Читать книгу Valley of the Moon - Melanie Gideon - Страница 12

The sheets smelled of sun. The man who’d made me kill poor innocent Wilbur stood looking out the window, his back to me. I coughed and he turned around.

“You’re awake,” he said.

Joseph, that was his name. He was about six feet tall, with dark hair and eerie light blue eyes. His face was tanned and a bit weathered; he was middle-aged, probably in his forties, but he was in good shape. He bristled with vitality.

“What happened?” I asked.

“You fainted.”

“I did?”

“You don’t remember?”

“I remember feeling dizzy.”

“And how do you feel now?”

I took stock. No headache, no dizziness—I was hungry, however. “Starving.”

“When did you eat last?”

“Around seven last night. A couple of spoonfuls of Jif.”

He made a funny face and I was embarrassed, as well as intimidated. He had a posh English accent.

The room was furnished impeccably in nineteenth-century farmhouse décor; not a detail had been overlooked. There was a washstand with a basin and pitcher. A rag rug. A lantern hung on the wall. The floor was hardwood, studded with black nails. The mattress rustled beneath me. Horsehair.

Why was the house outfitted like this? And why was this man dressed like Pa from Little House on the Prairie? Was this a movie set? Was he an actor? My mind kept scrabbling for purchase. The only thing that made sense was that they were in the middle of filming a scene when I arrived. But why didn’t they stop acting when I’d barged onto the set? And why did the pig die when I entered the fog? That wasn’t a special effect. The pig had really died; I’d felt its limbs go slack.

My heart started to pound. I put my hand on my chest to try and slow it down.

“Rest,” he said. “I’ll go get you something to eat.”

The thought of being left alone panicked me. I grabbed ahold of his arm. “No, please don’t leave.”

He stared down at my hand, seemingly taken aback that I’d touched him, and I forced myself to loosen my grasp.

“I’m only going downstairs. I’ll be back in a few moments,” he said.

I looked at him wild-eyed.

“I promise, Lux.”

He had a deep, resonant voice that immediately comforted me. It told me this was a man who did what he said he was going to do. Still, I didn’t want to be left alone.

“I’m coming with you.”

“You should stay.”

“Nope, I’m coming.” I slid my legs over the side of the bed.

When he saw that it was useless to try to stop me, he helped me to my feet and led me out of the room and toward the stairs. He pointed out the landing window. “That’s Martha, my wife.”

A woman knelt in the garden, her back to us. She tossed a pile of weeds in a basket.

“You live here? You and your wife?”

“Yes.”

“For real? All the time?”

“It appears so,” he said wearily.

“Dressed this way? Sleeping on horsehair mattresses on purpose?”

He stuck his head through the open window. “Martha!” he shouted.

She swiveled around. It was the woman who’d asked me what was wrong just before I’d fainted.

“For God’s sake, she’s awake, come inside!”

Martha got to her feet, wiping her hands on her apron. She, too, was attired head-to-toe in period garb. An ankle-length skirt, a long-sleeved blouse, and button-up boots.

“You’re not an actor? This is not a movie set?”

“No,” he confirmed.

“I don’t understand. Why would you choose to live like you’re in the nineteenth century? Are you a religious sect? Is this some sort of a commune?”

I didn’t really think they were a religious sect, but I hadn’t yet landed on any other plausible explanation. Oddly, he seemed as confused as I felt. His pupils enlarged as he took in my jeans and hiking boots; my appearance was just as shocking to him as his was to me.

“Come down!” Martha called up from the bottom of the stairs. “I’ll make you a sandwich.”

Martha brought a bowl of plums to the table. She was a petite woman, so small that from a distance she looked like a child. Her blond hair was parted in the middle and pulled back severely, but she had a kind face.

“Are you still hungry?” she asked. “Have some fruit.”

I’d already devoured my sandwich. “No, thanks, I’m good.”

We were making small talk but the atmosphere was dense. Questions were gathering like storm clouds. I had questions, too, but they could wait. Their need to know seemed more urgent.

“We are not actors. We are not a religious sect. This is not a commune,” said Joseph.

“I didn’t mean to insult you. I was just trying to understand what was going on. Where I was,” I said.

