The Excellent Lombards (25 page)

“Actually, my father is a real farmer!” That cry was a hot streak through my mind but also it seemed to have come from my mouth. William grabbed my arm and Tribby banged his gavel; he banged his gavel at me, Mary Frances Lombard. My own words in the air were burning my ears, the clue, besides William’s grip, that I had spoken out loud.

I put my head down. What had just happened? Philip had maybe said something important; I wasn’t sure. My father had thought so but bringing up Plato? You did not bring up Plato at a town meeting. That was a rule anyone should instantly apprehend, crossing the threshold of the room. And yet Philip must have been right if people like the chairman and Marv Johnson were lambasting him. Think, think: I couldn’t very well be on Tribby’s side. He had practically beaten me with that mallet. I had shouted without even realizing it, which might mean I was out of my mind. Or very ill. I was hot and shivering, both. Trying to keep my body still, afraid the chair would start rattling. I could feel William not paying the slightest attention to me.

After some time I became aware that Sherwood was standing. Then I had to look up and take note; I had to abandon my own suffering. We held our breath since you could never quite know what Sherwood was going to say. His craggy face, that block of a forehead, was imposing, his curls were still red and made a fanciful halo, his best feature, and even though he wasn’t on the dais he had a pressed shirt and his good shoes. There was no need for him to be shy but he was hesitating. For what seemed like a few minutes he looked up at the ceiling, trying to collect his ideas, everyone, even the Lombard-haters, pulling for him. You just had to, no matter what, that man with visible effort intending to speak thoughtfully.

Finally he began. “Consider how much arable land was here twenty years ago, ten years ago, and now.” He spoke softly, dreamily.

Philip was nodding at Sherwood, nodding without pause, as if he were saying,
That’s right, man
, again and again.

“There are four or five farmers who among them work about twenty-three hundred acres,” Sherwood went on. There was a small cry, an
uhhhh
from Mrs. Tillet. All the good land gone, a fresh sorrow to her. “We can say that the shrinkage is due to an individual’s right, and his choice to sell, but what if we had a land-use plan that rewards stewardship, rather than cashing in, a land-use plan that has built into it conservation easements and tax policy, so that we are not only assisting the individual but working for the communal good?” There was spittle on his lips, his hands making larger circles, Sherwood revving up. Philip was still nodding, as if he alone understood the points being made. He had no right to think he knew anything and yet he continued his outrageous agreement while Sherwood gently educated us about the Dust Bowl, about the possibility of hunger, about the richness of our land resource, about our obligation to preserve it. Sherwood was spirited and tender, quiet in his knowledge, proving Tribby wrong, proving to the assembly that the Lombards’ intelligence was mannerly, that it was not unseemly or puffed up in any way.

“Those of you,” Sherwood was saying, “who want out can sell your property for a good price. There’s no reason to fear you wouldn’t get a good price. Those of us who want to continue farming will feel secure that we’re still in a community that values us, that supports us. We are together in this, more than we realize. If we understand that we’re together so much of this Plan makes sense.”

We almost clapped. Being together was after all what the Lombard Orchard was about, too, and he knew it, he believed in it; he no longer thought he alone should run the farm. This was how we’d always loved Sherwood, suddenly, the joyousness knocking us over the head. It would fade away, the feeling, we’d forget about it, we wouldn’t see him for a time, we’d be in earshot of our parents’ complaints but then, then he’d appear before us again, unusual and pure.

When he was done he sat down. Even so Philip continued nodding. “Why is he nodding?” I whispered to William.

“Shush,” he said.

At last the citizens’ portion was concluded. Tribby informed the audience that the board would vote on the Plan at their next meeting.

It was Mrs. Tillet who yelled, “You can’t do that! TONIGHT. It said in the paper you’d vote tonight.”

A rumble rose from the crowd. “You’ve made up your minds so just do the vote.” Someone on the other side shouted, “Vote when you feel like it, fellas!” Another call, “You vote now, when we’re here to watch you.”

Tribby turned to his board. He said, “You boys ready?”

