That Distant Land, page 32
And that failed too, for Clara said, “My father’s loves are not mine.” After that, the Pettits communicated with Wheeler by way of the young Louisville lawyer, and they had little enough to communicate. Old associations, family ties, the dead man’s wishes were left to blow as the wind listed. But Old Jack’s letter, failing to hold Clara, held Wheeler. His duties as executor of Old Jack’s will were soon fulfilled, but disemployment brought him none of the freedom of the disemployed. There was no rest in it for him, no possibility that he and the problem of the dishonored letter might leave one another alone. The farm, according to the Pettits’ wishes, was to be sold at the courthouse door early in January, and until that day had passed the problem was Wheeler’s as much as it was Elton and Mary Penn’s. It was not a problem appointed to him, but one that he inherited, a part of his own legacy from his deceased client and friend. Jack Beechum came back to haunt him, and often in the small hours of the night Wheeler would find himself talking and arguing with the old man face-to-face. Trying to end these encounters, he would cry out in his thoughts: “But I did try! I can’t, damn it, make ’em do it!” And then he would think, no longer arguing but only mourning, that the Pettits were playing a different game from any that Old Jack had ever played, and living in a different world from the one that he had lived in. The letter in the notebook was written in a language the Pettits did not speak; they had forgot the tongue in which an old man might cry out from his grave in love and in defense of a possibility no longer his own in this world.
But it was not merely that the old man would not take no for an answer; Wheeler could not bring himself to offer it for an answer. The truth is that Wheeler is a seer of visions—not the heavenly visions of saints and mystics, but the earthly ones of a mainly practical man who sees the good that has been possible in this world, and, beyond that, the good that is desirable in it. Wheeler has known the hundred and fifty acres called, until now, the Beechum Place all his life. It is a good farm, a third or so of it rough enough, but the rest of it plenty good, and all of it well kept for a long time. It is a pretty place too. The fences and buildings are in good repair. The yard in front of the old house is full of low-spreading maples. And behind the house there is an ample garden plot with a grape arbor and a dozen old pear and apple trees. It is a place with good human life already begun in it, where the right sort of young man and woman could do well. Knowing all this, knowing the farm, knowing Elton and Mary Penn, Wheeler has irresistibly imagined the life they might live there. He does not think of it, of course, as the life they will live there, for he is aware of chance and human nature and mortality, but it is a life that they could hope to live, and a life that, Wheeler believes, a certain number of people in every generation must hope to live and try to live. He wants Elton and Mary to have that hope and make that effort there on Old Jack’s place where they have, in fact, already begun. And so Wheeler has a reason of his own not to take no for an answer.
Though the direct way was now lost, and the only available route appeared to wander in thicket and hollow without a plan, he would not give up. He did not give up when he learned for certain that there would be one strong contending bidder, or when he learned that there would be at least two. He did not know what could be done, but he did not give up. And he found it necessary to exercise his stubbornness on Elton’s behalf as well as his own.
In addition to the good judgment and good sense that Old Jack and Wheeler have admired in him, Elton has pride enough to overpower sense and judgment both—such pride that, as Wheeler understands, puts him more in need of a friend than it will let him admit. Being Old Jack’s heir was a nervous business for Elton in the first place. Nothing in his experience had prepared him for a benefit that was unasked, unearned, and unexpected. Nothing in his character prepared him to be comfortable with an obligation he could not repay. His election, both public and unexpected, to sonship to a man already dead took more gettting used to than he’d had time for, and then he learned of the opposition between himself and the other heir.
His impulse, on hearing of that, was to declare his own independence at any cost, to renounce his share in Old Jack’s estate along with whatever chance he had to buy the farm, and simply walk off, flinging defiance behind him like a handful of ashes.
“Whoa!” Wheeler said. “Wait a minute, now.”
And Mary said, “Oh, Elton!”