“You’re at Greengage Farm,” said Martha. “In the Valley of the Moon. You’ve heard of Greengage?” she asked.

“No.”

Martha turned to Joseph, her eyebrows knit together in worry, no longer able to hide her emotions. “But we’ve been here for seventeen years. Everybody knows who we are.”

I shrugged. “I’m sorry. I live in San Francisco. That’s probably why I’ve never heard of you.”

Joseph picked up Martha’s hand and squeezed it.

“It’s 1975?” he asked me.

“Yes,” I said, baffled.

He gave me a grave look.

“What is the problem?” I asked.

He hesitated. “It’s 1906 here.”

Joseph told me their story. It was simple enough. The earthquake. The fog. Stuck here for four months. Then I arrived.

What wasn’t simple—believing it.

“You can’t expect me to buy this,” I said.

“It’s the truth,” said Joseph.

“Well, if it’s the truth, I need proof.”

“Where’s your proof you’re from 1975?” he asked.

“Look at me,” I said, pointing to my shirt.

“Look at us. That’s your proof as well,” said Joseph.

“Show her your passport,” said Martha. “In the parlor desk. Right-hand drawer.”

He sighed, but left to retrieve it.

“I’m sure this must be quite shocking,” said Martha. “But I assure you we are just as shocked.”

I stared at her and shook my head. They were dressed this way because they were from the past? Because they’d somehow got stuck in time? It was laughable. But Martha didn’t look crazy. She looked completely sane.

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be rude. But what you’re asking me to believe is impossible,” I said.

“I know,” said Martha.

“It’s preposterous.”

“Yes,” she agreed.

Joseph returned with his passport. It wasn’t a booklet, like our current-day passports; it was a piece of paper pasted into a leather folio.

By order of Queen Victoria, Joseph Beauford Bell is allowed to pass freely and without hindrance into the United States of America … blah, blah, blah, antiquated language. His date of birth. July 20, 1864. And at the bottom of the page—a photograph.

Unmistakably him.

When I was a child, my father forbade me to read science fiction or fantasy. Trash of the highest order, he said. He didn’t want me muddying up my young, impressionable mind with crap. If it wasn’t worthy of being reviewed in the Times, it did not make it onto our bookshelves.

So while my classmates gleefully dove into The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, A Wrinkle in Time, and The Borrowers, I was stuck reading Old Yeller.

My saving grace—I was the most popular girl in my class. That’s not saying much; it was easy to be popular at that age. All you had to do was wear your hair in French braids, tell your friends your parents let you drink grape soda every night at dinner, and take any dare. I stood in a bucket of hot water for five minutes without having to pee. I ate four New York System wieners (with onions) in one sitting. I cut my own bangs and—bam!—I was queen of the class.

As a result I was invited on sleepovers practically every weekend, and it was there that I cheated. I skipped the séances and the Ouija board. I crept into my sleeping bag with a flashlight, zipped it up tight, and pored through those contraband books. I fell into Narnia. I tessered with Meg and Charles Wallace; I lived under the floorboards with Arrietty and Pod.

I think it was precisely because those books were forbidden that they lived on in me long past the time that they should have. For whatever reason, I didn’t outgrow them. I was constantly on the lookout for the secret portal, the unmarked door that would lead me to another world.

I never thought I would actually find it.

While I examined Joseph’s passport, Martha did some quick calculations on a piece of paper.

“Joseph, if she’s telling the truth, sixty-nine years have passed out there, but only four months in Greengage. That means almost three and a half of her hours pass per minute here. She’s been here half an hour at least. That’s about four and a half days she’s been gone. Her people will be panicked. We’ve got to take her back to the fog immediately.”

If she’s telling the truth. They didn’t believe me? Martha looked stricken with worry. Real worry, not fake. Three and a half hours passing per minute? Come on! Part of me wanted to laugh. I half expected a camera crew to come busting out of the pantry. But what if they were telling the truth and three and a half hours were passing per minute here? Oh God. If I stayed in Greengage just another hour, almost two weeks would have gone by at home.

“I’ve got to go!” I cried.

“Yes, you do,” said Martha.

