The House at Royal Oak (20 page)

The Royal Oak House kitchen passed inspection, as I expected, just as enthusiastic reviews of Hugo's breakfasts started rolling in. When return guests called to book, they'd often request the very same breakfast as before.

Hugo seemed a little better every day. We argued almost not at all and I dared to hope we were climbing back on track.

In some places it might be a big house or a big job that lets you “in,” but around here trucks of a certain size are important and most men have two, a good truck along with an everyday work truck. Early on, Hugo had traded his sport-utility vehicle for a pickup, claiming he had a lot of construction materials and trash to haul around. Guns were also way up there in importance, and ever since the sheriff's gunfire welcomed us to town, Hugo had planned to look for his gun, untouched since military school days.

With one thing and another, he didn't get around to it until a lull after the start of the second season. He found his rifle, cleaned it, and had it checked out at the local gun shop (“Fire away, it's fine”). He bought some shells, and when there were no guests he practiced target shooting in the backyard. At his urging I practiced, too, just enough to know how to load, aim, fire, and not get hurt. The most shocking thing about it was how easy it was. The rifle looked and felt like a toy.

I wanted Hugo to get rid of the shells and put the gun away. Isn't there a statistic about how many people shoot family members by mistake? What if I came home late one night and he woke up thinking I was an intruder? He chose to ignore my advice. Luckily.

Digging a bed for zinnias under the bay windows, I was sitting on the grass with my back up against the house. The grass shifted as if riffled by a breeze and a long shadow crossed in front of me. It was large and weaving through the grass right in front of the bed I was digging.

IT WAS ALMOST FIVE FEET LONG. I SCANNED MY MEMORY
of snakes. It wasn't a copperhead, but I couldn't remember what a water moccasin looked like, just that they are the most aggressive, venomous snake on the Eastern Shore. Called
trapjaws,
they have a nasty habit of holding on when they bite. Their nonpoisonous water snake companions are less stout but without the two side by side, how could I say if this one was more or less stout? One water snake has round eyes, the moccasin has vertically elliptical cat's eyes. I was too afraid to look this snake in the eye. It was probably afraid of me, too. The difference was it had the entire yard and I couldn't move.

Hugo, who happened to be repainting the porch floor, somehow noticed, went inside, got the gun from the closet and shells from a drawer in another room, came around to the front of the house, down the steps, up alongside me, and aimed.

He missed and the snake took off.

Ten days later the snake came back and hung around the back porch. This time Hugo did not miss. I felt a rush of gratitude, followed by fear. What would have happened if the fates were unkind and Hugo had not been out and around or not around at all? It was impossible to forget the recent past—it reared up at the slightest opportunity—and it seemed clear to me now that the fates had flirted with taking Hugo away, then capriciously, or who knows why, decided not to.

When Roland next came by—Roland, who possesses more practical knowledge of the area's natural history than anyone else we know—Hugo mentioned shooting the snake.

“Those big poisonous snakes can be annoying and they will hang around a place. You did the right thing, Hugo. You did the right thing.” Roland switched off his truck engine, opened the door, and climbed down.

Hugo had suddenly gained stature because, as Roland went on to say, snakes are hard to hit. Sean, who worked at The Oaks, saw us gathered at the roadside and came over. Roland always brought interesting news and if anything was up in Royal Oak, he probably knew it. He is also the person the weekend people call when a raccoon, snake, or fox gets in their barn, chimney, or house.

Sean said snakes like to hang from the branches of the huge white oaks down by the inn's dock, but the guests did not like this at all. It was Sean's job to get rid of them. “If it's high up in a tree, I'll shoot it. But if it's just lying on the ground, I'll pick it up by the tail and heave it as far as I can in the field.”

I realized a macho contest was underway and got busy deadheading the roses.

“If it bites,” Sean was saying, “don't go and yank its head off you because the teeth are weak. They'll break off and stay in your skin and you'll get a nasty infection. You have to wait till the snake decides to let go.”

Roland: “Shovel's the best way, as far as I'm concerned, Hugo. If it's on the ground, smack it on the head. Now if a snake makes my brother mad, I'll tell you what he does, especially if it's poisonous. He'll take it in his two hands and just rip it apart, like you snap a belt.”

The subtext of Sean and Roland's advice could not have been clearer. You did pretty good for a come-here, but you've still got a few things to learn.

It went like that whenever Hugo or I thought we were there, settled, getting comfortable, had learned what we needed to know to move on. It reached a point that I started wondering ahead of time what lessons the next day or hour, guests or neighbors would bring. Every time I guessed wrong.

“You aren't Democrats, are you?” The question was inescapable, whether it came over the fence, at a party, picnic, or happy hour gathering, though it wasn't always put so directly. The answer was obvious in the newspapers you read and mentioned. Around election time it was more than obvious in the signs you posted in your front yard, or not, and the bumper stickers you displayed on your truck, or not. Only once did the question come straight at me and there wasn't even time to say
independent
before this neighbor went on to add, “Because we can't stand for anyone to be against our boys, our troops, like the Democrats are.”

Safe topics of conversation were gardening, a new restaurant because it was such a novelty that everyone checked it out right away, and encounters with wildlife.

An encounter with wildlife is probably the highest-status topic and I've gathered that if you haven't had any lately it's okay to make one up. At a girls-only party I was pleased to be invited to, I met a sweet-faced older woman who concocts the best chicken salad with green grapes I've ever tasted. When I sat down to ask her for details of the recipe, I noticed her foot in a cast. What happened? She was out shooting a raccoon that was trying to get at the barn swallows' nest, she explained, when the rifle kicked back so hard she tripped and broke her ankle. But she got the raccoon.

