuscript, which was entitled
Game of Fire and Heat
. My praise was effusive in the extreme and included a referral to an agent in NYC. I went to prep school with her and she was kind of a bitch to one of my friends, so I felt justified. If teaching the Mighty Pens wasn’t such a moneymaker, I think I would quit. It was hard to take any of it seriously after losing Sara.

Winston and Orson were late, as usual, so they hadn’t joined the others at the fence. Just as well. It was bad enough dealing with Portia and her ironic applause.

“Very nice,” she rasped.

“We’re working on it,” I said.

As Brady and Portia and I walked inside, an early model Buick pulled up and Sara’s mother got out. She had on one of her depression-inducing outfits of I-quit-caring polyester pants and nothing-can-make-me-shake-these-blues blouse.

That was what I’d forgotten! I’d invited her to join the Mighty Pens. Had she said something about a memoir? A novel? I couldn’t recall. Well, whatever she was writing couldn’t be any worse than the other things being produced by the Pens. Or could it?

“Hello!” I said, as she walked toward us, managing to look both ruddy-cheeked and pale, like a diseased English rose.

Mrs. Spratt offered a wan smile.

“So you’re going to join the Mighty Pens?” asked Brady. “Or, as those of us with a historical bent like to call ourselves, the ink-stained wretches.”

Portia rolled her eyes.

“Hi,” said Mrs. Spratt in a voice so low and glum it could only be heard by suicidal worms.

“Hi, Sally. Funny to see you out from behind the counter. You’re looking well,” said Brady.

Portia and I shot him a glance, wondering what part of Mrs. Spratt looked well. Certainly not her defeated hair, her hunched posture or her haunted expression.

“Come on in,” I told Mrs. Spratt and the rest of the Pens. “Seth is waiting for us inside.”

I’ve developed a routine for workshop nights. I make a zucchini bread to serve with tea and coffee. Once the writers are set up around the living room, they take refreshments and we get to work. This week, due to my energy deficit, I’d had Seth make the bread.

I give a brief lecture on the topic for the evening and then I assign a writing exercise. When we finish that, we workshop the writing they’ve done since our last session.

I have sometimes dreaded the workshops because they take time away from farming. But as the weather has grown colder and the rain has set in, I’ve almost begun to look forward to our time together. The work produced by the Mighty Pens is sometimes offensive and often boring, but I’ve grown fond of my writers and their unpublishable projects. Also, with my health troubles, any work that doesn’t demand much from me physically or mentally is welcome.

When we entered the living room, Seth was already ensconced in
the best chair, taking enormous bites from a buttered slice of warm zucchini bread.

“I did great with the baking,” he said. “If I do say so myself.”

I looked at the table and saw that he’d made two loaves. The butter was out and so were the small plates and knives. I gave him a grateful look. He had come so far from when he first moved in.

“How’d the mule catching go?” he asked.

I pretended I didn’t hear and instead showed Mrs. Spratt where to sit.

“That mule of yours can sure move,” said Brady. “Gassy, too.”

“He’s obviously real fond of Prudence,” said Portia. “I could sense the affection when he tried to kick her head off her shoulders.”

“Well, not everyone’s on the same psychic wavelength as Mr.—” Seth cast a glance at Mrs. Spratt and caught himself. “Uh, people who are good with mules.”