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Chapter 27

“A Woman’s Place” by Evelyn Cabot

Mademoiselle, August 1970

You may think of me here on my hundred acres as buffered from the upheavals our country is facing. Such isolation is certainly what motivates the young people who seek self-sufficiency as part of the back-to-the-land movement. They’ve begun arriving in this upstate county in their bell-bottomed jeans and Volkswagen vans, determined to live outside the economic and military systems that drive our nation’s policies, both foreign and domestic.

There was a time I would have said Schuywich offered just such a refuge. When I last went down to the firehouse to cast my vote, I’m pretty sure my ballot was an outlier in this conservative community. But everyone on line knew one another’s name, and if we didn’t, an introduction was soon forthcoming. Despite our divergent politics, we all shared the conviction that in our upstate village, neighborliness ought to trump party affiliation. What did a presidential election matter when a fellow congregant required a ride to the doctor, a nearby farmer’s horse was on the loose, or a lonely widower was in need of a meal? Even an interloping city girl like myself has been on the receiving end of much generosity.

It’s not all kumbaya. There are feuds and fealties here like anyplace else, but I daresay we believed our neighborly bonds could weave a web strong enough to keep the wider world at bay. That is, until the war in Vietnam claimed the life of one of our own.

The boy we lost wasn’t a soldier. Jimmy was a teenager who never so much as boarded an airplane, let alone set foot in the country where more than forty thousand Americans have lost their lives. But as with the bullets that murdered those students at Kent State, the trajectory of the bullet that killed my neighbor’s youngest son originated in a military action being waged half a world away. It was loaded into the chamber back in 1960 when President Kennedy first sent advisors to help prop up a failed colonial state. It was fired when President Johnson increased deployments after the debacle in the Gulf of Tonkin. Its relentless path continued even after the Tet Offensive revealed the war to be unwinnable.

That bullet reached its zenith when Jimmy’s older brother decided to enlist. He was eager to get his military service over with so he could get on with the life he looked forward to: marrying his high school sweetheart, taking over his family’s farm, volunteering with the fire department, becoming a father. The fateful bullet followed that soldier home from his tour of duty, hitching a ride in the souvenir pistol he packed in his duffel as a gift for the little brother with whom he’d shared a bedroom ever since Jimmy, the baby of the family, was born. The bullet’s arc began its inexorable descent when Jimmy took that gifted pistol into the woods for what he said was target practice. Tragically, the bullet whose trajectory was set decades ago and continents away found its target when a teenage boy who struggled with dark moods pressed the muzzle of that pistol to his temple and pulled the trigger.

One might argue that a bullet can’t be blamed for the self-destruction of a suicidal teen, let alone a far-off war. A boy troubled enough to take his own life might as easily have met his fate at the bottom of a lake or the end of a noose. But I can’t help thinking of all the moments that would have preceded the last gasp of waterlogged lungs or the fatal kicking away of a stool. Hundreds of seconds for second guesses. Entire minutes during which rescue might have been possible. The chance for a mind to change, a swimmer to surface, a rope to be untied. With a gun, there’s no coming back from that split second of madness.

Some may say, and rightly so, there’s no shortage of firearms in Schuywich, that it’s fruitless to fixate on a single bullet in a gifted pistol. I’d have agreed with you once. What makes me count Jimmy as a casualty of war is the burden his surviving brother now carries. Having served abroad and come safely home, that young man is left feeling as much of a murderer as the maniacs who committed the massacre at My Lai.

I sat among my neighbors at the funeral service held in our village last week. The coroner, I’d heard, had declared the suicide an accident as a favor to the boy’s parents. The chants and prayers, the choir’s songs and swings of incense, the kneeling down and standing up, all meant nothing to me. What I witnessed, as one among many from different faiths and walks of life and races of man gathered together to bid farewell to one lost boy, is the waste of war made manifest. I thought of the bodies littering the landscape in Vietnam — Americans, yes, but Vietnamese, too. Young men, yes, but also women and children and the elderly. I thought of the tears being shed on the other side of our planet at that very same moment for some other mother’s son, some other man’s brother.

Humanity is incapable, apparently, of ending all wars. It’s impossible to comfort every troubled teen, to prevent every suicide, to assuage all our guilty souls. This war, though, must end, and soon. The only prayer I offered up to God in our little church in Schuywich, among the mourners who’ve become more like family to me than my own parents ever were, was that President Nixon fulfill his pledge for peace with honor. And if honor is no longer possible, then peace alone will be enough.

Chapter 28

The county fairgrounds are flat and hot under a late September sun that sucks the morning’s moisture from the browning blades of grass. Dust swirls as I reverse the van into my assigned spot. Lawn chairs and picnic tables dot the field between widely spaced vendors and a central pavilion where a rustic stage holds a microphone and an amplifier. I set up my table and put out the books and prints and business cards I brought. After turning my phone into a hotspot and activating the card reader, I sit on the van’s rear bumper, adjusting the brim of David’s Yankees cap to keep the sun from blinding me.