Wheeler was standing with his hat and raincoat on in the middle of the kitchen floor, having just told them the outcome of his discussion with the Pettits. When he entered in response to their call, Elton and Mary had just sat down to supper. Though he had expected it, Wheeler was distressed by the intensity of Elton’s embarrassment.
“Wait, Elton,” he said. “You can’t do that.”
“Well, I’d like to know why in the hell I can’t!”
Wheeler went to the table then and pulled out a chair and sat down.
“Here, Wheeler,” Mary said, starting to get up. “Let me get you a plate.”
“No. Don’t, Mary. I have to go home.”
But he sat on with them while they ate, patiently explaining—though he knew that Elton knew—that there could now be no backing out. To go ahead was best in Elton’s own interest, best in Mary’s interest, best in the interest of any children they might have.
“You’ve got to try for it, Elton,” Mary said.
“That’s right,” Wheeler said. “You’re in a fix, I admit, that I didn’t want to see you in, and didn’t think you’d be in. I know it won’t be easy for you to try for it and lose it. And you could do that. But you could come out with the farm too.”
He hushed and sat with his head down, looking at his hands at rest on his lap, thinking. Elton and Mary sat watching him, no longer eating. And then Wheeler raised his head and looked at them. “Listen,” he said. “Think about Jack Beechum getting his start here—way back yonder, seventy or seventy-five years ago. He was young and strong, excited by what he could do, demanding a lot of himself and of the place. And some things he asked were wrong. You’ve heard him tell it. He made mistakes that damaged him and the farm too, and that delayed and hampered him a long time. But he had the grace and the intelligence to learn and to keep on. And Ben Feltner, who was, you know, his brother-in-law, but a second father to him too, stood by him and put in a word when it would help, and helped in other ways.
“And those years changed him. He learned to do what his place asked of him. He became the man it asked him to be. He knew what it had cost him to become that kind of farmer, he knew he’d become his farm’s belonging, necessary to it, and he knew he was getting old.
“He was getting old, and he had no successor. He had an heir, but no successor. As his own workdays were coming to an end, he saw his farm going into a kind of widowhood. He’d talk about it sometimes.
“And then you and Mary came along. He saw right away what the two of you and the old farm could mean to each other, and what you meant to him. He saw that you could be the man and woman the place was asking for, and his life’s work might not go to waste, after all.”
“We’ve got to try it for Mr. Beechum’s sake, Elton.”
“Well,” Elton said, and cleared his throat. “Well, of course, that’s why we’ve got to try.”
Wheeler sat on with them for a while, talking of other things. When he got up to go he laid his hand on Elton’s shoulder and said, “Don’t worry.” He knew it was useless to say that to Elton, but he meant it. His own determination had grown, for he was in the presence of what he desired. “I don’t know what we’ll do, but we’ll do something.”
That there was plenty to worry about was soon evident. Earl Benson, who lived on one of the farms adjoining the Beechum Place, had bought two neighboring farms, the first of which joined his own original farm, the second being divided from it by the Beechum Place. It was a pattern that did not leave much to guess. Earl Benson was expected to be a bidder, and gossip soon confirmed that he would be. Wheeler knew the man, had done legal work for him in fact, and liked him. But meeting him on the street one afternoon, he said to him: “Earl, if Elton Penn can buy the Beechum Place, and he wants to, you’ll have a good neighbor.”
To which Earl replied, around his cigar, pleasantly enough: “And if I buy it, I’ll have a good farm.”
That didn’t surprise Elton any more than it did Wheeler.
“I figured that,” Elton said. “If I was in his place, I reckon l’d try to buy it too.”
Wheeler was sitting in his car with the motor running, Elton leaning down to talk to him through the window. A few feet away Elton’s tractor was standing with its motor running.
Wheeler had begun to make these visits almost daily, not because he had news for Elton that offen, but because he was anxious and could not stay away.
“With Earl in it,” Wheeler said, “you’ll have to bid higher than you want to. You might as well get ready for that.”
“I’m ready to go a little bit higher.”
