Quite a Year for Plums (15 page)

Squeaky was a black horse, grizzled now around the face, gaunt and spare, with big bones and big feet. He had been born to one of Roger's uncle's logging horses.

“Frances,” Hilma said to Squeaky.

One day Frances had paused in her job of snaking a big butt log out of the woods to the sawmill, laid her ears back, and given birth to a little black colt.

“Squeaky,” said Hilma.

Roger had named the little thing Squeaky because of its squeals and whinnies, but Squeaky had grown up to be a fine horse, patient and almost thoughtful, with the dignity and grace that is so unmistakable in some special horses.

Inside, the house smelled like hay and pine and sweet feed. Squeaky's head drooped and his tail drooped and his eyelids drooped. Hilma didn't dare pat the old horse, he seemed so frail and delicate. He wouldn't lift his head to look at her, but when she put her hand on his muzzle and felt his old bristly lip flap once against her fingers, it seemed like the most generous of good-byes.

The next day was in the seventies. Hilma put her flats of seedlings out on the steps in the sun. On the porch the lizards were scampering. That night she was wakened by gentle plopping sounds, as one by one the blossoms of Roger's camellias turned loose from their stems and hit the floor. Hilma lay in the dark for a while listening for the next flower to fall. Then, suddenly, with the instant clarity that sometimes comes in night thoughts, she realized why Roger had made Squeaky's house so big. It was so that when the old horse finally pitched over, there would be room for him to fall without crashing into the flimsy walls of the house, and his last thought in this world would not be one of panic as the Styro-foam panels and poles of the dying house collapsed on top of him.

T
hey have stuck some kind of bird up on a post at the entrance to their driveway” said Meade. “A dead bird?” cried Hilma, putting a hand to her throat.

“It's a ceramic bird, I think, or concrete,” said Meade. “Some kind of bird of prey, a raptor—perhaps it's meant to be a hawk, although it's bigger than a redtail.”

They were driving out to Tall Pines—“The Finest in Country Living.” A group of Wymans—brothers and cousins—had turned their parents’ old place into a subdivision with lots marked off, paved roads, a rectangular pond scooped out of what had been a little wet-weather swamp, and streetlamps at regular intervals illuminating the Wymans’ old scrubby woods. While the bulldozer tracks were still fresh at the edge of the pond, the Wyman boys began advertising “Lakefront Homesites” in the newspaper, and before long a young couple from Tallahassee had
actually bought a lot and built a brick-veneer house there.

At the driveway Meade boldly stopped the car, and they craned their necks to see the bird. It was a cast-concrete eagle, presenting its ruffled chest to passersby, wings outstretched, head to one side.

“Well, I never,” said Hilma. “It's an eagle. Imagine an eagle, just sitting there year after year, in that awkward position.”

“Pretension is what it is,” said Meade.

The next day when Hilma and Meade drove by, there was another post, topped by another eagle. They faced each other across the driveway.

“Two eagles!” cried Hilma. “I have seen pictures in
National Geographic
of a tree full of eagles in one of those wild western states, but it certainly wasn't presented as something you would see every day.”

“I think we should call on them,” said Meade.

“But our thoughts are not kind,” said Hilma, “so our good wishes would be insincere.”

“We wouldn't express good wishes,” said Meade. “You would bake them a little cake, and we would merely say hello.”

A thousand-year-old tree, thought Meade, looking at the redwood siding on the wall under the little porch—and felled for such a house as this.

Everything matches, thought Hilma, noticing the two gleaming brass light fixtures flanking the door and the pair of urns planted with juniper on the top step.

“Oh! Hi!” said the young woman in the doorway. There was a confusion of introductions, then a mingling of gratitude and apology for the cake.

“How nice!”

“… just a simple banana nut cake.”

“… my favorite, and Bob will be so…”

“… not enough nuts, and my oven, I don't know…”

“Won't you come in—Justin, get the dog, Justin, Justin!” But it was too late. A big black and white dog with a pink nose bounded into the room, over the back of the sofa, and into the kitchen, where it skidded on the linoleum, crashed into the refrigerator, and then started snuffling through the garbage pail. From the yard a little boy called, “Here, boy, here, boy,” and Hilma pressed herself up against the redwood wall as the dog dashed back out.

“101 Dalmatians”
the woman explained.

“One hundred and one?” gasped Hilma.

