Richard Ford - The Lay of the Land

“Now go over to Hunterdon County and Warren, it’s way different. Prices rose twenty-three, twenty-four percent here this year. Median price is four-fifty.” Benivalle brusquely scratches his rucked neck like Neville Brand would, and in a way that makes him look older.

“You don’t own the land, do you?” Mike suddenly says, forgetting that he’s supposed to help buy it. He’s been in a swoon since his two-hander was reciprocated. The thought that this out-of-date farmland, this comely but useless woods, this silted, dry creek could be transformed into a flat-as-a-griddle housing tract, on which behemoth-size dwellings in promiscuous architectural permutations might sprout like a glorious city of yore and that it could all be done to his bidding and profit is almost too much for him.

“I’ve got an option.” Benivalle nods again, as though this was news not to be bruited. “The old guy who used to operate this vegetable stand”—his big mitt motions toward the tumbledown gray-plank produce shack—“his family owns it.”

“MacDonald,” I suddenly realize — and say.

“Okay,” Benivalle says, like a cop. “You know him? He’s dead.”

“I used to buy tomatoes from him twenty-five years ago.”

“I used to pick those freakin’ tomatoes,” Benivalle says matter-offactly. “I worked for him. Like—”

“I probably bought tomatoes from you.” I can’t keep from grinning. Here is a human being from my certifiable past — not all that common if you’re me — who may actually have laid his honest human eyes on my dead son, Ralph Bascombe.

“Yeah, maybe,” Benivalle says.

“What happened to ole MacDonald?” I’m forgetting the option, the floodplain, inventory, footprint, usable floor space. Memory rockets to that other gilded time — red mums, orange pumpkins, fat dusty tomatoes, leathery gourds, sunlight streaming through the roof cracks in the warm, rich-aired produce stand. Ralph, age five or six, would march up to the counter and somebody — Tommy Benivalle, acned, furiously masturbating high schooler and reserve on the JV wrestling squad — would look gravely down, then slip my son a root beer rock candy on condition he tell no one, since Farmer MacDonald got a “pretty penny” for them. It became Ralph’s first joke. Every penny a pretty penny.

“He passed.” Meaning ole MacDonald. “Like I said. A few years ago.” Tom Benivalle’s not at ease sharing the past with me. He brushes a speck of phantom road grit off his oxford cloth shirtsleeve. On his breast pocket there’s stitched a tiny colorful pheasant bursting into flight. He buys his shirts from the same catalog I buy mine — minus the pheasant.

Silence momentarily becalms us while Benivalle refinds the skein of business talk. He is not the bad guy I thought. I could mention my son. He could say he remembered him. “He’s got a daughter up in Freylinghuysen,” he says about the now dead owner. “I approached her about this. She was okay.”

“You must’ve known her when you were kids.”

Mike’s still staring at the acreage in his mustard blazer, dreaming conquest dreams. A whole new it has bumped up onto his horizon. Lavallette no longer the final it. He and Mrs. Mahoney might see eye-to-eye again.

“Yeah, I sorta did,” Benivalle says scratchily. “He worked at Bell Labs, the old man. My dad had a decorative-pottery place up in Frenchtown. They did some business.” How do I know these natives? I should’ve been an FBI profiler. Sometimes no surprise can be a blessing. I, however, am not the business partner here. My job is to be the spiritual Geiger counter, and see to it Benivalle understands Mr. Mahoney has serious (non-Asian) backers who know a thing or two. I’m sure I’ve done that by now. Thoughts of my son go sparkling away.

“I’m going to take off,” I say, turning toward Mike, who’s still staring away, dazzled. “I’ve gotta see a man about a horse.”

Benivalle blinks. “So, then, are you in the horse business?” It’s his first spontaneous utterance to me — besides my name — and it causes him to ravel his brow, turn the corners of his mouth up in a non-smile, touch a finger to the stud in his earlobe and let his eyes examine me.

I smile back. “It’s just an expression.” Mike unexpectedly turns and looks to me as if I’d spoken his name.

“I get it,” Benivalle says. He’s ready for me to get going, for it to be just the two of them, so he can start making his spiel to Mike about having himself certified for all that government moolah so they can start moving Urdu speakers down from Gotham and Teaneck. He may think Mike’s a Pakistani. My work here is done, and fast.

M ike and I begin our walk back across the gusty turn-out toward my Suburban. Sweet pungence of leaf-burn swims in the air from the linked back yards across Mullica Road, where a homeowner’s daydreaming against his rake, garden hose at the ready, peering into the cool flames and curling smoke, indifferent to the good-neighbor ordinances he’s breaching, woolgathering over how things should most properly be, and how they once had been when something he can’t exactly remember was the rule of the day and he was young. It could all be put back into working order, he knows, if the Democrats could be kept from boosting the goddamned fucking election that he, because he was on a business trip to Dayton and had jury duty in Pennington the second he got home, somehow forgot to vote in. “Whatever It Takes” should be the battle hymn of the republic.

“So, I’ll see you later,” Mike says, nose in the breeze as we come to my parked vehicle. He’s feeling tip-top about everything now, even though seeming eager is incautious.

“I’ll be at the August,” I say. Benivalle has already headed toward his Caddy. He has no inclination for good-byes with strangers. “Gladda meetcha,” I shout to him in the stiff wind, but he’s already mashing a little cell phone to his ear and can’t hear me. “Yeah. I’m out here at the parcel,” I hear him say. “It’s all great.”

“What do you think?” Mike says barely under his breath. His flat freckled nose has gone pale in the cold, his small pupils shining with hope for a thumbs-up. His spiffy business outfit — expensive shoes and blazer — makes him seem helpless. His lapel, I see, sports a tiny American flag in the buttonhole. A new addition.

“You just better be careful.” My fingers are on the cold door handle.

Mike hands me the keys he’s removed. “No choices are ever absolutely right,” he says and frowns, trying to be confident.

“Plenty are absolutely crazy, though. This isn’t Buddhism, it’s business.”

“Oh, yes! I know!” He consults the sky again. A front, maybe cold New Jersey rain, true harbinger of winter, is coming in now. I’m colder already, my hands frozen. My barracuda jacket is water-resistant, not waterproof. “Just don’t let him talk you into signing anything.” I’m climbing stiffly into the driver’s side, where the seat’s too far forward. “If you don’t sign, they can’t put you in prison.”

Prison scares the crap out of him. Our bold, new-concept American lockups are the stuff of his nightmares, having seen too many documentaries on the Discovery Channel and knowing what happens on the inside to gentle souls like him.

“We’ll talk about it tonight,” I say out my window, which I’d like to close.

“You think belief’s a luxury, I know.” Breeze flaps his trouser legs. He’s fidgeting with his gold pinkie ring without seeking my eye. Benivalle starts up his Coupe de Ville with a noisy screech of fan-belt slippage.

“I guess if you think it is, it is,” I say, getting the seat resituated and not entirely sure what I mean by that.