Wheeler thought it would have to be more than a little bit, but he didn’t say so. He said, “Well, I’ll see you.”
Two days later, Wheeler was stopped in the post office by Dr. Stedman.
“Just the man I want to see,” the doctor said, taking hold of Wheeler’s elbow.
“Wheeler,” he said in the low, confidential voice with which some people talk to lawyers about serious matters, “I’ve got a little backlog of cash that I’m thinking of investing in land.”
“Well, do it,” Wheeler said. He was in a hurry, and he was impatient anyhow with the doctor’s persistent raids on him for free advice, legal and other.
When the doctor starts with his questions, Wheeler always wants to say, “While we’re standing here, Doc, would you mind taking my pulse?” But so far he has never said it. He merely saves himself as much time and trouble as possible by discovering what the doctor wants to do and advising him to do it. Even so, he always has to suffer an explanation.
“Well now,” the doctor said, “that old Beechum place up by Port William, I hear it’s going to be sold at auction.”
“That’s right.”
“I hear it’s a good one.”
“Yessir. It’s a good one.” There was more, Wheeler knew, and he did not want to hear it. He shifted his weight to turn away, but the grip on his elbow tightened.
“That young fellow who lives there, Elton Penn, I understand he made the old man a good tenant.”
“That’s right.”
“Well,” the doctor said, pursing his lips, looking down and looking up, “my thinking is this. If I bought the farm, he’d make me a good tenant. With my obligations, you know, I’d need somebody there who wouldn’t require a lot of seeing to. Do you see what I mean?”
“I do.”
“So if I could get the place and a good man on it at the same time, it would solve my problems, don’t you see? It would kill two birds with one stone.”
Wheeler knew very well the history of those two birds, the wish to own land, and the wish to have somebody else worry about it, and there were certain things that he was prepared to say on the subject. But he gently freed his elbow, and just as gently took hold of the doctor’s arm. “Doctor, do you know that Elton Penn wants to buy that farm for himself?”
“No, sir, I didn’t.”
“Well, he does. Listen. If you want to do a public service, get out of his way and let him have it.”
Wheeler turned away then, leaving the doctor’s reply floating in the air.
And so there was another bad possibility to warn Elton about.
“I don’t know how far he’ll go,” Wheeler said, “I don’t know how much money he’s got.”
“More than I got,” Elton said.
That Elton himself made the farm attractive to at least one of his competitors, Wheeler decided not to tell him.
Standing at the window, looking down, Wheeler thinks again, as he has many times, of the terms of a possible surrender. If the farm goes too high, why should Elton not just let it go? He would have his money still. He could take his time and find another place to buy—one that maybe, in the long run, would suit him just as well. And that was all right, as far as it went. But it left out Old Jack. It left the letter in the little notebook unanswered. It failed to answer Old Jack’s, and Wheeler’s, notion of what the farm itself needed and deserved. No more than the dead man could the living one bear to see the little farrn’s boundaries dissolved in Earl Benson’s adding of house to house and field to field. And if the doctor bought it? Wheeler knows that story as well as if it had already happened. Elton would not stay, and the doctor was right in supposing that he needed Elton along with the farm. He needed somebody who knew how to farm it, for he did not know how to farm it himself. When Elton and Mary left, they would be followed by a procession of other tenants who would also leave, worse following worse, while the farm ran down.
“No,” Wheeler says. “Hell, no.”
The sound of his own voice seems to move him. He glances at the clock on the courthouse tower, and then looks at his watch. He turns, walks slowly, looking at the floor, to the hat rack in the corner of the room, puts on his hat and coat, and returns to the window.
Clara is talking animatedly with Gladston and the lawyer, her coat collar turned up against the wind. As he watches her, it seems to Wheeler that she is elated, and he realizes with the sudden astonishment that one feels in looking into a life beyond the possibilities of one’s own, that for her the sale of the farm is a freedom, her own connection with it, her own early life there, being merely an encumbrance, probably an embarrassment. This whole passage of time has been burdened for Wheeler by his dislike of the Pettits, and he feels it now. He feels it, exults in it a little, for he knows that it defines his true allegiance, and yet is sorry for it. How much better it would be to be at peace with them, fellow mortals as they are, kindred as they are. And yet he feels, as he knows Old Jack felt, the irreconcilable division between his kind and their kind, between the things of this world and their value in money.