“That’s what this meeting is for! You’re supposed to vote—”

Tribby banged his gavel. “What do you say, boys—and Pam?”

One by one each member indicated that he was prepared.

“I’m going to say what I’ve said before.” Tribby raised his papers in a stack, tapping them together on the table, doing his tidying. “You all know I don’t believe in this Plan. Why would we want to approve even more government, bigger government? We’ve got government oversight in every arena of our life. Uncle Sam telling us when to turn around—”

“The government supports you!” Mrs. Tillet was again irrepressible. “You, personally, Chairman, get subsidies. Look it up, people, on the Internet. Learn how many hundreds of thousands—”

“You want a vote tonight?” Tribby’s throat and jaw were a blotchy red, no way to obscure his rage. “We need any discussion, boys, or have we discussed this thing into the dirt? It’s your call.”

There was all at once a motion, Pam Getchkey, the breeder of Dobermans, moving that the Land-Use Plan not be adopted. She moved also that my father’s committee be dissolved.

The committee over and done? Forever? A cry went up from the crowd. The faction that was incensed by Pam, by Tribby, got to their feet, the chairs banging against each other, the clangs ringing through the room. The Lombards stayed put because of course by and large we weren’t public jumper-uppers and yet I did find myself standing. Dolly was so amazed she started to laugh, calling out, “What are you doing, folks!” The townspeople, both sides, were gibbering, a few of them shaking fists, some of them advancing toward the dais. My mother actually looked alarmed. “Jesus Christ,” she muttered, “sit down, Francie.”

“No,” I said, although I somewhat wished I wasn’t on my feet.

The board members held to their positions. My father said afterward that nothing of the sort had happened in that chamber before, a mob of twenty-five or so advancing. Tribby pounded his gavel like a baby at a peg-and-hole toy, leaving it to my father to rise and greet us. He stretched out his long arms, my father. He towered over squat Tribby with the boiling face, my father looming and sallow under the awful light. “Sit down,” he called. “Please. Everyone. Go and sit down.” With his arms out it was as if he could hold us all, as if he could easily contain us.

Tribby continued to strike his gavel. No one looked at anyone else, everyone receding. We had sprung up without thinking in just the way I had shouted out—but now we were ashamed. Because, in truth, no one knew what was going on at the revolution. No one had a plan. Were we going to topple the table? Punch the board members in the nose? The furious cohort went back to their chairs and those of us who had stood without thinking sat back down. William was fiercely reading his book.

“We have to let this process unfold,” my father was saying. “In the next election, you’ll be able to vote for change, if that’s the will of the township. If there’s energy to—”

“Tell us something we don’t know,” Tribby sniped, still banging away.

Dolly turned around to us and said in her normal loud speaking voice, “You kids should understand that where we are right now? It’s the nuthouse. I like to think that everyone will leave this loony bin, that the only people left in the township will be these board members, the cuckoo clocks. I have to say, that makes me happy.”

My mother smiled a little, but she couldn’t agree outwardly because the town board members were the people who funded the library and in public she must always try to be on her best behavior.

When the motion carried Marv slowly clapped his enormous fleshy palms together, one loud clap after the next. My father’s work of seven years, for naught. He got up and we could see all at once that the meeting had drained him of his powers.

“Jim,” my mother murmured, even though he was not anywhere near her.

His chest was sunk in on itself, his back bent, the hump of an old person. That’s what I thought, an old person, my father. He looked like a man who through his life had not slept enough or eaten enough, a man who had no business being in a struggle with our community, or maybe with any community, with people who were coarse and mean, with people who could give up their farms for Florida.

“That was epic,” Philip said on the way out.

“That’s how it is around here,” Dolly said drily.

My father, I didn’t explain to them, would eventually win; he would win. He had to. He would win because he was right in principle. The whole world could not be built upon, the whole earth cement. It might take time but he would prevail. In fact, it wasn’t until the recession of 2008 that no new subdivisions were proposed. In that spring the building of prospective homes on those plats that had been approved was suspended. Every single plan on hold for lack of money. Even though my father had done nothing to cause the recession except privately hold to his convictions about farmland, nonetheless, Jim Lombard’s deepest dream, his dream for zero growth, of course had come true.