“You know how it is with kids,” said the woman. “Now come in, I'll take your coats, please sit down.” The room was long and low, with pale blue wall-to-wall carpeting and knotty pine paneling. A big plate-glass window looked out into a thicket of myrtle and rows of planted slash pine. The woman flipped a switch on the wall, and the logs in the fireplace instantly burst into flames.

Meade stretched a hand out to the fire, but a glass panel across the fireplace opening prevented any warmth from entering the room.

“We like the rustic look, but we were concerned
about safety, with kids and all,” said the woman, “you can never be too careful.”

“Oh no,” said Hilma, gazing with rapt horror at the logs, wreathed in flames but never consumed, “you can never be too careful with small children.”

The door opened just a crack, and the little boy squeezed into the room. A black and white snout appeared for an instant on either side of his legs, then between them as the dog shoved and squirmed to get in.

“Justin,” the woman said, in a warning tone.

“We noticed your eagles,” said Meade.

“That's how we knew someone lived here,” said Hilma hurriedly, “and so we came to say hello.”

“Those are exact replicas of the eagles at a certain castle in England,” said the woman. “I can't remember the name, but we saw it on ‘Masterpiece Theatre.’ And believe me, they were
not
cheap.”

“What's this?” the little boy called from the kitchen.

“That is some delicious banana nut cake,” said the woman in a shrill, cheerful voice, “that these nice ladies have brought us, Justin. Wasn't that nice of them?”

“I hate food with nuts in it,” said the little boy, trailing away down a dark hall.

“I have set up a bird-feeding station,” said the woman, and she pointed to a cedar bird feeder in the shape of a barn, and a white plastic bird bath. “Now that we live in this wooded area we want Justin to learn to appreciate nature.”

“Oh,” Hilma began helpfully, forcing her attention away from the mesmerizing fire. “You should be seeing finches, chickadees, chipping sparrows and white-throated sparrows, tufted titmice, and this seems to be a year for the pine siskins.”

“Well, I don't know,” said the woman. “So far I've only been seeing these little brown birds, and a few black and white ones.”

“The floor of the summer house at West Dean Park,” Meade said suddenly in a loud voice, “in the southeast of England, is paved entirely with horses’ teeth.”

Then there were a few awkward moments of silence before Hilma began talking about the weather, “very cold for the time of year,” and before long Hilma and Meade gathered up their coats and said good-bye.

On the ride back home Hilma kept thinking of Mr. and Mrs. Wyman, an old county family. “Those were such magnificent woods in the Wymans’ day,” she said at last. “An open stand of virgin longleaf pines.” The Wyman boys had sold the longleaf trees for saw timber in the seventies, when the price was high.

“And now that it's had twenty years to grow up in second-growth loblolly and hardwood thickets, it's called a ‘wooded area’ by an ignorant fool of a woman who doesn't know a bald eagle from a tufted titmouse,” said Meade. “ ‘A certain castle in England,’ ” she hissed, “ ‘little brown birds.’ ” Meade abhorred imprecision in conversation. “I can only
hope that she had her tubes tied after the birth of that child.”

“Oh, Meade,” said Hilma. “Ignorance is not an inherited trait. But it is a shame about those woods.”

“They were such cute little old ladies,” the woman said to her husband that night. “One of them was sweet, she brought some kind of bread. The other one was odd, she would just say the strangest things. But they loved the eagles.”

“You shouldn't blame the poor little family with the eagles. It's not their fault,” said Roger. Although he took his tea plain, he knew that Meade would not stop until she had laid down a cloth and set out the sugar bowl, cream pitcher, spoons, napkins, and cake, and he waited patiently with his hands in his lap. “It's the Wyman boys who should be ashamed, the way they clear-cut those woods. It broke my heart seeing those logs coming out of there, four-hundred-year-old trees some of them, truckload alter truckioaa* Kogefs own tamily place was across the road from Tall Pines. Now it was one oi the last fragments of what had once been a vast forest of longleaf pine trees stretching across the Southeast from Virginia to Texas, all cut down and sold for timber to make way for roads, farms, and towns. “Some beautiful boards came out of those trees though,” said Roger. “ ‘The forest that built America,’ they call it.”

Meade poured tea into his cup through a little silver gimbaled strainer and sat down with a sigh.

“Streetlights, Roger! Paved roads, concrete eagles, surly children, unruly dogs, fires that spring up out of nowhere and put out no heat. What are we coming to in this world, Roger, woods that go unburned, covered with second-growth scrub and idiots?”