Now the courthouse door opens. The auctioneer crosses the porch, takes his stand at the top of the steps, begins to summon the crowd. Buttoning his coat, Wheeler hurriedly crosses the room and goes out. “Back in a minute,” he says to Miss Julia, his secretary, as he strides through the outer office. She widens her eyes by way of comment as the door slams and his steps quicken going down the stairs.
Outside, the unblemished winter sunlight and the strong wind fill the square. Wheeler comes out into it with a relief and a pleasure that are familiar to him. This is the sort of day that makes an active man working inside feel that he is missing something. The year is starting. The weather is busy. Out over the river he sees a flock of birds fly up into the face of the wind and then turn, as one, away from it.
Once he is in the street, with the square in sight again, he slows down, looking, pausing, speaking to passersby as he makes his way toward the little crowd collecting at the foot of the courthouse steps. He lets the crowd shape itself before he gets there, and then he stops on its outer edge.
The crowd is hollow-centered, a kind of diffidence making everybody stay back a little, not wanting to appear too interested. The Penns are standing in front of Wheeler on the inside of the ring. Wheeler sees Mary looking around for him. He catches her eye, gives her a quick nod. She whispers to Elton then, her lips forming the words: “Wheeler’s here.” Elton nods, but does not look back. Mary is holding to Elton’s arm, huddled against him, more from nervousness, Wheeler knows, than from the chill in the wind. There is something in the set of Elton’s head and shoulders that denies the crowd and sets him aside from it even though he is in it.
Dr. Stedman is standing close to the foot of the steps. He looks away when Wheeler looks at him, and carefully does not look back. And then Wheeler catches Earl Benson’s eye and nods, and Earl throws his head back, grinning on both sides of his cigar, and gives him a wave. The Pettits and their lawyer have moved closer to the crowd. They see Wheeler and nod, and he tips his hat. Though the day is brilliant and the sun in sheltered places gives some warmth, in the open square the wind presses upon them with an irrestistible chill; people stand with their hands in their pockets and their shoulders hunched.
The auctioneer gives a little introductory speech, welcoming everybody, describing the property to be sold, explaining the terms of the sale. And then, starting into his spiel, he calls for a bid of $175 an acre. The figure is hardly named before Wheeler sees Elton nod.
“Well, that’s aggressive enough,” Wheeler thinks. He would have been a little slower than that himself, maybe, but he sees that Elton is performing in the way proper to him, and he is pleased. “Be careful, now,” he thinks.
The doctor gives a little wave of his hand at $200, and at $225 Earl Benson says loudly, “Yeah!” And so they’ve gone beyond Old Jack’s price at a run. The auctioneer asks for $250.
“Two thirty-five,” Elton says, slowing it down, and Wheeler thinks, “That’s right.”
Earl Benson comes in quickly at $245. The spiel continues for some time after that without a bid. Elton and Mary are talking in whispers. The doctor shakes his head, turns away, and then changes his mind and bids again: $255. Earl Benson bids $265 as quickly as before. The doctor, finished, puts his hand back in his pocket and sidles into the crowd.
Wheeler is watching only Elton now, but Elton is shaking his head at Mary, ready to quit. And then, making one of the sudden shifts from stillness to haste that is characteristic of him, Wheeler steps through the crowd just as Elton is turning away and the auctioneer’s hand is raised in the air. He stops at Elton’s left shoulder, a little behind him, and takes hold of his arm. He says, “Go on!” and when Elton hesitates, “It’ll be all right! Go on!” And Wheeler knows, he can feel in his hand, when Elton yields himself to his struggle again—can feel him settling onto his feet.