20.

The Fears of MF Lombard,
Part One

I
was outwardly more or less perfectly well adjusted, as far as I could tell, although sullen when it was necessary, but MF Lombard—the name I now used—MF in her inner sanctum was generally, more or less, terrified. The towers had come down, for one, when we’d been in school, the entire day devoted to CNN, the planes piercing the buildings, the office workers, those specks, falling through the sky, the buildings collapsing, over and over again. But more frightening than the footage itself was the shock of our teachers, some of them weeping as they watched, and also how silent, at first, the bad students were, the troublemakers, some of them with their heads down on their desks, as if even they couldn’t find a prank like that useful to look at.

At lunch I found William, I needed to be with William. He now wore good-boy clothing, Oxford shirts tucked in, his oversize pants with pockets for guns a fashion statement of the past. I didn’t usually see him much during the school hours but I had the feeling he was waiting for me, sitting on a bench by himself outside the library. I sat next to him, the two of us not saying anything. We were embarrassed. We didn’t know where to start. Everyone would understand our sitting together and yet we ourselves, between the two of us, didn’t know what to say. After a minute, however, I began to think that I did have something to tell him. I couldn’t explain it even though the feeling was hard in me, the tough little ball gathering speed out in the distance, within the space of my mind, the light of reason: which was, I was right, MF Lombard had been correct that William should not go far away to college. Because, this is what happened, strangers evidently from the land of Stephen Lombard on the bluest, softest autumn day perpetrating evil. Best to stay put, stay close to what was near and dear.

Amanda was already preparing to go to Germany with AFS in the next year, Dolly so excited for that adventure. And Adam was applying to colleges in California, an agricultural state with no water.

“Do you think we could go home?” I finally said to William.

“I have a calc test.”

“We’re just going to be watching the news for the rest of the day.”

“We’ve been attacked,” he said, needlessly.

William’s saying so, though, made the event real.

“What if our school is next?” I had to wonder.

“They only hit symbols of power,” he muttered.

The bell rang and we were required to move.

In the next few days there was talk of war, of trying to fight the group, the country, whatever it was, that had caught the world’s attention, and it was that idea that frightened me most. At the end of the week, on Friday, I was in the back room of the sheep shed, a place I often went for the purpose of crying. The floor was thick with hay, the room warm and close with dung and rumination. The spring lambs came to see MF with her head down, arms hugging knees, Spinky and Sue bravely approaching, nibbling at human hair. So then I could hold them close, clasping their heads to my cheek, my tears wetting their soft white noses. Sometimes I didn’t even know quite why I was crying but on that day I was scared about retribution, about William having to march off to the Middle East, and I even cried for Stephen Lombard, because maybe he’d be blown up somewhere along the line.

I’d never known May Hill to come around the sheep shed, and afterward I did remember that she had a pail in her hand, and that she was probably going to give her compost to the ewes. She was all at once looking in through the open windows. “What’s the matter with you?” She spoke sternly and yet with curiosity. It was, it seemed, a real question.

I had been distantly in her company in the summers, across the field making hay, and sometimes she walked by the barn when I was working, but I hadn’t been face-to-face with her in years, not since my capture. It was possible in the compound, if you were careful about your route, not to bump into someone like May Hill. And since we never celebrated any holiday with the Volta family there was no danger of seeing her around a Christmas tree. But now she’d come upon me at the peak of my frenzy. What was the matter with me? A good question. Certainly I was crying about how the world in the space of one Tuesday morning had completely changed. Maybe, however, there were also other lurking sorrows that had piggybacked on the big one. For instance, Philip with his springy walk and his blond curls and his good cheer working so ably alongside my father, his infiltration going on year after year. I could hardly remember when he hadn’t been with us. It was if my father had adopted him, as if he were now the first son. Philip, the second coming. And, additionally, there were the college materials, the sheer mass of the mailings in our PO box for William, every day appeals from institutions that wanted him.