“No, you don’t,” said Joseph firmly. “There’s no need to panic. You’re on regular time now. I’d stake my life on it.”

“We can’t take that chance, Joseph,” said Martha.

“What the hell are you two talking about?” I asked, getting more and more confused.

“Come,” said Martha. “We’ll take you to the fog. We’ll try and explain as we’re walking.”

I looked back and forth between the two of them. If they were acting, they were putting on an amazing show.

We walked at a brisk pace, just short of a jog.

“That feeling we’ve had on full moon days, Martha … that sensation,” Joseph said. He trailed off—whatever it was he was trying to describe was not easily articulated.

“Let me ask you something, Lux. Does it feel like time is racing by right now?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

In fact it felt like the opposite. My anxiety was making time feel as opaque as stone.

“It feels like it’s passing normally, correct?” he prompted.

“Well, it’s not exactly zipping along,” I said.

“For you, too, Martha?”

“Yes.”

“But yesterday, before she came?” he asked Martha.

They exchanged solemn glances.

“What? Tell me,” I said.

“Yesterday the day was over in what felt like an hour,” she said. “It’s been like that every full moon day since the earthquake.”

“We knew it, we just didn’t want to acknowledge it. The existence of this young woman confirms it,” Joseph said to Martha. “Time has been speeding up on full moon days and to the tune of approximately fourteen years. But only on full moon days.” He turned to me. “The rest of the days of the month—like today—time passes here exactly as it passes out there on the other side of the fog.”

He nodded at me. “I don’t think you’re in any danger, Lux. You made it through the fog perfectly fine. And unlike us, it appears you can leave anytime. You can leave right now if you want to.”

We had reached the meadow. The wall of fog still hung there.

“I think she should go,” said Martha. “We don’t want to take any chances.”

I thought of Benno with my parents. Day two of his vacation.

“Please, go,” pleaded Martha.

“If I go, will I be able to come back?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

I’d always had a sixth sense about Benno being in danger. I knew moments before he fell off the jungle gym that he was about to fall off. I would often wake in the middle of the night just before he woke with a nightmare. We were that close, that connected. I tried to reach out to him, to feel him three thousand miles away in Newport. I sensed nothing but good, clear energy. He was probably sitting on the couch with my mother, eating apple slices.

“I want to test out the fog once more,” I said. “Make sure I’m okay in it. That I really can leave whenever I want.”

Martha gave me a concerned look.

“I’ll stay in there just a minute,” I said.

“You have somebody—at home?” Joseph asked.

“Yes.”

“If you decide not to come back, we’ll understand,” he said.

Heart thudding, I walked into the fog. It was thick, but I had no trouble breathing. In fact, it seemed completely indifferent to me. I turned my back on Greengage and tried to peer through the fog to my campsite. I saw the faintest of glows, which comforted me: it was daylight in my time just as it was daylight here. I listened carefully and heard the hum of Route 12. And then a song. A car radio as it drove by. The unmistakable chorus of Captain and Tennille’s “Love Will Keep Us Together.” That song reassured me like nothing else—it was on a constant loop on every station in 1975.

“A minute’s up,” said Joseph.

I hesitated, then stepped into the past.

“You’re sure?” I asked Joseph, back at the house. “That unless it’s the day of the full moon, time passes regularly here?”

“As sure as I can be.”

Martha frowned. “I still think she should go back.”

Now that I’d convinced myself time was passing normally on the other side of the fog, I didn’t want to go, and I didn’t want them to force me to. I had something to offer them. Information. I would parcel it out to them while trying to figure out what was really going on.

“We studied the earthquake in school,” I said. “It leveled San Francisco. The city went up in flames. It was an eight-point-something on the Richter scale.”

“The Richter scale?” asked Joseph.

“It’s a way to measure the magnitude of a quake.”

“Eight points is high?”

“It’s a monster.”

“We kept waiting for somebody to rescue us,” said Martha. “We were well known in Sonoma. We sold our produce to every restaurant and grocery store within fifty miles of the farm. Why didn’t people come looking for us?”

Joseph rubbed his temples and sank lower in his seat. I could see the depression enveloping him. Crazy or not, I had to do something.

“When I go home, I’ll get help.”

