The Bond

Chapter 1: Farmer

Chapter 1: FarmerMy daughter Antonia and I live in an old farmhouse, on a backcountry road, in a town so small you hated hearing your last name by the time you were twenty. If you were here past twenty you weren’t getting out.

I was past twenty.

It wasn’t just your name you hated hearing. It was the O’Brien’s, the Muskavitch’s, the Reilly’s and countless others; the woman who ran the daycare, Megan Felber, the touchy-feely geography teacher, Mr. Musso. If you heard those names once more…

Then there were the Makavoy’s.

Us.

Dirt under our nails, soil caked on our boots, leaves stuck in our hair, perpetually working, trying to make ends meet; farmers.

Our existence relied on good harvests, fair weather, and an even fairer share of tenuous luck. Each generation passed down skills, tips, tricks, devotion to the land and the indefatigable work ethic upon which all else was judged. How much, how hard you worked, determined your value. Providing for family, friends, community was central to the structure of our lives, that and the farm, the work.

Always work. Always dirt.

My pop worked the land, as did all the men and women in our family, with a single-minded goal of surviving another season. From before dawn to after sunset he worked. When I was little, my grandfather worked alongside him, and as soon I was able, so did I. My grandfather smelled of trees and so did Pop. After a day’s work, it wasn’t the stink of sweat he wore, but the whiff of dirt and wood that clung to him.

My mother, Lila, wise in her own persnickety ways, complained that no matter how much she washed, the smell never came out of Pop’s clothes. It didn’t bother her, but she liked complaining. Since he’d passed, I received her biting complaints the same way my pop had, in relatively good-natured silence.

* * * *

It was, above all else, a farm of trees—black poplar, white ash, red oak and silver maple—most planted generations ago. Everywhere, these looming, leafed centurions kept vigil.

On Arbor Day, we celebrated.

Trees were planted. Trees were sold. People came together, celebrating things that grew, would grow and were planted long ago. Lila hocked our preserves, poured honey-sweetened tea, and chatted with customers buying bundles of herbs, and small jugs of maple syrup procured from the silver maples.

Once the last tree was carried home and the kids bundled off, exhausted and dirty with equally tired and often tiresome parents, Pop cracked a beer, poured some into the ground beneath a monster beech tree called Old Jed, and toasted the legacy of work and sacrifice started decades ago.

* * * *

According to Lila, and the story varied on her mood, Old Jed was named after some long-dead relative. Of course it could have been named after a mule, an uncle, a farm cat, or whatever Lila decided in the moment. Pop never corrected my mother’s historical tales; he’d smile knowingly, nodding at me over her shoulder.

If Lila weren’t around to elucidate, I’d watch visitors ponder the breadth of branch, limb and leaf. Old Jed provided shade during sweltering summers and awe when frosted white in winter. Countless were the times I’d climbed too high, one time falling from Old Jed’s formidable boughs and breaking my leg. The injury did little to deter my love for the tree, or stubbornness to climb higher.

Next to the farmhouse and behind Old Jed was the farm’s storefront; to the right of the store were display gardens. Depending on the season, flowers spilled out of ancient birdbaths, and an equally archaic claw-foot tub overflowed with a variety of vines, blooms and plants. The rusty sundial, surrounded by unruly bushes and wildflowers, was a particular customer favorite. Beyond the display gardens were smaller sub-divided plots, currently used for pumpkins and winter squash. There were assorted fruit and nut trees bordering the plots which were harvested and used to make goods to be sold at the farm. Behind the storefront, which was a remodeled part of the main barn, were the green houses, the largest of which you entered through the back of the store. One barn was in sad shape—on a farm, something always is—housing old tractors, machinery, and a couple of antique cars time forgot. As much as Pop wanted to empty and renovate the structure, he never found time. Farming is all about time—found and lost, never enough. By the end of the day, he’d be too tired to do more than eat, shower and pass out.

Fields stretched behind the property to lush woods. We took countless nature walks with family and friends, and each time, we discovered some new, unexpected part of the seemingly endless expanse of trees.

The heart of the property was the house; a comforting pile of wood, nails, beams, paint, history. Built in the 1800’s it had its quirks. It needed attention as much as the land. After Pop died, I did my best to finish the many projects he’d started, but as is the way of farmhouses nothing is ever done.

“There weren’t streets when the house was built,” Lila told me, friends, customers, anyone who asked. She relished the long history of my father’s family. “Settlers, farmers, hard workers, the hardest working…”

The history held me in its ancient, callused grasp, as much as my skin held my bones, veins and blood…I knew history, and it knew me. It’d been drummed into my and everyone else’s skulls, neighbors, city council members, teachers…and I could name each person smiling, listening to my mother’s ramblings, some yawning, because they, like everyone else, had heard it all before.

As a teenager my life was school, then farm, eat, sleep, repeat.

The monotony was slow suffocation. Monotony is like that; you don’t know you’re in it until something snaps you out of it. Two things did that in thunderous, rapturous ways. I discovered death metal via a local college radio station and I had s*x with a stranger in the woods next to the high school. I was seventeen. Suddenly my world went florescent, opened wide like some flower getting spring thrust upon it suddenly, gloriously, terrifyingly.

The metal came first, the roar, the chaos of the sound filled parts of me I didn’t know were empty, and the harder, louder, faster, the more I wanted. My parents were naturally mortified and many were the nights of my parents banging on my door to, “Turn that crap down!”

I escaped into sound, and bought as much as I could afford from the small alternative record shop the next town over, that catered to community college kids.

That day in the woods I’d been listening to death metal, loud, lost in it, I might have had my eyes closed, so familiar were those paths I walked without fear, I’d never lose my way, couldn’t…

Then he was there.

The rapturous part, unlike the roar of metal, came from within, something came undone, not just my jeans, but some wall I’d not known existed. I’d hit puberty with the same stumbling exuberance as anyone else, I loved looking at girls, lusted, m*********d, and fantasized, got pimples, hair everywhere…my voice changed, but I didn’t know there was more, or that there could be more. Like the well-worn path I walked without thinking, or realizing there were forks…other ways things could go, another way home.

When he touched me, I heard things; a crow squawking, the sound of our shoes crushing leaves, even the distant ringing of the final school bell, I don’t know how it started, what he said, or what I said. The rapture came like a wave: swollen, wet, flooding, and when it was over, I was left panting against a tree, my shirt torn open, my underwear lost among the ferns, and music still blasting from headphones lost among dead leaves, twigs, and green plants.

Those woods, once familiar, reeled and rocked with our f*****g until even when he wasn’t there, I smelled our s*x; piney, bleachy, and smoky. The more s*x I had the more my desires demanded. When he stopped showing up, I pined for him just long enough to fall for a girl I met bumming around the record shop. We bloomed under more exploration; learning from the other until she took off for some city, somewhere, and I caught my breath, stilled my heart.

Sitting on a tractor, one sunset-colored September afternoon I had a moment of actualization. I was bisexual. I could and did desire both men and women. I remember wishing I could look into a mirror, certain this realization must have changed me…this knowing. Pop shouted for me to get moving…but everything had already moved. Everything changed.

This realization shattered what was left of my suffocating monotony. My best friend, Ivan, was the only other person who knew. He’d come out as gay when we were juniors, much to the town’s collective shock and disdain. Ivan didn’t care. He exploited the people’s hatred by being outrageous, defiant and brazenly s****l until he became untouchable like some infamous deity.

I remained silent, and guarded my secret like a treasure.