“She wasn't out shooting any raccoon,” her daughter told me the next day. “She broke her ankle at a yard sale.”

Development, of course, is not a safe subject. The spread of big box stores over vast tracts of farmland is widely welcomed because it brings jobs, lower prices, and more convenient shopping. Even the old standby, the weather, is not a safe subject because of its inevitable, inconvenient connection to climate and politics. Hugo learned this around the neighborhood and he had to learn it over again from the guests.

Looking out the window on a mid-December day at the flowering quince in our front yard, a guest asked what it was. Hugo told him and then lapsed, remarking that the quince usually blooms in early April. “But there's no such thing as global warming, is there?”

The guest bristled. “There certainly is not. What there is is an effort to discredit our hardworking leadership in Washington.”

Exactly, Hugo answered, trying to retain a shred of poise, along with his self-respect.

Back in the kitchen, he scowled. Slam-dunked again.

At that time it was unimaginable that a perceptible shift in attitude would ever take place. It started when Vice-President Dick Cheney, a part-time resident a few miles away, accidentally shot a fellow quail hunter in Texas. At the gun store Hugo fell into discussion. Everyone agreed it was unfortunate, but the man who sold Hugo shells expressed the prevailing sentiment most succinctly. “Thanks to heaven the vice-president didn't shoot that lawyer in the face anywhere around here! He would have screwed our safety record.”

A newspaper editorial calculated how long it would take to repair damage to the statistics if the vice-president had shot someone in Talbot County. In any event, much care is taken during hunting season and almost everyone who walks, jogs, or bicycles wears blaze orange. One neighbor sports a penitentiary-orange jumpsuit and a welder's mask when he ventures out because not even a local knows when birdshot will come flying out of the woods.

A bigger shift in acceptable subject matter occurred as the Iraq war worsened. The jabs at Democrats and suspected Democrats stopped—they just stopped cold—as if this had never been a major sport, and politics altogether faded to an almost nonexistent topic. I wasn't sure about this until the heating and air-conditioning repairman came by to check the furnace.

As he wrote out the invoice, he said he guessed we wouldn't be needing the furnace half as much as the air-conditioning this year. It was a really good thing we had finally put it in. “The industry journals we get, they all say it—and I don't know what side you're on politically, but I can tell you—this thermal warming thing they talk about, it's happening, it's here.”

Even before all that, dodging political discussions was easier than avoiding hidden conversational land mines, of which there seem to be an unlimited number.

Like the pigs.

Driving out to a farmstand on St. Michaels Road, I passed a new fenced enclosure of animals and slowed down for a better look. Definitely pigs. Someone had tried to start a garden center on the site, but owing to regulations or politics, the garden center was not allowed. The nursery stock already dug into the ground was dying. The newly arrived pigs, I saw, were large and robust.

A few weeks later when I drove by again, I was startled to see a rusty old station wagon parked inside the pigpen, tires flat, doors open. Spray-painted on the windows in fluorescent pink and green was “OINK-OINK.” Within days the pigs, as could only be expected of pigs, issued their own scatological statement. More weeks later, pigs, car, and fencing vanished, as if they had never been.

Meanwhile, a couple of miles closer to town a new business opened up with a field full of too many hundreds of recreational vehicles, boats, and trailers to count. It reminded me of what Eugene McCarthy, who once lived along the Chesapeake watershed, observed: “Nothing in the country is ever quite as simple as it seems.”

When I ventured to ask a knowledgeable local about the curious appearance and disappearance of the pigs, it was my turn to be slam-dunked. “Those animals belong to a very nice family. The family owns a lot of land around here, always have.”

Sticking to wildlife sightings is a safer bet and it's one of the best surprises of our new life. “I saw a Monarch,” someone will greet you. “Just one, but they're on the way.” A shopper at the market says, “I hear quail in the woods again. They were gone so long, it's wonderful to have them back.” Scott Kilmon reports, “The barn swallows are here” and “Got the first striper yesterday.” A boat captain announces, “The ospreys are back in their nest on channel marker nine.”

I've started to join in. “For the first time I saw a ruby-throated hummingbird,” I say at the farmers market. “It was feeding on my trumpet vines and when it flew away I saw gold dust, pollen, on its beak and throat.” The farmer who sells sweet corn was impressed, but don't try to one-up anyone with your sightings.

“Do you know what my cat did yesterday?” she answered. “She brought a baby rabbit in the house and I found them napping side by side.”

The cat wanted a pet? I asked. “Oh, no. The cat has done this before and I always set the baby rabbit free before the cat can carry out her evil plan.”

THERE ARE SO MANY GOOD GUESTS THAT WHEN A BAD
one turns up, it always comes as a surprise. It was June, I remember, because the scent of honeysuckle mingled with the deep aroma of cigar smoke as we rounded the driveway after a late-night walk. Laughter echoed from the front porch and I saw the orange glow of sparks as a smoker tapped away ashes. The voice of Ella Fitzgerald drifted from the open front door of our house.

Men in tuxes and women in cocktail dresses sat on the porch. A pleasing sight except for the sparks and the door open to mosquitoes, wasps, snakes, foxes, coyotes, and who knew what else. Maybe we should stay up, I suggested to Hugo as we slipped discreetly in the side door, to monitor the party.

“Not necessary.” They seemed exceptionally polite and courteous when they requested an ice bucket earlier, he reported, and they'd asked permission to smoke on the porch.