“What kind of help could you possibly get?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Who could figure out a way to get you out of the fog? A physicist?”

He gave me a skeptical look.

“Maybe a meteorologist?” I said, attempting a joke. “Look, I’m not kidding. There’s got to be a solution.” Even though part of me was still not accepting the reality of all this, I forged ahead. “What about if I got some sort of a vehicle here? We could drive you through the fog.”

“We tried that,” said Joseph. “We have a Model T. Magnusson built a compartment for it. It was airtight. It didn’t work.”

The front door opened and footsteps pattered down the hallway.

“My sister, Fancy,” said Joseph.

The woman who’d hugged me when I first arrived walked into the room. Her dark hair was cut in a pixie. She wore crimson silk pants and a green kimono top. Compared to Joseph and Martha, she looked like a circus performer.

“Is it true?” she asked Joseph. “Is it true?” she asked me, not waiting for her brother’s reply. “Are you really from 1975?”

“I am.”

Tears sprang to her eyes. “I’ve missed everything,” she cried.

I understood what it was like to feel like life was passing you by.

“Did women finally get the right to vote?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“What year?”

“Nineteen twenty, I think. Here in the States, anyway.”

“Oh goodness, it took that long, did it? I have so many questions. Is she going back? Are you going back?” She looked at me with a desolate face, handing me something folded up in a cloth napkin. “I brought you a treat. A bribe, really, to induce you to stay. Some of Elisabetta’s almond sponge cake.”

I opened the napkin. A square of golden cake was nestled into the cloth. “No inducing necessary,” I said. “I’m staying.”

I was still far from convinced it was 1906, but I wasn’t leaving without looking around a bit more.

“For the day,” clarified Martha.

“Goody!” said Fancy, clapping her hands. “There’s so much we have to talk about.”

Suddenly I was aware of how bad I must look. My shirt was smeared with mud. I smelled of Wilbur, of barnyard. I tried to smooth my hair down, untangle it with my fingers, but it was hopeless.

“You’ll want to clean up,” said Martha.

“I’d love a quick shower,” I confessed.

Martha filled two large pots with water and put them on the woodstove. “Fancy, help me with the tub. It’s in the scullery.”

The two women carried a tin tub into the kitchen. There was no such thing as a quick shower here.

“I didn’t mean for you to go to all that trouble. I’ll just wash up at the sink. Or in the bedroom,” I said, remembering the basin and pitcher.

“Nonsense,” said Martha.

She emanated calm. She was a woman who dealt with the facts. I was here. I was dirty. I needed a proper bath.

“Your clothes will have to be washed. Get her something to wear in the meantime, Fancy,” said Martha.

“You mean like a corset?” Was Martha wearing one right now? Her waist was tiny.

“I don’t wear corsets and neither should you, Lux,” said Fancy. “Constricts the lungs and the liver. Death traps. I believe in a more natural look.”

The conversation had taken a disturbingly intimate turn.

“You may find me in the parlor when you’re done,” said Joseph, disappearing.

“There is nothing natural about your look, Fancy,” said Martha.

Fancy’s brightly colored silks were definitely not the norm, but I appreciated them.

“It’s the latest style, I’ll have you know. From Shanghai,” she sniffed.

Once the water was hot, Martha poured the contents of the two pots into the tub, retrieved a towel and a cake of soap, and handed them to me.

“Martha makes the most brilliant soaps,” said Fancy.

I smelled the soap. Lavender.

Martha abruptly left the room without speaking. Had I done something wrong?

“Don’t take it personally. She’s not good with hellos and goodbyes,” said Fancy. “We are going to be friends, I just know it.” She smiled. “Would you like to know a little about me? I’m sure you’re very curious.”

She gazed at me expectantly.

“Of course,” I said.

“Well, I’ve never been married. I’ve come close. I was engaged to Albert Alderson, but I called it off at the last minute, and do you want to know why? He had horrible breath, like blue cheese. Edward, my father, was so angry. He said, ‘You’re calling off a marriage because of halitosis? Give the poor man a mint! Or breathe through your mouth.’ Yes, Father dear, I’ll breathe through my mouth for the next fifty years. Ah, poor Edward. I’m afraid both his children gravely disappointed him. Are you married, Lux?”