When I first read the flyer Sam gave me, I thought the Homestead Festival’s eight o’clock start time meant it was an evening event. But no, I quickly realized, farmers are a morning breed. It’s nine already—I’m running late—and the festival is in as full a swing as a Covid-safe gathering can get. Family groups and couples have entire picnic tables to themselves. Individuals sit alone on camping chairs they carry under their arms or strapped to their backs. Onstage, a young woman replaces the microphone’s foam cover before beginning her talk about the best breeds of poultry for eggs and meat. People approach vendors cautiously, overcompensating for their masked faces with raised voices as they ask homesteaders about their artisan cheeses or goat-milk soaps or naturally dyed alpaca yarn. Plastic-wrapped food samples are offered in individual portions on disposable plates, to be tasted at a distance. A local brewery sells flights of beer in little paper cups clustered together on wooden boards that are wiped down with alcohol upon their return. Pecks of fruit can be purchased by scanning a QR code with the camera of one’s phone, a process that baffles the older people who insist on handing over cash, which is reluctantly accepted by hands that are swiftly doused with sanitizer.

The Homestead Festival is a paltry crowd compared to the capacity of the fairgrounds, but it’s the biggest gathering I’ve been part of since the pandemic started. I can’t shake the feeling we’re all doing something wrong, like high school seniors carousing on skip day. It’s a low-risk outdoor activity in a Phase Four region, but attendance is well over the fifty-person limit—or does that only apply to indoor gatherings? The rules change so often, everyone’s confused about what we can and can’t do. The list of states subject to our governor’s travel advisory keeps expanding until it seems as if the whole country is a festering petri dish threatening New York’s hard-won stasis. A new variant is emerging overseas that’s even more easily transmissible; it won’t be long, according to the CDC, before it’s the dominant strain in the United States. People who’ve recovered from the virus are becoming reinfected, shattering my fantasy of sharing immunity with Matt Damon.

I tell myself to stop freaking out. I’m outside and masked, too. I’ll be fine as long as I don’t let anyone get too close.

Looking over the program I got from the organizer who told me where to park, I see I’ve already missed Sam’s 8:30 question-and-answer session about agricultural zoning. Lucinda’s name is listed next to the ten o’clock speaker’s slot, between a 9:30 talk about the joys of raising kunekune pigs and a 10:30 lecture about growing hops as a cash crop. After a candle-making lesson at 11 and a wool-spinning demonstration at half past, the mic will be open at noon for an hour of songs and poems and stories while people eat the bagged lunches prepared by the women’s auxiliary of the Presbyterian church. The festival will conclude at one o’clock with a collection of canned goods for the county food bank.

“Hey, Audrey, how’s it going?” Aisha has reinterpreted a farmer’s look into a fashion statement, pairing red overalls with a sleeveless hoodie and platform sneakers. Her twists are gathered in a messy topknot, her dramatic wings of mascara accentuated with faux lashes.

“I’m fine, running late is all. You look great, Aisha.”

“Thanks. Here, let me get a picture.” When I mentioned I’d be setting up a table at the Homestead Festival, Aisha suggested I feature some of the books I’d be selling on social media. I hold up a 1947 Modern Guide to Home Canning and smile for the camera. Aisha fiddles with her phone before dropping it into her pocket. “There, that’s posted.”

“How’s school going?”

“It’s okay. I mean, I wish I could be there in person. I keep seeing kids on the screen I wanna hang out with IRL, you know? The classes are kind of boring, too. Most of my professors just talk into the camera for an hour and then make us do quizzes or whatever.”

“I don’t love teaching online, either.” I’m a few weeks into the fall semester and I’m doing my best, integrating breakout rooms and video links into my lessons, but I miss the humanity of a classroom.

“Well, at least I’ve got more time to manage Gramma Lulu’s business than if I were in Ithaca.”

“How is she?”

“Fantastic.” Aisha points across the fairgrounds to where Lucinda’s signature glasses are matched with a Barbie-pink blouse for a bright spot of color. “She encouraged that organization of Black farmers to set up a table today, said they belong here as much as anyone else, you know? Now they want her to give the keynote at a food justice conference they’re organizing. I told them her rate is five thousand for speaking gigs, which is what she’s getting from Skidmore College for a Zoom lecture next month, but Gramma Lulu insisted on saying yes for free. At least it’ll count as a charitable donation on her taxes.”

“She really is keeping you busy, isn’t she? Any news about the book deal?” Over the summer, Lucinda’s participation in a roundtable for the local public radio affiliate led to an interview on the national station, which in turn attracted the attention of a literary agent who’s currently shopping a book proposal.

Aisha’s eyes crinkle into a smile. “Turns out, Black Lives Matter has gotten the attention of the whole publishing industry. There’s a ton of interest in how the Cozy Cozy Lady combines African-American history with traditional crafts and Black entrepreneurship. Gramma Lulu’s agent thinks she can get a six-figure advance by taking the proposal to auction.”

“That’s incredible,” I say, stifling a surge of professional jealousy. The small press that published Dad’s Apprentice doesn’t do advances, and though it sold well for a while, my royalties have since stalled. The big payoff from my memoir was the job it landed me in academia, where capital accrues in the form of accomplishments that lead to promotion—a cutthroat economy in which I’m currently bankrupt. “Congratulations, Aisha.”