But it wasn't a question that could be answered and Roger sipped his tea in silence.

“Remember the Wymans’ house?” Meade went on. “A square-hewn dogtrot, 1850s—a fine, simple farmhouse. No pretension there.”

“Yes,” said Roger, bracing himself for what was sure to come in this well-traveled conversation. “I remember the house.”

“Those Wyman boys didn't care enough about it to fix the roof, but they didn't let a month go by without paying that fire insurance premium,” said Meade. “And by the time the fire truck got there, it was too late.”

“Every board in that house was heart pine,” said Roger, “cut off that place. The whole house was made out of kindling wood, Meade, nothing could have stopped that fire.”

Meade set her teacup into its saucer with an emphatic click. “Nothing could have stopped it, but what started it,” she said, “is what I want to know.”

“Now, Meade, you don't—” said Roger.

“Fire insurance!” said Meade. “Insurance money paid for those paved roads, insurance paid for that bulldozer, insurance paid for those shallow people to live their small lives in a place where they have no business to be.”

“Oh!” said the woman in the doorway. “How nice to see you—um—”

“It's Hilma,” said Hilma.

“Right right right, now I remember, such a pretty name,” said the woman, “and where's your friend?”

“Meade!” said Hilma, with a start. “Meade was busy with other things today. But I've brought you a little book that might help you learn the names of your birds.”

“Oh, how nice!” said the woman.
“Peterson Field Guides”
she read.

“Southeastern birds,” said Hilma, “Oh, listen,” and she paused. “A white-throated sparrow—such a weary little song—here he is; you'll be seeing him on the feeder, this rather large sparrow with the white patch. See the helpful arrows pointing out significant marks.”

“Won't you come in?” said the woman. “It's so warm today, I don't think we'll need the fire on, do you?”

“Oh no,” said Hilma, “certainly not the fire, not today at all. I can't stay, I just wanted you to have the book. Here,” and she opened it to a page of finches, “I have marked the ones you will be likely to see. Your little boy might enjoy making a list.”

“You what?” said Meade. “Well, I'm sure it's the only book in that house. I know she didn't offer you anything to eat, we certainly never saw a slice of that banana nut cake.”

“I didn't want anything to eat,” said Hilma. “I thought she could start with finches and sparrows.

Just standing on the porch, I heard a white-throated sparrow.”

“With that dog I'm surprised she has any birds at all,” said Meade, “except those eagles, of course, bolted to their posts.”

It was late in the afternoon, a damp day with an east wind. Roger stood for a minute feeling the wind and the humidity in the air. With a match he lit a little spot in the dry grass beside his raked fire lane, then dribbled a line of fuel oil with his fire torch. With a whoosh the fire swept along the trail of fuel, then leaned with the wind into the woods. Roger stood and watched. The flames burned slow but steady, kept low by the damp air, the wind pushing the line of fire deeper and deeper into the woods. It looked right. Roger walked for over two miles, carefully laying down fire with the torch, stopping from time to time to watch it burn, walking back now and then to be sure the fire had not crossed over his raked path.

When the fire got a few feet out into the woods, it took off. In open areas, where the big trees were thin, the accumulation of straw was sparse, and the fire burned slow and close to the ground. There had been a good seedfall the year before, and the little longleaf seedlings spread out a cool place with their green needles to protect themselves from the fire. But where the big old trees were thick and filled up the sky with their tops, there was no opening for the little seedlings. There the pine straw lay thick on the ground, a volatile fuel, and in those places the flames
licked up into the sky ten feet or more. Smoke rose in towering bulbs, there was a roaring sound, and the tops of the trees swayed and danced in the fire's wind. As many times as he had done this job, Roger still worried. It was a delicate business, balancing fire, fuel, wind, and water. Many times he stopped and watched and worried. But every time the hot spots burned through quickly, the flames sank down again, and the fire crept deeper and deeper into the woods. By midnight he had lit off the whole thing, and he just stood and watched it burn. Behind the flames the ground looked bare, black, and ashy, but it would rain tomorrow, and by the middle of next week blades of grass would begin to show, and in the spring the wire grass, bracken fern, and all the other fire-dependent ground covers of the longleaf pine woods would come up lush and green and sturdy, rejuvenated by this fire. By April only the sooty trunks of the great old trees would show that these woods had burned. Maybe needles on some lower limbs would be browned, Roger thought, peering up into the smoky sky—but maybe not. It was a good fire.