I hesitated. “Yes,” I lied. If she really was from an earlier era, I didn’t want to put her off.

“Really, you lucky girl! There’s nobody interesting here. What’s your husband’s name? Tell me all about him.” She leaned forward, her eyes bright.

“Oh. Well, I sort of misspoke. I was married, but I’m not anymore.”

Her face fell. I could tell what she was thinking. Was I a divorcée? To her, that was probably even worse than having a child out of wedlock.

“I’m a widow. I have been for a while. He, my husband, died years ago.”

Who knows? Maybe Nelson and I would have gotten married if he’d lived. It was another lie, but it wasn’t that much of a stretch.

“Oh, Lux, how awful.”

“It’s okay, we don’t have to talk about it.”

“I’m so sorry. How rude of me to interrogate you like this when we’ve only just met.” She stood. “I’ll go upstairs and gather up some clothes. You have a lovely, long soak.”

I didn’t have time for baths at home. Something about the experience made me feel like a child. I trailed my hands through the warm, soapy water and took inventory of the room. Pots of herbs lined the windowsill: chives, tarragon, and mint. On the shelves, stacks of simple white crockery. On the wooden table, bowls piled high with fruit and vegetables: peaches, plums, a basket of corn. It was so perfect—I still couldn’t shake the feeling I was on a movie set.

My mother once told me impossibility was a circle. You started at the top and immediately fell, plunging down the curve, all the while saying to yourself, This can’t be. Then you reached the hollow at the bottom. The dip. A dangerous place. You could lose yourself. Stay there forever, devoid of hope, of wonder. Or you could sit in that dip, kick your legs out and pump. Swing yourself clear up the other side of the curve to the tippy-top of the circle, where impossibility and possibility met, where for one shining moment they became the same thing. I pointed my toes underwater in the tub and gave a kick, so small it barely disturbed the surface of the water.

When had I grown so cautious?

The clothes were surprisingly comfortable. A pale blue blouse, velvety soft from being laundered so many times, and an oatmeal-colored cotton skirt, loose enough that it didn’t bind at the waist. I felt strangely liberated wearing the outfit, grateful to leave my jeans behind. Fancy had given me a tortoiseshell clip, but I had no idea how to use it to pin my hair back. Instead I braided it loosely and bound the end with a bit of twine I found on the counter.

Finally I made my way to the parlor, where I found Joseph sitting in a leather chair, his eyes closed, listening to opera on a gramophone. An Italian soprano keening in a minor key.

The room felt intimate and cozy. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. A piano and a large mahogany desk that was covered with letters, papers, a microscope, sheet music, and—was that an ostrich egg? The air smelled pleasantly of candle wax and tobacco.

“All freshened up?” he said.

How long had he been watching me?

“It’s a beautiful room. Inspiring.”

“Inspiring? How?”

“I don’t know. It just makes you want to do things. Discover things. Get out into the world.”

“Ah,” he said.

I was tongue-tied, seemingly incapable of saying anything intelligent while still occupied with casting about for an explanation. I needed to find some sort of strategy to calm my mind. I decided I would act as if this was really 1906, without truly accepting it. In that duality I was able to move forward.

“Are you feeling all right?” he asked.

“I’m fine.”

“You look—” He trailed off, as if he thought better of what he was about to say.

“Shell-shocked?” I offered.

He nodded. “You find this impossible to believe.”

“Well—yes,” I admitted.

He sat erect in his chair. “How can I help?”

How can I help? Had anybody ever asked me that? He had such a calm, steady presence about him. His gaze didn’t flit away from mine. He looked directly into my eyes without blinking. I was hanging on a rock face, searching desperately for my next handhold. He was offering to throw a rope up to me, to be my belayer.

“You’re not lying, are you?”

“I don’t lie,” he said.

“You really believe it’s 1906.”

“It’s 1906, Lux.”

“Do you believe I’m from 1975?”

“I must confess I’m struggling a bit with that.”

“You think I’m lying?”

“No. I think you believe it’s 1975.”

“Then you think I’m crazy.”

He hesitated and then said, “It has crossed my mind.”

“So we’re both thinking the same thing. That the other is a lunatic.”

I don’t know who began laughing first, but the laughter was contagious. I stood ten feet away from him, but that distance closed rapidly, our communal astonishment at the madness of our situation serving as a bridge, connecting us to one another.

Finally he stood. “I think a tour of Greengage is in order.”

“You want to give me proof that this place is really what you say it is.”

“Proof and a chance to show the farm off.”

“You’re the one in charge? The owner?” I suspected he was—everybody looked to him.

“I bought the original parcel of land, but as far as I’m concerned we all own Greengage Farm equally.”

“Greengage? Oh, because of the plums? You must grow them. I love greengage jam.”

“We don’t grow greengage plums. They are notoriously hard to grow.”

“Then why did you name the farm Greengage?”

He frowned ever so slightly. “Would you like a tour?”

“Sorry. Yes, please,” I said. Stop asking so many questions, Lux.

As we walked, Joseph explained to me what he’d set out to do, what kind of a community he’d envisioned: a residential farm where all jobs were equally valued and all jobs, whether done by men or women, paid out the same wage.

“Women still don’t get paid as much as men,” I said.

I watched his reaction carefully. Would he be surprised to hear that fact? He didn’t seem to be.

“You were quite forward-thinking for your time, then,” I said. “A real feminist.”

“A feminist?” He raised his eyebrows.

“Somebody who supports women’s rights.”

“Yes. Yes. Of course.”

Unless he was a brilliant actor, he’d never heard the word feminist. You couldn’t open a newspaper or magazine in 1975 without reading an article about feminists protesting some inequity or another.

Despite my skepticism, my heart lifted. What he was describing was a truly egalitarian society. I was in the presence of an honest-to-God idealist. I wanted to share with him that I was an idealist, too, but the idealist in me had been driven underground. Buried by the past five years of a shitty, low-paying job, and my inability to figure out how to better my and Benno’s lives.

Please let him be real. Please let this place be true, a little voice inside me said.

It was August and the fields were high with corn. In the orchard the last of the peaches clung to their branches and the apples were showing their first pinkish blush. The vegetable garden overflowed with produce: peppers, green beans, zucchini, tomatoes, cucumbers, and squash. It was the farm’s busiest season, he explained.

There were people hard at work everywhere. Some ignored me when he brought me by; others stared boldly. I didn’t sense unfriendliness, more of a stunned curiosity. Would I help them? Would I hurt them? I tried to appear as unthreatening as possible. I said hello whenever I caught somebody’s eye; still, I knew they were relieved when I moved on. I felt like a voyeur. Perhaps they felt like an exhibition.

“How do you decide where to put people to work?” I asked.

An elderly man picked corn. For every ear of corn he put in the basket, the woman beside him picked a dozen. It obviously wasn’t an easy task for him.

“I don’t decide, they decide,” Joseph said. “If they want to be on the garden crew, they’re on the garden crew. If they want to be on the animal crew, they’re on the animal crew.”

“But what if everybody wants to be on the animal crew and nobody wants to be on the garden crew?”

“That’s never been the case. The numbers always work out.”

“But what if somebody isn’t suited for the particular kind of work they want to do?”

“There’s always some way they can contribute. If you tell a man he’s useless, he becomes useless.”

Yes. And if you tell a woman she’s only good enough to clean up people’s dirty plates, she’ll always be cleaning up people’s dirty plates, I thought.

“How many crews are there?” I asked.

“Garden, fields, orchard, brambles, animals, building, medical, domestic, kitchen, winery, and school,” he rattled off. “There’s also the herb garden, but that is Martha’s domain—she works alone.”

“Brambles?”

“Blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, too, even though they’re not technically a bramble. The bramble crew is mostly children, who end up eating practically everything they harvest. But it’s a fine first job for them. They have to learn how to pick around the thorns.”

“How many people live here?”

“Two hundred and seventy-eight: 55 children, 223 adults.”

“And you can produce enough food to feed you all?”

“More than enough. In fact, since the fog, we’ve let some fields and gardens go fallow.”

He led me into a large two-story building. “This is the workshop, the building crew’s home base, although most of them are out on the grounds this time of day.”

The workshop was cavernous. Tucked into the corner was a blacksmith station. Every kind of tool imaginable was neatly hung or stacked against the back wall. There was even a horse mill.

Maybe Greengage was a living-history museum, like Old Sturbridge Village or Colonial Williamsburg, where the employees were paid to dress up and stay in character no matter what.

A man sanded a plank at one of the tables. It looked like he was putting together a tiny house.

“Magnusson!” Joseph called out.

The man stalked across the workshop floor. He was an intimidating figure; he towered over Joseph. His hair was white-blond, his eyes cornflower blue.

He stared at me, clicking his massive jaw.

“For God’s sake, don’t be a cretin. Be polite and say hello,” said Joseph.

“Hello,” he grunted.

“What are you building? A house for elves?” I said nervously.

Magnusson rolled his eyes.

“A privy,” said Joseph.

A privy. Right. No flush toilets here.

“Sorry,” I said, then cringed. Act normal, Lux; they’re just people. I was surprised how badly I wanted them all to like me.

“What do you mill?” I asked.

Magnusson walked away without a word, done with me and my ridiculous questions.

“Grain,” answered Joseph. “Oats. Wheat and corn.”

“Oh,” I said in a small voice. “I’m sorry. I live in San Francisco. I don’t know how you do things on a farm.”

“That’s fine. I love talking about what we do.” He led me out of the workshop.

“I’m afraid I made a bad impression on your friend.”

“Magnusson is a Swede,” he said, as if that explained everything.

We walked past pretty little cottages and two dormitories. On our way to the schoolhouse, Joseph told me they didn’t keep to a regular school year. When the children were needed to help with a harvest, school let out. When the community work was done, school was back in session again.

The schoolhouse was empty today. Written on the chalkboard was a Walt Whitman quote.

Now I see the secret of making the best persons: it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.

Sun streamed through the windows and birdsong filled the air. How I would love for Benno to go to school in a room like this. How I would have loved to have gone to a school like this. Against my better judgment, my spirits soared.

“Whitman is Martha’s patron saint,” Joseph said.

“Did you and Martha meet here on the farm?”

“We met at a lecture on cross-pollination methods for corn.”

Was he serious? He didn’t crack a smile. Yes, apparently he was serious.

“Is she from California?”

“She’s from Topeka, Kansas. A farmer’s daughter.”

He told me how Martha had been raised by her Scottish grandmother, a feisty old woman who ate bacon sandwiches, befriended the Kiowa, rode bareback, and practiced herbal medicine, as had her mother, and her mother before her. It was this grandmother who made sure Martha knew her digitalis from her purple coneflower, this grandmother who transformed her into a gifted herbalist.

“Martha’s a midwife as well,” he said.

“Wow. So she takes care of everybody?” Two-hundred-something people? That was a lot of responsibility.

“We have a physician here, too. Dr. Kilgallon, better known as Friar. They have an agreement. If it bleeds or is broken, it goes to Friar. Everything else goes to Martha.”

“So she treats people with what—tinctures?” I’d seen the row of tinctures at the co-op. I’d always been intrigued, but I was doubtful they’d work as well as Tums or Tylenol.

“Not just tinctures. She makes eye sponges and wine cordials, fever pastes, catarrh snuffs, blister treatments. But more often than not, her prescription is simple. Chop wood. Eat a beefsteak. Kiss your children,” he said.

“That works?”

“You’d be surprised. Never underestimate the power of having somebody pay attention to you.”

I wanted a Martha in my life.

He took me to the wine cave. Past the hay shed and the chicken coop, the sheep barn and the horse barn. We climbed into the hills and he proudly showed me one of the four springhouses on the property. Then he proceeded to give me a long lecture on gravity-propelled irrigation systems while we gazed down upon the farm, which was set in the bowl of the valley, a verdant paradise.

I was enchanted. My chest ached with longing. There was something here that was familiar, that I’d been missing but I hadn’t had any idea I’d been missing until this man had shown it to me.

“Well, if you have to be trapped, this is the place you’d want to be,” I said.

His face transformed into a mask of incredulity. “Good God.” He quickly walked away, leaving me to follow.